Philosophers have begun exploring justifications, such as liability and lesser-evil justifications, for consumer boycotting that are rooted in just war theory. The libertarian challenge holds that even morally objectionable consumer boycotts are nonetheless morally permissible in the sense that doing their constituent acts violates no rights or duties: consumer choice, information sharing, and advocacy are already permissible actions; boycotters do not acquire any special permissions that they did not already possess. I argue that even if consumers’ activities are generally permissible, (...) they can become impermissible when done with certain intentions. Liability-based accounts of permissible boycotting should accept the view that intention is relevant to permissibility. Accepting this view marks a discontinuity between mere consumer choice and boycotting, and a discontinuity between permissible and impermissible boycotting, strengthening the argument that liability-based and lesser evil principles may sometimes be necessary for the permissibility of some consumer boycotts. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article argues that there is a just cause for war to prevent the future hazards of anthropogenic climate change even if, because of what is known as the Non-Identity Problem, that caus...

This paper discusses some of the practical difficulties confronting Jeff McMahan’s proposal of a jus ad bellum court of experts for deciding the justice of war, and recommends two revisions. First, following the earlier proposals of Vitoria, Suarez, and Grotius, leaders could have a say in appointing judges to the ad bellum court; second, the court could be an organ of the International Criminal Court. Though significant practical challenges remain, these revisions make McMahan’s proposal fairer to democratic governments, and give (...) the court a better chance for successful implementation in the prevailing Westphalian system of state sovereignty. (shrink)

This paper discusses some of the practical difficulties confronting Jeff McMahan’s proposal of a jus ad bellum court of experts for deciding the justice of war, and recommends two revisions. First, following the earlier proposals of Vitoria, Suarez, and Grotius, leaders could have a say in appointing judges to the ad bellum court; second, the court could be an organ of the International Criminal Court. Though significant practical challenges remain, these revisions make McMahan’s proposal fairer to democratic governments, and give (...) the court a better chance for successful implementation in the prevailing Westphalian system of state sovereignty. (shrink)

Nowadays, many parents want to limit their children's exposure to violence, believing it is harmful to them. The Greek philosopher Plato would have agreed that violent media should not be completely avoided. In the Republic, he depicts Socrates as arguing that men and women should take children to war so that they can observe and act as their apprentices. Aliens validates Socrates in its depiction of Newt, a perfect example of how violence can shape a child into a strong and (...) rational person. Newt resembles an apprentice guardian and Ripley is like her auxiliary supervisor during the battle with the Xenomorphs. The key to preventing children from imitating a violent behavior is to teach them about the meaning of the messages put out by the media: that is, parents should define the difference between violence in reality and violence in video games or films. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Dispelling a Confusion ‘You Shall Not Make … Any Marks Upon Yourselves: I Am YHVH’ ‘You Are Not Your Own … Therefore Honor God with Your Body’ ‘We Must Not Injure Our Bodies: This Is the Beginning of Filial Piety’ The Christian Confucian Confusion.

Experimental research suggests that people draw a moral distinction between bad outcomes brought about as a means versus a side effect (or byproduct). Such findings have informed multiple psychological and philosophical debates about moral cognition, including its computational structure, its sensitivity to the famous Doctrine of Double Effect, its reliability, and its status as a universal and innate mental module akin to universal grammar. But some studies have failed to replicate the means/byproduct effect especially in the absence of other factors, (...) such as personal contact. So we aimed to determine how robust the means/byproduct effect is by conducting a meta-analysis of both published and unpublished studies (k = 101; 24,058 participants). We found that while there is an overall small difference between moral judgments of means and byproducts (standardized mean difference = 0.87, 95% CI 0.67 – 1.06; standardized mean change = 0.57, 95% CI 0.44 – 0.69; log odds ratio = 1.59, 95% CI 1.15 – 2.02), the mean effect size is primarily moderated by whether the outcome is brought about by personal contact, which typically involves the use of personal force. (shrink)

W dniach 3-4 czerwca 2022 roku w Höör (Szwecja) odbyła się międzynarodowa konferencja naukowa, poświęcona problematyce astrobiologii: Astrobiology and Society. Third Conference on History and Philosophy of Astrobiology, zorganizowana przez European Astrobiology Institute i Uniwersytet w Lund. Uczestnicy konferencji zaprezentowali tematy z zakresu historii, filozofii, socjologii, literaturoznawstwa i teologii, które dotyczyły problematyki astrobiologicznej. Konferencja była okazją do przedstawienia wyników badań humanistycznych, inspirowanych ustaleniami współczesnej astrobiologii oraz wymiany poglądów na temat znaczenia tych badań. ------------------------- Zgłoszono: 18/06/2022. Zrecenzowano: 05/09/2022. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: (...) 14/10/2022. (shrink)

