Machiavellianism is a popular construct in research on ethics and organizational behavior. This research has demonstrated that Machiavellianism predicts a host of counterproductive, deviant, and unethical behaviors. However, individuals high in Machiavellianism also adapt to their organizational surroundings, engaging in unethical behavior only in certain situations. Nevertheless, the utility of Machiavellianism has been questioned. Meta-analyses have demonstrated that psychopathy out-predicts Machiavellianism for most antisocial outcomes. Thus, many researchers assume Machiavellianism is a derivative and redundant construct. However, researchers examining the utility (...) of Machiavellianism may be asking the wrong question about how Machiavellianism is unique. In our review, we find it less informative to ask about what antisocial behaviors Machiavellianism predicts. Instead, we find it more informative to ask when Machiavellianism predicts antisocial behaviors. Drawing on Field Theory and Trait Activation Theory, we argue that Machiavellianism is a trait that is associated with person × environment interactions. Their adaptive nature is made possible through the presence of impulse control and environmental sensitivity to punishment, two characteristics that individuals high in psychopathy lack. Consequently, individuals high in Machiavellianism constrain their antisocial behavior to environments when the benefits outweigh the costs. Thus, environmental context, especially the risk of external punishment, moderates Machiavellian misbehavior more than it does for those high in psychopathy. These behavioral constraints align with Lewin’s argument that behavior is a function of the person, environment, and interaction between the two. From this discussion, we arrive at recommendations pertaining to the future of Machiavellianism research in organizational and other applied settings. (shrink)

This book starts with the proposition that digital media invite play and indeed need to be played by their everyday users. Play is probably one of the most visible and powerful ways to appropriate the digital world. The diverse, emerging practices of digital media appear to be essentially playful: Users are involved and active, produce form and content, spread, exchange and consume it, take risks, are conscious of their own goals and the possibilities of achieving them, are skilled and know (...) how to acquire more skills. They share a perspective of can-do, a curiosity of what happens next? Play can be observed in social, economic, political, artistic, educational and criminal contexts and endeavours. It is employed as a strategy, for tacit or open resistance, as a method and productive practice, and something people do for fun. The book aims to define a particular contemporary attitude, a playful approach to media. It identifies some common ground and key principles in this novel terrain. Instead of looking at play and how it branches into different disciplines like business and education, the phenomenon of play in digital media is approached unconstrained by disciplinary boundaries. The contributions in this book provide a glimpse of a playful technological revolution that is a joyful celebration of possibilities that new media afford. This book is not a practical guide on how to hack a system or to pirate music, but provides critical insights into the unintended, artistic, fun, subversive, and sometimes dodgy applications of digital media. Contributions from Chris Crawford, Mathias Fuchs, Rilla Khaled, Sybille Lammes, Eva and Franco Mattes, Florian 'Floyd' Mueller, Michael Nitsche, Julian Oliver, and others cover and address topics such as reflective game design, identity and people's engagement in online media, conflicts and challenging opportunities for play, playing with cartographical interfaces, player-emergent production practices, the re-purposing of data, game creation as an educational approach, the ludification of society, the creation of meaning within and without play, the internalisation and subversion of roles through play, and the boundaries of play. (shrink)

A large body of research in political science claims that the way in which democratic citizens think about politics is motivationally biased by partisanship. Numerous critics argue that the evidence for this claim is better explained by theories in which party allegiances influence political cognition without motivating citizens to embrace biased beliefs. This article has three aims. First, I clarify this criticism, explain why common responses to it are unsuccessful, and argue that to make progress on this debate we need (...) a more developed theory of the connections between group attachments and motivated reasoning. Second, I develop such a theory. Drawing on research on coalitional psychology and the social functions of beliefs, I argue that partisanship unconsciously biases cognition by generating motivations to advocate for party interests, which transform individuals into partisan press secretaries. Finally, I argue that this theory offers a superior explanation of a wide range of relevant findings than purely non-motivational theories of political cognition. (shrink)

