This article reconstructs the political motivation argument against cosmopolitanism, according to which the extension of social justice beyond bounded communities would be motivationally unstable, and thus unjustified. It does so through an analysis of the stability problem, and a reconstruction of the three most prominent anti-cosmopolitan arguments—Rawlsian statism, liberal nationalism, and civic republicanism—as solutions to this problem. It then examines, and rejects, three prominent objections, each denying a different level of the argument. The article concludes that the civic republican version (...) of the argument is the most plausible, and implications for cosmopolitanism are considered. (shrink)

Critics of investment citizenship often appeal to the idea that citizenship should not be commodified. This chapter clarifies how the different arguments in support of this Commodification Objection are best understood as versions of wider claims in the literature on the moral limits of markets (MLM). Through an analysis of the three main objections – The Wrong Distribution Argument, The Value Degradation Argument, and the Motivational Corruption Argument – it claims that these objections rely on flawed and partial interpretations of (...) the broader debates. As such, they do not in fact support the conclusions critics of investment citizenship wish to draw from them. The paper concludes that the commodification objection to investment citizenship should therefore be abandoned, and that normative resistance to the practice should be made on other grounds. (shrink)

Should facts about motivation play a role in the justification of political ideals? Many theorists argue that political ideals should be tailored to the limitations of human nature—‘taking people as they are’—while others maintain that facts about motivation should be excluded. This article offers a critical intervention in this debate: the important question is not so much whether people can motivate themselves, or whether they are capable of being motivated, but what social mechanisms would be required to motivate them, and (...) whether these mechanisms are legitimate. Reframing the question of motivation as a political question of legitimacy, I argue that if people could only be motivated to act through illegitimate use of power, the ideal in question cannot be fully justified. (shrink)

While many argue investment-based criteria for immigration are wrong or at least problematic, skill-based criteria remain relatively uncontroversial. This is normatively inconsistent. This article assesses three prominent normative objections to investment-based selection criteria for immigrants: that they wrongfully discriminate between prospective immigrants that they are unfair, and that they undermine political equality among citizens. It argues that either skill-based criteria are equally susceptible to these objections, or that investment-based criteria are equally shielded from them. Indeed, in some ways investment-based criteria (...) are less normatively problematic than skill-based criteria. Given this analysis, the resistance to investment-based migration criteria, but not to skill-based criteria, is inconsistent. (shrink)

As even those who endorse it concede, cosmopolitanism has a motivational problem. There is a need for strategies to generate support of global norms conducive to cosmopolitanism, but which do not rely primarily on the motivating force of the moral argument. This article makes the case for civic vigilance as an answer to this problem. It argues that support for cosmopolitan norms could be advanced by encouraging a recognition of the ‘boomerang effect’: the ways in which global injustice undermines the (...) freedom of one’s own political community. The article offers evaluative criteria for different motivational strategies, assesses prominent alternatives to moral motivation, and finally defends the appeal to civic vigilance. (shrink)

David Axelsen has recently introduced a novel critique of the motivational argument against cosmopolitanism : even if it were the case that lack of motivation could serve as a normative constraint, people’s anti-cosmopolitan motivations cannot be seen as constraints on cosmopolitan duties as they are generated and reinforced by the state. This article argues that Axelsen 's argument misrepresents the nationalist motivational argument against cosmopolitanism : the nationalist motivational argument is best interpreted as an argument about normative feasibility rather than (...) as an argument about the technical feasibility. Nationalists ' objection to cosmopolitanism arises not from the impossibility of cosmopolitan motivation, but from the moral costs of achieving and sustaining it. Given this interpretation, this article argues that Axelsen fails to demonstrate that nationalists would have to accept cosmopolitan conclusions from their own premises. (shrink)