16. Warsztaty Filozofii Przyrody odbyły się w dniach 15-18 czerwca 2023 roku w Krakowie, w budynku Wyższego Seminarium Duchownego Towarzystwa Salezjańskiego. Organizatorem cyklicznych warsztatów jest Sekcja Filozofii Przyrody i Nauk Przyrodniczych Polskiego Towarzystwa Filozoficznego. Uczestnikami warsztatów było ponad trzydziestu przedstawicieli kilkunastu ośrodków naukowych z Krakowa, Lublina, Łodzi, Poznania, Szczecina, Warszawy, Zielonej Góry, zajmujących się filozofią przyrody i filozofią nauk przyrodniczych. ------------------------- Zgłoszono: 30/10/2023. Zrecenzowano: 20/11/2023. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: 10/12/2023.

15. Warsztaty Filozofii Przyrody odbyły się w dniach 23-26 czerwca 2022 roku w Ciążeniu, w Domu Pracy Twórczej Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu. Organizatorem cyklicznych warsztatów jest Sekcja Filozofii Przyrody i Nauk Przyrodniczych Polskiego Towarzystwa Filozoficznego. Uczestnikami warsztatów było ponad trzydziestu przedstawicieli kilkunastu ośrodków naukowych z Krakowa, Lublina, Łodzi, Poznania, Szczecina, Warszawy, Wrocławia, Zielonej Góry, zajmujących się filozofią przyrody i filozofią nauk przyrodniczych. ------------------------- Zgłoszono: 30/11/2022. Zrecenzowano: 20/12/2022. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: 22/12/2022.

Autor omawianej publikacji podjął się zadania przeanalizowania zaproponowanych dotąd interpretacji „zaćmienia darwinizmu”, chcąc ustalić, w jakim stopniu odpowiadają one rzeczywistości. Po dokonaniu ustaleń w tym zakresie doszedł do wniosku, że żadna z nich nie wyjaśnia w sposób adekwatny załamania się, jakie dotknęło teorię Darwina we wspomnianym okresie. Dlatego postanowił zaproponować własną interpretację „zaćmienia darwinizmu”, w której odwołuje się przede wszystkim do filozoficznych uwarunkowań darwinowskiej teorii ewolucji. --------------- Zgłoszono: 04/08/2021. Zrecenzowano: 19/08/2021. Zaakceptowano do publikacji: 06/09/2021.

The World Bank is committed to “work[ing] with countries to improve the health, nutrition and population outcomes of the world's poor, and to protect[ing] the population from the impoverishing effects of illness, malnutrition and high fertility”.1 Ethical issues arise in the interpretation of these objectives and in helping countries formulate strategies and policies. It is these ethical issues—which are often not acknowledged by commentators—that are the subject of this paper. It asks why there should be a focus on the poor, (...) and explores the link between improving the health of the poor, and reducing health inequalities between the poor and better-off. It discusses difficult ethical issues at both the global level and the country level. (shrink)

This highly readable book is a collection of critical papers on Otto Neurath. It comprehensively re-examines Neurath’s scientific, philosophical and educational contributions from a range of standpoints including historical, sociological and problem-oriented perspectives. Leading Neurath scholars disentangle and connect Neurath’s works, ideas and ideals and evaluate them both in their original socio-historical context and in contemporary philosophical debates. Readers will discover a new critical understanding. Drawing on archive materials, essays discuss not only Neurath’s better-known works from lesser-known perspectives, but also (...) his lesser-known works from the better-known perspective of their place in his overall philosophical oeuvre. Reflecting the full range of Neurath's work, this volume has a broad appeal. Besides scholars and researchers interested in Neurath, Carnap, the Vienna Circle, work on logical empiricism and the history and philosophy of science, this book will also appeal to graduate students in philosophy, sociology, history and education. Readers will find Neurath’s thoughts described and evaluated in an accessible manner, making it a good read for those beyond the academic world such as social leaders and activists. The book includes the edited 1940-45 Neurath-Carnap correspondence and the English translation of Neurath's logic papers. (shrink)

