Constitutivism is the view that it is possible to derive contentful, normatively binding demands of practical reason and morality from the constitutive features of agency. Whereas much of the debate has focused on the constitutivist's ability to derive content, David Enoch has challenged her ability to generate normativity. Even if one can derive content from the constitutive aims of agency, one could simply demur: ?Bah! Agency, shmagency?. The ?Why be moral?? question would be replaced by the ?Why be an (...) class='Hi'>agent?? question. It is the aim of this paper to show that the shmagency objection is essentially correct, though not as originally defended by Enoch. Since Enoch posed his argument as ruling out the normative authority of agency under any conception of the constitutive features of agency, constitutivists have responded by arguing for the inescapability of certain minimal features of agency. I argue that this amounts to equivocation: the constitutivist appeals to a minimal conception of agency in answering the normative question but to a richer understanding in answering the content question. The key to the shmagency objection, as I shall defend it, is to insist that the same sense of agency must be employed in answering both questions. A shmagent can concede that there may be inescapable ways of understanding agency, but insist that any such understanding would have to be too minimal to generate substantive content. (shrink)

The question ‘Why care about being an agent?’ asks for reasons to be something that appears to be non-optional. But perhaps it is closer to the question ‘Why be moral?’; or so I shall argue. Here the constitutivist answer—that we cannot help but have this aim—seems to be the best answer available. I suggest that, regardless of whether constitutivism is true, it is an incomplete answer. I argue that we should instead answer the question by looking at our evaluative (...) commitments to the exercise of our other capacities for which being a full-blown agent is a necessary condition. Thus, the only kind of reason available is hypothetical rather than categorical. The status of this reason may seem to undermine the importance of this answer. I show, however, that it both achieves much of what we want when we cite categorical reasons and highlights why agency is valuable. (shrink)

Anti-individualists claim that concepts are individuated with an eye to purely external facts about a subject's environment about which she may be ignorant or mistaken. This paper offers a novel reason for thinking that anti-individualistic concepts are an ineliminable part of commonsense psychology. Our commitment to anti-individualism, I argue, is ultimately grounded in a rational epistemic agent's commitment to refining her own representational practices in the light of new and surprising information about her environment. Since anti-individualism is an implicit (...) part of responsible epistemic practices, we cannot abandon it without compromising our own epistemic agency. The story I tell about the regulation of one's own representational practices yields a new account of the identity conditions for anti-individualistic concepts. (shrink)

Bayesians defend norms of ideal rationality such as probabilism, which they claim should be approximated by non-ideal thinkers. Yet, it is not often discussed exactly in what sense it is beneficial for an agent’s credence function to approximate probabilistic coherence. Some existing research indicates that approximating coherence leads to improvements in accuracy, whereas other research suggests that it decreases Dutch book vulnerability. Yet, the existing results don’t settle whether there is a way of approximating coherence that delivers both benefits (...) at once. We show that there is. (shrink)

When does it make sense to act randomly? A persuasive argument from Bayesian decision theory legitimizes randomization essentially only in tie-breaking situations. Rational behaviour in humans, non-human animals, and artificial agents, however, often seems indeterminate, even random. Moreover, rationales for randomized acts have been offered in a number of disciplines, including game theory, experimental design, and machine learning. A common way of accommodating some of these observations is by appeal to a decision-maker’s bounded computational resources. Making this suggestion both precise (...) and compelling is surprisingly difficult. Toward this end, I propose two fundamental rationales for randomization, drawing upon diverse ideas and results from the wider theory of computation. The first unifies common intuitions in favour of randomization from the aforementioned disciplines. The second introduces a deep connection between randomization and memory: access to a randomizing device is provably helpful for an agent burdened with a finite memory. Aside from fit with ordinary intuitions about rational action, the two rationales also make sense of empirical observations in the biological world. Indeed, random behaviour emerges more or less where it should, according to the proposal. (shrink)

Like all theories that account for moral motivation, Francis Hutcheson's moral sense theory faces two related challenges. The skeptical challenge calls into question what reasons an agent has to be moral at all. The priority challenge asks why an agent's reasons to be moral tend to outweigh her non-moral reasons to act. I argue a defender of Hutcheson can respond to these challenges by building on unique features of his account. She can respond to skeptical challenge by drawing (...) a direct parallel between an agent's reasons to pursue natural, self-directed goods and her reasons to pursue moral goods. This parallel, however, makes establishing the significance of morality difficult. Given this difficulty, a separate aspect of Hutcheson's account, the additional weight given to benevolence in our assessment of mixed actions, can be used to respond to the priority challenge. (shrink)

In this article I am concerned with whether it could be morally significant to distinguish between doing something 'in order to bring about an effect' as opposed to 'doing something because we will bring about an effect'. For example, the Doctrine of Double Effect tells us that we should not act in order to bring about evil, but even if this is true is it perhaps permissible to act only because an evil will thus occur? I discuss these questions in (...) connection with a version of the so-called Trolley Problem known as the Loop Case. I also consider how these questions may bear on whether a rational agent must aim at an event which he believes is causally necessary to achieve an end he pursues. (shrink)

