Religious conservatives in the U.S. have frequently opposed public-health measures designed to combat STDs among minors, such as sex education, condom distribution, and HPV vaccination. Using Rawls’s method of conjecture, I will clear up what I take to be a misunderstanding on the part of religious conservatives: even if we grant their premises regarding the nature and source of sexual norms, the wide-ranging authority of parents to enforce these norms against their minor children, and the potential sexual-disinhibition effects of the (...) above public-health measures, their opposition to at least one of these measures, HPV vaccination, cannot be justified. In fact, their comprehensive doctrines, when properly interpreted, should lead them to back this measure and thereby draw closer to a policy consensus with other citizens regarding teenage sexual health. (shrink)

Truth pluralism offers the latest extension in the tradition of substantive theorizing about truth. While various forms of this thesis are available, most frameworks commit to domain reliance. According to domain reliance, various ways of being true, such as coherence and correspondence, are tied to discourse domains rather than individual sentences. From this follows that the truth of different types of sentences is accounted for by their domain membership. For example, sentences addressing ethical matters are true if they cohere and (...) those addressing extensional states of affairs if they correspond. By tying distinct truth-grounding properties to domains rather than individual sentences, truth pluralists avoid certain issues with definitional ambiguity and indeterminacy. I argue that contrary to the ideal situation, domains fail to provide the sought-after benefits of achieving definitional unambiguity and determinacy in the standard domain reliant pluralist frameworks. The reason is that, when combined with the inherently ambiguous nature of certain truth-relevant terms of sentences, fringe cases emerge, causing some of them to count as members of multiple domains. Consequently, some sentences end up being both true and false in the standard domain reliant pluralist frameworks, thus conflicting with both standard laws of non-contradiction and identity. Finally, I argue that truth pluralists should pay closer attention to the hitherto neglected question of inherent natural language ambiguity. (shrink)

ABSTRACTCurrent discourse about higher education focuses on issues like government funding, student debt, and admissions diversity; however, increasing attention is being paid to issues of speech and politics in the university. Alongside a series of events at several institutions, calls for ‘safe space’ on campus have grown familiar. Yet the appropriateness of such spaces on campus is debated. In this article the notion of safety implied in calls for ‘safe space’ is clarified, and three reasons are suggested for (...) supporting such safety pedagogically. A public reason is proposed, which relies on a normative interpretation of publicness as conjoint action. This substantive version of ‘public’ could be considered when assessing the institution’s publicness, rather than typical elements of the university’s nominal publicness. By embracing and ensuring safe space, universities could become sites of public full participation, thus fostering a re-recognition of higher education as a public good. (shrink)

I am writing a mediocre paper on a topic you are not particularly interested in. You don't have, it seems safe to assume, a (normative) reason to read my draft. I then ask whether you would be willing to have a look and tell me what you think. Suddenly you do have a (normative) reason to read my draft. By my asking, I managed to give you the reason to read the draft. What does such reason-giving consist in? And (...) how is it that we can do it? In this paper, I characterize what I call robust reason giving, the kind present in requests. I distinguish it from epistemic and merely triggering reason-giving, I discuss in detail the phenomenology of robust reason-giving, and I offer an analysis of robust reason-giving in terms of the complex intentions of the reason-giver and of the normative background. (shrink)

Phenomenal Conservatism is an ethics of belief that has received considerable support in recent years. One of the main arguments for it is the Self-Defeat Argument. The argument claims that the denial of Phenomenal Conservatism is self-defeating. The argument is at present highly controversial, with both supporters and critics. Critics have failed to discern the real problems with the argument: (I) that there are reasons to deny Phenomenal Conservatism that avoid the self-defeat in question and (II) the conclusion of the (...) Self-Defeat Argument, even if true, is still compatible with our properly denying Phenomenal Conservatism. I spell out these problems in more detail here. (shrink)

Based on fieldwork, this article highlights the unexpected effects of controversies about nanotechnology in France. These controversies stem in particular from a strong challenge to the field by civil society protests and criticism concerning environmental and health risks. One reason for this challenge is the specific difficulties in assessing the toxicity and ecotoxicity of nanomaterials. Civil society organizations have pushed for strictly controlling or stopping academic, industrial, or even basic research. They were not successful in this regard but their activities (...) prompted researchers to think about “safe by design” solutions and this led to new interdisciplinary cooperation. Furthermore, the uncertainty about the risks assessment resulted in a reconfiguration of the relationship between academic research and industrial companies. Researchers have become essential to the shaping of safe products. The risks of nanomaterials have thus been a driving force for new research and innovation practices. (shrink)