This article presents a new understanding of the problem of cosmopolitan motivation in war, comparing it to the motivational critique of social justice cosmopolitanism. The problem of cosmopolitanism’s “motivational gap” is best interpreted as a political one, not a meta-ethical or ethical one. That is, the salient issue is not whether an individual soldier is able to be motivated by cosmopolitan concerns, nor is it whether being motivated by cosmopolitanism would be too demanding. Rather, given considerations of legitimacy in the (...) use of political power, a democratic army has to be able to motivate its soldiers to take on the necessary risks without relying on coercion alone. Patriotic identification offers a way to achieve this in wars of national defense, but less so in armed humanitarian interventions (AHIs). Two potential implications are that either AHIs should be privatized or that national armies should be transformed to become more cosmopolitan. (shrink)

This article provides a new interpretation of Richard Rorty’s notion of the private-public distinction. The first section of the article provides a short theoretical overview of the origins of the public-private distinction in Rorty’s political thought and clarifies the Rortian terminology. The main portion of the article is dedicated to the critique of Rorty’s private-public distinction, divided into two thematic sections: (i) the private-public distinction as undesirable and (ii) the private-public distinction as unattainable. I argue that Rorty’s formulation provides plausible (...) answers to the first kind of criticism, but not to the second. Finally, a reformulation of the private-public distinction will be suggested, which both mitigates the second line of criticism and better coheres with Rorty’s general theory. (shrink)

In recent decades, revisionist philosophers have radically challenged the orthodox just war theory championed by Michael Walzer in the 1970s. This review considers two new contributions to the debate, Benbaji and Statman’s War by Agreement and Ripstein’s Kant and the Law of War, which aim to defend the traditional war convention against the revisionist attack. The review investigates the two books’ respective contractarian and Kantian foundations for the war convention, their contrast with the revisionist challenge, and their points of disagreement. (...) Building on the responses to Ripstein in the edited collection, The Public Uses of Coercion and Force, and providing an overview of the broader debate, the review offers an analysis of the two books’ positions on the relationship between the morality and laws of war, on just cause and the crime of aggression, and on the equality between just and unjust combatants. (shrink)

The convergence of morphogenesis into viable organisms under variable conditions suggests closed‐loop dynamics involving multiscale functional feedback. We develop the idea that morphogenesis is based on synergy between mechanical and bio‐signaling processes, spanning all levels of organization: molecular, cellular, tissue, up to the whole organism. This synergy provides feedback within and between all levels of organization, to close the loop between the dynamics of the morphogenesis process and its robust functional outcome. Hydra offer a powerful platform to explore this direction, (...) thanks to their simple body plan, extraordinary regeneration capabilities, and the accessibility and flexibility of their tissues. Our recent experiments show that structural inheritance of the actomyosin organization directs body‐axis formation during Hydra regeneration. Morphogenesis is then stabilized through dynamic cytoskeletal reorganization induced by the inherited structure. The observed cytoskeletal stability and reorganization capabilities suggest that mechanical feedback integrates with biochemical processes to establish viable patterns and ensure canalization. (shrink)

This article contributes to an emerging literature on the “neo” or “entrepreneurial” developmental state that emphasizes the role of innovation policy in promoting the structural transformation of industry. It finds further evidence that supports this approach and advances it by making two unique contributions. First, it highlights an essential yet underappreciated feature of contemporary innovation policy: the state’s capacity to condition public assistance and discipline private firms that do not adhere to government guidelines. These capacities are necessary to guarantee that (...) the benefits of public investment in innovation—the social and economic spillovers—are not appropriated by private actors but shared more broadly within society. Second, it highlights that politics—reflected in the relations between innovation agencies and key social actors—represents an important causal factor in both the formation and subsequent transformation of these institutional capacities. These points are illustrated through a historical analysis of a crucial case: the state-led development of Israel’s thriving high-tech sector. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 480-495, December 2021.

