We investigate the role of personal values in an investment decision in a controlled experimental setting. Participants were asked to choose an investment in a bond issued by a tobacco company or a bond issued by a non-tobacco company that offered an equal or sometimes lower yield. We then surveyed the participants regarding their feelings toward tobacco use to determine whether these values influenced their investment decision. Using factor analysis, we identified investment- and tobacco-related dimensions on which participants’ responses tended (...) to load. Two of these factors, relating to the societal impact of investment decisions and the health effects of tobacco, were highly significant in determining whether participants selected a tobacco or non-tobacco related investment. More importantly, we found that when the rate of return on a tobacco-related investment exceeds the rate of return on an investment not involving tobacco by 1%, the intensity of participant concerns about the societal effects of their investment decisions was especially important in determining investment choices. This finding indicates that traditional wealth-maximization approaches, which do not consider the personal values of the investor, omit an important factor that affects investment decisions. (shrink)

We investigate the role of personal values in an investment decision in a controlled experimental setting. Participants were asked to choose an investment in a bond issued by a tobacco company or a bond issued by a non-tobacco company that offered an equal or sometimes lower yield. We then surveyed the participants regarding their feelings toward tobacco use to determine whether these values influenced their investment decision. Using factor analysis, we identified investment- and tobacco-related dimensions on which participants’ responses tended (...) to load. Two of these factors, relating to the societal impact of investment decisions and the health effects of tobacco, were highly significant in determining whether participants selected a tobacco or non-tobacco related investment. More importantly, we found that when the rate of return on a tobacco-related investment exceeds the rate of return on an investment not involving tobacco by 1%, the intensity of participant concerns about the societal effects of their investment decisions was especially important in determining investment choices. This finding indicates that traditional wealth-maximization approaches, which do not consider the personal values of the investor, omit an important factor that affects investment decisions. (shrink)

Progressive supranuclear palsy is a movement disorder with prominent tau neuropathology. Brain diseases with abnormal tau deposits are called tauopathies, the most common of which is Alzheimer's disease. Environmental causes of tauopathies include repetitive head trauma associated with some sports. To identify common genetic variation contributing to risk for tauopathies, we carried out a genome-wide association study of 1,114 individuals with PSP and 3,247 controls followed by a second stage in which we genotyped 1,051 cases and 3,560 controls for the (...) stage 1 SNPs that yielded P ≤ 10-3. We found significant previously unidentified signals associated with PSP risk at STX6, EIF2AK3 and MOBP. We confirmed two independent variants in MAPT affecting risk for PSP, one of which influences MAPT brain expression. The genes implicated encode proteins for vesicle-membrane fusion at the Golgi-endosomal interface, for the endoplasmic reticulum unfolded protein response and for a myelin structural component. © 2011 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

An interpretation of Isaiah Berlin’s liberal pluralism is presented in which his tragic value pluralism is embedded within, and constrained by the other ingredients of, a common moral horizon that gives priority to the value of human survival, to social rules of decency or justice that are deemed essential to survival, to a minimum core of human rights distributed and sanctioned by such rules, and to a minimum sphere of negative liberty carved out by such basic moral rights. A serious (...) objection is that this interpretation assumes that human survival and human rights are far more important than any conflicting incommensurable values, contrary to the view associated with Berlin’s pluralism that incommensurable values are necessarily incomparable so that any conflict between them cannot be rationally resolved. But the objection is unpersuasive because, whatever Berlin’s idea of incommensurable values is, incommensurability cannot properly be reduced to incomparability: reasonable comparisons of incommensurable values are possible under plausible forms of incommensurability whereas incomparability is arguably an extreme form that tends to disappear with increasing information about competing values. It needs emphasis, however, that Berlin’s writings are marked by various ambiguities and inconsistencies, which require further critical discussion on another occasion. (shrink)

To mark the 300th anniversary of the composition of Leibniz’ most important mature writing on justice, the Méditation sur la notion commune de la justice, I published an interpretation of this work in The Leibniz Review. But Dr. Andreas Blank, dissatisfied with my Platonizing “reading” of the Méditation, published his own commentary in the same Review —treating not just my 2003 article but also my Leibniz’ Universal Jurisprudence: Justice as the Charity of the Wise and several smaller writings from (...) the period 1972-2002. Since Andreas Blank is a good Leibniz-scholar who deserves a reply, I want to attempt an answer; and to avoid any possible misrepresentation, I want to quote the beginning of his article, word-for-word. (shrink)

