Este trabajo analiza algunas de las dimensiones fundamentales de la influencia de la obra temprana de Martin Heidegger sobre la teoría política de Hannah Arendt. Como se sabe, la pensadora judía cursó algunos de sus más cruciales años universitarios bajo la tutoría del profesor alemán. En tal sentido, tanto la perspectiva hermenéutico-fenomenológica como los conceptos de “mundo” y praxis resultaron decisivos para definir, junto con la experiencia del totalitarismo, el sentido y la profundidad de la teoría política arendtiana. En líneas (...) generales, se espera que la investigación permita no solo entender varias de las nociones centrales del pensamiento de Arendt dentro de su horizonte de sentido original, sino además visibilizar algunas de las potencialidades que la obra temprana de Heidegger posee a la hora de repensar la política y la pluralidad humana. (shrink)

I argue against the view that metalinguistic usage is a form of conversational implicature. That view, suggested by Thomasson (Anal Philos 57(4):1-28, 2016) and Belleri (Philos Stud 174(9):2211–2226, 2017), has been most recently fleshed out by Mankowitz (Synthese 199:5603–5622, 2021). I provide two types of criticism to the implicature view. From an empirical point of view, metalinguistic usage differs in key respects from standard cases of conversational implicature. From a conceptual standpoint, I argue that the calculation algorithm provided by the (...) implicature view makes undesirable predictions. Although my main objective is negative, I end the paper by sketching an alternative neo-Stalnakerian view of metalinguistic usage, that can be gathered from work by Barker (Linguist Philos 25(1):1–36, 2002; Inquiry 56(2–3):240–257, 2013) and others. (shrink)

Moral Seduction Theory suggests that auditors are morally compromised by the perceived consequences of their opinions. The root of the auditing problem appears to result in an unintentional bias rather than in dishonesty. Although important accounting reforms have been taken to deal with auditors' trustworthiness, their lack of independence has not been adequately addressed. The new regulation (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) is a consequence of an incorrect understanding of the main true source of auditor's biases. We have developed a cognitive approach by (...) connecting the Throughput Model (TM) to the Moral Seduction Theory. This approach allows a better understanding of how conflicts of interest lead auditors to avoid the issuance of warning signals to stakeholders. We have tested our model by conducting a hypothetical scenario with eighty experienced auditors from international accounting firms. Our results confirm auditors' unintentional reluctance to issue qualified audit opinions alerting investors due to their fear of precipitating clients' final bankruptcy. The main implication is that, more than a regulation, effort should be made in monitoring those conflicts of interest to reduce unintentional bias. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the search for explainable models and interpretable decisions in AI must be reformulated in terms of the broader project of offering a pragmatic and naturalistic account of understanding in AI. Intuitively, the purpose of providing an explanation of a model or a decision is to make it understandable to its stakeholders. But without a previous grasp of what it means to say that an agent understands a model or a decision, the explanatory strategies will (...) lack a well-defined goal. Aside from providing a clearer objective for XAI, focusing on understanding also allows us to relax the factivity condition on explanation, which is impossible to fulfill in many machine learning models, and to focus instead on the pragmatic conditions that determine the best fit between a model and the methods and devices deployed to understand it. After an examination of the different types of understanding discussed in the philosophical and psychological literature, I conclude that interpretative or approximation models not only provide the best way to achieve the objectual understanding of a machine learning model, but are also a necessary condition to achieve post hoc interpretability. This conclusion is partly based on the shortcomings of the purely functionalist approach to post hoc interpretability that seems to be predominant in most recent literature. (shrink)

If there is no inner model with ω many strong cardinals, then there is a set forcing extension of the universe with a projective well-ordering of the reals.

La flexibilidad y la mercantilización de lo espiritual ¿son aspectos característicos de la cultura contemporánea? Centrado en los casos de Alemania, Inglaterra y Francia, el artículo detalla cómo el romanticismo literario se articula como un movimiento pionero de la espiritualidad flexible, proceso que se entrelaza con su rol seminal en la formación del campo literario moderno. El crecimiento económico y demográfico sostenidos en Europa desde el s. XV, así como la alfabetización impulsada por el protestantismo, construyen un moderno público lector (...) que da pie —durante el s. XVIII— a la revolución y diversificación de la lectura, lo que promueve la difusión de incipientes tendencias modernas (ciencia, Ilustración, prensa). Oponiéndose parcialmente a estas tendencias y extendiendo la diversificación de lo impreso, surge la tendencia romántica. Sus autores flexibilizan la espiritualidad más allá de las convenciones religiosas de la época —y aportan a la formación del campo literario— (1) caracterizando el desencanto y otras formas de malestar moderno; (2) multiplicando el lenguaje imaginario-trascendente; (3) brindando connotaciones metafísicas al genio artístico; (4) promoviendo la autonomía y libertad expresiva del arte. La evidencia indica que el mercado fue una condición histórica básica para la EF. Se sugiere que esta flexibilidad se muestra como una adaptación de la espiritualidad a las circunstancias empíricas de la modernidad, la cual conlleva nuevas necesidades de sentido y una mayor capacidad para divergir de los relatos religiosos tradicionales. (shrink)

