20 found
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  1. The Mental States First Theory of Promising.Alida Liberman - forthcoming - Dialectica.
    Most theories of promising are insufficiently broad, for they ground promissory obligation in some external or contingent feature of the promise. In this paper, I introduce a new kind of theory. The Mental States First (MSF) theory grounds promissory obligation in something internal and essential: the mental state expressed by promising, or the state that promisors purport to be in. My defense of MSF relies on three claims. First, promising to Φ expresses that you have resolved to Φ. Second, resolving (...)
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  2. Sexual Exclusion.Alida Liberman - 2022 - In David Boonin (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Sexual Ethics. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 453-475.
    This chapter delineates several distinct (and often problematically conflated) kinds of sexual exclusion: (1) lack of access to sexual gratification or pleasure, (2) lack of access to partnered sex, and (3) lack of social/psychological validation that comes from being seen as a sexual being. Liberman offers proposals about what our collective responses to these harms should be while weighing in on debates about whether there are rights to various kinds of sexual goods. She concludes that we ought to provide mechanical (...)
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  3. Wrongness, Responsibility, and Conscientious Refusals in Health Care.Alida Liberman - 2017 - Bioethics 31 (7):495-504.
    In this article, I address what kinds of claims are of the right kind to ground conscientious refusals. Specifically, I investigate what conceptions of moral responsibility and moral wrongness can be permissibly presumed by conscientious objectors. I argue that we must permit HCPs to come to their own subjective conclusions about what they take to be morally wrong and what they take themselves to be morally responsible for. However, these subjective assessments of wrongness and responsibility must be constrained in several (...)
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  4. For Better or for Worse: When Are Uncertain Wedding Vows Permissible?Alida Liberman - 2021 - Social Theory and Practice 47 (4):765-788.
    I answer two questions: (1) what are people doing when they exchange conventional wedding vows? and (2) under what circumstances are these things morally and rationally permissible to do? I propose that wedding pledges are public proclamations that are simultaneously both private vows and interpersonal promises, and that they are often subject to uncertainty. I argue that the permissibility of uncertain wedding promises depends on whether the uncertainty stems from doubts about one’s own internal weakness of will and susceptibility to (...)
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  5. Disability, sex rights and the scope of sexual exclusion.Alida Liberman - 2017 - Journal of Medical Ethics:medethics-2017-104411.
    In response to three papers about sex and disability published in this journal, I offer a critique of existing arguments and a suggestion about how the debate should be reframed going forward. Jacob M. Appel argues that disabled individuals have a right to sex and should receive a special exemption to the general prohibition of prostitution. Ezio Di Nucci and Frej Klem Thomsen separately argue contra Appel that an appeal to sex rights cannot justify such an exemption. I argue that (...)
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  6. On the Rationality of Vow‐making.Alida Liberman - 2019 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (3):881-900.
    I offer a philosophical account of vowing and the rationality of vow-making. I argue that vows are most productively understood as exceptionless resolutions that do not have any excusing conditions. I then articulate an apparent problem for exceptionless vow-making: how can it be rational to bind yourself unconditionally, when circumstances might change unexpectedly and make it the case that vow-keeping no longer makes sense for you? As a solution, I propose that vows can be rational to make only if they (...)
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  7. Permissible Promise-Making Under Uncertainty.Alida Liberman - 2019 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 5 (4):468-486.
    I outline four conditions on permissible promise-making: the promise must be for a morally permissible end, must not be deceptive, must be in good faith, and must involve a realistic assessment of oneself. I then address whether promises that you are uncertain you can keep can meet these four criteria, with a focus on campaign promises as an illustrative example. I argue that uncertain promises can meet the first two criteria, but that whether they can meet the second two depends (...)
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  8. Consequentialism and Promises.Alida Liberman - 2020 - In Douglas W. Portmore (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Consequentialism. New York, USA: Oup Usa. pp. 289 - 309.
    I explore the debate about whether consequentialist theories can adequately accommodate the moral force of promissory obligation. I outline a straightforward act consequentialist account grounded in the value of satisfying expectations, and raise and assess three objections to this account: that it counterintuitively predicts that certain promises should be broken when commonsense morality insists that they should be kept, that the account is circular, and Michael Cholbi’s argument that this account problematically implies that promise-making is frequently obligatory. I then discuss (...)
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  9. Commitment: Worth the Weight.Alida Liberman & Mark Schroeder - 2016 - In Errol Lord & Barry Maguire (eds.), Weighing Reasons. New York, NY: Oxford University Press USA. pp. 104-120.
    This chapter takes an indirect approach to the question of how people weigh conflicting reasons to determine what they ought to do. It is argued that obligations are a distinct normative concept that also admits of weighing. A natural, simple way due to W. D. Ross—Simple Weighing—of construing the manner in which both reasons and obligations are weighed is introduced. Commitments are introduced as a third normative concept that admits of weighing, and it is argued that Simple Weighing is inadequate (...)
     
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  10. Reconsidering Resolutions.Alida Liberman - 2016 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy (2):1-27.