To mark the 300th anniversary of the composition of Leibniz’ most important mature writing on justice, the Méditation sur la notion commune de la justice, I published an interpretation of this work in The Leibniz Review. But Dr. Andreas Blank, dissatisfied with my Platonizing “reading” of the Méditation, published his own commentary in the same Review —treating not just my 2003 article but also my Leibniz’ Universal Jurisprudence: Justice as the Charity of the Wise and several smaller writings from (...) the period 1972-2002. Since Andreas Blank is a good Leibniz-scholar who deserves a reply, I want to attempt an answer; and to avoid any possible misrepresentation, I want to quote the beginning of his article, word-for-word. (shrink)

For forty years all Leibniz-scholars have been deeply indebted to André Robinet, who is incontrovertibly the most important French Leibniz-interpreter since the much-lamented Gaston Grua. Indeed it was in the very year of Grua’s premature death that Robinet began four decades of Leibniz-illumination with his magisterial Malebranche et Leibniz: Rélations personnelles. The year 1962 saw the arrival of Robinet’s splendid edition of Leibniz’ Nouveaux Essais—as Volume VI, vi of the great Academy Edition of the Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. Further important (...) Leibniz-scholarship marked Robinet’s activity over the next quarter-century, culminating in two remarkable books from the 1980s: Architectonique disjonctive, automates systémiques et idéalité transcendentales dans l’oeuvre de Leibniz, the most penetrating general overview of Leibniz’ philosophy produced in recent decades, and G.W. Leibniz, Iter Italicum, La dynamique de la République des lettres, in which Leibniz’ many Italian concerns and rapports are brought out with astonishing thoroughness. This last book was an elaborated outgrowth of Robinet’s contribution to the 1980 Leibniz conference at Ferrara, “Leibniz as Historian”— the conference at which the present reviewer first met Professor Robinet, and learned that he is as formidably learned and eloquently persuasive in person as he is on the printed page. And that remains true to the present day: Robinet’s contribution to the celebration of Leibniz’ 350th birthday at the Berlin-Brandenburg Akademie der Wissenschaften was as masterly as ever, and was reported as such by a special article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. (shrink)

For forty years all Leibniz-scholars have been deeply indebted to André Robinet, who is incontrovertibly the most important French Leibniz-interpreter since the much-lamented Gaston Grua. Indeed it was in the very year of Grua’s premature death that Robinet began four decades of Leibniz-illumination with his magisterial Malebranche et Leibniz: Rélations personnelles. The year 1962 saw the arrival of Robinet’s splendid edition of Leibniz’ Nouveaux Essais—as Volume VI, vi of the great Academy Edition of the Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. Further important (...) Leibniz-scholarship marked Robinet’s activity over the next quarter-century, culminating in two remarkable books from the 1980s: Architectonique disjonctive, automates systémiques et idéalité transcendentales dans l’oeuvre de Leibniz, the most penetrating general overview of Leibniz’ philosophy produced in recent decades, and G.W. Leibniz, Iter Italicum, La dynamique de la République des lettres, in which Leibniz’ many Italian concerns and rapports are brought out with astonishing thoroughness. This last book was an elaborated outgrowth of Robinet’s contribution to the 1980 Leibniz conference at Ferrara, “Leibniz as Historian”— the conference at which the present reviewer first met Professor Robinet, and learned that he is as formidably learned and eloquently persuasive in person as he is on the printed page. And that remains true to the present day: Robinet’s contribution to the celebration of Leibniz’ 350th birthday at the Berlin-Brandenburg Akademie der Wissenschaften was as masterly as ever, and was reported as such by a special article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. (shrink)

Presents an historical analysis of social contract theory by considering the works of prominent philosophers.