The human experience is punctuated by times of crisis. Some crises are experienced at a personal level (e.g., the diagnosis of a life-threatening disease), organizational level (e.g., a business facing bankruptcy), and still others are experienced on a societal or global level (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic). Although crises can be deeply troubling and anxiety provoking, they can also serve as an important catalyst for creative action and innovative outcomes. This is because during times of crisis our typical forms of reasoning and (...) action may no longer serve us. It is precisely during such times that new ways of thought, action and leadership are needed. A key question for researchers to consider is:Why and how times of crisis serve as an impetus for creative actions and outcomes?The purpose of this paper is to address this question. I open by briefly discussing the features of a crisis. I then introduce an empirically testable, process model that outlines various pathways, factors, and outcomes associated with different ways people and organizations respond during times of crisis. I close by briefly outlining future directions for creativity theory and research. (shrink)

Developing themes in the work of Thomas Hill, I argue that servility is an underappreciated but pervasive reason for moral transgression. Recognizing servility as a basic cause of immorality obliges us to reconsider questions about the rationality of morality. Traditional answers to the problem of the immoralist, which tend to be stated in terms of enlightened self-interest, fail to properly engage the problems posed by 'servile immorality.' In response to these problems, I develop a Humean version of a traditionally Kantian (...) strategy for substantiating the rationality of morality: (i.e.) agents' conceptions of themselves commit them to accepting morality's authority. Servile behavior implies cognitive dissonance, which can restructure or dissolve those particular desires, beliefs, and projects that constitute agents' most highly valued contingent conceptions of themselves. I conclude that agents have reason to abstain from servility even on a parsimonious Humean account of practical reasons. (shrink)

In this article I am concerned with whether it could be morally significant to distinguish between doing something 'in order to bring about an effect' as opposed to 'doing something because we will bring about an effect'. For example, the Doctrine of Double Effect tells us that we should not act in order to bring about evil, but even if this is true is it perhaps permissible to act only because an evil will thus occur? I discuss these questions in (...) connection with a version of the so-called Trolley Problem known as the Loop Case. I also consider how these questions may bear on whether a rational agent must aim at an event which he believes is causally necessary to achieve an end he pursues. (shrink)

Cuneo and Shafer-Landau have argued that there are moral conceptual truths that are substantive and non-vacuous in content, what they called ‘moral fixed points’. If the moral proposition ‘torturing kids for fun is pro tanto wrong’ is such a conceptual truth, it is because the essence of ‘wrong’ necessarily satisfies and applies to the substantive content of ‘torturing kids for fun’. In critique, Killoren :165–173, 2016) has revisited the old skeptical ‘why be moral?’ question and argued that the moral fixed (...) points give us no reason to care about morality and, therefore, they are normatively irrelevant. He concluded that this is a counterintuitive implication that undermines the proposal. In this paper, I develop a rejoinder to Killoren’s argument that explains why, at least from the perspective of the moral fixed points framework, if the moral fixed points exist, they are necessarily normatively relevant for rational agents. I supplement this explanation with an explanation of why it might prima facie appear that moral fixed points are not normatively relevant, although ultima facie they are relevant. The supplementary explanation explains prima facie normative irrelevance as the upshot of failures of rational agency. I conclude that the moral fixed points, can, in principle, offer an interesting response to the skeptical ‘why be moral?’ question’. (shrink)

In this article I am concerned with whether it could be morally significant to distinguish between doing something 'in order to bring about an effect' as opposed to 'doing something because we will bring about an effect'. For example, the Doctrine of Double Effect tells us that we should not act in order to bring about evil, but even if this is true is it perhaps permissible to act only because an evil will thus occur? I discuss these questions in (...) connection with a version of the so-called Trolley Problem known as the Loop Case. I also consider how these questions may bear on whether a rational agent must aim at an event which he believes is causally necessary to achieve an end he pursues. (shrink)

This paper explores one way in which the meta-problem may shed light on existing debates about the hard problem (though not directly on the hard problem itself). I'll argue that the possibility of a suitable agent without problem intuitions would undercut the dialectical force of arguments against physicalism. Standard antiphysicalist arguments begin from intuitions about what's ideally conceivable, and argue from there to the falsity of physicalism. For these arguments to be dialectically effective, there must be a shared conception (...) of what ideal conceivability consists in. Unfortunately, proposed accounts of ideal conceivability all make reference to an unexplained 'intuitive' notion of idealization. Consideration of the meta-problem reveals that, when it comes to the hard problem, intuitions about idealization are essentially theory-laden. There is no neutral basis for determining whether agents with or without problem intuitions are more rationally ideal. (shrink)

In this article I am concerned with whether it could be morally significant to distinguish between doing something 'in order to bring about an effect' as opposed to 'doing something because we will bring about an effect'. For example, the Doctrine of Double Effect tells us that we should not act in order to bring about evil, but even if this is true is it perhaps permissible to act only because an evil will thus occur? I discuss these questions in (...) connection with a version of the so-called Trolley Problem known as the Loop Case. I also consider how these questions may bear on whether a rational agent must aim at an event which he believes is causally necessary to achieve an end he pursues. (shrink)

