A much-needed consideration of methodology in comparative philosophy.

Priority setting is inevitable to control expenditure on expensive medicines, but citizen support is often hampered by the workings of the ‘identified victim effect’, that is, the greater willingness to spend resources helping identified victims than helping statistical victims. In this paper we explore a possible cognitive debiasing strategy that is being employed in discussions on healthcare priority setting, which we call ‘empathy counterbalancing’ (EC). EC is the strategy of directing attention to, and eliciting empathy for, those who might be (...) harmed as a result of one-sided empathy for the very ill who needs expensive treatment. We argue that governments have good reasons to attempt EC because the identified victim effect distorts priority setting in ways that undermine procedural fairness. We briefly outline three areas of application for EC and suggest some possible mechanisms that might explain how EC might work, if at all. We then discuss four potential ethical concerns with EC. First, EC might have the counterproductive effect of reducing overall citizen support for public funding of expensive medical treatments, thereby undermining solidarity. Second, EC may give rise to a ‘competition in suffering’, which may have unintended side effects for patients who feature in attempts at EC. Third, there may be doubts about whether EC is effective. Fourth, it may be objected that EC comes down to emotional manipulation, which governments should avoid. We conclude that insofar these concerns are valid they may be adequately addressed, and that EC seems a promising strategy that merits further investigation. (shrink)

This paper presents three claims concerning boundaries, dependence and parthood. The claims are intuitively plausible, but cannot, at face value, all be true on pain of contradiction. Each of the three claims is shown to be more plausible than its converse and some solutions to the puzzle are presented.

Lewis famously argued that mereology is ontologically innocent. Many who have considered this claim believe he was mistaken. Mereology is not innocent, because its acceptance entails the acceptance of sums, new objects that were not previously part of one’s ontology. This argument, the argument from ontological parsimony, has two versions: a qualitative and a quantitative one. I argue that the defender of mereology can neutralize both arguments by holding that, given mereology, a commitment to the parts of an object is (...) not an extra ontological commitment, made in addition to the commitment to the object; and that if the parts of an object are ‘ontologically innocent’, then sums cannot fail to be innocent either. (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag bietet eine umfassende Diskussion des Textes “Humanismus und Christentum” (1950) des dänischen Philosophen und Theologen Knud E. Løgstrup. Er verortet den Text in seinem geistesgeschichtlichen Kontext und analysiert seine wichtigsten Argumente wie auch seine zentrale These, der zufolge Humanismus und Christentum einen entscheidenden Grundsatz teilen, insofern beide die Ethik als “stumm“ oder “unausgesprochen“ verstehen. Darüber hinaus wird dargelegt, wie Løgstrups Text zentrale Überlegungen in dessen späteren Publikationen, besonders in dem Hauptwerk Die ethische Forderung (1956), vorwegnimmt.

The idea that two objects can coincide—by sharing all their proper parts, or matter—yet be non-identical, results in the “Problem of Coincident Objects”: in what relation do objects stand if they are not identical but share all their proper parts? One solution is to introduce material constitution. In this paper, I argue that this is ad hoc since, first, this solution cannot be generalized to solve similar problems, and, second, there are pseudo cases of coincidence that should not trigger the (...) introduction of material constitution and these cannot be distinguished in any principled way from the allegedly real cases of coincidence. (shrink)

The mereological predicate ‘is part of’ can be used to define the predicate ‘is identical with’. I argue that this entails that mereological theories can be ideologically simpler than nihilistic theories that do not use the notion of parthood—contrary to what has been argued by Ted Sider. Moreover, if one accepts an extensional mereology, there are good philosophical reasons apart from ideological simplicity to give a mereological definition of identity.

_A much-needed consideration of methodology in comparative philosophy._.

