After distinguishing between a metaphysical and a contemplative strategy interpretation of the no-self doctrine, I argue that the latter allows for the illumination of significant and under-discussed Kantian affinities with Buddhist views of the self and moral psychology. Unlike its metaphysical counterpart, the contemplative strategy interpretation, understands the doctrine of no-self as a technique of perception, undertaken from the practical standpoint of action. I argue that if we think of the contemplative strategy version of the no-self doctrine as a process (...) engaged in, in order to free oneself from delusion and to see things more objectively in order to promote right action, then we find a clear parallel in Kant’s duty of self-knowledge which demands that we rid ourselves of deluded moral self-descriptions. While in Buddhism the aim is a selflessness that liberates one from suffering, for Kant the aim is an agency free of the conceit that interferes with clear moral vision, sound judgement, and dutiful action. I conclude by responding to objections advanced by Charles Goodman which aim to show that the Kantian position is deeply at odds with Buddhist thinking, arguing that neither Kantian agency nor Kantian self-legislation is undermined by the doctrine of no-self. (shrink)

I defend constitutivism against two prominent objections and argue that agential constitutivism has the resources to take normative and ethical deliberation seriously. I first consider David Enoch’s shmagency challenge and argue that it does not form a coherent objection. I counter Enoch’s view that the phenomenology of first-person deliberation pragmatically justifies belief in irreducibly realist normative truths, claiming that constitutivism can respect the practice of moral deliberation without appeal to robustly realist truths. Secondly, I argue that the error theoretic worry (...) that all normative judgements are false does not threaten constitutivism ; the objection either fails to shift the burden of proof to constitutivism, or poses justificatory challenges that constitutivism can meet. I conclude that a questionable foundationalism about justification underlies these objections. (shrink)

I argue for an egalitarian conception of modesty. Modesty is a virtue because an apt expression of what is, and is not, morally salient in our attitudes toward persons and is important because we are prone to arrogance, self‐importance, and hero worship. To make my case, I consider 3 claims which have shaped recent discussions: first, that modesty is valuable because it obviates destructive social rankings; second, that modesty essentially involves an indifference to how others evaluate one's accomplishments; and third, (...) the wide spread but normatively fraught assumption that the modest person is deserving of credit. Although the first two features identify something significant about modesty, they fail to ground it. I argue that appeals to deserved credit bear a larger explanatory burden than has been supposed; they can smuggle in the illegitimate social hierarchies that modesty is supposed to counter. I make my case for modesty as an excellence in moral perspective by arguing that prominent, nonegalitarian, accounts of modesty allow for or promote illegitimate forms of social privilege. Modesty is valuable because it expresses a commitment to fair distribution of basic moral recognition and a skillful response to unjust social hierarchies at odds with this fair distribution. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Christine Korsgaard’s account of the normativity of practical reasons cannot meet her own justificatory criteria, specifically the demand that an answer to the normative question be successfully addressed in the first person. On this point her position is crucially ambiguous. I argue that Korsgaard’s demand that the authority of norms be justified by appeal to an agent’s practical identity leads her to conflate psychological facts about agents with the norms that establish the authority of (...) those psychological dispositions. Her ambition to make reasons genuinely public is undermined by the psychologism of her account. (shrink)

Kant’s duty of self-knowledge demands that one know one’s heart—the quality of one’s will in relation to duty. Self-knowledge requires that an agent subvert feelings which fuel self-aggrandizing narratives and increase self-conceit; she must adopt the standpoint of the rational agent constrained by the requirements of reason in order to gain information about her moral constitution. This is not I argue, contra Nancy Sherman, in order to assess the moral goodness of her conduct. Insofar as sound moral practice requires moral (...) self-knowledge and moral self-knowledge requires a theoretical commitment to a conception of the moral self, sound moral agency is for Kant crucially tied to theory. Kant plausibly holds that self-knowledge is a protection against moral confusion and self-deception. I conclude that although his account relies too heavily on the awareness of moral law to explain its connection to moral development, it is insightful and important in Kantian ethics. (shrink)