As a way of comparing qualitative and quantitative approaches to critical discourse analysis, two analysts independently examined similar datasets of newspaper articles in order to address the research question ‘How are different types of men represented in the British press?’. One analyst used a 41.5 million word corpus of articles, while the other focused on a down-sampled set of 51 articles from the same corpus. The two ensuing research reports were then critically compared in order to elicit shared and unique (...) findings and to highlight strengths and weaknesses between the two approaches. This article concludes that an effective form of CDA would be one where different forms of researcher expertise are carried out as separate components of a larger project, then combined as a way of triangulation. (shrink)

According to the so-called Hempel’s Dilemma, the thesis of physicalism is either false or empty. Our intention in this paper is not to propose a solution to the Dilemma, but rather to argue as follows: to the extent that Hempel’s Dilemma applies to physicalism it equally applies to any theory that gives a deep-structure and changeable account of our experience or of high-level theories. In particular, we will show that it also applies to mind-body dualistic theories. The scope of Hempel’s (...) Dilemma turns out to be very wide: it is a special case of a general sceptical argument against changeable deep-structure theories in and outside science. (shrink)

The expressivist account of knowledge attributions, while claiming that these attributions are nonfactual, also typically holds that they retain a factual component. This factual component involves the attribution of a belief. The aim of this work is to show that considerations analogous to those motivating an expressivist account of knowledge attributions can be applied to belief attributions. As a consequence, we claim that expressivists should not treat the so-called factual component as such. The phenomenon we focus on to claim that (...) belief attributions are non-factual is that of normative doxastic disagreement. We show through several examples that this kind of disagreement is analogous to that of the epistemic kind. The result will be a doxastic expressivism. Finally, we answer some objections that our doxastic expressivism could seem to face. (shrink)

In recent years, state-of-the-art artificial intelligence systems have started to show signs of what might be seen as human level intelligence. More specifically, large language models such as OpenAI’s GPT-3, and more recently Google’s PaLM and DeepMind’s GATO, are performing amazing feats involving the generation of texts. However, it is acknowledged by many researchers that contemporary language models, and more generally, learning systems, still lack important capabilities, such as understanding, reasoning and the ability to employ knowledge of the world and (...) common sense in order to reach or at least advance toward general intelligence. Some believe that scaling will eventually bring about these capabilities; others think that a different architecture is needed. In this paper, we focus on the latter, with the purpose of integrating a theoretical–philosophical conception of understanding as knowledge of dependence relations, with the high-level requirements and engineering design of a robust AI system, which integrates machine learning and symbolic components. (shrink)

Triggered Inversion (TI) in Hebrew has been previously analyzed as canonical A'-movement to the specificer position of a functional projection in the CP-layer (Doron & Shlonsky 1990, Shlonsky 1997). This article examines the semantic properties of TI constructions in Hebrew, specifically the cross-linguistic similarities between TI in Hebrew and pseudoclefts (PC) in English, as discussed in Heycock & Kroch (1999). A structure is proposed for Hebrew TI that parallels the structure given for equatives in Hebrew by Rothstein (1995), in which (...) the trigger is base-generated in the operator layer and the inverted surface word order is an artifact of subject movement to a position below that of the verb. Finally, TI is considered in the crosslinguistic typology of focus constructions outlined in Kiss (1998). (shrink)

In the last few decades, residency in some of the world’s desired destination cities has become a privilege, as housing supply has not kept pace with population growth. This has led to a significant rise in housing prices and consequently to the exclusion of middle- and low-income populations on a large scale. These developments have received only scant attention in political theory despite their prominence in local policymaking and their contribution to processes of redrawing the boundaries of inclusion into local (...) political communities. My focus in this article is on the question ‘is it morally permissible for cities to sort members by economic means, and grant the better-off privileged access to residency?’ I explore this question by examining the main arguments used to support the city’s right to selectively admit would-be members. This allows me to delineate the limitations of the city’s general duty to be accessible to all segments of society and to present particular cases where the city has special obligations to incorporate nonmembers. (shrink)