This paper offers a new account of the epistemic significance of disagreement which is grounded in two assumptions; that knowledge is the norm of belief and, that the safety condition is a necessary condition for knowledge. These assumptions motivate a modal definition of epistemic peerhood, which is much easier to operate on than the more traditional definitions of epistemic peerhood. The modal account of the epistemic significance of disagreement yields plausible results regarding cases of disagreement. Furthermore, it is able to (...) tap into the intuitions that have motivated the conformist and the nonconformist positions and it locates a fruitful middle-ground between these two conflicting positions. It will be shown that the conformist is correct in that cases of real peer disagreement force us to suspend our judgment. The reason for this is that in cases of real peer disagreement our beliefs fail to be safe. The nonconformist, on the other hand, is right in that disagreement in itself does not have any epistemic power. It is only by the grace of nature that we gain knowledge. The fact that someone disagrees with you does not mean that you do not have knowledge. (shrink)

Until recently, many philosophers took Causal Decision Theory to be more successful than its rival, Evidential Decision Theory. Things have changed, however, with a renewed concern that cases involving an extreme form of decision instability are counterexamples to CDT :392–403, 1984; Egan in Philos Rev 116:93–114, 2007). Most prominent among those cases of extreme decision instability is the Psychopath Button, due to Andy Egan; in that case, CDT recommends a seemingly absurd act that almost certainly results in your death. This (...) renewed attention to decision instability has spurned an array of modifications to and rejections of CDT. I argue, however, that the Psychopath Button and its ilk are no counterexamples to CDT. That is, given the causalist’s commitments in Newcomb Problems, they already have the tools to justify CDT’s verdict in Egan-style cases of extreme decision instability. I first argue that there is no reason to think the Psychopath Button is a counterexample to CDT; in particular, many philosophers have placed too much weight on pre-theoretic intuition in Egan-cases, and apart from pre-theoretic intuition, arguments against CDT in cases of extreme decision instability are flawed. My second claim is that the causalist can provide good reasons for following CDT in cases of extreme decision instability. I present a new case, the Two Button Defense, that highlights precisely why the causalist can reasonably follow CDT in even the Psychopath Button. CDT therefore stands as a viable decision theory, without need for modification, restriction, or rejection. (shrink)

There is currently a stalemate over the correct approach to legal liability. To take a prominent example, it remains a point of contention whether land owners should be held liable for injuries to trespassers. Many of those who insist that land owners should be held liable for injuries to trespassers maintain this for purely economic or pragmatic reasons. In contrast, those on the other side frequently defend their view on the grounds that, in such trespass cases, owners are not morally (...) responsible for the injuries. We maintain that the best way forward for all parties in this debate is to recognize the existence of “morally responsible liability ”—of cases where owners qua owners are morally responsible for damages caused by their property. Once this is recognized, the debate can be framed in terms of whether there are economic or pragmatic reasons for legal liability to diverge from morally responsible liability. Unfortunately, there is no good account of morally responsible liability in the literature. Taking lessons from the failings of the few extant accounts, we draw on the work of A. M. Honoré and Jeremy Waldron to develop an account of our own. We argue that owners are morally responsible for damages caused by their property when and because their taking ownership of something leads to increased risk to others. We explain how and why such increases in risk come about, and how our account captures our intuitions concerning various cases, including those concerning injuries to trespassers. (shrink)

In complex, pluralistic societies, different views concerning the moral duties of healthcare professionals inevitably exist: according to some accounts, doctors can and should cooperate in performing abortion or physician-assisted suicide, while according to others they should always defend human life and protect their patients’ health. It is argued that the very plurality of responses presently given to questions such as these provides a liberal argument in favour of conscientious objection, as an attempt to deal with moral diversity by protecting both (...) the professionals’ claim to moral integrity and the patients’ claim to receive lawful and safe medical treatments. A moderate view on CO is defended, according to which none of these claims can be credited with unconditional value. Claims to CO by healthcare professionals can be justified but must be subjected to a reasonableness standard. Both the incompatibility of CO with the medical profession and its unconditional sanctioning by conscience absolutism are therefore rejected. The paper contributes to the definition of the conditions of such reasonableness, particularly by stressing the role played by conceptions of good medicine in discriminating claims to CO; it is argued that respecting these conditions prevents from having the negative consequences dreaded by critics. The objection according to which accepting the physician’s duty to inform and refer is inconsistent with the professed value of moral integrity is also discussed. (shrink)