I argue for an egalitarian conception of modesty. Modesty is a virtue because an apt expression of what is, and is not, morally salient in our attitudes toward persons and is important because we are prone to arrogance, self-importance, and hero worship. To make my case, I consider 3 claims which have shaped recent discussions: first, that modesty is valuable because it obviates destructive social rankings; second, that modesty essentially involves an indifference to how others evaluate one's accomplishments; and third, (...) the widespread but normatively fraught assumption that the modest person is deserving of credit. Although the first 2 features identify something significant about modesty, they fail to ground it. I argue that appeals to deserved credit bear a larger explanatory burden than has been supposed; they can smuggle in the illegitimate social hierarchies that modesty is supposed to counter. I make my case for modesty as an excellence in moral perspective by arguing that prominent, nonegalitarian, accounts of modesty allow for or promote illegitimate forms of social privilege. Modesty is valuable because it expresses a commitment to fair distribution of basic moral recognition and a skillful response to unjust social hierarchies at odds with this fair distribution. (shrink)

Most commonplace moral failure is not conditioned by evil intentions or the conscious desire to harm or humiliate others. It is more banal and ubiquitous – a form of moral stupidity that gives rise to rationalization, self‐deception, failures of due moral consideration, and the evasion of responsibility. A kind of crude, perception‐distorting self‐absorption, moral stupidity is the cause of many moral missteps; moral development demands the development of self‐knowledge as a way out of moral stupidity. Only once aware of the (...) presence or absence of particular desires and beliefs can an agent have authority over them or exercise responsibility for their absence. But what is the connection between self‐knowledge and moral development? I argue that accounts (such as Kant's and Richard Moran's) which construe instances of self‐knowledge as like the verdicts of a judge cannot explain its potential role in moral development, and claim that it must be conceived of in a way that makes possible a process of self‐refinement and self‐regulation. Making use of Buddhist moral psychology, I argue that when self‐knowledge plays a role in moral development, it includes a quality of attention to one's experience best modeled as the work of the craftsperson, not as judge. (shrink)

In this paper I advance a constitutive argument for the authority of rational norms. Because accountability to reasons is constitutive of rational agency and rational norms are implicit in reasons for action and belief, the justification of rational norms is of a piece with the practice of reasoning. Peter Railton has objected that the constitutive view fails to defend the categorical authority of reason over agents. I respond to his objections, arguing that they presuppose a foundationalist conception of justification that (...) demands a ground for reason's authority outside of the practice of reasoning. (shrink)

Influentially, Pamela Hieronymi has argued that any account of forgiveness must be both articulate and uncompromising. It must articulate the change in judgement that results in the forgiver’s loss of resentment without excusing or justifying the misdeed, and without comprising a commitment to the transgressor=s responsibility, the wrongness of the action, and the transgressed person=s self-worth. Non-articulate accounts of forgiveness, which rely on indirect strategies for reducing resentment (for example, reflecting on the transgressor’s bad childhood) are said to fail to (...) explain forgiveness. I argue that the articulateness condition is not a necessary condition for forgiveness. I respond to numerous objections advanced against non-articulate accounts, including the claim that the resentment-mitigating practices they involve amount to excusing. Appealing to P.F. Strawson=s distinction between objective and participant attitudes, I argue that forgivers can take transgressors to be detrimentally causally shaped by their past while holding him them to be morally responsible. (shrink)

Persons interested in developing virtue will find attending to, and attempting to act on, the right reason for action a rich resource for developing virtue. In this paper I consider the role of self-knowledge in intentional moral development. I begin by making a general case that because improving one’s moral character requires intimate knowledge of its components and their relation to right reason, the aim of developing virtue typically requires the development of self-knowledge. I next turn to Kant’s ethics for (...) an account which explains the reflexivity involved in moral reasoning generally, and the significance of self-knowledge to morality. I then take up Robert Audi’s interesting notion of the harnessing and unharnessing of reasons as a potential way of strengthening the agent’s connection to right reason, and his concerns about our limited and indirect resources for becoming virtuous. I argue that harnessing and unharnessing are not plausibly characterized as activities to be accomplished by an exertion of will, rather they involve a dynamic, cognitive, reflective attempt to gain self-knowledge and align oneself with one’s moral reasons for action. (shrink)