This book reconceives virtue epistemology in light of the conviction that we are essentially social creatures. Virtue is normally thought of as something that allows individuals to accomplish things on their own. Although contemporary ethics is increasingly making room for an inherently social dimension in moral agency, intellectual virtues continue to be seen in terms of the computing potential of a brain taken by itself. Thinking in these terms, however, seriously misconstrues the way in which our individual flourishing hinges on (...) our collective flourishing. Green’s account of virtue epistemology is based on the extended credit view, which conceives of knowledge as an achievement and broadens that focus to include team achievements in addition to individual ones. He argues that this view does a better job than alternatives of answering the many conceptual and empirical challenges for virtue epistemology that have been based on cases of testimony. The view also allows for a nuanced interaction with situationist psychology, dual processing models in cognitive science, and the extended mind literature in philosophy of mind. This framework provides a useful conceptual bridge between individual and group epistemology, and it has novel applications to the epistemology of disagreement, prejudice, and authority. (shrink)

Growing concern has been expressed that we have entered a “post-truth” era in which each of us willfully believes whatever we choose, aided and abetted by alternative and social media that spin alternative realities for boutique consumption. A prime example of the belief in alternative realities is said to be acceptance of “conspiracy theories”—a term that is often used as a pejorative to indict claims of conspiracy that are so obviously absurd that only the unhinged could believe them. The epistemological (...) standard often involved in this indictment, however—the standard of “obvious” falsity—invites subjectivity in its application, because what is obviously false to one person can be common sense to another. This is not just a truism; considerable research suggests that people’s political beliefs, in general, and their acceptance or rejection of conspiracy theories in particular, tends in large part to be determined by partisan, ideological, and other priors. (shrink)

Most accounts of “logical empiricism in America” take logical empiricism to be a monolithic, or at least a one-dimensional, philosophical group. This picture of logical empiricism has come under well-reasoned attack during the past two decades, but some of the relevant conclusions for the reception-history of the movement were not drawn, or were not drawn as thoroughly as they could have been. Thus, if we want to understand the reception of logical empiricism, we should not talk about the reception of (...) logical empiricism as such; rather, we should provide a more stratified and differently balanced account. This article aims to draw the contours of one more stratified account by pointing out differences in the reception-history of logical empiricism with respect to pragmatism in particular. Namely, I will examine and defend an account according to which the more pragmatist-naturalist wing of logical empiricism was welcomed by the majority of American pragmatists while the more technical wing came immediately under pragmatist attack from various sides. (shrink)

Research Articles Adam Mossoff, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

I argue that folk psychology does not serve the purpose of facilitating prediction of others' behaviour but if facilitating cooperative action. (See my subsequent book *The Importance of Being Understood*.

In a recent monograph, Sandy Goldberg argues that epistemology should be renovated so as to accommodate the way in which human beings are dependent on others for what they know. He argues that the way to accomplish this is to consider the cognition of others to be part of the belief-forming process for the purposes of epistemic assessment when radical dependence on others is in evidence. In this paper, I argue that, contrary to what one may expect, a credit theory (...) of knowledge is well positioned to make the sort of anti-individualistic move that Goldberg advocates. Furthermore, unlike Goldberg's extended process reliabilism, an extended credit theory has a theoretically motivated way of restricting the domain of epistemic evaluation to the cognitive. Finally, I argue that, although adopting the extended cognition hypothesis would help Goldberg's position, an extended credit theory would still have the advantage. (shrink)

This paper considers the prospect of moral transhumanism from the perspective of theological virtue ethics. I argue that the pursuit of goodness inherent to moral transhumanism means that there is a compelling prima facie case for moral enhancement. However, I also show that the proposed enhancements would not by themselves allow us to achieve a life of virtue, as they appear unable to create or enhance prudence, the situational judgement essential for acting in accordance with virtue. I therefore argue that (...) moral enhancement technologies should take a limited or supporting role in moral development, which I call ‘moral supplementation’. (shrink)

Human beings are promiscuously social creatures, and contemporary epistemologists are increasingly becoming aware that this shapes the ways in which humans process information. This awareness has tended to restrict itself, however, to testimony amongst isolated dyads. As scientific practice ably illustrates, information-processing can be spread over a vast social network. In this essay, a credit theory of knowledge is adapted to account for the normative features of strongly distributed cognition. A typical credit theory analyzes knowledge as an instance of obtaining (...) success because of or through the ability of the individual knower. The extended credit theory developed here broadens this framework so as to accommodate team-like epistemic achievements. The extended credit theory is then contrasted with some similar proposals given from within a process reliabilist framework. Once one isolates pairs of cases of distributed cognition in which there is a difference between sheer reliability and reliability grounded in ability, one can see that the extended credit theory maps the normative terrain better than the alternatives. (shrink)

In the Typic chapter of the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant aims to enable moral judgment by means of the law of nature, which serves as the ‘type’, or formal analogue, of moral law. The present monograph is the first comprehensive study of this key text. It provides a detailed commentary on the Typic, situates it within Kant’s ethics and his theory of symbolic representation, and critically engages with the relevant secondary literature.