Hans Herzberger's 1973 essay 'Ordinal Preference and Rational Choice' is a classic milestone in the erosion of the idea that rational agents are maximizers of utility. By the time Herzberger wrote, many authors had replaced this claim with the thesis that rational agents are maximizers of preference. That is to say, it was assumed that at the moment of choice a rational agent has a weak ordering representing his or her preferences among the options available to the agent (...) for choice and that the rational agent restricts choice to one of the optimal options. Such an option is an available option judged at least as good as any other.Herzberger explored the prospects of weakening this ordinalist view of maximizing .. (shrink)

Is curiosity a virtue or a vice? Curiosity, as a disposition to attain new, worthwhile information, can manifest as an epistemic virtue. When the disposition to attain new information is not manifested virtuously, this is either because the agent lacks the appropriate motivation to attain the information or because the agent has poor judgement, seeking information that is not worthwhile or seeking information by inappropriate means. In the right circumstances, curiosity contributes to the agent’s excellence in character: (...) it is appropriate to praise the agent for being curious, blame the agent for not being curious, and also prompt the agent to cultivate such curiosity, at least in some of the relevant contexts. We believe curiosity can also manifest as a moral virtue when it helps an interpreter view a speaker as an agent with a valuable perspective on the world. Especially in interactions where either there is a marked power imbalance between interpreter and speaker, or interpreter and speaker have identity beliefs that lead them to radically different worldviews, curiosity can help foster mutual understanding, and prevent the interpreter from dismissing, marginalizing, or pathologizing the speaker’s perspective. (shrink)

NIMBY claims have certainly been vilified. But, as Feldman and Turner point out, one cannot condemn all NIMBY claims without condemning all appeals to partiality. This suggests that any moral problem with NIMBY claims stems not from their status as NIMBY claims but from an underlying illegitimate appeal to partiality. I suggest that if we are to distinguish illegitimate from legitimate appeals to partiality we should look to what might morally justify the sort of agent-relative reasons that can be (...) expressed as a part of public morality. However, if this serves to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate appeals to partiality, the scope for justifiable NIMBY claims is significantly reduced. NIMBY claims require special justification, just as do appeals to the appropriate form of agent-relative reasons. NIMBY appeals to the value of a particular place may very well be morally acceptable, but not merely in virtue of being significant to someone. (shrink)

In philosophy of mind, zombies are imaginary creatures that are exact physical duplicates of conscious subjects but for whom there is no first-personal experience. Zombies are meant to show that physicalism—the theory that the universe is made up entirely out of physical components—is false. In this paper, I apply the zombie thought experiment to the realm of morality to assess whether moral agency is something independent from sentience. Algorithms, I argue, are a kind of functional moral zombie, such that thinking (...) about the latter can help us better understand and regulate the former. I contend that the main reason why algorithms can be neither autonomous nor accountable is that they lack sentience. Moral zombies and algorithms are incoherent as moral agents because they lack the necessary moral understanding to be morally responsible. To understand what it means to inflict pain on someone, it is necessary to have experiential knowledge of pain. At most, for an algorithm that feels nothing, ‘values’ will be items on a list, possibly prioritised in a certain way according to a number that represents weightiness. But entities that do not feel cannot value, and beings that do not value cannot act for moral reasons. (shrink)

Judith Jarvis Thomson recently argued that it is impermissible for a bystander to turn a runaway trolley from five onto one. But she also argues that a trolley driver is required to do just that. We believe that her argument is flawed in three important ways. She fails to give proper weight to (a) an agent¹s claims not to be required to act in ways he does not want to, (b) impartiality in the weighing of competing patient-claims, and (c) (...) the role of patient-claims in determining agent-duties. All three of these failures can be understood in terms of what we call the Mechanics of Claims, an approach we develop for identifying and balancing competing claims in determining rights. Using that framework, one can see both why Thomson's most recent argument is mistaken, and how to think more clearly about deontological choices generally. (shrink)

For Aristotle, some wrongdoers do not deserve blame, and the virtuous judge should extend sungnōmē, a correct judgment about what is equitable, under the appropriate excusing circumstances. Aristotle’s virtuous judge, however, does not forgive; the wrongdoer is excused from blame in the first place, rather than being forgiven precisely because she is blameworthy. Additionally, the judge does not fail to blame because she wishes to be merciful or from natural feeling, but instead, because that is the equitable action to take (...) under the circumstances. Moreover, while Aristotle does claim in his discussions of the virtues of megalopsychia and praotēs that the virtuous person will sometimes fail to become angry at blameworthy wrongdoers, Aristotle’s reasons for repudiating anger or forestalling blame have little to do with the sorts of reasons that one would or could be forgiving for. Although an Aristotelian virtuous agent does let go of anger for her own reasons, she does not forgive. As a result, I argue that since Aristotle’s account of equity entails that forgiveness is positively vicious, forgivingness is not merely a virtue left out of Aristotle’s account, but is in fact incompatible with his account. (shrink)