A normative reason for a person to? is a consideration which favours?ing. A motivating reason is a reason for which or on the basis of which a person?s. This paper explores a connection between normative and motivating reasons. More specifically, it explores the idea that there are second-order normative reasons to? for or on the basis of certain first-order normative reasons. In this paper, I challenge the view that there are second-order reasons so understood. I then show that prominent views (...) in contemporary epistemology are committed to the existence of second-order reasons, specifically, views about the epistemic norms governing practical reasoning and about the role of higher-order evidence. If there are no second-order reasons, those views are mistaken. (shrink)

What is a normative reason for acting? In this paper, I introduce and defend a novel answer to this question. The starting-point is the view that reasons are right-makers. By exploring difficulties facing it, I arrive at an alternative, according to which reasons are evidence of respects in which it is right to perform an act, for example, that it keeps a promise. This is similar to the proposal that reasons for a person to act are evidence that she ought (...) to do so; however, as I explain, it differs from that proposal in two significant ways. As a result, I argue, the evidence-based account of reasons I advance shares the advantages of its predecessor while avoiding many of the difficulties facing it. (shrink)

Predictive processing and its apparent commitment to explaining cognition in terms of Bayesian inference over hierarchical generative models seems to flatly contradict the pragmatist conception of mind and experience. Against this, I argue that this appearance results from philosophical overlays at odd with the science itself, and that the two frameworks are in fact well-poised for mutually beneficial theoretical exchange. Specifically, I argue: first, that predictive processing illuminates pragmatism’s commitment to both the primacy of pragmatic coping in accounts of the (...) mind and the profound organism-relativity of experience; second, that this pragmatic, “narcissistic” character of prediction error minimization undermines its ability to explain the distinctive normativity of intentionality; and third, that predictive processing therefore mandates an extra-neural account of intentional content of exactly the sort that pragmatism’s communitarian vision of human thought can provide. (shrink)

It's standard in epistemology to approach questions about knowledge and rational belief using idealized, simplified models. But while the practice of constructing idealized models in epistemology is old, metaepistemological reflection on that practice is not. Greco argues that the fact that epistemologists build idealized models isn't merely a metaepistemological observation that can leave first-order epistemological debates untouched. Rather, once we view epistemology through the lens of idealization and model-building, the landscape looks quite different. Constructing idealized models is likely the best (...) epistemologists can do. Once one starts using epistemological categories like belief, knowledge, and confidence, the realm of idealization and model-building is entered. We can object to a model of knowledge by pointing to a better model, but in the absence of a better model, the fact that a framework for epistemologizing theorizing involves simplifications, approximations, and other inaccuracies-the fact of its status as an idealized model-is not in itself objectionable. Once we accept that theorizing in epistemological terms is inescapably idealized, a number of intriguing possibilities open up. Greco defends a package of epistemological views that might otherwise have looked indefensibly dismissive of our cognitive limitations-a package according to which we know a wide variety of facts with certainty, including what our evidence is, what we know and don't know, and what follows from our knowledge. (shrink)

This volume provides a detailed account of the syntax of expressive language, that is, utterances that express, rather than describe, the emotions and attitudes of the speaker... Daniel Gutzmann demonstrates that expressivity has strong syntactic reflexes that interact with the semantic and pragmatic interpretation of these utterances, and argues that expressivity is in fact a syntactic feature on a par with other established features such as tense and gender. Evidence for this claim is drawn from three detailed case studies (...) of expressive adjectives, intensifiers, and vocatives; their puzzling properties are accounted for through a minimalist approach to syntactic features and agreement, which shows that expressivity can partake in agreement operations, trigger movement, and be selected for syntactically. The analysis not only supports the hypothesis of expressive syntax, but also highlights the hidden role that grammar may play in phenomena that are traditionally considered to be solely semantic in nature" -- Publisher. (shrink)