This edited collection provides the first comprehensive volume on A. J. Ayer’s 1936 masterpiece, Language, Truth and Logic. With eleven original chapters the volume reconsiders the historical and philosophical significance of Ayer’s work, examining its place in the history of analytic philosophy and its subsequent legacy. Making use of pioneering research in logical empiricism, the contributors explore a wide variety of topics, from ethics, values and religion, to truth, epistemology and philosophy of language. Among the questions discussed are: How did (...) Ayer preserve or distort the views and conceptions of logical empiricists? How are Ayer's arguments different from the ones he aimed at reconstructing? And which aspects of the book were responsible for its immense impact? The volume expertly places Language, Truth and Logic in the intellectual and socio-cultural history of twentieth-century philosophical thought, providing both introductory and contextual chapters, as well as specific explorations of a variety of topics covering the main themes of the book. Providing important insights of both historical and contemporary significance, this collection is an essential resource for scholars interested in the legacy of the Vienna Circle and its effect on ethics and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Jennifer Lackey presents a puzzle to which she argues there is no current solution. Lackey's claim is that testimonial knowledge can have something conspicuously wrong with it and still be knowledge. Testimonial knowledge can be ‘deficient’. Given that knowledge is a normative category, that it describes what it is for a belief to go right, there is a puzzle that comes with accounting for how a testimonial belief could be knowledge and yet go wrong in the ways Lackey has in (...) mind. In this paper, I argue that the deficiency is one of teamwork, and that Lackey's puzzle offers one a window into the respect in which testimony is a kind of team achievement. (shrink)

Many traditional attempts to show that nonhuman animals are deserving of moral consideration have taken the form of an argument by analogy. However, arguments of this kind have had notable weaknesses and, in particular, have not been able to convince two kinds of skeptics. One of the most important weaknesses of these arguments is that they fail to provide theoretical justifications for why particular physiological similarities should be considered relevant. This paper examines recent empirical research on pain and, in particular, (...) explores the implications of the dissociation between the sensory and the affective pain pathways. It is argued that these results show that the belief that nonhuman animals experience pain in a morally relevant way is reasonable, though not certain. It is further argued that the proposal to explore the relationship between consciousness and various forms of learning challenges the aforementioned skeptics to provide more physiological details for their claims that nonhuman mammals are probably not conscious. (shrink)

The author offers a comprehensive interpretation of Aquinas's claim that the human intellect is immaterial and assessment of his arguments on behalf of this claim, also positioning Aquinas's thought alongside recent work in hylomorphic metaphysics and philosophy of mind.

Rather than being in inherent conflict with religion or operating on planes that do not intersect, the cognitive science of religion (CSR) can be used to renovate a religious understanding of the world. CSR allows one to reshape the perspectives of Aquinas and Calvin on the natural knowledge of God. The Christian tradition affirms that all human beings have available to them some knowledge of God. This claim has empirical import and thus invites scientific investigation and clarification. A CSR-inspired lens (...) allows one’s theological reflections to move from paradigms that focus on the cognitive reach of a domain-general power of human thought to a paradigm focused on different ways of relating to another person. The case study of the natural knowledge of God presented here models a productive way of relating CSR and religious perspectives from within a faith tradition. (shrink)

C.H. Waddington is today remembered chiefly as a Drosophila developmental geneticist who developed the concepts of “canalization” and “the epigenetic landscape.” In his lifetime, however, he was widely perceived primarily as a critic of Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. His criticisms of Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory were focused on what he saw as unrealistic, “atomistic” models of both gene selection and trait evolution. In particular, he felt that the Neo-Darwinians badly neglected the phenomenon of extensive gene interactions and that the “randomness” of mutational (...) effects, posited in the theory, was a false postulate. This last criticism dealt with the phenomenon known today as “developmental constraints.” Although population genetics itself has evolved considerably from its form at mid-20th century, much of Waddington’s critique, it is argued here, retains cogency. Yet, he did not attempt to develop a full-fledged alternative theory himself. Perhaps most surprisingly, in retrospect, is that he did not try to marry his work on gene interactions in development with his evolutionary interests, to create a theory of “genetic networks” and their evolution. Whether evolutionary genetics today will incorporate “network thinking” as a central element or whether there will be a general retreat to the more atomistic approach offered by genomics, remains an open question. (shrink)