Philosophers like to worry about luck. And well they should. Luck poses potential difficulties for knowledge, moral appraisal, and freedom. The primary target of this paper will be the last of these concerns . Recent arguments from luck have been levied against libertarian accounts of free will, including agent-causal ones. One general goal of this paper will be to demonstrate the truth of an often overlooked claim about responsibility-undermining luck. Part of this task will include illustrating what is genuinely (...) worrisome about luck in the context of free will. It will turn out that the problem is not fundamentally a problem of explanation. Another aim will be to argue that the truth of this claim about luck reveals a problem for event-causal libertarianism but has yet to reveal a problem for the agent-causal view. For the purposes of this paper, it will be assumed that luck does indeed undermine free action and moral responsibility. But it will be argued that agent-caused actions have not been shown to be "lucky.". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Agent-Centered Morality: An Aristotelian Alternative to Kantian InternalismDaniel E. PalmerGeorge W. Harris. Agent-Centered Morality: An Aristotelian Alternative to Kantian Internalism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Pp. xi + 434. Cloth, $60.00.Contemporary philosophers have found substantial resources in the ethical writings of both Aristotle and Kant. Together Aristotelian-inspired virtue ethics and Kantian constructivism have not only contributed greatly to the resurgence of interest in normative theory (...) in recent decades, but have also provided the most prominent alternatives to the utilitarianism that has dominated Anglo-American ethics for so long. However, the development of these ethical projects has been carried out largely independently of one another. In Agent-Centered Morality, George Harris helps to overcome this lacuna by comparing and contrasting these two competing versions of [End Page 449] morality. As such, this work is a welcome addition to the literature both as a survey of recent work in Aristotelian and Kantian ethics as well as an account of the many ways in which they converge and diverge in their corresponding treatments of practical rationality.Harris begins by noting that the appeal of both the Aristotelian and Kantian models is that they attempt to generate a foundation for ethics within an account of practical reason, and thus to ground morality within a deliberative perspective that connects the demands of morality with an agent's own meaningful commitments. As such, Harris correctly argues that these projects have much more in common than has sometimes been supposed. The central question that Harris raises in this book is which account of practical reason is best suited for this task. His thesis is that the Aristotelian model gives us a more plausible picture of the role of norms within practical rationality.The major distinction between the Aristotelian and the Kantian models according to Harris is that while on the Aristotelian model the norms made use of in practical judgments are symmetric in their regulative function, the Kantian model provides an asymmetrical account of norms. To arbitrate between these two views, Harris proposes an integration test. The point of the integration test is to assure that our account of practical rationality and the function of regulative norms that it provides can support the integrity of rational agents. Minimally then, the test will favor the account of practical rationality that best "integrates the various concerns of rational human agents in a way that preserves integrity" (32).While the above vastly simplifies Harris's rich treatment of this issue, it nonetheless allows us to see how Harris goes about arguing for the superiority of the Aristotelian view. For Harris maintains that the Aristotelian symmetrical model integrates regulative norms better than the Kantian model. To show why, Harris makes use of a number of examples to demonstrate that regulative norms function in a symmetrical fashion in regards to one another for the agent of integrity. For instance, to show that the norm of impartial respect is sometimes regulated by the norm of impartial sympathy, Harris gives an example of someone who breaks a lunch date in order to help a dog that is being mistreated. Likewise, Harris uses examples to argue that sometimes even partial norms, like that of parental concern, regulate the impartial norm of respect. Harris believes that these cases demonstrate that the regulative norms made use of in practical deliberation must function in a symmetrical fashion. Thus, Harris thinks we have good reason to reject the Kantian view "that the integrative function of practical reason is achieved by an impartial norm that is asymmetrical in its regulative function" (127).Though interesting and worthy of attention, I am not convinced that Harris makes use of the most plausible understanding of the Kantian model of practical rationality in his central argument. By focusing almost exclusively upon the idea of respect, Harris assumes that the best reading of the Kantian project will be founded primarily in the idea of impartial respect. However, if we adopt a procedural understanding of the Categorical Imperative, a plausible case could be made that a Kantian account of practical rationality can account for the examples that Harris makes use of just as well as the Aristotelian... (shrink)

Note: Paper to appear in special issue of the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, on the evolution of consciousness //// The explanatory challenge of sentience is known as the “hard problem of consciousness”: How does subjective experience arise from physical objects and their relations? Despite some optimistic claims, the perennial struggle with this question shows little evidence of imminent resolution. In this article I focus on the “why” rather than on the “how” of sentience. Specifically, why did (...) sentience evolve in organic lifeforms? From an evolutionary perspective this question can be framed: “What adaptive problem(s) did organisms face in their evolutionary past and how were those challenges met? I argue that sentience was a critical component of the adaptive solution (i.e., adopting an agentic stance) to increasingly complex and unpredictable demands placed on vertebrates approximately 500 million years ago (the so-called Cambrian explosion). One consequence of taking an agentic stance is that it freed the organism from its neural moorings, positioning it within phenomenal space outside its brain. (shrink)

The cognitive science of religion is a rapidly growing field whose practitioners apply insights from advances in cognitive science in order to provide a better understanding of religious impulses, beliefs, and behaviors. In this book Ilkka Pyysiäinen shows how this methodology can profitably be used in the comparative study of beliefs about superhuman agents. He begins by developing a theoretical outline of the basic, modular architecture of the human mind and especially the human capacity to understand agency. He then goes (...) on to discuss examples of supernatural agency in detail, arguing that the human ability to attribute beliefs and desires to others forms the basis of conceptions of supernatural agents and of such social cognition in which supernatural agents are postulated as interested parties in social life. Beliefs about supernatural agency are natural, says Pyysiäinen, in the sense that such concepts are used in an intuitive and automatic fashion. Two dots and a straight line below them automatically trigger the idea of a face, for example. Given that the mind consists of a host of such modular mechanisms, certain kinds of beliefs will always have a selective advantage over others.theological concepts are usually elaborate versions of such simpler and more contagious folk conceptions. Pyysiäinen uses ethnographical and survey materials as well as doctrinal treatises to show that there are certain recurrent patterns in beliefs about supernatural agents both at the level of folk-religion and of formal theology. (shrink)