Ken Binmore argues that justice consists in a proportional bargaining equilibrium of a ‘game of morals’, which corresponds to a Nash bargaining equilibrium of a ‘game of life’. His argument seems unassailable if rational agents are predominantly self-interested, an assumption that he is apparently willing to make on the grounds that human behaviour is ultimately constrained in accord with the selfish gene paradigm. But there is no compelling scientific evidence for that paradigm. Rather, human nature appears to be highly plastic. (...) If so, rational agents might eventually be moulded by cultural forces into social and moral actors who effectively believe that they are the same person-no different from anyone else−when it comes to certain vital personal interests which ought to be treated as rights. In this context, a utilitarian outcome is an efficient and fair equilibrium of the game of life. Compliance with the rules is enforced by the actor’s own conscience, a powerful internal ‘judicious spectator’ which threatens to inflict harsh punishment in the form of intense feelings of guilt for cheating. (shrink)

Human Dignity The mercurial concept of human dignity features in ethical, legal, and political discourse as a foundational commitment to human value or human status. The source of that value, or the nature of that status, are contested. The normative implications of the concept are also contested, and there are two partially, or even wholly, … Continue reading Human Dignity →.

Proposals to release genetically engineered organisms in the wild raise complex ethical issues related to their safe and equitable implementation. While there is broad agreement that community and public engagement is vital to decision‐making in this context, more discussion is needed about who should be engaged in such activities and in what ways. This article identifies Indigenous peoples as key stakeholders in decisions about gene‐editing in the wild and argues that engagement activities need not only include Indigenous peoples but also (...) be designed, conducted, and analyzed in ways that confront longstanding power imbalances that dismiss Indigenous expertise. We offer specific recommendations to guide deliberative activities to not only be inclusive of Indigenous peoples but also to empower their diverse, situated knowledges. We call on those committed to the inclusive design of broad public deliberation to pursue strategies that shift dominant power dynamics to include Indigenous communities in more meaningful ways. (shrink)

John Rawls is an influential critic of standard utilitarianism, which he classifies as “teleological” in the sense that it specifies utility as the sole rational end independent of any moral concepts or principles and then maintains that morally right actions are those which maximize this independent good. In Rawls′ view, John Stuart Mill relies on a pluralistic conception of happiness together with certain fundamental principles of human psychology to construct an extraordinary utilitarianism that gives absolute priority to a liberal basic (...) institutional structure similar to that of justice as fairness. This chapter shows that Rawls’ interpretation is problematic even on its own terms. According to the author, Rawls has opened up the possibility of deontological utilitarianisms which could serve as reasonable members of a democratic consensus. Indeed, perhaps Mill may still be properly interpreted as a deontological utilitarian, despite his avowed hedonism. (shrink)

David Émile Durkheim, life and times -- Moral solidarity and the new social science: Durkheim's study of the individual in society and society in the individual -- Morality, law, the state, and politics -- Establishing a social science -- Education as social science and cultural politics -- The "revelation" of religion -- Odds and ends: Durkheim's unfinished works on morality and the family and his war writings -- Further readings.

Mark Jago presents an original philosophical account of meaningful thought: in particular, how it is meaningful to think about things that are impossible. We think about impossible things all the time. We can think about alchemists trying to turn base metal to gold, and about unfortunate mathematicians trying to square the circle. We may ponder whether God exists; and philosophers frequently debate whether properties, numbers, sets, moral and aesthetic qualities, and qualia exist. In many philosophical or mathematical debates, when (...) one side of the argument gets things wrong, it necessarily gets them wrong. As we consider both sides of one of these philosophical arguments, we will at some point think about something that’s impossible. Yet most philosophical accounts of meaning and content hold that we can’t meaningfully think or reason about the impossible. -/- In The Impossible, Jago argues that we often gain new information, new beliefs, and, sometimes, fresh knowledge through logic, mathematics, and philosophy. That is why logic, mathematics, and philosophy are useful. We therefore require accounts of knowledge and belief, of information and content, and of meaning which allow space for the impossible. Jago’s aim in this book is to provide such accounts. He gives a detailed analysis of the concept of hyperintensionality, whereby logically equivalent contents may be distinct, and develops a theory in terms of possible and impossible worlds. Along the way, he provides a theory of what those worlds are and how they feature in our analysis of normative epistemic concepts: knowledge, belief, information, and content. (shrink)

Trait Selective Abortions (TSA) have come under critique as a medical practice that presents potential disabled infants as burdens and lacking the potential for meaningful lives. This paper, using the author’s background as a disabled person, contends that the philosophy underpinning TSAs reflects liberal society’s lack of a theory of needs. The author argues for a care ethics based approach informed by disability analyses to engage with TSAs.