Retributive theories of punishment argue that punishing a criminal for a crime she committed is sufficient reason for a justified and morally permissible punishment. But what about when the state gets lucky in its decision to punish? I argue that retributive theories of punishment are subject to “Gettier” style cases from epistemology. Such cases demonstrate that the state needs more than to just get lucky, and as these retributive theories of punishment stand, there is no anti-luck condition. I’ll argue that (...) Gettier-style cases demonstrate an impermissible instance of punishment, even though they meet the conditions of retributive theories of punishment. Retributive theories are, therefore, too weak. The safety condition from epistemology provides the anti-luck condition needed for permissible punishment. I argue that two forms of retributivism, rights-forfeiture and what I call standard retributivism, are both subject to Gettier-style cases. Unlike the literature on standards of proof, this paper argues that safety is a condition on punishment itself, i.e., in all nearby possible worlds, the accuser must correctly accuse the convicted for the crime they actually committed. (shrink)

It is safe to say that the main line of criticism against the reading of Critical Philosophy as Transcendental Semantics is that Kant would be concerned about semantic problems only on Critique of Pure Reason so that such reading would not make sense beyond that work. In this paper, I describe Transcendental Semantics in short words and analyze at length Kant’s theory of concepts on Transcendental Analytic of Critique of Pure Reason in order to make a suggestion: every concept (...) has to attend the demands of Transcendental Semantics to be called a concept in critical sense.A principal linha da crítica contra a leitura da filosofia crítica como semântica transcendental afirma que Kant teria trabalhado sobre problemas semânticos apenas na Crítica da razão pura, assim sendo, não faria sentido ultrapassar esse limite com aquela intepretação. Neste artigo, descrevo a semântica transcendental em poucas palavras e analiso a teoria dos conceitos de Kant na Analítica transcendental da Crítica da razão pura para oferecer a seguinte observação: para atender as demandas da semântica transcendental todo conceito tem de ser chamado de conceito em sentido crítico. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a number of issues related to a life lived with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Primarily, I am interested in discussing how one unwillingly changes their personal identity by forced medicating—demanded by others implicitly and explicitly. My motivation is something deep and invasive in me. I want to know, I have always wanted to know, why others want me to not be Me so badly. I have thought about this question for years, and though others may (...) simply chalk it up to just one of the standard paranoid or narcissistic traits of borderline personality disorder, there is something more to this question that many of us agonize over most of our lives. There is a deeply normative component to this question that extends beyond the mere fear of abandonment; it is tied to a desire by others to erase—literally—who we are for their own comfort. In this sense, then, I invite you to travel along a path of what it can mean to be a BPDer, from a narrative, phenomenological, and cognitive lived, embodied perspective. My purpose is to show that the treatments for us that others desire cannot avoid (and usually do not want to avoid) the unraveling of who we really are. Whether we want to or not, we give up our self to keep other people with us. And for many, this is too much to ask, and can be one, though not the only, reason suicide and self‐harm seem to be necessary recourses. One in 10 people with BPD commit suicide. So this is a serious matter, indeed. (shrink)

Recently, Del Ratzsch proposed a new version of the design argument. He argues that belief in a designer is often formed non-inferentially, much like perceptual beliefs, rather than formed by explicit reasoning. Ratzsch traces his argument back to Thomas Reid (1710-1796) who argues that beliefs formed in this way are also justified. In this paper, I investigate whether design beliefs that are formed in this way can be regarded as knowledge. For this purpose, I look closer to recent scientific (...) study of how design beliefs are formed. I argue that the science strongly suggest that people easily form false beliefs. As a result, design beliefs can only constitute knowledge if subjects have additional reasons or evidence for design. (shrink)

Scott Woodcock has levied a number of objections against Aristotelian naturalism which claims that ethical norms are grounded by reason and biology. His most recent “membership objection” is a synthesis of earlier objections and consists in a trilemma. If Aristotelian naturalists answer the first horn of the trilemma by stipulating that determinations of species-membership are grounded non-empirically, and the second horn of the trilemma by stipulating rationality is species-specific, then they are confronted by a moral outsider—someone who claims that they (...) have non-empirically determined their species membership and are thus guided by different norms of rationality than the rest of us. This permits the moral outsider to act heinously without moral sanction from Aristotelian naturalism. Critics have neglected Alasdair MacIntyre’s Aristotelian naturalism. And he has faced moral-outsider-type counterexamples before. I develop a new response to counterexamples MacIntyre’s account has faced and argue that MacIntyre’s Aristotelian naturalism is able to answer Woodcock’s membership objection. I do this by developing an empirical taxonomy-based approach that enables us to justify the moral outsider’s responsibilities while preserving the best of Aristotelian naturalism. (shrink)