Nearly all defences of the agent-causal theory of free will portray the theory as a distinctively libertarian one — a theory that only libertarians have reason to accept. According to what I call ‘the standard argument for the agent-causal theory of free will’, the reason to embrace agent-causal libertarianism is that libertarians can solve the problem of enhanced control only if they furnish agents with the agent-causal power. In this way it is assumed that there is (...) only reason to accept the agent-causal theory if there is reason to accept libertarianism. I aim to refute this claim. I will argue that the reasons we have for endorsing the agent-causal theory of free will are nonpartisan. The real reason for going agent-causal has nothing to do with determinism or indeterminism, but rather with avoiding reductionism about agency and the self. As we will see, if there is reason for libertarians to accept the agent-causal theory, there is just as much reason for compatibilists to accept it. It is in this sense that I contend that if anyone should be an agent-causalist, then everyone should be an agent-causalist. (shrink)

To be an agent, one must be able to formulate intentions. To be able to formulate intentions, one must have a first-person perspective. Computers lack a first-person perspective. So, computers are not agents.

In this paper, I sketch an answer to the question “Why be an intellectually humble philosopher?” I argue that, as far as philosophical argumentation is concerned, the historical record of Western Philosophy provides a straightforward answer to this question. That is, the historical record of philosophical argumentation, which is a track record that is marked by an abundance of alternative theories and serious problems for those theories, can teach us important lessons about the limits of philosophical argumentation. These lessons, in (...) turn, show why philosophers should argue with humility. (shrink)

I propose the notion of ‘epistemic sanity’, a property of parsimony between the holding of true but not false beliefs and the consideration of our cognitive limitations. Where ‘alethic value’ is the epistemic value of holding true but not false beliefs, the ‘alethic potential’ of an agent is the amount of extra alethic value that she is expected to achieve, given her current environment, beliefs, and reasoning skills. Epistemic sanity would be related to the holding of (true or false) (...) beliefs that increase the agent's alethic potential (relevant beliefs) but not of beliefs that decrease it (this is related to cognitive parsimony). Suspension of judgment, forgetting, and clutter avoidance are the main contributors to an agent's epistemic sanity, where this paper focuses on suspension. I argue that rational suspension favors the holding of true and relevant beliefs, which is not the case for the extremes of opinionation (no suspension) and skepticism (general suspension). In the absence of evidence, opinionated agents are often forced to rely on principles such as the principle of indifference, but suspension dominates indifference in terms of alethic value in some conditions. A rational agent would only find it beneficial to adopt skepticism if she considers herself to be an anti-expert about her entire agenda, but then ‘flipping’ beliefs maximizes expected alethic value in relation to skepticism. The study of epistemic sanity results in an ‘impure’ veritism, which can deal with some limitations of veritism (e.g., explaining the existence of false but relevant beliefs). (shrink)

An intelligent machine surpassing human intelligence across a wide set of skills has been proposed as a possible existential catastrophe. Among those concerned about existential risk related to artificial intelligence, it is common to assume that AI will not only be very intelligent, but also be a general agent. This article explores the characteristics of machine agency, and what it would mean for a machine to become a general agent. In particular, it does so by articulating some important (...) differences between belief and desire in the context of machine agency. One such difference is that while an agent can by itself acquire new beliefs through learning, desires need to be derived from preexisting desires or acquired with the help of an external influence. Such influence could be a human programmer or natural selection. We argue that to become a general agent, a machine needs productive desires, or desires that can direct behavior across multiple contexts. However, productive desires cannot sui generis be derived from non-productive desires. Thus, even though general agency in AI could in principle be created by human agents, general agency cannot be spontaneously produced by a non-general AI agent through an endogenous process. In conclusion, we argue that a common AI scenario, where general agency suddenly emerges in a non-general agent AI, such as DeepMind’s superintelligent board game AI AlphaZero, is not plausible. (shrink)

There is an important but unorthodox view within the philosophy of action that when it comes to certain mental actions of a person—her decisions and choices—these actions cannot be caused by her beliefs and desires or by any prior event or state of her at all. The reason for this, it is said, is that there is something in the very nature of a person’s decisions and choices that entails that they cannot be caused in this way. The arguments for (...) this view, however, have largely gone unexamined. This paper, therefore, critically examines the arguments that have been proposed for this view. It concludes, however, that they are unpersuasive. There is, as yet, no good reason offered as to why we should think that decisions and choices must be uncaused by prior events or states of the agent. (shrink)