Geoffrey Scarre has recently argued that the version of qualitative hedonism which I attribute to Mill is unsatisfactory for various reasons. In his view, even if it is formally compatible with value monism, involves non-hedonistic elements and offers an implausible account of the relationship between and pleasures. In this paper, I show that his objections, which are similar in spirit to those pressed earlier by Bradley, Moore and others against Mill, are unfounded where not confused. The Mill/Riley line does (...) not rely on non-hedonistic standards and has sufficient flexibility to account for many different kinds of pleasures and pleasing activities. It remains a coherent version of qualitative hedonism, worthy of further consideration and study. (shrink)

This thesis is about making decisions when we are uncertain about what will happen, how valuable it will be, and even how to make decisions. Even the most sure-footed amongst us are sometimes uncertain about all three, but surprisingly little attention has been given to the latter two. The three essays that constitute my thesis hope to do a small part in rectifying this problem. The first essay is about the value of finding out how to make decisions. Society spends (...) considerable resources funding people (like me) to research decision-making, so it is natural to wonder whether society is getting a good deal. This question is so shockingly underresearched that bedrock facts are readily discoverable, such as when this kind of information is valuable. My second essay concerns whether we can compare value when we are uncertain about value. Many people are in fact uncertain about value, and how we deal with this uncertainty hinges on these comparisons. I argue that value comparisons are only sometimes possible; I call this weak comparability. This essay is largely a synthesis of the literature, but I also present an argument which begins with a peculiar view of the self: it is as if each of us is a crowd of different people separated by time (but connected by continuity of experience). I’m not the first to endorse this peculiar view of the self, but I am the first to show how it supports the benign view that value is sometimes comparable. We may be uncertain of any decision rules, even those that would tell us how to act when we face uncertainty in decision rules. We may be uncertain of how to decide how to decide how to... And so on. If so, we might have to accept infinitely many decision rules just to make any mundane decision, such as whether to pick up a five-cent piece from the gutter. My third essay addresses this problem of regress. I think all of our decisions are forced: we must decide now or continue to deliberate. Surprisingly, this allows us to avoid the original problem. I call this solution “when forced, do your best”. (shrink)

The paper concerns the essential and permanent place of roles and rules in human life, or what I call ‘the dilemma of compliance.’ The paper begins with previous scholarship warning therapists and psychologists about the danger of unknowingly reinforcing violent and toxic social expectations. A distinction is drawn between conformity and compliance, with the former standing for rote and mindless following of rules, and the latter a self-conscious and flexible way of relating to rules and roles. The paper argues that (...) following rules and filling roles is unavoidable, and, consequently, a human life is always a double-life, divided between pre-existing, generic roles, and our private and unique way of relating to those roles. The crucial difficulty is learning to comply with rules and roles rather than merely conforming to them. Two extreme cases are examined to develop this problem of rules, roles, and living a double-life: schizophrenia and censorship. It is argued that schizophrenia and censorship are cases in which the place of rules and roles become overbearing and urgent. Finally, the paper argues that attention to the dilemma of compliance highlights the significance of trauma-informed care, as trauma is often connected to how one fits or does not fit into a social milieu constituted by roles, rules, and expectations. The arguments are developed primarily in historical, philosophical, and clinical terms. (shrink)

In this paper we outline the activities of young girls in a Toba community of northern Argentina and examine the effect of girl helpers on time allocation of nursing women. Activity budgets were obtained for 41 girls aged 3 to 15 using spot observations. Girls spent substantial portions of observations engaged in helping behaviors. Individual values varied with age, anthropometric characteristics, and birth order. Activity budgets of 21 nursing women were obtained through focal observation sessions. Women living in households with (...) girls aged 7 to 15 allocated 17% less time to domestic work and 9% more time to socializing during afternoon observation sessions. For nursing women in this community, direct childcare (provided by the infant’s own mother) seemed to be a priority. Living with a girl helper did not have any measurable effect on the frequency or duration of nursing, or on the time that women spent caring for their infants. Based on these findings, hypotheses are outlined for future work on the effect of girl helpers on women’s fertility. (shrink)