An analysis of phaedo 96c-606c seeks to demonstrate that when forms are cited as either "safe" or "clever" aitiai they are not meant to function as either final or efficient causes, But as logico-Metaphysical essences which have no causal efficacy whatever, But which do have definite (and far-Reaching) implications for the causal order of the physical universe, For it is assumed that a causal statement, Such as "fire causes heat" will be true if, And only if, The asserted physical (...) bond between fire and heat instantiates the eternal and logically necessary relation of entailment between the instantiated forms, Fire, Heat. (shrink)

Cosmology raises novel philosophical questions regarding the use of probabilities in inference. This work aims at identifying and assessing lines of arguments and problematic principles in probabilistic reasoning in cosmology. -/- The first, second, and third papers deal with the intersection of two distinct problems: accounting for selection effects, and representing ignorance or indifference in probabilistic inferences. These two problems meet in the cosmology literature when anthropic considerations are used to predict cosmological parameters by conditionalizing the distribution of, e.g., (...) the cosmological constant on the number of observers it allows for. However, uniform probability distributions usually appealed to in such arguments are an inadequate representation of indifference, and lead to unfounded predictions. It has been argued that this inability to represent ignorance is a fundamental flaw of any inductive framework using additive measures. In the first paper, I examine how imprecise probabilities fare as an inductive framework and avoid such unwarranted inferences. In the second paper, I detail how this framework allows us to successfully avoid the conclusions of Doomsday arguments in a way no Bayesian approach that represents credal states by single credence functions could. -/- There are in the cosmology literature several kinds of arguments referring to self- locating uncertainty. In the multiverse framework, different "pocket-universes" may have different fundamental physical parameters. We don’t know if we are typical observers and if we can safely assume that the physical laws we draw from our observations hold elsewhere. The third paper examines the validity of the appeal to the "Sleeping Beauty problem" and assesses the nature and role of typicality assumptions often endorsed to handle such questions. -/- A more general issue for the use of probabilities in cosmology concerns the inadequacy of Bayesian and statistical model selection criteria in the absence of well-motivated measures for different cosmological models. The criteria for model selection commonly used tend to focus on optimizing the number of free parameters, but they can select physically implausible models. The fourth paper examines the possibility for Bayesian model selection to circumvent the lack of well-motivated priors. (shrink)

After reading Savulescu and colleagues,1 one ought to be in no doubt that human heritable genome editing is a ‘moral imperative’: to cure disease, reduce inequalities, improve public health and protect future generations. They make this argument repeatedly and in no uncertain terms. Yet are they right to do so? I am certainly not against developing HGE or exploring its possibilities. Instead, I aim to sound a cautionary note in relation to claims about its technological potential and how we frame (...) arguments on this basis. The ‘moral imperative’ argument has been made many times, since well before the advent of genome editing, by the present authors and others. It generally rests on a number of preconditions, implicit or explicit: that HGE will be safe, effective, cost-efficient and equitably available. Now, many bioethicists would take no issue with, indeed have supported,5 the proposition that, once all of these conditions are satisfied, HGE is something we have good moral reasons to pursue. At this pivotal moment for global science, ethics and governance, however, we need equally to be concerned with the technology’s immediate future trajectory: whether and how we can reach the point of satisfying these conditions. In this context, the MIA is something of a distraction; at worst, it may even be corrosive and damaging. Consider first the argument from evolutionary fitness, that HGE is morally required to counteract the supposed ‘genetic deterioration’ produced by medically enabled ‘survival of the weak’, that makes …. (shrink)