Some compatibilists are internalists. On their view, whether an agent is morally responsible for an action depends only on her psychological structure at that time. Other compatibilists are externalists. On their view, an agent’s history can make a difference as to whether or not she is morally responsible. In response to worries about manipulation, some internalists have claimed that compatibilism requires internalism. Recently, Alfred Mele has argued that this internalist response is untenable. The aim of this paper is (...) to vindicate the claim that compatibilism requires internalism, showing where Mele’s argument goes wrong along the way. (shrink)

In search of good -- A Socratic question -- Flourishing and well-being -- Mind and value -- Utilitarianism -- Rawls and the priority of the right -- Right, wrong, should -- The elimination of moral rightness -- Rules and good -- Categorical imperatives -- Conflicting interests -- Whose good? The egoist's answer -- Whose good? The utilitarian's answer - Self-denial, self-love, universal concern -- Pain, self-love, and altruism -- Agent-neutrality and agent-relativity -- Good, conation, and pleasure -- "Good" (...) and "good for" -- "Good for" and advantage -- "Good that" and "Bad that" -- Pleasure and advantage -- Good for S that P -- The "for" of "good for" -- Plants, animals, humans -- Ross on human nature -- The perspectival reading of "good for" -- The conative approach to well-being -- Abstracting from the content of desires and plans -- The faulty mechanisms of desire formation -- Infants and adults -- The conation of an ideal self -- The appeal of the conative theory -- Conation hybridized -- Strict hedonism -- Hedonism diluted -- Prolegomenon to flourishing -- Development and flourishing: the general theory -- Development and flourishing: the human case -- More examples of what is good -- Appealing to nature -- Sensory un-flourishing -- Affective flourishing and un-flourishing -- Hobbes on tranquility and restlessness -- Flourishing and un-flourishing as a social being -- Cognitive flourishing and un-flourishing -- Sexual flourishing and un-flourishing -- Too much and too little -- Comparing lives and stages of life -- Adding goods: Rawls's principle of inclusiveness -- Art, science, and culture -- Self-sacrifice -- The vanity of fame -- The vanity of wealth -- Making others worse-off -- Virtues and flourishing -- The good of autonomy -- What is good and why -- The sovereignty of good -- The importance of what is good for us -- Good's insufficiency -- Promises -- Retribution -- Cosmic justice -- Social justice -- Pure antipaternalism -- Moral space and giving aid -- Slavery -- Torture -- Moral rightness revisited -- Lying -- Honoring the dead -- Meaningless goals and symbolic value -- Good-independent realms of value -- Good thieves and good human beings -- Final thoughts. (shrink)

According to a naïve view sometimes apparent in the writings of moral philosophers, ‘ought’ often expresses a relation between agents and actions – the relation that obtains between an agent and an action when that action is what that agent ought to do. It is not part of this naïve view that ‘ought’ always expresses this relation – on the contrary, adherents of the naïve view are happy to allow that ‘ought’ also has an epistemic sense, on which (...) it means, roughly, that some proposition is likely to be the case, and adherents of the naïve view are also typically happy to allow that ‘ought’ also has an evaluative sense, on which it means, roughly, that were things ideal, some proposition would be the case.1 What is important to the naïve view is not that these other senses of ‘ought’ do not exist, but rather that they are not exhaustive – for what they leave out, is the important deliberative sense of ‘ought’, which is the central subject of moral inquiry about what we ought to do and why – and it is this deliberative sense of ‘ought’ which the naïve view understands to express a relation between agents and actions.2 In contrast, logically and linguistically sophisticated philosophers – with a few notable exceptions3 – have rejected this naïve view. According to a dominant perspective in the interpretation of deontic logic and in linguistic semantics, for example, articulated by Roderick Chisholm (1964) and Bernard Williams (1981) in philosophy and in the dominant paradigm in linguistic semantics as articulated in particular by.. (shrink)