It has been argued that moral assertions involve the possession, on the part of the speaker, of appropriate non-cognitive attitudes. Thus, uttering ‘murder is wrong’ invites an inference that the speaker disapproves of murder. In this paper, we present the result of 4 empirical studies concerning this phenomenon. We assess the acceptability of constructions in which that inference is explicitly canceled, such as ‘murder is wrong but I don’t disapprove of it’; and we compare them to similar constructions involving ‘think’ (...) instead of ‘disapprove’—that is, Moore paradoxes (‘murder is wrong but I don’t think that it is wrong’). Our results indicate that the former type of constructions are largely infelicitous, although not as infelicitous as their Moorean counterparts. (shrink)

If the bounded proper forcing axiom BPFA holds and ω 1 = ${\mathrm{\omega }}_{1}^{\mathrm{L}}$ , then there is a lightface ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}_{3}^{1}$ well-ordering of the reals. The argument combines a well-ordering due to Caicedo-Veličković with an absoluteness result for models of MA in the spirit of "David's trick." We also present a general coding scheme that allows us to show that BPFA is equiconsistent with R being lightface ${\mathrm{\Sigma }}_{4}^{1}$ , for many "consistently locally certified" relations R on $\mathrm{\mathbb{R}}$ . (...) This is accomplished through a use of David's trick and a coding through the ∑ 2 stable ordinals of L. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the search for explainable models and interpretable decisions in AI must be reformulated in terms of the broader project of offering a pragmatic and naturalistic account of understanding in AI. Intuitively, the purpose of providing an explanation of a model or a decision is to make it understandable to its stakeholders. But without a previous grasp of what it means to say that an agent understands a model or a decision, the explanatory strategies will (...) lack a well-defined goal. Aside from providing a clearer objective for XAI, focusing on understanding also allows us to relax the factivity condition on explanation, which is impossible to fulfill in many machine learning models, and to focus instead on the pragmatic conditions that determine the best fit between a model and the methods and devices deployed to understand it. After an examination of the different types of understanding discussed in the philosophical and psychological literature, I conclude that interpretative or approximation models not only provide the best way to achieve the objectual understanding of a machine learning model, but are also a necessary condition to achieve post hoc interpretability. This conclusion is partly based on the shortcomings of the purely functionalist approach to post hoc interpretability that seems to be predominant in most recent literature. (shrink)

Convocada por diferentes estudiosos de los Padres de la Iglesia y del cristianismo antiguo en Latinoamérica, a saber, los profesores Ana Cristina Villa Betancourt, Andrés Mauricio Quevedo Rodríguez y Estiven Valencia Marín, de Colombia; Alejandro Nicola y Francisco Basttita-Harriet, de Argentina; Bruno Gripp, de Brasil; Pamela Chávez Aguilar, de Chile; y Jesús Ma. Aguiñaga Fernández, de México.

En los años recorridos de este siglo XXI la filosofía de la educación y la enseñanza de la filosofía, particularmente en Colombia e Iberoamérica, se han convertido en campos de acción y de profunda reflexión. Dado que ponen en discusión la relación de las filosofías con su pasado, con las instituciones y llevan necesariamente a preguntarnos por su quehacer en el presente y sus condiciones a futuro. Los debates teóricos y la confrontación de perspectivas han venido ganando fuerza, como lo (...) evidencia la producción académica derivada de resultados de investigación, y las reflexiones realizadas por docentes de filosofía en facultades o programas de filosofía al igual que en los espacios universitarios de formación en educación. Un buen número de publicaciones de artículos de revistas y libros, así como contenidos en formatos de radio, blogs y otros posibilitados por plataformas de internet y redes sociales, dan cuenta de esta fructífera y necesaria producción intelectual en un área que es igualmente importante y necesaria para la formación y quehacer filosófico en Colombia e Iberoamérica. Además, es destacable la periódica realización de congresos internacionales, nacionales y las asociaciones que tienen a la enseñanza de la filosofía y a su relación con el discurso y la práxis educativa como nodos importantes. (shrink)