Some philosophers say that a whole is “nothing over and above” its parts. Most also take general extensilonal mereology to be treating wholes as “nothing over and above” their parts. It is not always clear, however, what exactly is meant by the phrase “nothing over and above.” Nor is it obvious why the phrase is associated with mereology, and what purpose it serves there. In the words of Peter Van Inwagen : “This slippery phrase has had a lot of employment (...) in philosophy, but what it means is never explained by its employers.” This paper sheds light on the various senses in which one might hold that a whole is “nothing over and above” its parts, and on how these senses are related both to each other and to mereology. (shrink)

Core principles of mereology have been questioned by appealing to time travel scenarios. This paper questions the methodology of employing time travel scenarios to argue against mereology. We show some time travel scenarios are structurally equivalent to more standard ones not involving time travel; and that the three main theories about persistence through time can each solve both the time travel scenario as well as the structurally similar classical scenario. Time travel scenarios that are not similar to more standard arguments (...) are instead problematic because they are open to different, incompatible interpretations. We conclude that compared to the classical arguments against mereological principles, time travel scenarios do not add anything new. (shrink)

The concept of meaningful work has recently received increased attention in philosophy and other disciplines. However, the impact of the increasing robotization of the workplace on meaningful work has received very little attention so far. Doing work that is meaningful leads to higher job satisfaction and increased worker well-being, and some argue for a right to access to meaningful work. In this paper, we therefore address the impact of robotization on meaningful work. We do so by identifying five key aspects (...) of meaningful work: pursuing a purpose, social relationships, exercising skills and self-development, self-esteem and recognition, and autonomy. For each aspect, we analyze how the introduction of robots into the workplace may diminish or enhance the meaningfulness of work. We also identify a few ethical issues that emerge from our analysis. We conclude that robotization of the workplace can have both significant negative and positive effects on meaningful work. Our findings about ways in which robotization of the workplace can be a threat or opportunity for meaningful work can serve as the basis for ethical arguments for how to—and how not to—implement robots into workplaces. (shrink)

The development of new effective but expensive medical treatments leads to discussions about whether and how such treatments should be funded in solidarity-based healthcare systems. Solidarity is often seen as an elusive concept; it appears to be used to refer to different sets of concerns, and its interrelations with the concept of justice are not well understood. This paper provides a conceptual analysis of the concept of solidarity as it is used in discussions on the allocation of healthcare resources and (...) the funding of expensive treatments. It contributes to the clarification of the concept of solidarity by identifying in the literature and discussing four uses of the concept: (1) assisting patients in need, (2) upholding the solidarity-based healthcare system, (3) willingness to contribute and (4) promoting equality. It distinguishes normative and descriptive uses of the concept and outlines the overlap and differences between solidarity and justice. Our analysis shows that the various uses of the concept of solidarity point to different, even conflicting, ethical stances on whether and how access to effective, expensive treatments should be provided. We conclude that the concept of solidarity has a role to play in discussions on the accessibility and funding of newly approved medical treatments. It requires, for instance, that healthcare policies promote and maintain both societal willingness to contribute to the care of others and the value of providing care to vulnerable patients through public funding. (shrink)

There are relatively few empirical studies on the impacts of corporate social responsibility policies and programs. This article addresses the research gap by analyzing the incidence of, and the conditions that affect, decoupling among CSR policies, implementation of CSR programs, and CSR impacts for various environmental and social issues. Complete decoupling is a condition of full divergence among policies, programs, and impacts amounting to purely ceremonial CSR. Using ratings from a sustainability rating agency on a sample of about 1,000 large (...) companies in 24 countries, the authors find empirical evidence not supporting a conclusion of complete decoupling. The empirical evidence suggests four levels of nondivergence in the sample. First, for most CSR issues examined, CSR policies of high quality do have relatively strong effects on CSR implementation. Second, CSR programs of high quality do have relatively strong effects on CSR impacts. Third, for most CSR issues, even low-quality CSR policies enforce the incidence and quality of programs in comparison with having no policy at all. Fourth, weak programs have more impact on the realization of CSR goals than having no program at all. The authors also find that the quality of CSR reporting and locating the responsibility for CSR at the board level reduce decoupling by strengthening the quality of CSR programs. (shrink)

Standard principles of mereology, such as the transitivity and asymmetry of proper parthood, have been questioned, using various multi-location scenarios. The most famous of these is Borges’s Aleph, although the literature is rife with other examples that allegedly show that some mereological principle is at odds with some form of multi-location. However, the scenarios only support this conclusion given various bridge principles that link location to parthood. I argue that the bridge principles that guarantee the desired conclusion are controversial partly (...) because they give the wrong result in other situations, in particular cases of co-location. Moreover, less controversial bridge principles do not provide an incompatibility result between standard mereological principles and multi-location. Hence, multi-location does not threaten any standard mereological principles. (shrink)

