Value sensitive design aims at creating better technology based on social and ethical values. However, VSD has not been applied to long-term and uncertain future developments, such as societal planning for climate change. This paper describes a new method that combines elements from VSD with scenario planning. The method was developed for and applied to a case study of adaptation to sea level rise in southern Sweden in a series of workshops. The participants of the workshops found that the method (...) provided a framework for discussing long-term planning, enabled identification of essential values, challenged established planning practices, helped find creative solutions, and served as a reminder that we do not know what will happen in the future. Finally, we reflect on the limitations of the method and suggest further research on how it can be improved for value sensitive design of adaptation measures to manage uncertain future sea level rise. (shrink)

Climate change goals and actions are often discussed with reference to their feasibility. However, in the climate change literature, there is no agreed upon understanding of what feasibility means. In this paper, insights from political philosophy are used to address this problem in a two-fold way. First, different uses of the term feasibility in the climate change context are critically analyzed, surfacing problematic uses that can have severe consequences for what goals or actions are considered. Second, the ‘conditional probability account (...) of feasibility’ is presented as a positive account of how feasibility should be understood in the climate change context, and applied to the case of managed retreat as an approach for adaptation to sea level rise. Together, the critical analysis and the positive proposal furthers a necessary discussion on feasibility in the context of climate change. (shrink)

In the field of responsibility and climate change, much attention has been paid to actions and what we need to do in order to take responsibility. This paper shifts the perspective from what we should do to how we should be in order to be responsible. Looking at the case of local adaptation to sea level rise, the question of what characterizes a responsible planner is addressed. Departing from the idea of professional virtues, aspirational characteristics are extrapolated from three codes (...) of ethics for planners. The identified virtues are discussed in relation to the central challenges of adaptation to sea level rise, giving an indication of which virtues are most important in this given context. When placing the responsible planner in an institutional context, it is evident that while a virtue perspective should not replace a system analysis, it provides a valuable complement to the traditional action-focused discourse on responsible adaptation. (shrink)

How can we explain the structure of perceptual experience? What is it that we perceive? How is it that we perceive objects and not disjoint arrays of properties? By which sense or senses do we perceive objects? This book investigates Aristotle's views on these and related questions.

The 1994 US spectrum auction is now a paradigmatic case of the successful use of microeconomic theory for policy-making. We use a detailed analysis of it to review standard accounts in philosophy of science of how idealized models are connected to messy reality. We show that in order to understand what made the design of the spectrum auction successful, a new such account is required, and we present it here. Of especial interest is the light this sheds on the issue (...) of progress in economics. In particular, it enables us to get clear on exactly what has been progressing, and on exactly what theory has – and has not – contributed to that. This in turn has important implications for just what it is about economic theory that we should value. (shrink)

In Valuing Health, Dan Hausman argues that well-being is not measurable, at least not in the way that science and policy would require. His argument depends on a demanding conception of well-being and on a pessimistic verdict upon the existing measures of subjective well-being. Neither of these reasons, I argue, warrant as much skepticism as Hausman professes.

This paper is about the standard Reflection Principle :235–256, 1984) and the Group Reflection Principle :478–502, 2007; Bovens and Rabinowicz in Episteme 8:281–300, 2011; Titelbaum in Quitting certainties: a Bayesian framework modeling degrees of belief, OUP, Oxford, 2012; Hedden in Mind 124:449–491, 2015). I argue that these principles are incomplete as they stand. The key point is that deference is an intensional relation, and so whether you are rationally required to defer to a person at a time can depend on (...) how that person and that time are designated. In this paper I suggest a way of completing the Reflection Principle and Group Reflection Principle, and I argue that so completed these principles are plausible. In particular, they do not fall foul of the Sleeping Beauty case :143–147, 2000), the Cable Guy Paradox :112–119, 2005), Arntzenius’ prisoner cases :356–370, 2003), or the Puzzle of the Hats :281–300, 2011). (shrink)

This article aims to provide a critical map of toleration as it is displayed in contemporary democracy. It does so by presenting three conceptions of toleration to which current practices of toleration can be traced, and, precisely, these are the standard notion, the political conception based on the neutrality principle, and toleration as recognition. The author argues that the latter is the appropriate conception to address the politically relevant issues of toleration arising in pluralistic democracy, while the first is adequate (...) only for social relations. In order to illustrate this argument, she presents a case of a contested and never solved request for a place of worship by the Muslims of Vercelli which represents an example of a very restricted and minimal interpretation of the standard notion, labeled ‘disrespectful tolerance’. The case is meant to show that unacceptable forms of toleration are still practised, and that the standard notion, here interpreted in the most minimal and negative way, is inappropriate for democratic politics. (shrink)

