In Why We Build Rowan Moore shows how buildings are driven by human emotions and desires – such as hope, power, money, sex, and the idea of home – and how buildings then shape our experiences.

Trans and gender-nonconforming people sometimes say that certain gender norms are authentic for them. For example, a trans man might say that abiding by norms of masculinity tracks who he really is. Authenticity is sometimes taken to appeal to an essential, pre-social “inner self.” It is also sometimes understood as a moral notion. Authenticity claims about gender norms therefore appear inimical to two key commitments in feminist philosophy: that all gender norms are socially constructed, and that many domains of gender (...) norms are both morally and prudentially bad. I argue that that this apparent tension is illusory. Concordant with existing trans narratives of authenticity, I articulate an existentialist view that understands authenticity as a socially embedded, constructive project undertaken in a non-ideal social world, rather than a reflective uncovering of a pre-given, essential self. I then show that authenticity and morality can come apart; what is authentic for someone need not be either morally good or good for them. I conclude that the authenticity of gender norms does not cut against the feminist commitments that I identify. This conclusion enables a theoretical space that is both respectful of trans experience and critical of dominant gender norms, an important liberatory goal. (shrink)

Trans people often prioritize self-identification and self-determination when it comes to gender. We think people have a right to tell us who they are, rather than to be told who they are. But what does this really mean? And what should we do when someone self-identifies in bad faith--such as when the Club Q mass shooter (briefly) identified as nonbinary? I discuss these questions in a short blog post.

In the late Middle Ages the philosopher and mystic Meister Eckhart preached that to know the truth you must be the truth. But how to be the truth? Eckhart's answer comes in the form of an imperative: release yourself, let be. Only then will you be able to understand that the deepest meaning of being is releasement. Only then will you become who you truly are. This book interprets Eckhart's Latin and Middle High German writings under the banner of an (...) imperative of releasement, and then shows how the twentieth-century thinker Martin Heidegger creatively appropriates this idea at several stages of his career. Heidegger had a lifelong fascination with Eckhart, referring to him as "the old master of letters and life." Drawing on archival material and Heidegger's marginalia in his personal copies of Eckhart's writings, Moore argues that Eckhart was one of the most important figures in Heidegger's philosophy. This book also contains previously unpublished documents by Heidegger on Eckhart, as well as the first English translation of Nishitani Keiji's essay "Nietzsche's Zarathustra and Meister Eckhart," which he initially gave as a presentation in one of Heidegger's classes in 1938. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper is a further development of two previous pieces of work (Moore 2002, 2005) in which modern virtue ethics, and in particular MacIntyre’s (1985) related notions of “practice” and “institution,” have been explored in the context of business. It first introduces and defines the concept of corporate character and seeks to establish why it is important. It then reviews MacIntyre’s virtues-practice-institution schema and the implications of this at the level of the institution in question—the corporation—and argues that the (...) concept of corporate character follows from, but is a novel development of, MacIntyre’s schema. The paper contrasts corporate character and virtues with the more familiar concepts of corporate culture and values. The constitutive and substantive elements of corporate character, including the essential corporate virtues, are then drawn out and illustrated with reference to the cases explored in Koehn (1998). Finally, the paper acknowledges and counters a specific criticism of this approach. (shrink)

Nonreductive physicalism states that actions have sufficient physical causes and distinct mental causes. Nonreductive physicalism has recently faced the exclusion problem, according to which the single sufficient physical cause excludes the mental causes from causal efficacy. Autonomists respond by stating that while mental-to-physical causation fails, mental-to-mental causation persists. Several recent philosophers establish this autonomy result via similar models of causation :1031–1049, 2016; Zhong, J Philos 111:341–360, 2014). In this paper I argue that both of these autonomist models fail on account (...) of the problem of Edwards’s Dictum. However, I appeal to foundational principles of action theory to resuscitate mental-to-mental causation in a manner that is consistent with the models of causation endorsed by these autonomists. (shrink)