This paper critically assesses John Danaher’s ‘ethical behaviourism’, a theory on how the moral status of robots should be determined. The basic idea of this theory is that a robot’s moral status is determined decisively on the basis of its observable behaviour. If it behaves sufficiently similar to some entity that has moral status, such as a human or an animal, then we should ascribe the same moral status to the robot as we do to this human or animal. The (...) paper argues against ethical behaviourism by making four main points. First, it is argued that the strongest version of ethical behaviourism understands the theory as relying on inferences to the best explanation when inferring moral status. Second, as a consequence, ethical behaviourism cannot stick with merely looking at the robot’s behaviour, while remaining neutral with regard to the difficult question of which property grounds moral status. Third, not only behavioural evidence ought to play a role in inferring a robot’s moral status, but knowledge of the design process of the robot and of its designer’s intention ought to be taken into account as well. Fourth, knowledge of a robot’s ontology and how that relates to human biology often is epistemically relevant for inferring moral status as well. The paper closes with some concluding observations. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence-driven technology increasingly shapes work practices and, accordingly, employees’ opportunities for meaningful work (MW). In our paper, we identify five dimensions of MW: pursuing a purpose, social relationships, exercising skills and self-development, autonomy, self-esteem and recognition. Because MW is an important good, lacking opportunities for MW is a serious disadvantage. Therefore, we need to know to what extent employers have a duty to provide this good to their employees. We hold that employers have a duty of beneficence to design (...) for opportunities for MW when implementing AI-technology in the workplace. We argue that this duty of beneficence is supported by the three major ethical theories, namely, Kantian ethics, consequentialism, and virtue ethics. We defend this duty against two objections, including the view that it is incompatible with the shareholder theory of the firm. We then employ the five dimensions of MW as our analytical lens to investigate how AI-based technological innovation in logistic warehouses has an impact, both positively and negatively, on MW, and illustrate that design for MW is feasible. We further support this practical feasibility with the help of insights from organizational psychology. We end by discussing how AI-based technology has an impact both on meaningful work (often seen as an aspirational goal) and decent work (generally seen as a matter of justice). Accordingly, ethical reflection on meaningful and decent work should become more integrated to do justice to how AI-technology inevitably shapes both simultaneously. (shrink)

In a recent article, David distinguishes between two interpretations of Tarski’s work on truth. The standard interpretation has it that Tarski gave us a definition of truth in-L within the meta-language; the non-standard interpretation, that Tarski did not give us a definition of true sentence in L, but rather a definition of truth, and Tarski does so for L within the metalanguage. The difference is crucial: for on the standard view, there are different concepts of truth, while in the alternative (...) interpretation there is just one concept. In this paper we will have a brief look at the distinction between these two interpretations and at the arguments David gives for each view. We will evaluate one of David’s arguments for the alternative view by looking at Tarski’s ‘On the concept of truth in formalized languages’, and his use of the term ‘extension’ therein, which, we shall find, yields no conclusive evidence for either position. Then we will look at how Tarski treats ‘satisfaction’, an essential concept for his definition of ‘true sentence’. It will be argued that, in light of how Tarski talks about ‘satisfaction’ in Sect. 4 of ‘CTF’ and his claims in the Postscript, the alternative view is more likely than the standard one. (shrink)

Speeding is a major problem in road safety. Intelligent Speed Adaptation is a potential solution, but the moral acceptability of ISA has been called into question both in the popular media and in academic discussions. In this article, a moral case is made for making warning and limiting versions of ISA obligatory in all cars. The practice of car driving involves frequent speeding, which imposes unacceptable risks of harm on other road users. In this article, I argue that ISA can (...) therefore be justified on the basis of the harm it prevents, as is the current criminalisation of speeding. I defend obligatory ISA against three objections. First, ISA is likely to introduce some additional risk for drivers. However, drivers should accept these risks to reduce the risks from driving for other parties to an acceptable level. Second, although limiting ISA reduces drivers' options for moral agency and exercising self-restraint to some extent, this consequence is defensible. Third, accepting ISA does not commit us to accepting an entire range of other behaviour-regulating technologies. (shrink)