The much-lamented anthropocentrism of human rights is misleading. Human rights anthropocentrism is radically attenuated and reflects persistent patterns of intra- and interspecies injustice and binary subject–object relations inapt for twenty-first-century crises and posthuman complexities. This article explores the possibility of reimagining the “human” of human rights in the light of anti- and post-Cartesian analyses drawing—in particular—upon Merleau-Ponty and on new materialism. This article also seeks to reimagine human rights themselves as responsibilized, injustice-sensitive claim concepts emerging in the “midst of” lively (...) materialities and the uneven global dynamics of twenty-first-century predicaments. (shrink)

Bernard Stiegler’s concept of individuation suggests that the human being is co-constituted with technology. Technology precedes the individual in the respect that the latter is thrown in a technological world that always already contains externally inscribed memories—what he calls tertiary memories—that selectively form the individual and the collective space of the community. Revisiting Husserlian phenomenology, Stiegler renews the critique of culture industries asserting that imagination and differance have always been technologically mediated, and echoing the Heideggerian anxiety concerning thinking’s over-determination, Stiegler (...) offers an intriguing analysis of the specificity of our age’s technologies while exploring the possibility for political responsibility and educational intervention. (shrink)

Traditionally the domain of scientists, the history of science became an independent field of inquiry only in the twentieth century and mostly after the Second World War. This process of emancipation was accompanied by a historiographical departure from previous, ‘scientistic’ practices, a transformation often attributed to influences from sociology, philosophy and history. Similarly, the liberal humanists who controlled the Cambridge History of Science Committee after 1945 emphasized that their contribution lay in the special expertise they, as trained historians, brought to (...) the venture. However, the scientists who had founded the Committee in the 1930s had already advocated a sophisticated contextual approach: innovation in the history of science thus clearly came also from within the ranks of scientists who practised in the field. Moreover, unlike their scientist predecessors on the Cambridge Committee, the liberal humanists supported a positivistic protocol that has since been criticized for its failure to properly contextualize early modern science. Lastly, while celebrating the rise of modern science as an international achievement, the liberal humanists also emphasized the peculiar Englishness of the phenomenon. In this respect, too, their outlook had much in common with the practices from which they attempted to distance their project. (shrink)

The aim of the present study was to describe and explore the perception of ethical guidelines and their role in ethical competence-building among Swedish physicians and research nurses. Twelve informants were interviewed in depth. The results demonstrated that the informants had a critical attitude towards ethical guidelines and claimed to make little use of them in practical moral judgements. Ethical competence was seen primarily as character-building, related to virtues such as being empathic, honest and loyal to patients. Ethical competence was (...) assumed to be learned through good examples, role models and practical experience, while ethical guidelines were not perceived as valuable in this process. In order to improve the staff's familiarity with and the usability of ethical guidelines, the workplace needs to provide opportunities for ethical dialogues. In such discussions, argumentation can improve, virtues can be developed and guidelines can be usefully invoked. (shrink)

First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Here’s a plausible thought: we should make a promise only if we rationally believe that we will follow through. But if that’s right, and if it’s rational to believe only what our evidence supports, then it seems that we shouldn’t make promises to do things our evidence suggests that there’s a significant chance we don’t do – things that many others, or we ourselves, have set out and failed to do. Think: promises to stay faithful or to be on time (...) or to quit smoking. But surely that can’t be right! After all, these are some of our most important promises. This leaves us with a puzzle: either accept that sometimes it’s ok to promise against the evidence or accept that we shouldn’t be making many of our most important promises. This paper develops a response to this puzzle. Promising against the evidence turns out to be morally problematic across the board. But, upon closer inspection, it seems our evidence often does support the belief that we will do something that many others, or we ourselves, have set out and failed to do. When it does, promising is permissible. When it doesn’t, promising is not the right thing to do. (shrink)