Is it defensible to use the concept of a right? Can we justify this concept's central place in modern moral and legal thinking, or does it unjustifiably side-line those who do not qualify as right-holders? Rowan Cruft brings together a new account of the concept of a right. Moving beyond the traditional 'interest theory' and 'will theory', he defends a distinctive role for the concept: it is appropriate to our thinking about fundamental moral duties springing from the good of (...) the right-holder. This has important implications for the idea of 'natural' moral rights-that is, rights that exist independently of anyone's recognising that they do. Cruft argues that only rights that exist primarily for the sake of the right-holder can qualify as natural in this sense.In its relation to property, however, matters are far more complicated because much property is groundable only by common or collective goods beyond the right-holder's own good. For such property, Cruft argues that a non-rights property system-that resembles modern markets but is not conceived in terms of rights-would be preferable. The result of this study is a partial vindication of the rights concept that is more supportive of human rights than many of their critics might expect, and is surprisingly doubtful about property as an individual right. (shrink)

Oppressive ideology regularly misrepresents features of structural injustice as normal or appropriate. Resisting such injustice therefore requires critical examination of the evaluative judgments encoded in shared concepts. In this paper, I diagnose a mechanism of ideological misevaluation, which I call "hermeneutical misfit." Hermeneutical misfit occurs when thick concepts, or concepts which both describe and evaluate, mobilize ideologically warped evaluative judgments which do not fit the facts (e.g. "slutty"). These ill-fitted thick concepts in turn are regularly deployed as if they merely (...) describe--a phenomenon I call "descriptive masquerade." I argue that, via descriptive masquerade, ill-fitted thick concepts smuggle in warped evaluative judgments alongside apparently value-neutral ‘mere facts’, a process which both reinforces those judgments and increases the difficulty of critique. I investigate the concept "obesity" as an example: scientists and medical practitioners will deploy this concept as if it "merely" describes, enabling the smuggling of a host of warped evaluative judgments. I suggest that, to resist this process, we should develop collective consciousness and articulate "meta-hermeneutical resources," or thick concepts which encode critique of other, ill-fitted concepts (e.g. "slut-shaming" or "fat-shaming"). (shrink)

This essay explores “sculptural plasticity” through neuronal matterings of the brainbody in philosophy, literature, and art. It focuses on Socrates’s cataleptic condition as evidenced in Plato’s Symposium, the plasticities at work in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea, and morphogenetic acts of cell formation in the sculptural installation of Pierre Huyghe’s After ALife Ahead.

We argue for three main claims. First, the sentence ‘A and B ought to φ and ψ’ can express what we a call a joint-ought claim: the claim that the plurality A and B ought to φ and ψ respectively. Second, the truth-value of this joint-ought claim can differ from the truth-value of the pair of claims ‘A ought to φ’ and ‘B ought to ψ.’ This is because what A and B jointly ought to do can diverge from what (...) they individually ought to do: it may be true that A and B jointly ought to φ and ψ respectively, yet false that A ought to φ and false that B ought to ψ; and vice-versa. Third, either of two prominent semantic analyses of ‘ought’ – Mark Schroeder’s relational semantics, and Angelika Kratzer’s modal semantics – can model joint-ought claims and this difference in truth-value. (shrink)

The introduction introduces the history of the concept of human rights and its philosophical genealogy. It raises questions of the nature of human rights, the grounds of human rights, difference between proposed and actual human rights, and scepticism surrounding the very idea of human rights. In the course of this discussion, it concludes that the diversity of positions on human rights is a sign of the intellectual, cultural, and political fertility of the notion of human rights. The chapter concludes with (...) an overview of the chapters present in the volume. (shrink)

ABSTRACTViolating a person's rights is disrespectful to that person. This is because it is disrespectful to someone to violate duties owed to that person. I call these ‘directed duties’; they are the flipside of rights. The aim of this paper is to consider why directed duties and respect are linked, and to highlight a puzzle about this linkage, a puzzle arising from the fact that many directed duties are justified independently of whether they do anything for those to whom they (...) are owed. (shrink)

"Proof" has been and remains one of the concepts which characterises mathematics. Covering basic propositional and predicate logic as well as discussing axiom systems and formal proofs, the book seeks to explain what mathematicians understand by proofs and how they are communicated. The authors explore the principle techniques of direct and indirect proof including induction, existence and uniqueness proofs, proof by contradiction, constructive and non-constructive proofs, etc. Many examples from analysis and modern algebra are included. The exceptionally clear style and (...) presentation ensures that the book will be useful and enjoyable to those studying and interested in the notion of mathematical "proof.". (shrink)