Descartes’s mechanistic account of the passions is sometimes dismissed as one which lacks the resources toadequately explain the cognitive aspect of emotion. By some, he is taken to be “feeling theorist”, reducing thepassions to a mere awareness of the physiological state of the soul-body union. If this reading of Descartes’spassions is correct, his theory fails not only because it cannot account for the intentional nature of the passions,but also because the passions cannot play the role in Descartes’s moral theory they (...) are meant to play. I arguethat Descartes’s account is not best read as a feeling theory. I defend a reading of the Cartesian passions whichacknowledges their mechanistic nature, arguing that for Descartes, passions are modes of the soul withcognitive significance, they are perceptions of relational axiological properties. Thus, Descartes’s theory of thepassions has the resources to connect it with an account of good conduct. As a means of elaborating on thenormative nature of the passions I consider the role of generosity in Descartes’s moral theory. (shrink)

Descartes’s mechanistic account of the passions is sometimes dismissed as one which lacks the resources to adequately explain the cognitive aspect of emotion. By some, he is taken to be “feeling theorist”, reducing the passions to a mere awareness of the physiological state of the soul-body union. If this reading of Descartes’s passions is correct, his theory fails not only because it cannot account for the intentional nature of the passions, but also because the passions cannot play the role in (...) Descartes’s moral theory they are meant to play. I argue that Descartes’s account is not best read as a feeling theory. I defend a reading of the Cartesian passions which acknowledges their mechanistic nature, arguing that for Descartes, passions are modes of the soul with cognitive significance, they are perceptions of relational axiological properties. Thus, Descartes’s theory of the passions has the resources to connect it with an account of good conduct. As a means of elaborating on the normative nature of the passions I consider the role of generosity in Descartes’s moral theory. (shrink)

The concept of identification is often appealed to in explanations of how it is that some actions are authored by an agent, and so autonomous, or free. Over the last several decades, different conceptions of identification have been advanced and refined, and the term is now commonplace in moral psychology and metaethics. In this paper I argue that two dominant accounts of identification implicated in self-unity fail to acknowledge the significance of a related form of self-unifying activity, self-recognition. Self-recognition is (...) self-authoring because it involves identification with a new description of oneself, but it is excluded by standard accounts of identification which over-emphasize action and volition in autonomous agency. Although self-recognition is unlikely to produce immediate action, it accords with the activity of self-unity that is said to be constitutive of identification. (shrink)

The concept of identification is often appealed to in explanations of how it is that some actions are authored by an agent, and so autonomous, or free. Over the last several decades, different conceptions of identification have been advanced and refined, and the term is now commonplace in moral psychology and metaethics. In this paper I argue that two dominant accounts of identification implicated in self-unity fail to acknowledge the significance of a related form of self-unifying activity, self-recognition. Self-recognition is (...) self-authoring because it involves identification with a new description of oneself, but it is excluded by standard accounts of identification which over-emphasize action and volition in autonomous agency. Although self-recognition is unlikely to produce immediate action, it accords with the activity of self-unity that is said to be constitutive of identification. (shrink)

Faces of Intention is a fine collection of essays covering Michael Bratman’s work on intention and agency between 1992 and 1998, along with four critical reviews published between 1983 and 1998. In his introductory chapter, the only previously unpublished essay in this volume, Bratman outlines the broad themes which influence an expansion of his “planning theory of intention.” According to the planning theory, intentions are “elements of stable, partial plans of action concerning present and future conduct”. Plans are revocable, of (...) course, and so in order to understand intentions we must understand how it is that one comes to be now committed to later action once one has settled on a plan concerning one’s future conduct. Having focused on the nature of intention and basic features of agency in his 1987 book, Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reason, Bratman here turns his attention to forms of responsible and shared agency in order to further develop his account. The broad themes which influence his work are neither explicitly discussed nor defended in the essays that follow, a feature of this collection which detracts somewhat from its overall force. He sees agency as embedded in planning structures which are themselves valuable as a means of attaining an agent’s chosen ends, and thus avoids the need to appeal to any substantive conception of the good. He takes no stand on whether practical reason itself commands specific ends or moral constraints, but he does hold that any account of agency owes explanations of both responsible and shared intentional agency. Adherence to what he describes as a modest, non-mysterious, theory of the will has the consequence that interpersonal commitments and obligations are not derivable directly from the study of practical reason, but require a further investigation into moral philosophy. (shrink)

The doyen of university presidents emeriti, Patrick (Paddy) Masterson remains one of UCD's most admired scholars and leaders twenty-five years after he was its President. A Festschrift is the crowning accolade for an academic, and the present volume is testament to the high esteem in which Paddy Masterson is regarded by his peers. It is also a token of gratitude from his Alma Mater. Outside of Ireland, he has been honoured in Portugal, Italy, the United States, and his beloved France. (...) He shares his intellect and wit by continuing to publish in philosophy and his more recent passion, fiction.. (shrink)