The article addresses the pervasive global challenge of delayed justice, emphasizing its role as a catalyst for widespread judicial reforms. The study defines international and national court approaches to reasonable trial durations by employing systematic and comparative legal methods. It delves into essential technology courts and parties use to ensure timely proceedings, categorizing associated risks and problems. The authors advocate for the multi-door courthouse system, illustrating its efficacy in reducing delays. Furthermore, the article classifies technologies facilitating reasonable trial durations, acknowledging (...) and offering solutions for the challenges they present. This research contributes to the dynamic landscape of judicial reform, offering a holistic perspective on the multifaceted aspects of timely justice. (shrink)

Weighted voting involves weighting representatives’ votes by the populations that they represent. Such systems have been adopted in some legislative bodies as a remedy for malapportionment, and are sometimes used to elect candidates for the executive branch of government. But they receive little attention. This note observes the neglected vices of weighted voting systems: they violate intuitive conditions of monotonicity and participation. These vices count significantly against the use of weighted voting, and reflecting on why they arise improves our understanding (...) of axioms in social choice theory. (shrink)

First-order evidence is evidence which bears on whether a proposition is true. Higher-order evidence is evidence which bears on whether a person is able to assess her evidence for or against a proposition. A widespread view is that higher-order evidence makes a difference to whether it is rational for a person to believe a proposition. In this paper, I consider in what way higher-order evidence might do this. More specifically, I consider whether and how higher-order evidence plays a role in (...) determining what it is rational to believe distinct from that which first-order evidence plays. To do this, I turn to the theory of reasons, and try to situate higher-order evidence within it. The only place I find for it there, distinct from that which first-order evidence already occupies, is as a practical reason, that is, as a reason for desire or action. One might take this to show either that the theory of reasons is inadequate as it stands or that higher-order evidence makes no distinctive difference to what it is rational to believe. I tentatively endorse the second option. (shrink)

The experimental validity of research in the experimental philosophy of free will has been called into question. Several new, important studies (Murray et al. forthcoming; Nadelhoffer et al., Cognitive Science 44 (8): 1–28, 2020 ; Nadelhoffer et al., 2021; Rose et al., Cognitive Science 41 (2): 482–502, 2017 ) are interpreted as showing that the vignette-judgment model is defective because participants only exhibit a surface-level comprehension and not the deeper comprehension the model requires. Participants, it is argued, commit _bypassing_, _intrusion_, (...) and _fatalism_ errors. We respond in two ways: (1) we critique and improve existing methods for assessing deeper comprehension and (2) we develop videos to convey deterministic principles of change that succeed in significantly reducing participants’ bypassing, intrusion, and fatalism errors. Consequently, we have the best existing instrument for gauging folk intuitions about the relationship between free will and determinism. (shrink)

This is a reply by the author to the contributors to a symposium on the book, The Range of Reasons (Oxford University Press, 2021).

We whole-heartedly support Andrew Garland, Stephanie Morain, and Jeremy Sugarman’s claim that clinicians have a duty to participate in pragmatic clinical trials (Garland, Morain, and Sugarman 2023)...

The conventional wisdom declares that evolution is not goal directed, that teleological considerations play no part in our understanding of evolutionary trends. Here I argue that, to the contrary, under a current view of teleology, field theory, most evolutionary trends would have to be considered goal directed to some degree. Further, this view is consistent with a modern scientific outlook, and more particularly with evolutionary theory today. Field theory argues that goal directedness is produced by higher-level fields that direct entities (...) contained within them to behave persistently and plastically, that is, returning them to a goal-directed trajectory following perturbations (persistence) and directing them to a goal-directed trajectory from a large range of alternative starting points (plasticity). The behavior of a bacterium climbing a chemical food gradient is persistent and plastic, with guidance provided by the external “food field,” the chemical gradient. Likewise, an evolutionary trend that is produced by natural selection is a lineage behaving persistently and plastically under the direction of its local ecology, an “ecological field.” Trends directed by selection-generated boundaries, thermodynamic gradients, and certain internal constraints, would also count as goal directed. In other words, most of the causes of evolutionary trends that have been proposed imply goal directedness. However, under field theory, not all trends are goal directed. Examples are discussed. Importantly, nothing in this view suggests that evolution is guided by intentionality, at least none at the level of animal intentionality. Finally, possible implications for our thinking about evolutionary directionality in the history of life are discussed. (shrink)