Suppose that it would be best if some set of people all did A, significantly worse if they all did B, and worst of all if some did A while some did B. Now suppose that they’re all going to do B, regardless of what the others do. It seems as though each of these people ought to pick B, given what the others are going to do. Yet it also seems as though something has gone wrong. This leads to (...) a puzzle: how can it be wrong for everyone to act as they ought? In this paper, I resolve this puzzle by arguing that there are joint ‘oughts’ which apply irreducibly to pluralities of agents, and which can pull in different directions to ‘oughts’ holding of given individuals; even if everyone individually ought to pick B, what they jointly ought to do is all pick A. (shrink)

In this article I argue that, despite the views of such theorists as Locke, Hart and Raz, most of a person's property rights cannot be individualistically justified. Instead most property rights, if justified at all, must be justified on non-individualistic (e.g. consequentialist) grounds. This, I suggest, implies that most property rights cannot be morally fundamental ‘human rights’.

Brazil’s Movement of the Landless emerges from this collection as one of the great social movements of modernity. In historical chapters we see its evolution from confrontations with landowners and police in land invasions in the South of Brazil in the 1970s to become a multi-faceted movement with a presence throughout Brazil. More than a pressure group for Land Reform, it turned to mount a comprehensive challenge, on linked legal, cultural, political and economic fronts to Brazil’s dominant model of development. (...) Its ‘social movement approach’, conjoining challenge to Brazil’s massive inequalities with the formation of active citizens among the marginalised rural poor, has become a model for movements in the urban scene. We see this not just through the rich descriptive accounts of MST actions, but because the contributing editor, Miguel Carter, has pointed the action portraits with theoretical acumen, and, with other contributors, placed them in historical context. (shrink)

This review critically engages with Radhika Desai’s concept of geopolitical economy as a framework for understanding the evolution of the capitalist state system. While presenting a useful challenge to many of the most deeply-held beliefs in International Relations theory, Desai’s over-reliance on a geopolitical lens produces a relatively one-sided account of the ways in which capitalism forges distinct international regimes and ideological formations under a given set of historical conditions of possibility. Thus, Desai’s somewhat opaque reading of the international relations (...) of capitalism clouds our understanding of what the current conjuncture might entail for any possible future beyond the social discipline of capital. (shrink)

Our think tank tasked by the Dutch Health Council, consisting of Radboud University Nijmegen Honours Academy students with various backgrounds, investigated the implications of Deep Brain Stimulation for psychiatric patients. During this investigation, a number of methodological, ethical and societal difficulties were identified. We consider these difficulties to be a reflection of a still fragmented field of research that can be overcome with improved organization and communication. To this effect, we suggest that it would be useful to found a centralized (...) DBS organization. Such an organization makes it possible to 1) set up and maintain a repository, 2) facilitate DBS studies with a larger sample size, 3) improve communication amongst researchers, clinicians and ethical committees, and 4) improve communication between DBS experts and the public at large. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether responsibility could be borne vicariously. I distinguish between three different senses of responsibility: attributional responsibility, practices of holding people responsible, and substantive responsibility. I argue that it is doubtful both whether attributional responsibility could be borne vicariously, and whether it could be appropriate to hold someone vicariously responsible. However, I suggest that substantive responsibility can genuinely be borne vicariously. Getting clear on these conceptual issues has important implications for how we approach more concrete legal and political (...) questions. More specifically, I argue these abstract arguments can be used to inform views on the common-law doctrine of joint enterprise, and on reparations for historic injustice. (shrink)