Inquiry is an aim-directed activity, and as such governed by instrumental normativity. If you have reason to figure out a question, you have reason to take means to figuring it out. Beliefs are governed by epistemic normativity. On a certain pervasive understanding, this means that you are permitted – maybe required – to believe what you have sufficient evidence for. The norms of inquiry and epistemic norms both govern us as agents in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and, on the (...) surface, they do so in harmony. Recently, however, Jane Friedman (2020) has pointed out that they are in tension with each other. In this paper, I aim to resolve this tension by showing that reasons for acts of inquiry – zetetic reasons – and epistemic reasons for belief can both be understood as flowing from the same general normative principle: the transmission principle for instrumental reasons. The resulting account is a version of epistemic instrumentalism that offers an attractive unity between zetetic and epistemic normativity. (shrink)

In debates about the metaphysics of material objects examples of colocated objects are commonly taken to be examples of coincidence too. But the argument that colocation is best understood as involving coincidence is never spelled out. This paper shows under what conditions colocation entails coincidence and argues that the entailment depends on a principle that actually rules out certain forms of colocation. This undermines the argument from colocation to coincidence.

In this paper, we discuss the ethics of automated driving. More specifically, we discuss responsible human-robot coordination within mixed traffic: i.e. traffic involving both automated cars and conventional human-driven cars. We do three main things. First, we explain key differences in robotic and human agency and expectation-forming mechanisms that are likely to give rise to compatibility-problems in mixed traffic, which may lead to crashes and accidents. Second, we identify three possible solution-strategies for achieving better human-robot coordination within mixed traffic. Third, (...) we identify important ethical challenges raised by each of these three possible strategies for achieving optimized human-robot cordination in this domain. Among other things, we argue that we should not just explore ways of making robotic driving more like human driving. Rather, we ought also to take seriously potential ways of making human driving more like robotic driving. Nor should we assume that complete automation is always the ideal to aim for; in some traffic-situations, the best results may be achieved through human-robot collaboration. Ultimately, our main aim in this paper is to argue that the new field of the ethics of automated driving needs take seriously the ethics of mixed traffic and responsible human-robot coordination. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Democracy in an Uncertain World:Expertise as a Provisional Response to VulnerabilityRobert Smid (bio)In the final chapter of American Immanence, Michael Hogue writes that "[r]ather than asking the foundationalist question of what epistemology is needed to ground or justify democracy, the pragmatist asks what epistemology democracy entails. What 'way of knowing' follows from, or is appropriate to, democracy as an associational ethos of vulnerable life?"1 While Hogue and I (...) have explored similar themes in our research on the promises and perils of democracy, this statement identifies a key difference in our respective approaches that has significant implications for the role that democracy can and should play in inquiry as well as for its potential to revolutionize civilization as we know it in the Anthropocene.In what follows, I raise three interrelated points that interrogate that difference. The first pertains to the role of foundations, provisional or otherwise, in Hogue's work, and results in a challenge to the special status seemingly given to democracy and a proposed inversion of the relation he poses between epistemology and democracy. The second pertains to the role of education in a democracy. This is a dimension of traditional pragmatist discourse on democracy that is conspicuously absent in Hogue's book, yet one that has significant implications for his argument. In this section, I will draw out the Deweyan strains of that discourse that appear to inform Hogue's work and contrast them with a Peircean take that yields notably different outcomes. The third point addresses the relation between democracy and sovereignty, a relation that Hogue explicitly eschews but that I will argue maintains some validity within democratic discourse, albeit in a more modest and provisional form. Finally, I draw these three points together in a conclusion that affirms much of Hogue's argument—including the profound vulnerability manifested by the Anthropocene and the need for more resilient forms of associated life—but assert that democracy is no less vulnerable than any other aspect of our uncertain world and therefore cannot be expected to possess within itself all that is necessary for its ongoing development. Building on the inversion of democracy and epistemology in the first section, the constitutive role of education in a [End Page 30] democracy as laid out in the second section, and the argument for a mitigated sovereignty in the third section, I argue that professional expertise provides an acceptable and necessary default when democratic structures fail.I. Provisional FoundationsAs a theopolitics rooted in religious naturalism, Hogue's understanding of democracy is one that is "embodied, relational, and vulnerable."2 That is, knowledge, meaning, and value all emerge out of and are conditioned by their social context, and shift according to the interests and needs of those who lay claim to them. Accordingly, Hogue's argument for democracy is that it is the way of life that allows for the broadest possible participation in such constructions, and which responds most effectively to the conditions of uncertainty and vulnerability surrounding them. It comes as no surprise, then, that his account of democracy is antifoundational, recognizing not only that all inquiry begins in medias res, but also that it emerges from a wide variety of media and that, while one goal of democratic discourse may be to chart a coherent path forward, both the media and the proposed paths are subject to change at any moment. Such antifoundationalism is a fairly standard commitment in pragmatist and process discourse, and thus relatively uncontroversial in its own right. It is worth noting, however, that being committed to antifoundationalism and actually being antifoundationalist in practice are often two very different things, our best efforts to the contrary notwithstanding.It is clear from Hogue's book that he resists any foundationalist epistemology, opting instead to derive his epistemology from democratic practice. As noted above, he asks "[w]hat 'way of knowing' follows from, or is appropriate to, democracy as an associational ethos of vulnerable life?"3 While it is possible that there is one epistemology that is best suited to democracy understood in this way, that epistemology would not, by his account, stand on its own foundation but be contingent on one... (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag bietet eine umfassende Diskussion des Textes “Humanismus und Christentum” (1950) des dänischen Philosophen und Theologen Knud E. Løgstrup. Er verortet den Text in seinem geistesgeschichtlichen Kontext und analysiert seine wichtigsten Argumente wie auch seine zentrale These, der zufolge Humanismus und Christentum einen entscheidenden Grundsatz teilen, insofern beide die Ethik als “stumm“ oder “unausgesprochen“ verstehen. Darüber hinaus wird dargelegt, wie Løgstrups Text zentrale Überlegungen in dessen späteren Publikationen, besonders in dem Hauptwerk Die ethische Forderung (1956), vorwegnimmt.