John Gray, much influenced by Isaiah Berlin and building on work by the late John Rees and the late Fred Berger, has recently stated three ‘fatal’ objections which virtually all analysts seem to find persuasive against John Stuart Mill's classic doctrine of liberty. First, Gray thinks it ‘an obvious objection to Mill's project that conceptions of harm vary with competing moral outlooks, so that no Principle of Liberty whose application turns on judgements about harm can expect to resolve disputes between (...) exponents of opposed moral perspectives’. Even if we overlook Mill's strange silence in the matter and supply him with a reasonable definition of harm, it remains clear that the liberty principle ‘is not, and cannot be, the very simple principle Mill sought’. For ‘Mill's principle is in its very nature radically incomplete. It tells us what we may not do, but not what we ought to do.’ To know when liberty should in fact be restrained, ‘we must look to other principles—chiefly the Principle of Utility itself’. But if general utility alone can ‘tell us how much liberty may be given up for how much harm-prevention’, then ‘there can be no question of adherence to [an] exceptionless principle such as Mill's Principle of Liberty’. Thus, even if we believe that Mill's version of utilitarianism is coherent, his judgements about the regulation of conduct must depend on a highly complex and controversial moral doctrine. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Experience, Institutions, and EpistemologyRiley Paterson, MA (bio)I am grateful for these comments on my paper, “The Dilemma of Compliance,” because they illuminate the limitations of the paper’s emphasis. The paper is, above all, meant to caution or warn providers of subtle but serious harm that can occur in institutional settings. I want to attune providers to the ways in which institutional coercion and violence occur in the ordinary process (...) of following rules and filling of roles. Thus I write that the goal is “to become self-conscious observers of systems of compliance, rather than unconscious conformers.” Institutional coercion is a social process like any other and thus involves intersubjective dynamics. These dynamics do not appear as measurable, physical structures, but rather as invisible patterns in time, made visible only by being named and grasped experientially. I am offering language that can help make these invisible dynamics visible, so that providers can navigate institutions differently.My desire to caution and attune other providers can be explained partly by the conditions in which I wrote the paper: making sense of my time in forensic mental health, where I worked with clients who were mandated mental health treatment upon avoiding or exiting incarceration. I was processing my own experience of submitting monthly “compliance reports” to various agencies. I was concerned with the experiential process of navigating coercive environments. Thus my commenter is correct to try and widen our consideration, as my paper is indeed limited by its focus on the lived experience of censorship, oppression, and institutional coercion.This emphasis means that I am neglecting other dimensions, such as the positive role of rules in organizing communities, and the way in which some mental health institutions are working on creating safe and healing formal environments. I also believe, however, that the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and mental health broadly need to be careful about institutions, rules, and roles. We are not, in my estimation, in danger of providing too many safe spaces in which healing can occur. Quite the opposite, psychiatry and psychotherapy have, since their outset, been intertwined with troubling political motivations, and we continue to struggle with the manipulative tendencies of the field (Carr, 2018; Cabanas & Illouz, 2021).I, therefore, would like to take this opportunity to restate the core argument of my paper, and to situate this argument within the context of my other publications and the overall project they belong to. There is likely some ambiguity about [End Page 385] the central thrust of my paper. When commenting on my discussion of schizophrenia, my commenter refers to it as “the seeming central topic of the paper.” This is understandable. Schizophrenia is the topic I discuss that has the most obvious clinical implications. Indeed, I am making an argument about the phenomenological intelligibility of schizophrenia. With both my discussions of schizophrenia and censorship, however, I am making both immanent arguments and transcendent arguments. In other words, although I am making arguments about both schizophrenia and censorship, those arguments need to be understood as an example of a broader problem of coercion within human relationships. My intent is to highlight general dynamics present within human relationships and communities that contribute to institutional violence and the excessive regulation of individuals. My concern is with rules, roles, and coercion in general; schizophrenia and censorship provide exaggerated examples of what is fundamentally an ordinary, daily experience. Mental health institutions are uniquely involved in coercive institutional processes, but almost all human environments carry some danger of coercion and oppression in terms of fitting, belonging, or conforming with rules and roles. My exploration of schizophrenia and censorship is certainly meant to illuminate those particular topics, but the broader point concerns all human experience.The phenomenological or experiential thrust of the paper must be situated within my broader analysis that also includes institutional and epistemological dimensions. My reviewer is correct to point out that with schizophrenia, censorship, or trauma, the crucial dimension is communities in which people feel safe enough to learn, grow, and develop their capacities. In this vein, my reviewer points to Geel as an admirable model of communally driven care. I am largely in agreement with this line of thinking. In... (shrink)

John Stuart Mill provides a classic defense of individual and group rights to liberty with respect to purely private or self-regarding matters: The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself … directly, and in the first instance, … his independence is, of right, absolute.… From this liberty of each individual, follows the liberty, within the same limits, of combination among individuals; (...) freedom to unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others: the persons combining being supposed to be of full age, and not forced or deceived. (shrink)

It is time to bring the rich resources of these traditions into the contemporary debate about the nature of self. This volume is the first of its kind.

Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was a show that focused on teaching children an ethics of caring for oneself and care for others. This article examines those ethics through the songs “I Like You As You Are” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor.” It contends that these songs focus on a celebration of the self and others, welcoming individuals as they are into the community, and embracing authenticity. This article looks to understand these ethics in a contemporary setting and argues that Mister (...) Rogers and the communal ethics of care that he taught are needed. (shrink)

How does mutual intelligibility impact the political sphere? This paper uses Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations as a means of examining this connection. I argue that Wittgenstein’s paradigm of a dialectical world suggests that his analysis of mutual intelligibility in understanding experiences is necessary in a pluralistic democracy. I conclude that via his theory of social reality politics is a dynamic dialectical process of communicating experiences.

(2006). Utilitarian Liberalism: Between Gray and Mill. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 9, The Political Theory of John Gray, pp. 117-135.

Nondescriptivist views in many areas of philosophy have long been associated with the commitment that in contrast to other domains of discourse, there are no propositions in their particular domain. For example, the ‘no truth conditions’ theory of conditionals1 is understood as the view that conditionals don’t express propositions, noncognitivist expressivism in metaethics is understood as advocating the view that there are not really moral propositions,2 and expressivism about epistemic modals is thought of as the view that there is no (...) such thing as the proposition that Jack might be at home, over and above the proposition that Jack is at home.3 Of course, it is nearly always acknowledged that advocates of a nondescriptivist theory need not deny that there are conditional, moral, or modal propositions ‘at the end of the day’ – for if they also endorse a deflationary reading of talk about propositions, as famously advocated by Simon Blackburn, then they can employ such deflationary talk just as much as the rest of us. They just don’t appeal to propositions to do any of the work in their theories. Rather, they ‘earn the right’ to talk about propositions.4 It is the aim of this paper to upset this way of thinking about the proper attitude of nondescriptivists toward propositions, and to advocate a more constructive and in some ways more radical alternative on behalf of the nondescriptivist. I will begin by introducing and developing a set of problems that are faced by any nondescriptivist theory which tries to do without propositions. All of these problems are easily solved by any view which postulates propositions across the board, but none of them are solved by merely deflationary talk about propositions – their most promising solutions require propositions to do real theoretical work, and therefore the problems themselves remind us of and illustrate some of the important reasons why it is worth positing propositions in the first place.. (shrink)

Heyman's analysis of addiction suggests that drug taking is irrational. The irrationality of drug taking, however, may depend on the acceptance of mainstream society's view of what is valuable. Consideration of the addict's viewpoint and cultural aspects of drug taking may be useful in trying to fathom the “rationality” of drug taking.

In this paper, I describe some of what I take to be the more interesting features of friendship, then explore the extent to which other virtues can be reconstructed as sharing those features. I use trustworthiness as my example throughout, but I think that other virtues such as generosity & gratitude, pride & respect, and the producer’s & consumer’s sense of humor can also be analyzed with this model. The aim of the paper is not to demonstrate that all moral (...) virtues are exactly like friendship in all important respects, but rather to articulate a fruitful model in which to explore the virtues. Section 2 explores the relational nature of friendship, drawing on Aristotle’s discussion of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics. Section 3 catalogues four motivations for taking seriously the friendship model of virtue. Section 4 applies the friendship model in depth to the virtue of trustworthiness. (shrink)

If harm is restricted to mean perceptible damage suffered by an agent against his wishes, so that his mere dislike with no evidence of injury is excluded, then Mill's liberty principle arguably is ‘one very simple principle’ as he claims. But even so, what of John Gray's charge that the liberty principle relies on a ‘radically defective’ notion of individuality or autonomy that is incompatible with every civil society's cultural and moral traditions? If he is correct about this, then Mill's (...) principle lacks appeal even if it can be stated in a definite and coherent manner. (shrink)