InWorld Poverty and Human Rights, Thomas Pogge presents a range of attractive policy proposals—limiting the international resource and borrowing privileges, decentralizing sovereignty, and introducing a “global resources dividend”—aimed at remedying the poverty and suffering generated by the global economic order. These proposals could be motivated as a response topositive dutiesto assist the global poor, or they could be justified onconsequentialistgrounds as likely to promote collective welfare. Perhaps they could even be justified onvirtue-theoreticgrounds as proposals that a just or benevolent person (...) would endorse. But Pogge presents them as a response to the violation ofnegative duties; this makes the need for such remedial policies especially morally urgent—on a par with the obligations of killers to take measures to stop killing.In this essay, I focus on the claim that responsibility for world poverty should be conceived in terms of a violation of negative duties. I follow Pogge in distinguishing two questions (p. 134): What kind of duties (positive or purely negative?) would we be subject to in a just global society where everyone fulfilled their duty and there was no significant risk of injustice? And what kind of duties (positive or purely negative?) do we face given that our global society falls short of the just society?I tackle these questions in reverse order below. I argue, in contrast to Pogge, that positive duties are relevant to our answers to both questions. (shrink)

Libertarian free will is, roughly, the view that agents cause actions to occur or not occur: Maddy’s decision to get a beer causes her to get up off her comfortable couch to get a beer, though she almost chose not to get up. Libertarian free will notoriously faces the luck objection, according to which agential states do not determine whether an action occurs or not, so it is beyond the control of the agent, hence lucky, whether an action occurs or (...) not: Maddy’s reasons for getting beer in equipoise with her reasons to remain in her comfortable seat do not determine that she will get up or stay seated, so it seems beyond her control, hence lucky, that she gets up. In this paper I consider a sub-set of the luck objection called the Physical Indeterminism Luck Objection, according to which indeterministic physical processes cause actions to occur or not, and agent’s lack control over these indeterministic physical processes, so agent’s lack control over, hence it is lucky, whether action occurs or not. After motivating the physical indeterminism luck objection, I consider responses from three recent event-causal libertarian models, and conclude that they fail to overcome the problem, though one promising avenue is opened up. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica - Journal of the International Association for Semiotic Studies / Revue de l'Association Internationale de Sémiotique Volume: 2013 Issue: 196 Pages: 431-441.

It is sometimes argued that while human gestures are produced ostensively and intentionally, great ape gestures are produced only intentionally. If true, this would make the psychological mechanisms underlying the different species’ communication fundamentally different, and ascriptions of meaning to chimpanzee gestures would be inappropriate. While the existence of different underlying mechanisms cannot be ruled out, in fact claims about difference are driven less by empirical data than by contested assumptions about the nature of ostensive communication. On some accounts, there (...) are no reasons to doubt that great ape gestural communication is ostensive. If these accounts are correct, attributions of meaning to chimpanzee gestures would be justified. (shrink)

This cutting edge volume provides an overview of the dynamic new field of cyberphilosophy – the intersection of philosophy and computing.

Basic rights are often of great instrumental value in securing protection for important human needs and interests. The first two sections of this paper defend the thesis that basic rights are also valuable independently of their instrumental role. Taking my cue from Frances Kamm's suggestion that basic rights reflect or express human worth, in the third, fourth and fifth sections I develop the proposal that the non-instrumental value of basic rights derives from their constitutive role in a universal form of (...) community or fellowship. The importance of basic rights' instrumental role is reaffi rmed in the final section of the paper, which builds on the earlier sections to offer a 'mixed' theory according to which basic rights have both instrumental and non-instrumental value. (shrink)

Journal of Applied Philosophy, EarlyView.

If it works, I can use Putnam’s vat argument to show that I have not always been a brain-in-a-vat. It is widely thought that the vat argument is of no use against closure scepticism – that is, scepticism motivated by arguments that appeal to a closure principle. This is because, even if I can use the vat argument to show that I have not always been a BIV, I cannot use it to show that I was not recently envatted, and (...) it is thought that the claim that I am not justified in thinking that I was not recently envatted is all that the closure sceptic requires. In this paper I first argue that scenarios in which I have been recently envatted are inadequate for the sceptic’s purposes, and so the standard argument that the vat argument is of no use against closure scepticism fails. I then argue that it is not possible to revise the standard argument to meet my objection. I conclude that, if it works, I can use the vat argument as a defence against closure scepticism. (shrink)