Humans ought to do much more in order to remedy the severe harm caused by climate change. While there seems to be an overall consensus that governments and other national and international political agents need to resolve the problem, there is no agreement yet on the role and responsibility of individuals in this process. In this paper, I suggest an argument of integrity that offers strong pro tanto moral reasons for individuals to reduce their personal greenhouse gas emissions. Hourdequin (2010) (...) has presented an argument of integrity to justify a corresponding obligation. In this paper, I argue that even though Hourdequin’s argument is appealing, it has important limitations. I advance the argument in light of the current literature so that it is not subject to these limitations and establishes an overall more comprehensive justification for why individuals ought to reduce their personal emissions. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to argue that empathy is an intellectual virtue. Empathy enables agents to gain insight into other people’s emotions and beliefs. The agent who possesses this trait is: (i) driven to engage in acts of empathy by her epistemic desires; (ii) takes pleasure in doing so; (iii) is competent at the activity characteristic of empathy; and, (iv) has good judgment as to when it is epistemically appropriate to engage in empathy. After establishing that empathy (...) meets all the necessary conditions to be classified as an intellectual virtue, we proceed to discuss Battaly’s argument according to which empathy is a skill rather than a virtue. We contend, contra Battaly, that the agent who possesses the virtue of empathy: (a) sometimes foregoes opportunities to engage in the activity characteristic of empathy because it is the virtuous thing to do, (b) does not make deliberate errors, and (c) her actions are always ultimately aiming at epistemic goods. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Being a Moral Agent in Shakespeare's ViennaRobert B. PierceIn one sense we are all moral agents because we make decisions that in some degree take account of what we think we should do and what sorts of selves we want to be. But the problem of moral agency as more than just a theoretical set of philosophical issues, as the lived experience of acting morally in a contingent (...) world, is especially acute for those who set out deliberately to try to uphold some moral ideal, for the idealist in that popular sense of the term. In describing moral agency, philosophers may tend to exaggerate the importance of reflective rationality in the human task of being moral, elevating their own habits of mind into the apex of human striving, but at least the experience of the intellectual idealist is of a special kind, and as such it is an endlessly fascinating subject for artistic contemplation in fiction and drama. That interest raises the issue of what kind of text a philosophical play or novel is. Does it constitute a kind of argument for some set of ideas? Does it show how those ideas play out in lived experience? Or are there other possible ways for a text to count as philosophical?One may also ask why Shakespeare is a good subject for such an enquiry. He is not first and foremost a dramatist of ideas. Bernard Shaw and Tom Stoppard, for example, are far more likely to dramatize the encounter of ideas than he; but for a few years after 1599 or so, beginning with the creation of Brutus, Shakespeare seems to have devoted considerable attention to portraying how ideas impinge on the human experience, and especially to studying moral idealists. Leonato may doubt the importance of philosophical moralizing when he protests that "there was never yet philosopher / That could endure the toothache patiently" (Much Ado 5.1.35–36),1 but in Julius Caesar Brutus is determined to cure the toothaches of the Roman political world by the power [End Page 267] of thought and to govern his own life by the precepts of Stoicism. A group of Shakespeare's plays over the next few years are unusually idea-centered for him and are especially concerned with characters who try to apply moral ideas in the world. Hamlet with its intellectual protagonist comes to mind of course, but perhaps the most systematic exploration of idealists trying to live by their ideas is Measure for Measure. Angelo, Isabella, and the Duke set out on that project in a world that the play analytically divides into four environments for their moral testing: the court, the convent, the tavern-brothel, and the prison.The dramatic richness of this topic of practical ethics lies in how terribly difficult it is to live by a morality worthy of respect. Most of us share the admiration for Brutus's idealism in Antony's tribute, "This was the noblest Roman of them all" (5.5.68), but we may also share the irony, even contempt, in the sarcastic catchphrase of his oration, "Brutus is an honorable man" (3.2.84 and following). The tragedy of Brutus's fate emerges from the difficulties of living out any idealism in our tangled and terribly imperfect world. First, moral principles like the categorical imperative and the Golden Rule, admired character traits like constancy and benevolence, even intuitions (or, as it may be, divine inspirations) about duty do not apply themselves automatically and unambiguously to a decision how to act in a specific situation.2 What does treating human beings as ends, not means entail in your quotidian dealings with your wife, your boss, the dealer who sells you a newspaper? Second, rival values may conflict with a good you are trying to uphold. How can you devote yourself to your work and also give your family the love and attention they need? Third, the demands of the ideal may extend past the limits of your will power or even attention. How many teachers are as patient and understanding of the eightieth student paper as of the first? And, finally, living up to an ideal can be painful... (shrink)

In this paper I explore various themes in Alfred Mele's Manipulated Agents: A Window to Moral Responsibility. I develop four points. First, I argue that Mele's historical requirement for moral responsibility for developed morally responsible agents should be coupled with a nonhistorical theory of initially developing agents. Second, I argue that one might resist Mele's negative historical requirement with a minimal positive historical requirement according to which an agent has a history wherein she did not undergo any responsibility-defeating events, (...) like being severely manipulated.Third, I also explore the idea that one who defended a nonhistorical view, such as Harry Frankfurt's, might rely on a different conception of what moral responsibility is. This might explain why some resisting Mele would not have the intuition that in certain cases a manipulated agent is not responsible. Finally, I question how we should think of the role of intuition in thought experiments figuring centrally in Mele's work. (shrink)

According to what I call the reductive standard-causal theory of agency, the exercise of an agent's power to act can be reduced to the causal efficacy of agent-involving mental states and events. According to a non-reductive agent-causal theory, an agent's power to act is irreducible and primitive. Agent-causal theories have been dismissed on the ground that they presuppose a very contentious notion of causation, namely substance-causation. In this paper I will assume, with the proponents of (...) the agent-causal approach, that substance-causation is possible, as I will argue against that theory on the ground that it fails as a theory of agency. I will argue that the non-reductive agent-causal theory fails to account for agency, because it fails to account for agential control: it cannot explain why the stipulated irreducible relation between the agent and an action constitutes the agent's exercise of control over the action. This objection, I will argue, applies to the agent-causal theory in particular, and to the non-reductive approach in general. (shrink)

Christine Korsgaard claims that Gewirth’s argument for morality fails to demonstrate that there is a categorically binding principle on action because it operates with the assumption that reasons for action are essentially private. This attribution is unfounded and Korsgaard’s own argument for moral obligation, in its appeal to Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument to establish that reasons for action are essentially public, is misdirected and unnecessary. Gewirth’s attempt to demonstrate a strictly a priori connection between a moral principle and the concept (...) of being an agent as such is essentially Kantian, and recognizing that the Principle of Hypothetical Imperatives is categorically binding requires Kantians to accept that Gewirth’s Principle of Generic Consistency is the supreme practical principle. (shrink)