Why I thought it useful to offer an explanation of Hegel’s doctrine on the Incarnation was so that the reader may be empowered to identify Hegel’s influence in modern accounts of this mystery. Even if, in my view, Hegel’s interpretation of revealed religion differs greatly from Catholic Doctrine, it is not surprising to find the presence of some of his concepts in modern theology. In truth, what matters is not the theologian’s self-identification as Hegelian or as non-Hegelian, but whether or (...) not the theologian adopts Hegel’s concepts. This paper offers an explanation of the internal dynamism of Hegelian concepts and their relation to Christian doctrine in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. This research may help to show in what way it is possible to explain Christian religious doctrine with a philosophy other than the Thomistic one and how, at least in Hegel’s case, religious doctrine is changed and reduced to an erroneous philosophical content. Also, an attempt is made to show the internal “coherence” of this Hegelian re-reading of Christianity so that theologians may become more cautious about accepting an explanation of Christian doctrine simply because the Christian language is preserved in that explanation. (shrink)

Copredication is the phenomenon whereby two or more predicates seem to require that their argument denotes different things. The denotation of words that copredicate has been broadly discussed. In this paper, I investigate the metaphysics behind this question. Thus, mereological theories of dot objects claim that these nouns denote complex entities; Asher (Lexical meaning in context, Cambridge University Press, 2011, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511793936) thinks that they denote bare particulars; and the Activation Package Theory contends that they stand for multiple denotations. According to (...) the Activation Package Theory, copredicative nouns stand for complex knowledge structures that offer a range of multiple potential denotations. In this paper, I claim that the Activation Package Theory contributes to solve some of the metaphysical questions that arise from copredication. (shrink)

In this article I respond to Yuk Hui by revisiting the crossroads in the philosophy of technology as represented by the philosophies of Stiegler and Ihde. Whereas Hui proposes the concept of cosmotechnics as an integrating perspective, I conceive of the crossroads in other terms, namely from the perspective of substantivism. I characterize our present situation, what a philosophy of technology should address and then examine Hui’s notion of cosmotechnics from this alternative perspective. My main concern is to show future (...) paths of development for cosmotechnical thought. (shrink)

Many word forms in natural language are polysemous, but only some of them allow for co-predication, that is, they allow for simultaneous predications selecting for two different meanings or senses of a nominal in a sentence. In this paper, we try to explain (i) why some groups of senses allow co-predication and others do not, and (ii) how we interpret co-predicative sentences. The paper focuses on those groups of senses that allow co-predication in an especially robust and stable way. We (...) argue, using these cases, but focusing particularly on the multiply polysemous word ‘school’, that the senses involved in co-predication form especially robust activation packages, which allow hearers and readers to access all the different senses in interpretation. (shrink)

This paper presents key elements of Paolo Prodi´s historiagraphic theory that allow us to include him in the contemporary debate on the rol of religion and morality within democratic societies. The text is developed in three moments. First, we will briefly describe the aforementioned debate. Second, we will present the theorical elements found in Prodi’s works which are more relevant for the topic discussed. Finally, we will offer some critical comments in order to present what, for us, is still an (...) open discussion. (shrink)

Este ensayo argumenta que el análisis conceptual inmodesto es epistémicamente inviable para seres como nosotros, porque no tenemos forma de justificar afirmaciones inmodestas acerca de la naturaleza de algo. Como argumento más adelante, las afirmaciones inmodestas no pueden ser justificadas por medios a priori o a posteriori. Si como suponen nuestras prácticas epistemológicas evaluativas tradicionales, no hay otras formas de justificar una creencia, entonces no podemos justificar afirmaciones inmodestas sobre la naturaleza de algo. El análisis conceptual inmodesto es epistemológicamente inviable, (...) entonces, porque nosotros no tenemos una forma confiable de identificar y justificar afirmaciones inmodestas sobre la naturaleza de algo. El ensayo finaliza con una evaluación de las teorías jurídicas de Scott Shapiro y Mark Greenberg desde el punto de vista de una aproximación desde el análisis modesto, por ejemplo, lo que implican nuestras prácticas conceptuales sobre la naturaleza del derecho. (shrink)