    In Willing, Wanting, Waiting, Richard Holton lays out a detailed account of resolutions, arguing that they enable agents to resist temptation. Holton claims that temptation often leads to inappropriate shifts in judgment, and that resolutions are a special kind of first- and second-order intention pair that blocks such judgment shift. In this paper, I elaborate upon an intuitive but underdeveloped objection to Holton’s view – namely, that his view does not enable agents to successfully block the transmission of temptation in (...)
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  11.  86
    Effective altruism and Christianity: possibilities for productive collaboration.Alida Liberman - 2017 - Essays in Philosophy 18 (1):6-29.
    While many Christians accept the claim that giving to support the poor and needy is a core moral and religious obligation, most Christian giving is usually not very efficient in EA terms. In this paper, I explore possibilities for productive collaboration between effective altruists and Christian givers. I argue that Christians are obligated from their own perspective to give radically in terms of quantity and scope to alleviate the suffering of the poor and needy. I raise two important potential stumbling (...)
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  12.  46
    Philosophers Folding Origami.Jennifer Wilson Mulnix & Alida Liberman - 2017 - Teaching Philosophy 40 (4):437-462.
    This paper discusses an exercise that Alida Liberman facilitated among participants at a Teaching and Learning workshop sponsored by the American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT) aimed at helping instructors become more learner-centered in their pedagogy. The exercise was designed to place participants in the role of inadequately supported learners by asking them to fold an origami crane with varying levels of instruction and feedback. The failure of many participants to successfully fold cranes functioned as a striking analogy for student (...)
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  13. “‘But I Voted for Him for Other Reasons!’: Moral Permissibility and a Doctrine of Double Endorsement.Alida Liberman - 2019 - In Mark Timmons (ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics Volume 9. Oxford University Press. pp. 138 - 160.
    Many people presume that you can permissibly support the good features of a symbol, person, activity, or work of art while simultaneously denouncing its bad features. This chapter refines and assesses this commonsense (but undertheorized) moral justification for supporting problematic people, projects, and political symbols, and proposes an analogue of the Doctrine of Double Effect called the Doctrine of Double Endorsement (DDN). DDN proposes that when certain conditions are met, it is morally permissible to directly endorse some object in virtue (...)
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  14. A Promise Acceptance Model of Organ Donation.Alida Liberman - 2015 - Social Theory and Practice 41 (1):131-148.
    I aim to understand how the act of becoming an organ donor impacts whether it is permissible for a family veto to override an individual’s wish to donate. I argue that a Consent Model does not capture the right understanding of donor autonomy. I then assess a Gift Model and a Promise Model, arguing that both fail to capture important data about the ability to revoke one’s donor status. I then propose a Promise Acceptance Model, which construes becoming an organ (...)
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  15. Medical Crowdfunding, Political Marginalization, and Government Responsiveness: A Reply to Larry Temkin.Alida Liberman - 2019 - Journal of Practical Ethics 7 (1):40-48.
    Larry Temkin draws on the work of Angus Deaton to argue that countries with poor governance sometimes rely on charitable giving and foreign aid in ways that enable them to avoid relying on their own citizens; this can cause them to be unresponsive to their citizens’ needs and thus prevent the long-term alleviation of poverty and other social problems. I argue that the implications of this “lack of government responsiveness argument” (or LOGRA) are both broader and narrower than they might (...)
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  16.  53
    In Defense of Doing Philosophy “Badly” or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Imperfection.Alida Liberman - 2022 - American Association of Philosophy Teachers Studies in Pedagogy 7:19-39.
    I argue that it can sometimes be good to do philosophy badly and that this has important implications for our classroom practices. It is better to engage in philosophy in a mediocre way than to not engage with it at all, and this should influence what learning goals we adopt and how we assess students. Furthermore, being open to doing and teaching philosophy imperfectly is necessary for fighting against rampant prestige bias and perfectionism in our discipline and our classrooms; if (...)
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  17.  60
    Summer of Protest.Alida Liberman - 2020 - The Philosophers' Magazine 91:33-39.
    I assess the ways in which popular narratives about protests against police brutality in the summer of 2020 are ethically and epistemically problematic. I argue that many news outlets have pushed a false and misleading narrative that frames the protests as inherently violent and dangerous when in fact they were primarily non-violent. I analyze the ways in which these narratives are likely to increase epistemic injustice, including testimonial injustice against protestors. I then introduce a new framework that I call ignorance (...)
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  18.  32
    Constructivism in Practical Philosophy, edited by James Lenman and Yonatan Shemmer. [REVIEW]Alida Liberman - 2015 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 12 (4):557-560.
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  19.  71
    David Copp, Morality in a Natural World: Selected Essays in Metaethics: Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007. 361 pp. ISBN: 978-0-521-86371-1. $85. [REVIEW]Alida Liberman - 2010 - Journal of Value Inquiry 44 (1):127-134.
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  20.  70
    Owens, David. Shaping the Normative Landscape.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. 272. $49.95. [REVIEW]Alida Liberman - 2013 - Ethics 124 (1):201-205.
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