In this article I explore ways to argue about punishment of personal representations in virtual reality. I will defend the idea that such punishing might sometimes be morally required. I offer four different lines of argument: one consequentialistic, one appealing to an idea of appropriateness, one using the notion of organic wholes, and one starting from a supposed inability to determine the limits of the extension of the moral agent. I conclude that all four approaches could, in some cases, (...) justify punishing a virtual reality representation; an avatar. As a consequence of my conclusion, I suggest that our institutionalized criminal justice system must be broadened in scope and punitive measures, in order to cover the new and difficult cases arising in virtual reality. (shrink)

Christine Korsgaard claims that Gewirth’s argument for morality fails to demonstrate that there is a categorically binding principle on action because it operates with the assumption that reasons for action are essentially private. This attribution is unfounded and Korsgaard’s own argument for moral obligation, in its appeal to Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument to establish that reasons for action are essentially public, is misdirected and unnecessary. Gewirth’s attempt to demonstrate a strictly a priori connection between a moral principle and the concept (...) of being an agent as such is essentially Kantian, and recognizing that the Principle of Hypothetical Imperatives is categorically binding requires Kantians to accept that Gewirth’s Principle of Generic Consistency is the supreme practical principle. (shrink)

This brief article is concerned with an aspect of Jonathan Glover's book, Alien Landscapes?. After reflecting a little on the book as a whole, the question that is taken up is, ‘Why might a book that seeks to help those without mental disorders understand what they are like “from the inside” be of interest to laymen and practitioners in the criminal law?’. One answer lies in part in the way that ‘what it is like from the inside’ might interact with (...) judgements of criminal responsibility. Taking its cue from examples used by Glover the article considers, and puts pressure on, the ‘dual view’ he proposes: that when dealing with those with mental disorders we should treat them as responsible agents in the sense of not withholding from them Strawson's ‘reactive attitudes’, while nevertheless accepting that their personalities and behaviours are the results of large doses of ‘bad luck’. (shrink)

Decision theory faces a number of problematic gambles which challenge it to say what value an ideal rational agent should assign to the gamble, and why. Yet little attention has been devoted to the question of what an ideal rational agent is, and in what sense decision theory may be said to apply to one. I show that, given one arguably natural set of constraints on the preferences of an idealized rational agent, such an agent is (...) forced to be indifferent among entire families of goods, and hence cannot choose among them. This result illustrates the dangers of speaking of the choices of an ?ideal rational agent? when one does not make precise the exact nature of the idealizing assumptions. The result may also be viewed as providing an upper bound on the kinds of idealizing assumptions which can be made for rational agents, beyond which the very concept of choice becomes attenuated. (shrink)

Determinism is frequently understood as implying the possibility of perfect prediction. This possibility then functions as an assumption in the Manipulation Argument for the incompatibility of free will and determinism. Yet this assumption is mistaken. As a result, arguments that rely on it fail to show that determinism would rule out human free will. We explain why determinism does not imply the possibility of perfect prediction in any world with laws of nature like ours, since it would be impossible for (...) an agent to predict with certainty any future event that is causally influenced by events outside her own backward light cone yet inside the backward light cone of the future event. This is the _light-cone limit_ and it undermines the Manipulation Argument or limits what this argument can tell us about the relevance of determinism to free will. We also respond to objections that the light-cone limit is irrelevant to the Manipulation Argument. (shrink)

An evolutionary case for the existence of free will. Scientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency-or free will-is an illusion. In Free Agents, leading neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents a wealth of evidence to the contrary, arguing that we are not mere machines responding to physical forces but agents acting with purpose. Traversing (...) billions of years of evolution, Mitchell tells the remarkable story of how living beings capable of choice emerged from lifeless matter. He explains how the emergence of nervous systems provided a means to learn about the world, granting sentient animals the capacity to model, predict, and simulate. Mitchell reveals how these faculties reached their peak in humans with our abilities to imagine and to introspect, to reason in the moment, and to shape our possible futures through the exercise of our individual agency. Mitchell's argument has important implications-for how we understand decision making, for how our individual agency can be enhanced or infringed, for how we think about collective agency in the face of global crises, and for how we consider the limitations and future of artificial intelligence.An astonishing journey of discovery, Free Agents offers a new framework for understanding how, across a billion years of Earth history, life evolved the power to choose and why this matters. (shrink)

Should we understand implicit attitudes on the model of belief? I argue that implicit attitudes are (probably) members of a different psychological kind altogether, because they seem to be insensitive to the logical form of an agent’s thoughts and perceptions. A state is sensitive to logical form only if it is sensitive to the logical constituents of the content of other states (e.g., operators like negation and conditional). I explain sensitivity to logical form and argue that it is a (...) necessary condition for belief. I appeal to two areas of research that seem to show that implicit attitudes fail spectacularly to satisfy this condition—although persistent gaps in the empirical literature leave matters inconclusive. I sketch an alternative account, according to which implicit attitudes are sensitive merely to spatiotemporal relations in thought and perception, i.e., the spatial and temporal orders in which people think, see, or hear things. (shrink)