In this introduction, I explain the notion of higher-order evidence and explore its bearing on aesthetic judgement. I start by illustrating how reflection on cases involving higher-order evidence engages with well-established concerns in aesthetics—specifically, how it might reveal tensions within and between widely recognized aesthetic ideals governing aesthetic judgement. Next, I show how attention to higher-order evidence in relation to aesthetic judgement might expose limitations or assumptions of theories in epistemology, where the nature and significance of higher-order evidence with respect (...) to belief is the focus of much recent attention. The aim is not to resolve the issues but to demonstrate the significance of higher-order evidence in aesthetics and, in doing so, encourage work on the topic in and across aesthetics and epistemology. (shrink)

Since at least the mid-2000s, political commentators, environmental advocates, and scientists have raised concerns about an “anti-science” approach to environmental policymaking in conservative governments in the US and Canada. This paper explores and resolves a paradox surrounding at least some uses of the “anti-science” epithet. I examine two cases of such “anti-science” environmental policy, both of which involve appeals to epistemic values that are widely endorsed by both scientists and philosophers of science. It seems paradoxical to call an appeal to (...) epistemic values “anti-science.” I develop an analysis that, I argue, can resolve this paradox. This analysis is a version of the “aims approach” to science and values, drawing on ideas from axiology and virtue ethics. I characterize the paradox in terms of conflicts or tensions between epistemic and pragmatic aims, and argue that there is a key asymmetry between them: epistemic aims are valuable, in part, because they are useful for pursuing pragmatic aims. Thus, when epistemic and pragmatic aims conflict, epistemic aims need to be reconceptualized in order to reconcile them to pragmatic aims. When this is done, in the “anti-science” cases, the epistemic values are scientific vices rather than virtues. Thus the “anti-science” epithet is apt. (shrink)

Inner speech is known as the “little voice in the head” or “thinking in words.” It attracts philosophical attention in part because it is a phenomenon where several topics of perennial interest intersect: language, consciousness, thought, imagery, communication, imagination, and self-knowledge all appear to connect in some way or other to the little voice in the head. Specific questions about inner speech that have exercised philosophers include its similarities to, and differences from, outer speech; its relationship to reasoning and conceptual (...) thought; its broader cognitive roles—especially within metacognition and self-knowledge; and the role it can play in explanations of auditory verbal hallucinations and “thought insertion”. (shrink)

We assess John Bishop’s theory of the nature of Christian faith in God, as most recently expressed in ‘Reasonable Faith and Reasonable Fideism’, although we dip into other writings as well. We explain several concerns we have about it. However, in the end, our reflections lead us to propose a modified theory, one that avoids our concerns while remaining consonant with some of his guiding thoughts about the nature of Christian faith in God. We also briefly examine three normative issues (...) Bishop’s views present. (shrink)

Recently, William Hasker and Cheryl Chen have argued that James Sterba’s argument for the non-existence of God based on the existence of horrendous evil consequences fails. Hasker, among other things, contends that eliminating horrendous evil consequences will result in a moral kindergarten. It is unclear, however, whether the elimination of horrendous evil consequences will result in a moral kindergarten. Moreover, if Hasker is right, then it may be that most people in the actual world live in a moral kindergarten. Chen (...) argues that eliminating horrendous evil consequences may lead to a morally worse world. While Chen is ultimately right about this, it is not fatal to the basic intuition at the heart of Sterba’s argument. (shrink)