In the research field of machine ethics, we commonly categorize artificial moral agents into four types, with the most advanced referred to as a full ethical agent, or sometimes a full-blown Artificial Moral Agent (AMA). This type has three main characteristics: autonomy, moral understanding and a certain level of consciousness, including intentional mental states, moral emotions such as compassion, the ability to praise and condemn, and a conscience. This paper aims to discuss various aspects of full-blown AMAs and presents the (...) following argument: the creation of full-blown artificial moral agents, endowed with intentional mental states and moral emotions, and trained to align with human values, does not, by itself, guarantee that these systems will have _human_ morality. Therefore, it is questionable whether they will be inclined to honor and follow what they perceive as incorrect moral values. we do not intend to claim that there is such a thing as a universally shared human morality, only that as there are different human communities holding different sets of moral values, the moral systems or values of the discussed artificial agents would be different from those held by human communities, for reasons we discuss in the paper. (shrink)

It is argued that ideals emerge in the course of the individuation‐separation process, preserving the narcissism of primary Thingness. Ideals form an essential part of social structure, as opposed to communitas, where individuation is suspended. The anthropological distinction between social structure and communitas is reformulated in psychoanalytic terms. Structure and communitas are shown to correspond to two alternative organizations of narcissism. Ideals and myths figure among the manifestations of the narcissism of structure. In the last section, certain explanations of the (...) discourse of ideals are drawn from the preceding account. While the premises of the following reflections are broadly Kleinian, Lacanian concepts are supplemented, not on the basis of any definite synthesis but towards a piecemeal reconciliation. (shrink)

Este trabajo se enmarca en una investigación en curso sobre la representación de los genocidios en el cine documental. En esta instancia se indagará en torno a las características del testimonio del victimario en el cine documental, efectuando un mapeo por diversas producciones. Se presentará un posible esquema que prestará atención en la matriz narrativa de los testimonios y los modos de responsabilidad que allí se exponen. De este modo, se presentarán dos grandes polos que oscilarán entre la entrevista –más (...) ligada a brindar información “objetiva”– y el trabajo de confesión –ámbito donde el perpetrador medita sobre su subjetividad–. (shrink)

Artificial general intelligence is not a new notion, but it has certainly been gaining traction in recent years, and academic as well as industry resources are redirected to research in AGI. The main reason for this is that current AI techniques are limited as they are designed to operate in specific problem-domains, following meticulous preparation. These systems cannot operate in an unknown environment or under conditions of uncertainty, reuse knowledge gained in another problem domain, or autonomously learn and understand the (...) problem-domain. We shall call AI systems capable of such feats artificial general intelligent systems. The three tasks of this paper are to provide a working definition of the term AGI, examine the “missing G”, i.e., the set of abilities that current AI systems lack and whose implementation will result in a basic AGI system, and consider different approaches, including a hybrid one, to a comprehensive solution for an AGI. (shrink)

South Africa has been undergoing a process of transformation since the end of White minority rule in 1994. During this period, various employment and lifestyle opportunities have given rise to a growing Black middle class. Against this backdrop, the article draws upon an intersectional approach to corpus-assisted discourse studies in order to examine the construction of the BMC in a 1.4 million-word corpus composed of 20 mainstream Anglophone South African newspaper titles published between 2008 and 2014. With the help of (...) the corpus tool AntConc, the article investigates the collocates of ‘black middle class’, ‘black diamonds’, ‘clever blacks’ and ‘coconuts’, classifying results according to semantic categories in order to provide an idea of the multiple but nuanced representations of the BMC in contemporary SA. The analysis finds several lexically rich moralizing and paternalistic discourses that, in accordance with an intersectional perspective, enact a complex pattern of strategies that are simultaneously exclusionary and inclusionary. (shrink)

When discussing AI alignment, we usually refer to the problem of teaching or training advanced autonomous AI systems to make decisions that are aligned with human values or preferences. Proponents of this approach believe it can be employed as means to stay in control over sophisticated intelligent systems, thus avoiding certain existential risks. We identify three general obstacles on the path to implementation of value alignment: a technological/technical obstacle, a normative obstacle, and a calibration problem. Presupposing, for the purposes of (...) this discussion, that the technical and normative problems are solved, we focus on the problem of how to calibrate a system, for a specific value, to be on a specific location within a spectrum stretching between righteous and normal or average human behavior. Calibration, or more specifically mis-calibration, also raises the issue of trustworthiness. If we cannot trust AI systems to perform tasks the way we intended, we would not use them on our roads and at our homes. In an era where we strive to construct autonomous machines endowed with common sense, reasoning abilities and a connection to the world, so they would be able to act in alignment with human values, such mis-calibrations can make the difference between trustworthy and untrustworthy systems. (shrink)