This article presents an alternative understanding of corporations from the two problematic visions that see corporations as either the shareholders’ property or as nexuses of contracts. The alternative proposed here is based on the theories of pre-eighteenth-century philosophers, particularly Aristotle’s political philosophy, which Thomas Aquinas later refined. The article aims to advance a theory of corporate legal and moral responsibility for human rights based on the conception of corporations as imperfect communities whose purpose is to produce a good or service (...) through participatory work that allows individuals to self-develop while contributing to the community by satisfying consumers’ needs through collaborative work. The critical account of corporations presented here provides a sound foundation upon which to build a justification of corporate responsibility for human rights violations, providing a more accurate description of the reality of a corporation than most mainstream contemporary accounts do. (shrink)

This paper offers some insights and clarifications of the paramount role that Mexico has had in the forging of first-order cybernetics. Our account starts with Arturo Rosenblueth as a key intellectual figure in the foundation and formation of the field. After revisiting a historical context of people and places, we proceed to a cultural and media archeological investigation that helps us obtain new insights into the ongoing effort to intertwine the complex intellectual networks across different countries in Latin America, North (...) America, and Europe. We then present cases and first-hand interviews to discuss the legacy of cybernetics in Mexico around institutions where Rosenblueth was affiliated, mainly the Institute of Cardiology and, later on, the CINVESTAV at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional. We claim that subjective affinities are as important as common scientific goals to establish and keep connections alive, necessary to the development of a research field. As the active compound in spicy peppers, capsaicin represents a local component to the definition of cybernetics. Ultimately, the paper aims to contribute to the research on the importance of cybernetics in Latin America. (shrink)

In this brief note, I offer some considerations to the effect of arguing (i) that Duffley's criticism to formal semantics is based on a dogma about the proper nature of the linguistic sing, and (ii) that, even when I agree with the general spirit of his realizational theory of meaning, an explicit theory of how syntax affects meanings realization is missing.

In this essay, I deal with the problem of the attribution of psychological predicates to non-human animals. The first section illustrates three research topics where it has become scientifically legitimate to explain the conduct of non-human animals by means of the attribution of psychological predicates. The second section discusses several philosophical objections to the legitimacy of such attributions provided by central thinkers from the last decades. I try to show that these objections —which are related among other questions to the (...) holism of the mental, the indeterminacy of the attributions, and the strangeness of animal concepts— can be alleviated. In the third section, I propose to adopt a literalist view of the attributions in the sense articulated by Figdor. At the same time, I argue that one must draw limits to the conceptual change forwarded by her literalist view, taking into account holistic considerations and the fact that the psychological concepts must retain their core notes. (shrink)

This paper seeks to destabilize the silent privilege given to the secured juridical-political position of the citizen as the stable site of enunciation of the problem/solution framework under which the stranger (foreigner, immigrant, refugee) is theoretically located. By means of textual, intertextual, and extratextual readings of Antigone, the paper argues that it is politically and literarily possible to (re)invent her for strangers in the twenty-first century, that is, for those symbolically produced as not-legally locatable and who resignify their ambivalent ontological (...) status between life and death as an alternative sociopolitical location of speech and action in equality with “others.”. (shrink)

There is a collection of exogenously given socially feasible sets, and, for each one of them, each individual in a group chooses from an individually feasible set. The fact that the product of the individually feasible sets is larger than the socially feasible set notwithstanding, there arises no conflict between individual choices. Assuming that individual preferences are random, I characterize rationalizable collective choices.

A partir de un estudio longitudinal sobre cultura política en chilenos, discutimos la paradojal evidencia encontrada en la literatura que plantea que, por un lado, las actitudes políticas más pro-democráticas y anti-autoritarias se observarían en sectores sociales acomodados y, por otro lado, las actitudes más pro-conservadoras y anti-igualitaristas se observarían en grupos sociales dominantes. Nuestros datos muestran que el patrón de actitudes políticas (autoritarismo, apoyo a la democracia, conservadurismo y nacionalismo) es similar entre personas de derecha de estrato alto, izquierda (...) de estrato bajo, y centro de estrato medio. En cambio, quienes manifiestan una orientación política incongruente con su condición socioeconómica presentan actitudes políticas diferenciadas del patrón predominante. Concluimos que la paradoja puede resolverse explicando el patrón de actitudes políticas de un grupo en función del (des)ajuste de la orientación política a sus condiciones socioeconómicas. (shrink)