For the history of science the 1940s were a transformative decade, when salient scholars like Herbert Butterfield or Alexandre Koyré set out to shape postwar culture by promoting new standards for understanding science. Some years ago I placed these developments in a tradition of enduring arts–science tensions and the contemporary notion that previous, “scientistic”, historical practices needed to be confronted with disinterested codes of historical craft. Here, I want to further explore the ideological dimensions of the processes through which the (...) academic study of science became institutionalized. Butterfield’s generation of science historians moulded perception of science in highly specific ways. Whereas the scientist-historians of the 1930s put scientific innovation into its socio-economic contexts, postwar accounts portrayed the birth of modern science as an intellectual revolution. Anti-Marxism formed a defining feature of the process by which the image of scientific work as a disinterested journey of the mind came to be institutionalized. Rather than spelling the end of ideology, appointments processes in the early Cold War years reveal disagreement about what science was to be invariably coextensive with dissent about social and political order. Rather than testifying to irreconcilable conflicts between interestedness and historical craft, the work of both the 1930s and 40s speaks of surprisingly productive relations between the two.Author Keywords: Author Keywords: Hessen; Bernal; Pagel; Needham; Butterfield; Cold War; Cambridge. (shrink)

Ever feel concerned that you may not achieve your career goals, or feel worried about where your life is going? Such examples may reflect the experience of status anxiety, that is, concerns that one may be stuck or not able to move up in life, or worries that one may be too low in standing compared to society’s standards. Status anxiety is believed to be exacerbated by economic inequality and negatively affect well-being. While job satisfaction is an important determinant of (...) well-being, no research has examined whether status anxiety can also help explain people’s satisfaction with their jobs. We tested whether status anxiety differs from other organizational constructs and uniquely relates to job satisfaction among full-time working adults. In a pilot study we found that status anxiety is separate from the concept of job insecurity (e.g.,, perceived threat of job loss). Results of our main study also indicated that higher status anxiety significantly predicted lower job satisfaction beyond several other indicators of organizational attitudes (job insecurity, occupational self-efficacy, distributive, procedural, and interactional justice), as well as the tendency to seek status and several background factors (e.g., income, education, perceived socioeconomic status). We discuss the unique role of status anxiety in job satisfaction and the implications of this research to our understanding of status concerns as well as organizational attitudes and policies. (shrink)

In March 1986, a public symposium took place in Heidelberg about the “unresolved potential dangers of genetic engineering”. The event was organized by institutions affiliated with the environmental movement. Choosing this symposium as an example, the article shows how the public appearance of scientists can be understood as a form of political activism. The article shows how specialists from fields as diverse as biology, chemistry, physics, law and political sciences tried to place political messages by putting themselves in the limelight (...) as independent scientists. I argue that the symposium was both: a place of science communication intertwined with political agitation that, as should be noted, happened in a time when the West German government was working on the legislation of genetic engineering, legitimated by relying on independent expertise. It can be concluded that the discourse of scientific independence became a strategic tool in the controversial debate about the uses and dangers of genetic engineering. Thus, it draws attention to a dimension of political-scientific activity which cannot be fully grasped by the concept of ‘the expert’ that is established in the history of science. (shrink)

Public health raises critical ethics issues and concerns, making public heath ethics an essential topic for students and public health professionals. The 73 chapters in this volume examine public health ethics across a broad range of public health topics both in the U.S. and globally. It is the first ever comprehensive collection devoted to public health ethics.

Cet article s’intéresse aux ateliers régionaux de production céramique de Chypre à l’époque géométrique. À partir de l’analyse détaillée de la céramique, qui constitue la documentation primaire pour cette époque, et suivant une méthode rigoureuse, on tentera d’identifier et de définir le caractère régional de la production céramique. Cela nous permettra de cerner des modes de développement spécifiques et différenciés selon les régions de l’île. En l’absence de sources écrites pour l’époque chypro-géométrique, cette démarche est susceptible d’éclairer les processus de (...) constitution des royaumes chypriotes du Ier millénaire av. J.-C. (shrink)

In the literature, one finds two accounts of the normative status of rational belief: the ought account and the permissibility account. Both accounts have their advantages and shortcomings, making it difficult to favour one over the other. Imagine that there were two principles of rational belief or rational degrees of belief commonly considered plausible, but which, however, yielded a paradox together with one account, but not with the other. One of the accounts therefore requires us to give up one of (...) the plausible principles; whereas the other allows us to save them both. The fact that it allows us to save both of the plausible principles might well be considered a strong reason in favour of the relevant account. The permissibility-account-based resolution of the lottery paradox suggests that the permissibility account is a candidate for being supported in this way, since the account seems to save two plausible principles of rational belief and rational degrees of belief. I argue that even if the permissibility account were supported in this way the support would be defeated, since one cannot provide an analogous resolution of the preface paradox. The principles remain unsaved by the permissibility account. (shrink)

We have been researching the distinctive ethical issues raised by what we have called “the reset period,” when non-Covid services resumed alongside the continuing pandemic in the UK. In this commen...