The essay proposes that children should not participate in custody proceedings because they lack a place in the public world, a concept which was developed by Arendt and which I elaborate on the basis of her writings. Arendt’s concepts of place in the world and of childhood are correlated, polar ethical concepts. ‘Place in the world’ as described by Arendt combines commitment to worldbuilding as a collaborative enterprise, relations of mutual-recognition among equal co-builders of the public world, an inviolable place (...) in public and private realms, and self-disclosure through the staging of public appearances. We should recognize children as rightful participants in divorce proceedings when we are ready to treat them as occupants of place in the world, split between public and private realms and corresponding public and private voices. Recent practices of children’s participation undermine the intimate realm of childhood as well as the public world. (shrink)

The article presents the argument that administrative decision-making should be understood as devoted to balancing between conflicting interests of individuals or groups, usually when none of the affected parties has predefined legal rights that are relevant to the substantial content of the administrative decision. Administrative decisions often have a direct effect not only on human and civil rights issues, but also on matters bearing on the quality of life, living conditions, prices of regulated products, and the allocation of government funds. (...) Since the decision as to which interest should prevail in the conflict is a distributive one and has many possible answers, the role of administrative law is primarily to ensure that these decisions are made fairly, with due weight given to the conflicting interests of the various groups and individuals involved. With this as background, the article shows how the doctrines of positive administrative law are designed to meet the challenge of coping with conflicting interests in the administrative decision-making process, using such examples as the prohibitions against decision-makers’ conflicts of interest and the rules regarding interest representation and judicial review. In the second part, the article applies the interest perspective to the administrative decision-making process in order to analyze the highly extensive regulation of land resources in Israel. The analysis concentrates on the Israeli Supreme Court decision in one of the most controversial petitions brought before it: against administrative decisions on the development of formerly agricultural lands. (shrink)

This article takes a close look at a rhetoric strategy, often used in an attempt to preserve an appearance of neutrality in conflicts over rights. This strategy rests on the concept of symmetry, and in particular concerns symmetry between so-called 'positive rights' (described as the right to obtain or have an object, to engage in an activity, or to enjoy a desired state of affairs) and 'negative rights' (the right not to have this object, not to engage in this activity, (...) or to prevent this state of affairs). When a positive and a negative right protect contradictory options, this strategy conveys that they are of equal standing. The article cautions against the risks entailed by this inference. The deceptive nature of symmetry is first examined in the context of procreation rights and subsequently in other contexts, including conflicts concerning freedom of expression, active euthanasia, and abortion. Our conclusion is that the explicit or implicit recourse to the argument from symmetry is a recurrent feature of rights discourse, deserving attention and cautious handling. (shrink)

Departing from Durkheim’s assertion of the primacy of public time, I argue that time is manufactured through the legal organization of society in the form of a corporate body. As a corporation, society enjoys fictive immortality, and it is this legal fiction that allows the flow of historical time. The institution of time, and of the corporate structure in general, is made possible through the political triumph over communal aspirations for timelessness, oneness and death: aspirations for an eternal present, to (...) which I refer as the communal body. The passage from a founding, pre-historical experience of timelessness into historical time is accomplished through the construction of a perpetual corporate body in place of a communal body that lacks a temporal dimension. I will argue that the establishment of historical time and of the corporate organization of society necessitates the normative regulation of sexuality. Thus, the relaxation of the traditional structure of historical time and of sexual morality in contemporary society are closely intertwined. (shrink)