Philosophers are approaching a consensus that biological individuality, including evolutionary individuality, comes in degrees. Graded evolutionary individuality presents a puzzle when juxtaposed with another widely embraced view: that evolutionary individuality follows from being a selectable member of a Darwinian population. Population membership is, on the orthodox view, a bivalent condition, so how can members of Darwinian populations vary in their degree of individuality? This article offers a solution to the puzzle, by locating difference in degree of evolutionary individuality at the (...) level of population lineages, some of which are more Darwinian than others. In doing so, it sheds light on graded individuality in overlapping and nested population lineages, such as those that arise in multilevel selection and symbiotic collectives. (shrink)

This essay surveys a number of prominent, recurring, and new directions in the growing scholarly discourse on the theme “Heidegger and Judaism” arranged under three headings. The first, the contrastive framing, encompasses cases in which the relationship between Heidegger and Judaism is perceived as antithetical. The second, the conjunctive framing, encompasses views claiming the existence of affinities and parallels between Heidegger and Judaism, grouped under three subheadings: “Heidegger and biblical thinking,” “Heidegger and Kabbalah,” and “Heidegger and the Jewish nation.” The (...) third, historical perspectives, uses the approach of intellectual history to explore visions of Judaism that are developed as part of engagements with Heidegger’s philosophy. (shrink)

This paper will argue that intellectualism about skill—the contention that skilled performance is without exception guided by proposition knowledge—is fundamentally flawed. It exposes that intellectualists about skill run into intractable theoretical problems in explicating a role for their novel theoretical conceit of practical modes of presentation. It then examines a proposed solution by Carlotta Pavese which seeks to identify practical modes of presentation with motor representations that guide skilled sensorimotor action. We argue that this proposed identification is problematic on empirical (...) and theoretical grounds, and—as such—it fails to deliver on its explanatory ambitions. In the final analysis, it will be argued that intellectualism about skill is, in any case, superfluous when it comes to accounting for the aspects of skilled performance it purports to explain. (shrink)

One takes advantage of some basic properties of every homotopic \(\lambda\)-model (e.g. extensional Kan complex) to explore the higher \(\beta\eta\)-conversions, which would correspond to proofs of equality between terms of a theory of equality of any extensional Kan complex. Besides, Identity types based on computational paths are adapted to a type-free theory with higher \(\lambda\)-terms, whose equality rules would be contained in the theory of any \(\lambda\)-homotopic model.

Newton’s First Law of Motion is typically understood to govern only the motion of force-free bodies. This paper argues on textual and conceptual grounds that it is in fact a stronger, more general principle. The First Law limits the extent to which any body can change its state of motion –– even if that body is subject to impressed forces. The misunderstanding can be traced back to an error in the first English translation of Newton’s Principia, which was published a (...) few years after Newton’s death. (shrink)

Nietzsche values intellectual honesty, but is dubious about what he calls the will to truth. This is puzzling since intellectual honesty is a component of the will to truth. In this paper, I show that this puzzle tells us something important about how Nietzsche conceives of our pursuit of truth. For Nietzsche, those who pursue truth occupy unstable ground, since being honest about the ultimate reasons for that pursuit would mean that truth could no longer satisfy the important human needs (...) it satisfies at present. We can pursue truth, or be honest about what in us is served by such a pursuit, but not both. Nietzsche aims to show that understanding and owning up to this instability is the sort of affirmation of human life to which we ought to aspire, and is the price we pay for being free from otherworldly morality. (shrink)

We should not be creating conscious, humanoid agents but an entirely new sort of entity, rather like oracles, with no conscience, no fear of death, no distracting loves and hates.