The Stoics’ guiding principle in ontology is the Eleatic principle. Their existents are bodies that have the power to act and be acted upon. They account both for the constitution of material objects and the causal interactions among them in terms of such dynamic bodies. Blending is the physical mechanism that explains both constitution and causation; and is facilitated by the fact that for the Stoics all bodies exist as unlimited divided. In this paper I offer a novel analysis of (...) this Stoic stance, and of the role it plays in their metaphysics. I argue that when blended, the substances involved become sharing subjects of qualities and structural features. (shrink)

Recently, hinge epistemologists have applied Wittgenstein’s metaphor of hinges to religious belief. The most prominent proposal in this context is Pritchard’s “quasi-fideism”. This paper examines some historical precursors of the notion of religious hinges, with the aim of shedding more light on it. After outlining the framework of hinge epistemology and its application to religious belief, I briefly examine the views of Thomas Reid and John Henry Newman as acknowledged forerunners of this framework (or cognate views). Next, I turn to (...) two hitherto unacknowledged forerunners, the pragmatists William James and Charles S. Peirce. I then focus on some insights that the pragmatists offer. On this basis, I conclude that religious beliefs are a special class of hinges. As such, while they can be defended through hinge epistemology, they cannot constitute a model through which we can interpret the nature of hinges in general. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper adds to efforts to retrieve the long-neglected philosophical contributions of Karoline von Günderrode, and is one of the first to seriously address the political commitments in Günderrode’s work, especially regarding revolution. This idea gains an unusual status in the context of Günderrode’s metaphysics, and is key to understanding the connections between Günderrode’s more obviously philosophical writings and her literary work. I argue that Günderrode’s concept of revolution resembles, in some respects, the ideas of other thinkers of her (...) time, but has ramifications for conceiving of human individuals and their relationships to society and nature that are unique to Günderrode. First, I use a comparison with the work of contemporaries on revolution to justify interpreting Günderrode’s metaphysics in relation to her thought on politics. Günderrode often masks her political thought in the form of plays, and the paper next considers the theme of revolution in her plays Muhammad, the Prophet of Mecca, and Udohla. Lastly, the paper contrasts Günderrode’s position on revolution to claims by Herder and Fichte, arguing that Günderrode’s conception of a cycle of enhancement and decay of natural forces, political power and social cohesion differs from androcentric models that emphasize the development of consciousness. (shrink)

Though Epicurus recommends that his followers eschew politics and live “unnoticed” apart from society, he also recommends that they live in communion with other Epicureans. I show that both pieces of this seemingly contrasting advice function to help the Epicurean achieve her goal, tranquility. Politics is (usually) to be avoided because it disrupts tranquility; but the Epicurean community of friends supports and strengthens the ability to reach tranquility, secure from the challenges that beset the traditional, non-Epicurean political community.

This paper aims to critique the phenomenon of advanced patient autonomy and choice in healthcare within the specific context of self-testing devices. A growing number of self-testing medical devices are currently available for home use. The premise underpinning many of these devices is that they assist individuals to be more autonomous in the assessment and management of their health. Increased patient autonomy is assumed to be a good thing. We take issue with this assumption and argue that self-testing provides a (...) specific example how increased patient autonomy and choice within healthcare might not best serve the patient population. We propose that current interpretations of autonomy in healthcare are based on negative accounts of liberty to the detriment of a more relational understanding. We also propose that Kantian philosophy is often applied to the healthcare arena in an inappropriate manner. We draw on the philosophical literature and examples from the self-testing process to support these claims. We conclude by offering an alternative account of autonomy based on the interrelated concepts of relationality, care and responsibility. (shrink)

Feminist Ethics and Narrative Ethics This article defines feminist ethics and narrative ethics and then explores the intersection of the two. A narrative approach to ethics focuses on how stories that are told, written, or otherwise expressed by individuals and groups help to define and structure our moral universe. Specifically, narrative ethicists take the practices … Continue reading Feminist Ethics and Narrative Ethics →.