Imprisonment calls into question the institutionalized violence of the state and its organs. It touches on the very core of the meaning of state sovereignty and concerns one of the most disempowered groups of society: indicted criminals. Therefore, privatization of prisons signals the willingness to apply privatization policies almost with no limitations. Private prisons have become a known phenomenon in many countries. After the debate on this issue seemed to lose its pragmatic value—in contrast to its importance on the theoretical (...) level—privatization of prisons reemerged as an issue of legal debate due to the Israeli Supreme Court decision that declared a law authorizing the establishment of a private prison unconstitutional. The following analysis evaluates this decision using it as a microcosm for studying the role of law in regulating privatization policies. The Article starts by studying the full range of privatization policies, in order to offer an analysis that would be relevant also to other cases along the privatization spectrum. It then challenges the traditional premise of public law that the move to privatization is merely a matter of policy and not of law. More concretely, the Article offers an analysis based upon distinguishing among three distinct spheres of discussion: the boundaries of privatization, the privatization process, and the regulation of privatized actions. This model of analysis is then applied to the case-study of prison privatization as decided by the Israeli Supreme Court. (shrink)

Ostracism is known to cause psychological distress. Thus, defining the factors that can lead to recovery or diminish these negative effects is crucial. Three experiments examined whether suggesting the possible causes of ostracism to victims could decrease or eliminate their ostracism distress. They also examined whether death-anxiety mediated the association between the suggested possible cause for being ostracized and recovery. Participants were randomly assigned to six experimental and control groups and were either ostracized or included in a game of Cyberball. (...) Two control conditions were used: participants who were ostracized but received no explanation and participants who were included. Immediately after the ostracism experience, participants in the experimental groups were presented with one of four causes for being ostracized, using locus of control and stability, the two causal dimensions of Weiner’s attribution theory. After a short delay they were administered a mood or needs-satisfaction questionnaire. The results highlight the interaction between locus of control and stability, and underscore the relative importance of different attributions in alleviating self-reported ostracism distress. Specifically, both external and unstable attributions decreased distress, and an unstable attribution led to complete recovery in some participants. Thus, recovery from ostracism may be accelerated when the victim receives an explanation for ostracism that attributes the incident to unstable, external causes soon after the incident. Death-anxiety fully mediated the association between locus of control attribution and mood, but for on needs-satisfaction or the stability of the attribution. (shrink)

What happens when men and women feel powerful in intimate relationships? When does power corrupt and when does it lead to positive consequences, such as increased sensitivity to others' needs, personal growth, and social responsibility? This book offers anyone interested in such questions a clear and accessible depiction of the effects of social power, based on cutting-edge theory and research. The book starts with a general discussion on the ways power influences individuals. The role of one's personality, goals, and culture (...) seem to play a decisive role in whether power leads to benevolent or malevolent consequences. Some effects of power are more intuitively understood (e.g., taking from or contributing to a common resource, or aggressive responses in parents who feel powerless), while other effects regard much more surprising phenomena (e.g., self-fulfilling prophecies, stopping an annoying fan, or forgiveness for a transgression). Following the description of this social-psychological mechanism, The Power to Care discusses the cultural and developmental circumstances in which power is experienced. Culturally acquired gender-roles, experiencing racism, egoistic vs. altruistic motivations, and defensive tendencies - all influence what men and women want in intimate relationships, and the way power can motivate them to attain their goals. These circumstances may explain the gender differences found in the results of three experiments, described in Chapter 4. In these experiments, men and women in long-term, intimate relationships reacted differently to a temporary sense of power, in terms of their tendency to self-focus, take the perspective of others, and objectify their relationship partners.In the last section, The Power to Care discusses the seemingly contradictory beliefs of professionals and laymen alike, that power corrupts, but that the empowerment processes yields positive results. In this section, the role of power and empowerment processes is discussed, mainly in macro-level interventions, in intimate partner violence (for both victims and perpetrators), overcoming addiction, and in policy practice (e.g., in court verdicts regarding cases of post-divorce relocation of custodial parents). (shrink)