What makes something a human right? What is the relationship between the moral foundations of human rights and human rights law? What are the difficulties of appealing to human rights? This book offers the first comprehensive survey of current thinking on the philosophical foundations of human rights. Divided into four parts, this book focuses firstly on the moral grounds of human rights, for example in our dignity, agency, interests or needs. Secondly, it looks at the implications that different moral perspectives (...) on human rights bear for human rights law and politics. Thirdly, it discusses specific and topical human rights including freedom of expression and religion, security, health and more controversial rights such as a human right to subsistence. The final part discusses nuanced critical and reformative views on human rights from feminist, Kantian and relativist perspectives among others. The essays represent new and canonical research by leading scholars in the field. Each section is structured as a set of essays and replies, offering a comprehensive analysis of different positions within the debate in question. The introduction from the editors will guide researchers and students navigating the diversity of views on the philosophical foundations of human rights. (shrink)

In this article I argue that, despite the views of such theorists as Locke, Hart and Raz, most of a person's property rights cannot be individualistically justified. Instead most property rights, if justified at all, must be justified on non-individualistic grounds. This, I suggest, implies that most property rights cannot be morally fundamental ‘human rights’.

Abstract:This paper is a further development of two previous pieces of work (Moore 2002, 2005) in which modern virtue ethics, and in particular MacIntyre’s (1985) related notions of “practice” and “institution,” have been explored in the context of business. It first introduces and defines the concept of corporate character and seeks to establish why it is important. It then reviews MacIntyre’s virtues-practice-institution schema and the implications of this at the level of the institution in question—the corporation—and argues that the (...) concept of corporate character follows from, but is a novel development of, MacIntyre’s schema. The paper contrasts corporate character and virtues with the more familiar concepts of corporate culture and values. The constitutive and substantive elements of corporate character, including the essential corporate virtues, are then drawn out and illustrated with reference to the cases explored in Koehn (1998). Finally, the paper acknowledges and counters a specific criticism of this approach. (shrink)

This study investigated the link between meditation, self-reported mindfulness and cognitive flexibility as well as other attentional functions. It compared a group of meditators experienced in mindfulness meditation with a meditation-naïve control group on measures of Stroop interference and the “d2-concentration and endurance test”. Overall the results suggest that attentional performance and cognitive flexibility are positively related to meditation practice and levels of mindfulness. Meditators performed significantly better than non-meditators on all measures of attention. Furthermore, self-reported mindfulness was higher in (...) meditators than non-meditators and correlations with all attention measures were of moderate to high strength. This pattern of results suggests that mindfulness is intimately linked to improvements of attentional functions and cognitive flexibility. The relevance of these findings for mental balance and well-being are discussed. (shrink)

This volume collects essays by leading criminal law theorists to explore the principal themes in his work.

Many appraisal theories claim that appraisal causes emotion. Critics have rejected this claim because they believe (a) it is incompatible with the claim that appraisal is a part of emotion, (b) it is not empirically supported, (c) it is circular and hence nonempirical, and (d) there are alternative causes. I reply that (a) the causal claim is incompatible with the part claim on some but not all interpretations of the causal claim and the part claim, (b) the lack of empirical (...) support can be remedied, (c) there may even be ways to cope with the circularity problem, and (d) it is unclear to what extent the alternative causes differ from appraisal. (shrink)

D. C. Stove's analysis of Popper's theory of scientific statements is vitiated by at least three errors, all of which stem from a crucial omission: that whilst Popper's theory of scientific statements is a theory of statements in science, Stove's restrictive analysis ignores the context of the statements and proceeds as though they were related to each other by nothing more than the logic of propositions, i.e. they appear in Stove's analysis as atomistic, as distinct from scientific statements.

I do not answer my title’s question in this paper. Instead, my aims are first to show that the question is worth asking, secondly to show that its answer will not be trivial, and thirdly to show that it is unclear what the answer is. From these three conclusions it follows that many contemporary Hohfeldian approaches to the conceptual analysis of rights (including those of Sumner, Jones, Kramer, Wenar and myself)1, while potentially capable of extensional accuracy, overlook an essential but (...) unidentified feature of rights: the feature which explains why duties are not rights. The paper challenges theorists to investigate what this feature is. (shrink)