Expertise has become a topic of increased interest to philosophers. Fascinating in its own right, expertise also plays a crucial role in several philosophical debates. My aim in this paper is to draw attention to an important, and hitherto unappreciated feature of expertise: its brittleness. Experts are often unable to transfer their proficiency in one domain to other, even intuitively similar domains. Experts are often unable to flexibly respond to changes within their domains. And, even more surprisingly, experts will occasionally (...) be outperformed by novices when confronted with novel circumstances within their domains of expertise. In section 1, I marshal the evidence in favour of brittleness. In section 2, I argue that appeals to brittleness can advance the dialectic in debates on skilled action and provide reasons to reject a powerful recent argument offered by Christensen et al. : 693–719, 2019). In section 3, I appeal to brittleness to argue against a common conception of philosophical expertise, according to which philosophers possess a domain-general set of reasoning skills. Although my argument in this section is largely negative, there is a twist. Recalibrating our understanding of philosophical expertise opens new avenues of research for defenders of the so-called ‘expertise defence’ against the findings of experimental philosophy. (shrink)

The problem of dream skepticism – i.e., the problem of what can justify one’s belief that they are not dreaming – is one of the most famous problems in philosophy. I propose a way of responding to the problem which is available if one subscribes to the theory that the sensory experiences that we have in dreams consist of images (as opposed to false percepts). The response exploits a particular feature of imagination, viz., that it is not possible to simultaneously (...) have two separate imagistic experiences in the same modality. (shrink)

Relaxed naturalism and liberal naturalism both invite us to adopt a philosophy of nature that includes a range of non-scientific phenomena in its inventory while nevertheless keeping the supernatural at bay. This paper considers the question of how relaxed naturalism relates to liberal naturalism and what refinements are required if they are to succeed in their joint cause of developing a tenable alternative to scientific naturalism. Particular attention is given to what might be added to the naturalist’s toolbox when it (...) comes to identifying and dealing with supernatural excesses and clarifying how philosophers can do positive metaphysical work in support of the naturalistic project. (shrink)

Tony Milligan argues that some forms of covert non-human animal rescue, wherein activists anonymously and illegally free non-human animals from confinement, should be understood as acts of civil disobedience. However, most traditional understandings of civil disobedience require that the civil disobedient act publicly rather than covertly. Thus Milligan’s proposal is that we revise our understanding of civil disobedience to allow for covert in addition to public disobedience. I argue we should not. Milligan cannot justify using paradigm cases to expand the (...) scope of civil disobedience without justifying similar reasons to limit the scope, and he does nto give convincing reasons for discarding the communication requirement, according to which an action cannot count as civil disobedience unless it is communicative. The immediate conclusion is that animal rescue is not civil disobedience, while the broader conclusion is one about civil disobedience more broadly: an act must be public to count as civil disobedience. (shrink)

The philosophical literature on scientific explanation in neuroscience has been dominated by the idea of mechanisms. The mechanist philosophers often claim that neuroscience is in the business of finding mechanisms. This view has been challenged in numerous ways by showing that there are other successful and widespread explanatory strategies in neuroscience. However, the empirical evidence for all these claims was hitherto lacking. Empirical evidence about the pervasiveness and uses of various explanatory strategies in neuroscience is particularly needed because examples and (...) case studies that are used to illustrate philosophical claims so far tend to be hand-picked. The risk of confirmation bias is therefore considerable: when looking for white swans, all one finds is that swans are white. The more systematic quantitative and qualitative bibliometric study of a large body of relevant literature that we present in this paper can put such claims into perspective. Using bibliometric tools, we identify the typical linguistic patterns used in the alleged mechanistic, dynamical, and topological explanations in the literature, their preponderance and how they change over time. Our findings show abundant use of mechanistic language, but also the presence of a significant neuroscience literature using topological and dynamical explanatory language, which grows over time and increasingly differentiates from each other and from mechanistic explanations. (shrink)