In their major work, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow expressed the opinion of presumably many working physicists, philosophers of physics and even educated laymen when they said, "philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge." Their examples of the fields that have been conquered by physicists include most of the perennial philosophical questions: "what is the (...) nature of the world", "how can we understand the world," "where did we come from," "how did the universe come into existence."Due to numerous disruptions that shocked the... (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between naturalism and morality and to assess their compatibility. Naturalism is defined as respect for science, for its methods and results. From this respect for science, one can infer two distinct philosophical naturalisms: the methodological and the metaphysical. The relationship between these forms of naturalism and morality depends on the correct conception of morality. This paper differentiates between objectively realistic conception and all other conceptions and argues that while other conceptions (...) can easily fit morality into a naturalistic worldview, objectively realistic conception faces theoretical challenges, including the challenge of explaining how moral facts and concepts play an explanatory role and the challenge of bridging the is/ought gap. The paper focuses on Railton's ethical naturalism as a prominent naturalistic theory of morality and evaluates its ability to overcome these challenges. The conclusion is that, so long as we consider a theory like Railton's, naturalism and realistically conceived morality are incompatible. (shrink)

I argue that considerations about computational complexity show that all finite agents need characteristics like those that have been called epistemic virtues. The necessity of these virtues follows in part from the nonexistence of shortcuts, or efficient ways of finding shortcuts, to cognitively expensive routines. It follows that agents must possess the capacities – metavirtues –of developing in advance the cognitive virtues they will need when time and memory are at a premium.

Models of purgatory tend to come paired with an operative conception of what perfection consists in. In the recent philosophical literature, two models, the satisfaction model and the sanctification model, have been pitted against one another. The former focuses on innocence before the law and makes purgatory out to be a place where a debt of punishment is paid. The latter focuses on moral character and describes purgatory in terms of character formation. If perfection consists in a certain way of (...) being related to God, however, then there is a third model that merits our attention that focuses on relational dynamics. (shrink)

Some rights are so important for human autonomy and well-being that many scholars insist they should not be waived, traded, or abandoned. Privacy is a recent addition to this list. At the other end of the spectrum is the belief that privacy is a mere unimportant interest or preference. This paper defends a middle path between viewing privacy as an inalienable, non-waivable, non-transferrable right and the view of privacy as a mere subjective interest. First, an account of privacy is offered (...) that clarifies the concept and demonstrates how privacy is directly related to human health and well-being. Second, along with considering and rejecting several accounts for why privacy might be considered an inalienable right, an argument is offered for why it is morally permissible to waive, transfer, abandon, or alienate privacy. (shrink)

Abstract:Humans often comply with social norms, but the reasons why are disputed. Here, we unify a variety of influential explanations in a common decision framework, and identify the precise cognitive variables that norms might alter to induce compliance. Specifically, we situate current theories of norm compliance within the reinforcement learning framework, which is widely used to study value-guided learning and decision-making. This framework offers an appealingly precise language to distinguish between theories, highlights the various points of convergence and divergence, and (...) suggests novel ways in which norms might penetrate our psychology. (shrink)

The phenomenon of ‘canalization’ ‐ the genetic capacity to buffer developmental pathways against mutational or environmental perturbations ‐ was first characterized in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Despite enormous subsequent progress in understanding the nature of the genetic material and the molecular basis of gene expression, there have been few attempts to interpret the classical work on canalization in molecular genetic terms. Some recent findings, however, bear on one form of canalization, ‘genetic canalization’, the stabilization of development against mutational (...) effects. These data indicate that co‐expressed paralogous genes can function as mutual ‘back‐up’ elements in developmental processes. Paralogues, however, are far from the only basis of canalization: other genetic sources can be readily envisaged and some of these are described here. The evolutionary questions about genetic canalization and the mechanistic questions about developmental instability that still need to be addressed are also briefly discussed. (shrink)

Since their discovery, mirror neurons have played a critical role in the interdisciplinary debate over how we come to understand other people, a topic often labelled 'mind-reading'. The philosopher Alvin Goldman argues that mirror neurons provide critical evidence that we come to understand others by simulating them. In this paper, I demonstrate that mirror neurons should be thought of as facilitating the perception of persons but should not be thought of as simulators. Our basic understanding of others does not come (...) from thinking our way into their shoes but rather through seeing into their minds through their pattern behaviour. (shrink)

I discuss Quine's claim that anyone denying what we now take to be a logical truth would be using logical words in a novel way. I trace this to a confusions between outright denial and failure to assert, and assertion of a negation. (This abstract is written from memory decades after the article.).