I distinguish between the classical Gricean approach to conversational implicatures, which I call the action-theoretic approach, and the approach to CIs taken in contemporary cognitive science. Once we free ourselves from the AT account, and see implicating as a form of what I call “conversational tailoring”, we can more easily see the many different ways that CIs arise in conversation. I will show that they arise not only on the basis of a speaker’s utterance of complete sentences but also on (...) the basis of sub-sentential clauses—cases of so-called embedded implicatures—as well as from discourse segments containing several sentences—cases that Geurts calls ‘multiplicatures’. I will argue that they arise also from contents that are themselves implicit, such as presupposed contents or other implicatures. All but the first sort of case are difficult for the traditional Gricean AT account to handle, whereas they fall naturally out of an account that sees conversational participants as engaged in conversational tailoring—i.e., as engaged in a process of shaping informational and discourse structural properties of utterances in their successive conversational turns, and hence shaping their interlocutors’ cognitive environments. (shrink)

The focus of this paper is the discussion between supporters of the intentional account of SD and supporters of the causal account. Between these two options the author argues that SD is the unintentional outcome of intentional steps taken by the agent. More precisely, she argues that SD is a complex mixture of things that we do and that happen to us; the outcome is however unintended by the subject, though it fulfils some of his practical, though short-term, goals. In (...) her account, SD is produced after a fashion similar to those beneficial social phenomena which serve some collective purpose, are the product of human action, but not of human design, such as money, language and many social conventions; and similarly SD can be accounted by invisible hand explanation. The paper will critically analyze both the intentional and the causal accounts, and then present the invisible hand explanation which avoids the most puzzling aspect of the intentional view, while keeping the distinctiveness of SD in the realm of motivated irrationality. A brief discussion of the issue of responsibility for SD will conclude the paper. (shrink)

An important objection to the Counterfactual Comparative Account (CCA) of harm is that the account fails to cohere with standard views about the normative significance of harm. In response, some proponents of CCA suggest that the concept of harm should play a more limited role in normative theorising than philosophers might usually think. This paper addresses the most elaborate defence of CCA of this sort, namely that by Neil Feit (2019) Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 22, 809–823, and argues that (...) it is unsuccessful. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the two types of self-deception, usually labeled straight and twisted self-deception. In straight cases the self-deceptive belief coincides with the subject’s desire. In twisted cases, by contrast, the self-deceptive belief opposes the subject’s desire as in the example of Othello’s conviction of Desdemona’s infidelity. Are both these contrasting types of deceptive beliefs cases of SD? The argument of this paper shall answer this question in the positive, yet in different way from the unitary explanation of straight and (...) twisted SD proposed by Alfred Mele. The causal account of SD claims to provide a unitary and simple explanation for both straight and twisted SD, and considers such a unitary explanation as a specific virtue of the causal view. Within the same causal model, the difference between straight and twisted self-deception is explained by a difference in the motivational state that in twisted cases is dominated by emotions. The paper will critically examine this claim, and advance an alternative explanation based on a different view of self-deception where emotions play a role alongside wishes both in straight and in twisted case. (shrink)

In this commentary on Nuno Venturinha’s Description of Situations, after highlighting what in my view are the most significant and innovative features of his work, I focus on Venturinha’s infallibilist approach to knowledge. This topic allows for a wider discussion concerning the pragmatist aspects of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy. I discuss this in three steps: first, by describing the general similarity between Wittgenstein and the pragmatists with respect to the emphasis on contexts; second, by focusing on the kind of fallibilism (...) endorsed by the pragmatists and its compatibility with Charles S. Peirce’s concept of the “indubitables,” which I take as a precursor of Wittgenstein’s concept of hinges; and, finally, by advancing the hypothesis that it is possible to find a form of fallibilism in the later Wittgenstein too, notwithstanding his insistence on the impossibility of mistakes. My conclusion is that while Venturinha’s contextualism finds support in the later Wittgenstein’s writings, his infallibilism does not. (shrink)

Democratic innovations have been widely presented by both academics and practitioners as a potential remedy to the crisis of representative democracy. Many argue that deliberation should play a pivotal role in these innovations, fostering greater citizen participation and political influence. However, it remains unclear how digitalization affects the quality of deliberation—whether digital democratic innovations (DDIs) undermine or enhance deliberation. This paper takes an inductive approach in political theory to critically examine three features of online deliberation that matter for deliberative democracy: (...) scale, transparency, and the facilitation of equality. It argues that the enhancement of equality should be given special attention when designing and implementing deliberative DDIs. Equality is a basic democratic value that is crucial for the intrinsic quality of deliberation. One way of enhancing equality through digital deliberative practices is via AI facilitation, which can assist human facilitators and help mitigate power dynamics, often present in non-digital settings. (shrink)

In a series of one-shot linear public goods game, we ask subjects to report their contributions, their contribution plans for the next period, and their first-order beliefs about their present and future partner. We estimate subjects’ preferences from plan data by a finite mixture approach and compare the results with those obtained from contribution data. Controlling for beliefs, which incorporate the information about the others’ decisions, we are able to show that plans convey accurate information about subjects’ preferences and, consequently, (...) are good predictors of their future behavior. (shrink)