Final value accrues to objects that are good for their own sakes, while instrumental value accrues to objects that are good for the sake of their effects. The following paper aims to show that this distinction cuts across some surprising areas of the evaluative domain. This means that there may be some unexpected types of value that can come in a final or instrumental form. The argument proceeds by looking at two prominent types of value, namely kind-value and personal value. (...) The former accrues to objects that are good as the kinds of things that they are, while the latter accrues to objects that are good for someone. Substantive examples are offered in support of the idea that these types of value can come in final or instrumental form. The substantive examples are then given additional support by considering the structure and behavior of fitting attitudes. (shrink)

Morally progressive social changes seem to have taken place with the onset of democratic governance, the abolition of slavery, the rise of gender equality, and other developments. This essay attempts to demonstrate that natural and objective moral facts are a plausible cause of some morally progressive social changes. Since this hypothesis is a version of naturalistic moral realism, I call it the Naturalist-Realist Hypothesis. To support the NRH, I argue that objective moral facts are natural facts pertaining to the impartial (...) promotion of well-being within a population of agents facing a social dilemma. I then describe a mechanism to explain how natural and objective moral facts so construed may cause some morally progressive social changes. I suggest that the NRH is a credible hypothesis because it is compatible with empirical findings from research on the evolution of moral cognition and on the sociology of mass political movements. (shrink)

The origin of Paraconsistent Logic is closely related with the argument that from the assertion of two mutually contradictory statements any other statement can be deduced, which can be referred to as ex contradict!one sequitur quodlibet (ECSQ). Despite its medieval origin, only in the 1930s did it become the main reason for the unfeasibility of having contradictions in a deductive system. The purpose of this paper is to study what happened before: from Principia Mathematica to that time, when it became (...) well established. The main historical claims that I am going to advance are the following: the first explicit use of ECSQ as the main argument for supporting the necessity of excluding any contradiction from deductive systems is to be found in the first edition (1928) of the book Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik by Hilbert and Ackermann. At the end, I will suggest that the aim of the 20th century usage of ECSQ was to change from the centuries long philosophical discussion about contradictions to a more "technical" one. But with Paraconsistent Logic viewed as a technical solution to this restriction, the philosophical problem revives, but now with an improved understanding of it at one's disposal. (shrink)

El siguiente texto aborda la poesía de Carlos Fajardo Fajardo, cuya obra sólida, rigurosa y de estupenda factura, lo sitúa entre uno de los poetas más representativos de la actual poesía colombiana. El texto muestra las constantes poéticas de Fajardo, sus propuestas estéticas e influencias, rastreando la sugerente lucidez y la exquisita sensibilidad que habitan en sus poemas.

This paper presents a method to compute a posteriori probability intervals when the initial conditional information is also given with probability intervals. The right way to make an exact computation is with the associated convex set of probabilities. Probability trees are used to represent these initial conditional convex sets because they greatly save the space required. This paper proposes a simulated annealing algorithm, which uses probability trees to represent the convex sets in order to compute the a posteriori intervals.

We study whether the probabilistic postulate could be derived from basic principles. Through the analysis of the Strong Law of Large Numbers and its formulation in quantum mechanics, we show, contrary to the claim of the many-worlds interpretation defenders and the arguments of some other authors, the impossibility of obtaining the probabilistic postulate by means of the frequency analysis of an ensemble of infinite copies of a single system. It is shown, though, how the standard form of the probability as (...) the square of the scalar product follows from Gleason's theorem. (shrink)

Since it implies a reduction in the quality and the quantity of the natural resources, environmental degradation is a present day problem that requires immediate solutions. This situation is driving firms to undertake an environmental transformation process with the purpose of reducing the negative externalities that come from their economic activities. Within this context, environmental marketing is an emerging business philosophy by which organizations can address sustainability issues. Moreover, environmental marketing and orientation are seen as valuable strategies to improve a (...) firm's competitiveness. However, the literature that has analyzed the link between environmental strategies and firms' results has been inconclusive and contradictory. In this study, we propose and test a model that analyses how the implementation of ecological issues within a firm's marketing strategy and orientation influences organizational results. Data were obtained through a survey sent to Spanish manufacturing firms. The results show that environmental marketing positively affects firms' operational and commercial performance and this improvement will influence their economic results. Moreover, environmental marketing is revealed as an excellent strategy to obtain competitive advantages in costs and in product differentiation. Thus, this study agrees with the researchers who affirm that environmental strategies positively affect firm's competitiveness while reducing environmental impact. (shrink)