This paper discusses the robotization of the workplace, and particularly the question of whether robots can be good colleagues. This might appear to be a strange question at first glance, but it is worth asking for two reasons. Firstly, some people already treat robots they work alongside as if the robots are valuable colleagues. It is worth reflecting on whether such people are making a mistake. Secondly, having good colleagues is widely regarded as a key aspect of what can make (...) work meaningful. In discussing whether robots can be good colleagues, the paper compares that question to the more widely discussed questions of whether robots can be our friends or romantic partners. The paper argues that the ideal of being a good colleague has many different parts, and that on a behavioral level, robots can live up to many of the criteria typically associated with being a good colleague. Moreover, the paper also argues that in comparison with the more demanding ideals of being a good friend or a good romantic partner, it is comparatively easier for a robot to live up to the ideal of being a good colleague. The reason for this is that the “inner lives” of our friends and lovers are more important to us than the inner lives of our colleagues. (shrink)

In response to this pressing need, Integral Ecology unites valuable insights from multiple perspectives into a comprehensive theoretical framework-one that can ...

Classical mereology seems unable to characterise the identity conditions of word types. For example, the same letter types ordered differently result in different word types; but mereological fusions of the same letters are identical, regardless of the order of the letters. We show, however, that by combining classical mereology with plural logic one can give a definition of word types that satisfies the identity criteria of word types. This means that it is not necessary to abandon classical mereology in order (...) to give an analysis of the mereological structure of word types. (shrink)

El contexto actual de las desigualdades sociales en Latinoamérica cuestiona y, al mismo tiempo, desafía el escenario de la educación superior en la búsqueda de procesos de transformación social. Estos desafíos se comprenden, en el marco de esta ponencia, desde la justicia educativa, entendida como la posibilidad de acceso con calidad a la enseñanza-aprendizaje como consecuencia de prácticas individuales y acciones colectivas. A partir de este panorama, y desde una reflexión teórica, se intentan identificar los aportes que ofrece la perspectiva (...) pedagógica y filosófica de la Fundación Universitaria Claretiana en su apuesta de educación superior de frontera, con mirada humanista, liberadora, crítica y contextual, como respuesta a las aspiraciones que tienen aquellas comunidades que afrontan realidades de pobreza, exclusión y violencia sociopolítica, especialmente indígenas, afrodescendientes y campesinas, de acceder a una universidad que se ajuste a su contexto y dinámicas de vida; no obstante, las exigencias del modelo socioeconómico y del sistema educativo en particular dificultan su materialización. (shrink)