Plausibility models are Kripke models that agents use to reason about knowledge and belief, both of themselves and of each other. Such models are used to interpret the notions of conditional belief, degrees of belief, and safe belief. The logic of conditional belief contains that modality and also the knowledge modality, and similarly for the logic of degrees of belief and the logic of safe belief. With respect to these logics, plausibility models may contain too much information. A (...) proper notion of bisimulation is required that characterises them. We define that notion of bisimulation and prove the required characterisations: on the class of image-finite and preimage-finite models, two pointed Kripke models are modally equivalent in either of the three logics, if and only if they are bisimilar. As a result, the information content of such a model can be similarly expressed in the logic of conditional belief, or the logic of degrees of belief, or that of safe belief. This, we found a surprising result. Still, that does not mean that the logics are equally expressive: the logics of conditional and degrees of belief are incomparable, the logics of degrees of belief and safe belief are incomparable, while the logic of safe belief is more expressive than the logic of conditional belief. In view of the result on bisimulation characterisation, this is an equally surprising result. We hope our insights may contribute to the growing community of formal epistemology and on the relation between qualitative and quantitative modelling. (shrink)

Plausibility models are Kripke models that agents use to reason about knowledge and belief, both of themselves and of each other. Such models are used to interpret the notions of conditional belief, degrees of belief, and safe belief. The logic of conditional belief contains that modality and also the knowledge modality, and similarly for the logic of degrees of belief and the logic of safe belief. With respect to these logics, plausibility models may contain too much information. A (...) proper notion of bisimulation is required that characterises them. We define that notion of bisimulation and prove the required characterisations: on the class of image-finite and preimage-finite models, two pointed Kripke models are modally equivalent in either of the three logics, if and only if they are bisimilar. As a result, the information content of such a model can be similarly expressed in the logic of conditional belief, or the logic of degrees of belief, or that of safe belief. This, we found a surprising result. Still, that does not mean that the logics are equally expressive: the logics of conditional and degrees of belief are incomparable, the logics of degrees of belief and safe belief are incomparable, while the logic of safe belief is more expressive than the logic of conditional belief. In view of the result on bisimulation characterisation, this is an equally surprising result. We hope our insights may contribute to the growing community of formal epistemology and on the relation between qualitative and quantitative modelling. (shrink)

Some screening tests for donor blood that are used by blood services to prevent transfusion-transmission of infectious diseases offer relatively few health benefits for the resources spent on them. Can good ethical arguments be provided for employing these tests nonetheless? This paper discusses—and ultimately rejects—three such arguments. According to the ‘rule of rescue’ argument, general standards for cost-effectiveness in healthcare may be ignored when rescuing identifiable individuals. The argument fails in this context, however, because we cannot identify beforehand who will (...) benefit from additional blood screening tests. On the ‘imposed risk’ argument, general cost-effectiveness standards do not apply when healthcare interventions impose risks on patients. This argument ignores the fact that imposing risks on patients is inevitable in healthcare and that these risks can be countered only within reasonable limits. Finally, the ‘manufacturing standard’ argument premises that general cost-effectiveness standards do not apply to procedures preventing the contamination of manufactured medical products. We contend that while this argument seems reasonable insofar as commercially manufactured medical products are concerned, publicly funded blood screening tests should respect the standards for general healthcare. We conclude that these particular arguments are unpersuasive, and we offer directions to advance the debate. (shrink)

In the previous chapter, Stephen Levick presents several reasons for thinking that human reproductive cloning would be unacceptable even if it were safe. His main concern is that it is likely to have adverse psychological and social consequences. Levick takes an interesting approach. He discusses five existing situations that are analogous in some respect to human reproductive cloning. In each case he argues that human reproductive cloning is likely to involve either the same or more serious adverse consequences than (...) those associated with the putatively analogous situation. Using analogies is a common method in applied ethics and philosophy. Analogies allow us to think more clearly about situations that are otherwise difficult to imagine, or about which we do not have any empirical information, as in the case of cloning. I will, however, argue that Levick's analogies do not establish the conclusions he wishes to draw from them. (shrink)

Throughout the years, Sosa has taken different views on the safety condition on knowledge. In his early work, he endorsed the safety condition, but later retracted this view when first developing his much discussed virtue epistemology. Recently, Sosa has further developed his virtue theory with the notion of competence and has developed an accompanying, modified safety condition that he maintains is entailed by that theory: the SSS-safety condition. Sosa's view is that this condition holds on both knowledge and action, because (...) both knowledge and action are the manifestations of competence. The SSS-safety condition, roughly, says that if S were to make an attempt at φ-ing under certain specified shape-situation pairs, holding fixed their seat, then S would φ. The argument of this paper is that this new SSS-safety condition does not hold on either knowledge or action. We argue for this conclusion by providing a principled way to generate counter-examples to the condition for both knowledge and action. The reasoning is that there can exist a non-empty symmetric difference between the sets of shape-situation pairs under which distinct agents can manifest their epistemic and pragmatic competences, and if there can exist such a symmetric difference then the SSS-safety condition fails to hold. (shrink)