Truth in Wittgenstein′s Later Philosophy. In this paper I attempt to examine Wittgenstein′s understanding of truth in his later period. In doing so, I orient myself primarily on the remarks published as Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty. My primary aim in the destructive part is to show that his later philosophy neither espouses a redundancy and deflationary, nor an epistemic and anti-realist conception of truth. Both strands of interpretation are strongly represented in the debate. An examination of Wittgenstein’s remarks on (...) the correspondence theory of truth will also shed some light on his thoughts about truth. Furthermore, in the preceding constructive part of this paper, I will try to demonstrate that (1) for Wittgenstein there is a strong link between truths that we accept based on our certainties and our use of the term “truth” and (2) that skepticism about truth, which claims that all accepted truths in our Weltbild (“world-view”) could be actually false, fails to give any meaning to its use of “truth”. This culminates in Wittgenstein′s insight, that the question of what truth is can only be answered relative to the Weltbild. Therefore, talking about truths that transcend our Weltbild becomes nonsense. (shrink)

Substance dualism is the view that there are two fundamentally different kinds of substances: physical and mental. By contrast, according to property dualism there is only one kind of substance (physical) but two fundamentally different kinds of properties: physical and mental. Property nominalism is the view that there are neither repeatable nor non-repeatable fundamentally predicable entities (i.e. neither universals nor tropes) and that things being a certain way or being related in a certain way must ultimately be accounted for in (...) terms of concrete particulars. In this paper, we consider a number of different kinds of property nominalism and argue that none of them sits well with property dualism. We pay special attention to the question of what it could mean for a property to count as mental given different nominalistic accounts of properties. Our conclusion is that property nominalism and property dualism are not a stable match. This is surprising, since property dualism has usually been understood as a thesis that is neutral about the nature of fundamental ontological categories and the relation between them. (shrink)

We achieve several results. First, we develop a variant of the theory of absolute Galois groups in the context of many sorted structures. Second, we provide a method for coding absolute Galois groups of structures, so they can be interpreted in some monster model with an additional predicate. Third, we prove the “Weak Independence Theorem” for pseudo-algebraically closed (PAC) substructures of an ambient structure with no finite cover property (nfcp) and the property [Formula: see text]. Fourth, we describe Kim-dividing in (...) these PAC substructures and show several results related to the SOPnhierarchy. Fifth, we characterize the algebraic closure in PAC structures. (shrink)

The Pensées is a difficult book. When originally published in 1670, eight years after Pascal’s death, it was simply a collection of “thoughts” or pensées found among his papers after his death. Modern editors have based their editions on two seventeenth-century copies that group many of the fragments into thematic groups that purport to reflect Pascal’s own organization. Even so, the Pensées is still a collection of fragments. The reader, particularly the first-time reader, needs a guide.It was well known among (...) his friends that Pascal was working on an apology for Christianity. In Pascal: Reasoning and Belief, Michael Moriarty is attempting both to recover Pascal’s plan for this apology and to offer a philosophical... (shrink)

Resentment is a negative reaction to expressions of bad will. Gratitude is a positive reaction to expressions of good will. To give up resentment, when someone has wronged you, is to forgive them. We might expect an analog for giving up gratitude. The practice features in some ordinary and extraordinary moments in our lives. But it is unnamed and unstudied. I clarify what giving up gratitude is. I identify three types of ordinary and important cases. I then attend to implications; (...) in particular, my account sheds light on restorations of gratitude analogous to un-forgiving. Restoring gratitude may help to repair relationships, and restoring your once-lost gratitude may be morally required in some contexts. More generally, by taking account of gratitude as a dynamic attitude that may be given up and restored as fits the situation and one’s judgment, we may better understand the power and flexibility of gratitude’s everyday function. (shrink)

Workers in distant nations who produce the products we buy frequently suffer from accidents, managerial malfeasance, and injustice. Are consumers who bought the products made by these workers in any way morally responsible for those injustices? And what about the far more frequent, less severe injustices, such as the withholding of wages, the denial of bathroom breaks, forced overtime, and harassment of various sorts? Could buying a shirt at the local department store create for you some responsibility for the horrendous (...) death in a factory fire of the women who sewed it half a planet away? (shrink)