Displacement is an endemic phenomenon that affects those uprooted, the communities that feel the impact of those arriving, governments, and the international agencies which are increasingly engaged in organising the displaced. The current war in the north of Mozambique, which has caused a massive displacement of people from 2017 onwards, may be related to a number of factors, including economic, social and even political. Although some actors and analysts include ethnicity as part of the causes, this has more often than (...) not been analytically downplayed when grappling with the dynamics of, particularly, the groups that oppose the Mozambican government. This article analyses the dynamics of relationships between internally displaced people and host communities in Cabo Delgado, especially underlining, firstly, the resilience of communities in the face of extremist violence and, secondly, the distrust that typically shapes conflict. The latter dimension is aggravated by a historical past based on ethnic, political and social differences - cleavages that are accentuated and reproduced within the centres of displaced people and between these and host communities. We argue that factors such as poverty, hunger, lack of jobs or work opportunities, as well as poor access to arable land for family food production, exacerbate the relationship dynamics and create an environment conducive to the outbreak of small-scale conflicts that can, in the medium and long term, open spaces for radicalisation and more violence. Keywords: Mozambique, displacement, war, extremism, Cabo Delgado, resilience. (shrink)

This discussion is grounded in Aristotelian–Thomistic realism and takes the position that nursing is a practical science. As an exposition of the title statement, distinctions are made between opinion and truth, and the speculative, productive and practical sciences. Sources of opinion and truth are described and a discussion follows that truth can be achieved through knowing principles and causes of the natural kind behind phenomena. It is proposed that humans are the natural kind behind nursing phenomena. Thus, human nature provides (...) proper principles (the truth) of nursing practice. (shrink)

Classical mereology is a particularly strong theory about the part–whole relation. Not only does it ensure that any collection of entities composes a whole, or ‘fusion’, it also states that this object is unique: no two entities have the same parts. Recently, Claudio Calosi (dialectica 68(1):121–139, 2014) has argued that this extensional aspect makes classical mereology incompatible with multilocated entities. Calosi’s argument is arguably the most precise one from a whole battery of arguments to the effect that some mereological principle (...) is at odds with multilocation. Still, I show that Calosi’s arguments fail and that classical mereology is a safe space for multilocation. Moreover, I argue that the question of extensionality is orthogonal to the question of multilocation. (shrink)

Self-driving cars hold out the promise of being safer than manually driven cars. Yet they cannot be a 100 % safe. Collisions are sometimes unavoidable. So self-driving cars need to be programmed for how they should respond to scenarios where collisions are highly likely or unavoidable. The accident-scenarios self-driving cars might face have recently been likened to the key examples and dilemmas associated with the trolley problem. In this article, we critically examine this tempting analogy. We identify three important ways (...) in which the ethics of accident-algorithms for self-driving cars and the philosophy of the trolley problem differ from each other. These concern: the basic decision-making situation faced by those who decide how self-driving cars should be programmed to deal with accidents; moral and legal responsibility; and decision-making in the face of risks and uncertainty. In discussing these three areas of disanalogy, we isolate and identify a number of basic issues and complexities that arise within the ethics of the programming of self-driving cars. (shrink)

one of the challenges of commenting on this book is deciding what to say in praise of it. This is, after all, the ritual we typically follow in reviewing new books, especially when the author is present. And I want to be clear: there is a lot to praise in this book; it is written with great precision and subtlety and yet is one of the more broadly accessible of Neville’s academic texts. He brings together philosophical peers as diverse as (...) Plato, Confucius, Leibniz, and Whitehead with an apparent ease and with thought-provoking results. And his critical engagement with Whitehead is arguably the best it has ever been, Creativity and God notwithstanding. But these aren’t the things I want to focus on in this paper.For... (shrink)