Recent work in the fields of ethics and entrepreneurship has raised the possibility that entrepreneurs may differ from other individuals in the moral issues they face, in their moral judgements and behaviors concerning those issues, and even in their level of cognitive moral development. While this work has been exploratory and its conclusions tentative, the findings raise two interesting questions: do entrepreneurs actually differ from non-entrepreneurs in their ethical orientations and, if so, why? We propose a model of ethical decision (...) making for small business entrepreneurs. We suggest some ways in which the ethical framework of entrepreneurs may differ systematically from that of other business people and propose some areas for future research. (shrink)

Volontiers pluridisciplinaire, le présent ouvrage multiplie les regards susceptibles d’éclairer l’insidieux changement de paradigme en cours qui affecte le mouvement Droit & Littérature et il prépare ainsi une espérée « théorie narrative du Droit ». L’être social fut naguère un être de Droit. Le voici aujourd’hui cerné de toutes parts - étouffé même - par les normes, les règles et les nudges qui déferlent sur lui en flux continus, issus de mille sources et transportés de mille manières. Pareille avalanche entraîne (...) de nouvelles modalités narratives qui se bousculent les unes les autres, dans un tourbillon où se dissout le Droit tel qu’il nous a longtemps été familier. (shrink)

Category-specific impairments of object recognition and naming are among the most intriguing disorders in neuropsychology, affecting the retrieval of knowledge about either living or nonliving things. They can give us insight into the nature of our representations of objects: Have we evolved different neural systems for recognizing different categories of object? What kinds of knowledge are important for recognizing particular objects? How does visual similarity within a category influence object recognition and representation? What is the nature of our semantic knowledge (...) about different objects? We review the evidence on category-specific impairments, arguing that deficits even for one class of object cannot be accounted for in terms of a single information processing disorder across all patients; problems arise at contrasting loci in different patients. The same apparent pattern of impairment can be produced by damage to different loci. According to a new processing framework for object recognition and naming, the hierarchical interactive theory, we have a hierarchy of highly interactive stored representations. HIT explains the variety of patients in terms of lesions at different levels of processing and different forms of stored knowledge used both for particular tasks and for particular categories of object. Key Words: category-specific deficits; functional imaging; hierarchical models; interactive activation models; neuropsychology; object recognition; perceptual and functional knowledge. (shrink)

Providing a vibrant four-color design, market-leading BUSINESS ETHICS: ETHICAL DECISION MAKING AND CASES, Ninth Edition, thoroughly covers the complex environment in which managers confront ethical decision making. Using a proven managerial framework, this accessible, applied text addresses the overall concepts, processes, and best practices associated with successful business ethics programs--helping readers see how ethics can be integrated into key strategic business decisions. Thoroughly revised, the new ninth edition incorporates coverage of new legislation affecting business ethics, the most up-to-date examples, and (...) the best practices of high-profile organizations. It also includes 20 all-new or updated original case studies. (shrink)

We summarise and respond to the main points made by the commentators on our target article, which concern: whether structural similarity can play a causal role in normal object identification and in neuropsychological deficits for living things, the nature of our structural knowledge of the world, the relations between sensory and functional knowledge of objects, and the nature of our functional knowledge about living things, whether we need to posit a “core” semantic system, arguments that can be marshalled from evidence (...) on functional imaging, the causal mechanisms by which category differences can emerge in object representations, and the nature of our knowledge about categories other than living and nonliving things. We also highlight points raised in our article that seem to be accepted. (shrink)

"Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite consequences for the people who hold them? Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false belief. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it irrelevant to many (...) people whether they believe true things or not? In an age riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, the authors argue that social factors, not individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the persistence of false belief and that we must know how those social forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively."–Publisher’s description. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: Rawls Against Capitalism Rawls's Critique of “Welfare State Capitalism” Rawls (and Meade) on the Aims and Features of “Property‐Owning Democracy” Putting the Democracy into Property‐Owning Democracy: POD and the Fair Value of the Political Liberties Power, Opportunity, and Control of Capital: POD and Fair Equality of Opportunity Power, Status, and Self‐Respect: POD, the Difference Principle, and the Value of Equality Welfare State Capitalism and Property‐Owning Democracy: Ideal Types, Public Policy, and Real Politics Conclusion ‐ (...) Liberty, Equality, and Property‐Owning Democracy References. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question “what connection is there between our answer to the question of what we are, and the question, what our actions are?” Suppose that actions are reflexive changes of agents. On that supposition, there would be a direct connection between the answers to those two questions. An action of mine will be a reflexive change of me, and what I am will fix the nature of those changes. I hold that supposition to be true and consider (...) reasons in favor of believing it. However, the paper is not primarily aimed at defense of that thesis. It rather concerned with exploring what consequences accepting it has for the competing notions of what we are, given what we ordinarily think actions are, and bringing to light a tension between thinking of actions as reflexive changes of agents in this way, and a kind of causal understanding of actions that is prevalent. What emerges is that we should shift where we start our theorizing: we cannot assume that action theory primarily involves the task of characterizing the relation between an agent and changes caused, rather than a characterization of a particular kind of relation between the agent and herself. (shrink)

This paper advances the thesis that sensory concepts have as a semantic component the first-person indexical. It is argued that the private nature of our access to our own sensations forces, in our talking about them, an indexical reference to the inner states of the speaker in lieu of publicly accessible properties by which reference is usually fixed. Indexicals, such as ‘here’, can be understood despite ignorance of their referent. Such is the case with sensory terms. Furthermore, the thesis that (...) sensory terms are indexical has considerable explanatory power. I give two examples: firstly, I argue that clashes of intuition over Block's ‘inverted spectrum’ thought experiment can be explained by appeal to semantic properties of indexicals. Secondly, I argue that multiple realisability intuitions can be shown to be consistent with the view that sensations are type-identical with brain states. (shrink)

Substance has long been one of the key categories in metaphysics. This Element focuses on contemporary work on substance, and in particular on contemporary substance ontologies, metaphysical systems in which substance is one of the fundamental categories and individual substances are among the basic building blocks of reality. The topics discussed include the different metaphysical roles which substances have been tasked with playing; different critieria of substancehood (accounts of what is it to be a substance); arguments for and against the (...) existence of substances; and different accounts of which entities, if any, count as substances1. (shrink)

Анотація. У статті розглянуто тісний зв´язок між зменшенням впливу Московського патріархату на суспільно-політичні процеси в Україні та відновленням українського культурно-цивілізаційного простору. А саме – поступове позбавлення православних віруючих проявів постімперського синдрому, зокрема установок, уявлень, поведінкових моделей тощо, пов´язаних із перебуванням українців у складі іншомовної та чужої за ментальністю й культурою імперії. Зазначено, що отримання православними віруючими України Томосу про визнання автокефалії і конституювання Православної Церкви України позитивно впливає не лише на розвиток самої ПЦУ, але й рівня патріотизму, відновлення і розвою (...) україномовного середовища, архетипних традицій, обрядів, поведінкових моделей тощо. Все це, у підсумку, сприяє українському поступу від азійської до європейської культурно-цивілізаційної моделі. (shrink)

池上彰氏が各紙誌で紹介、大反響を呼んだ前作『「昔はよかった」と言うけれど戦前のマナー・モラルから考える』の待望の続編!

Resumen El artículo se centra en el poema Seudoaraucana de Elvira Hernández (2010; 2017) a partir de la reescritura como recurso articulador de una mirada descentrada y amplificada del texto fuente, La Araucana de Ercilla y Zúñiga. Como hipótesis se plantea que la reescritura discute fenómenos sociales vinculados con las fisuras de la nación chilena y los procesos políticos de la actual coyuntura. Como objetivo, se busca establecer un diálogo con la tradición y el campo literario en torno a la (...) épica, por un lado, y con las reconsideraciones críticas acerca de la imaginación poética de la historia, por otro. Abstract The article focuses on the poem Seudoaraucana by Elvira Hernández (2010; 2017) based on the rewriting as an articulating resource of an off-center and amplified look at the source text, La Araucana de Ercilla y Zúñiga. As a hypothesis, it proposes that the rewriting discusses social phenomena linked to the fissures of the Chilean nation and the political processes of the current situation. As an objective, it tries to establish a dialogue with the tradition and the literary field around the epic, on the one hand, and with critical reconsiderations about the poetic imagination of history, on the other. (shrink)