Gaining information can be modelled as a narrowing of epistemic space . Intuitively, becoming informed that such-and-such is the case rules out certain scenarios or would-be possibilities. Chalmers’s account of epistemic space treats it as a space of a priori possibility and so has trouble in dealing with the information which we intuitively feel can be gained from logical inference. I propose a more inclusive notion of epistemic space, based on Priest’s notion of open worlds yet which contains only those (...) epistemic scenarios which are not obviously impossible. Whether something is obvious is not always a determinate matter and so the resulting picture is of an epistemic space with fuzzy boundaries. (shrink)

I discuss three ways of responding to the logical omniscience problems faced by traditional ‘possible worlds’ epistemic logics. Two of these responses were put forward by Hintikka and the third by Cresswell; all three have been influential in the literature on epistemic logic. I show that both of Hintikka's responses fail and present some problems for Cresswell’s. Although Cresswell's approach can be amended to avoid certain unpalatable consequences, the resulting formal framework collapses to a sentential model of knowledge, which defenders (...) of the ‘possible worlds’ approach are frequently critical of. (shrink)

We argue that the interaction of biased media coverage and widespread employment of the recognition heuristic can produce epistemic injustices. First, we explain the recognition heuristic as studied by Gerd Gigerenzer and colleagues, highlighting how some of its components are largely external to, and outside the control of, the cognitive agent. We then connect the recognition heuristic with recent work on the hypotheses of embedded, extended, and scaffolded cognition, arguing that the recognition heuristic is best understood as an instance of (...) scaffolded cognition. In section three, we consider the double-edged sword of cognitive scaffolding. On the one hand, scaffolds can reduce the internal processing demands on cognitive agents while increasing their access to information. On the other hand, the use of scaffolding leaves cognitive agents increasingly vulnerable to forming false beliefs or failing to form beliefs at all about particular topics. With respect to the recognition heuristic, agents rely on third parties (such as the media) to report not just what’s true but also what’s important or valuable. This makes cognitive agents relying on these third parties vulnerable to two erroneous influences: 1) because they don’t recognize something, it isn’t important or valuable, and 2) because they do recognize something, it is important or valuable. Call the latter the Kardashian Inference and the former the Darfur Inference. In section four, we use Fricker’s (2007) concept of epistemic injustice to characterize the nature and harm of these false inferences, with special emphasis on the Darfur Inference. In section five, we use data-mining and an empirical study to show how Gigerenzer’s population estimation task is liable to produce Darfur Inferences. We conclude with some speculative remarks on more important Darfur Inferences, and how to avoid them by scaffolding better. One primary way to accomplish this it to shift the burden of embodying the virtue of epistemic justice from the hearer or consumer of media to the media themselves. (shrink)

The American conservative movement is a force of anti-reflexivity insofar as it attacks two key elements of reflexive modernization: the environmental movement and environmental impact science. Learning from its mistakes in overtly attacking environmental regulations in the early 1980s, this counter-movement has subsequently exercised a more subtle form of power characterized by non-decision-making. We examine the conservative movement’s efforts to undermine climate science and policy in the USA over the last two decades by using this second dimension of power. The (...) conservative movement has employed four non-decision-making techniques to challenge the legitimacy of climate science and prevent progress in policy-making. We argue that reflexive modernization scholars should focus more attention on similar forces of anti-reflexivity that continue to shape the overall direction of our social, political and economic order, and the life chances of many citizens. Indeed, better understanding of the forces and effectiveness of anti-reflexivity may very well be crucial for societal resilience and adaptation, especially in the face of global environmental problems like climate change. (shrink)

This book offers a systematic framework for thinking about the relationship between language and technology and an argument for interweaving thinking about technology with thinking about language. The main claim of philosophy of technology—that technologies are not mere tools and artefacts not mere things, but crucially and significantly shape what we perceive, do, and are—is re-thought in a way that accounts for the role of language in human technological experiences and practices. Engaging with work by Wittgenstein, Heidegger, McLuhan, Searle, Ihde, (...) Latour, Ricoeur, and many others, the author critically responds to, and constructs a synthesis of, three "extreme", idealtype, untenable positions: only humans speak and neither language nor technologies speak, only language speaks and neither humans nor technologies speak, and only technology speaks and neither humans nor language speak. The construction of this synthesis goes hand in hand with a narrative about subjects and objects that become entangled and constitute one another. Using Words and Things thus draws in central discussions from other subdisciplines in philosophy, such as philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics, to offer an original theory of the relationship between language and technology centered on use, performance, and narrative, and taking a transcendental turn. (shrink)