There is a growing awareness that there are many subtle forms of exclusion and partiality that affect the correct workings of a judicial system. The concept of epistemic injustice, introduced by the philosopher Miranda Fricker, is a useful conceptual tool to understand forms of judicial partiality that often go undetected. In this paper, we present Fricker’s original theory and some of the applications of the concept of epistemic injustice in legal processes. In particular, we want to show that the seed (...) planted by Fricker has flourished into a rich field of study in which the concept is used to analyze many different phenomena in law, not always following the original characterization provided by her. This has led to a distinction between what we will call the narrow version of the concept, which is closer to Fricker’s original account, and the wider version of epistemic injustice, which is a more controversial notion because it is always on the verge of morphing into other well-known concepts like sexism, racial discrimination, oppression, silencing, and gaslighting. We will show that the value of the narrow version is mostly theoretical, and that in order to use the concept of epistemic injustice one must adopt a more liberal understanding of it. (shrink)

Plagiarism is a serious, yet widespread type of research misconduct, and is often neglected in developing countries. Despite its far-reaching implications, plagiarism is poorly acknowledged and discussed in the academic setting, and insufficient evidence exists in Latin America and developing countries to inform the development of preventive strategies. In this context, we present a longitudinal case study of seven instances of plagiarism and cheating arising in four consecutive classes of an Epidemiology Masters program in Lima, Peru, and describes the implementation (...) and outcomes of a multifaceted, “zero-tolerance” policy aimed at introducing research integrity. Two cases involved cheating in graded assignments, and five cases correspond to plagiarism in the thesis protocol. Cases revealed poor awareness of high tolerance to plagiarism, poor academic performance, and widespread writing deficiencies, compensated with patchwriting and copy-pasting. Depending on the events’ severity, penalties included course failure and separation from the program. Students at fault did not engage in further plagiarism. Between 2011 and 2013, the Masters program sequentially introduced a preventive policy consisting of: intensified research integrity and scientific writing education, a stepwise, cumulative writing process; honor codes; active search for plagiarism in all academic products; and a “zero-tolerance” policy in response to documented cases. No cases were detected in 2014. In conclusion, plagiarism seems to be widespread in resource-limited settings and a greater response with educational and zero-tolerance components is needed to prevent it. (shrink)

Abstract In The Descent of Man (1879), Charles Darwin proposed a speculative evolutionary explanation of extended benevolence—a human sympathetic capacity that extends to all nations, races, and even to all sentient beings. This essay draws on twenty-first century social science to show that Darwin’s explanation is correct in its broad outlines. Extended benevolence is manifested in institutions such as legal human rights and democracy, in behaviors such as social movements for human rights and the protection of nonhuman animals, and in (...) normative attitudes such as emancipative values and a commitment to promote the rights or welfare of animals. These phenomena can be substantially explained by cultural evolutionary forces that trace back to three components of what Darwin called the human “moral sense”: (1) sympathy, (2) our disposition to follow community rules or norms, and (3) our capacity to make normative judgments. Extended benevolence likely emerged with “workarounds,” including political ideologies, that established an inclusive sympathetic concern for sentient life. It likely became as widespread as it is now due to recently arisen socio-economic conditions that have created more opportunities for people to have contact with and take the perspective of a broader cross-section of humanity, as well as other species. (shrink)

In this article I argue that anti-perfectionist liberals can accept nudging in certain areas: in particular, they can accept nudges aimed at helping people to discharge their nonenforceable duties, and to secure personal autonomy. I claim that nudging is not disrespectful since it does not involve a comparative negative judgment on people’s ability to pursue their plans, and that the judgments that motivate nudging are compatible with treating citizens as free and equal. I also claim that despite being sometimes manipulative, (...) nudging is easy to resist and so it can be employed to pursue legitimate goals. (shrink)

One of the strongest defences of free speech holds that autonomy requires the protection of speech. In this paper I examine five conditions that autonomy must satisfy. I survey recent research in social psychology regarding automatic behaviour, and a challenge to autonomy is articulated. I argue that a plausible strategy for neutralising some of the autonomy-threatening automatic responses consists in avoiding the exposure to the environmental features that trigger them. If this is so, we can good autonomy-based pro tanto reasons (...) for controlling exposure to certain forms of speech. (shrink)