This article considers whether there is a parental obligation to comply with child health advice which is aimed at the general population and grounded in population-based research. Drawing upon the concept of role obligations, I argue that there is a temptation to use child health advice as a set of rules to which parents are morally obligated to comply, but that this temptation should be resisted. Using the case of Safe Sleep recommendations, designed to reduce the risk of sleep-related (...) infant deaths, I present three reasons for doubting that parents are obligated, as a matter of course, to comply with child health advice. I suggest that, rather than compliance, deliberation about child health advice is obligatory, and that parents should have reasons for not following credible child health advice. (shrink)

Scholars such as Simon (2007; 2004) and Loland (2002) as well as the authors of the World Anti-Doping Code (2001) argue that using performance-enhancing substances is unhealthy and unfairly coercive for other athletes. Critics of the anti-doping position such as Hoberman (1995), Miah et al. (2005) and Tamburrini (2007) are quick to argue that such prohibitions, even though well-intended, constitute an unjustifiable form of paternalism. However, advocates for both of these positions assume that preserving good health and, conversely, avoiding health-related (...) harms, lie at the centre of the debate. Given the apparent stalemate in the debate over the validity of health concerns on performance-enhancing drugs, in this essay, I investigate ethical issues of ‘harm-free’ pharmaceutical performance enhancement. Beginning with the hypothesis that a harm-free performance-enhancing drug may be produced in the future, I ask if there would still be compelling reasons for prohibiting such a drug. I address this question by providing two arguments against allowing athletes to use pharmaceutical performance-enhancing drugs – the damage to the testing and contesting of sport and the loss of internal goods that are intrinsically satisfying. These two arguments taken together, I argue, are sufficient to sustain the prohibition of pharmaceutical performance-enhancing drugs without citing their harmful side effects. (shrink)

Introduction: The paper investigates the impact of the use of metaphors in reasoning tasks concerning vaccination, especially for defeasible reasoning cases. We assumed that both metaphor and defeasible reasoning can be relevant to let people understand vaccination as an important collective health phenomenon, by anticipating possible defeating conditions. -/- Methods: We hypothesized that extended metaphor could improve both the argumentative and the communicative effects of the message. We designed an empirical study to test our main hypotheses: participants (...) (N = 196, 78% females; Meanage = 27.97 years, SDage = 10.40) were presented with a text about vaccination, described in either literal or metaphorical terms, based on uncertain vs. safe reasoning scenarios. -/- Results: The results of the study confirmed that defeasible reasoning is relevant for the communicative impact of a text and that an extended metaphor enhances the overall communicative effects of the message, in terms of understandability, persuasion, perceived safety, and feeling of control over the health situation, collective trust in expertise and uptake of experts' advice. However, the results show that this effect is significantly nuanced by the type of defeasible reasoning, especially in the case of participants' trust in expertise and commitment to experts' advice. -/- Conclusion: Both communicative and defeasible reasoning competences are needed to enhance trust in immunization, with possible different outcomes at an individual and collective level. (shrink)

I am writing a mediocre paper on a topic you are not particularly interested in. You don't have, it seems safe to assume, a (normative) reason to read my draft. I then ask whether you would be willing to have a look and tell me what you think. Suddenly you do have a (normative) reason to read my draft. What exactly happened here? Your having the reason to read my draft – indeed, the very fact that there is such (...) a reason – depends, it seems, on my having asked you to read it. By my asking, I managed to make it the case that you have such a reason, or to give you the reason to read the draft. What does such reason-giving consist in? And how is it that we can do it? In the next section, I distinguish between purely epistemic reason-giving, merely triggering reason-giving, and the kind of reason-giving I will be primarily interested in, the kind presumably involved in requests, which I call robust reasongiving. Then, in section 3, I try to characterize in some detail the intuitive or phenomenological data. I try, in other words, to clarify what it is we want an account of robust reason-giving to accommodate. But at the end of section 3 it remains entirely open whether any possible account in fact satisfies the desiderata elaborated in that section. In section 4 I thus proceed to inquire whether such an account is there to be found. I argue that the only plausible way of making sense of robust reason-. (shrink)

This book argues that a conscientiously objecting medical professional should receive an exemption only if the grounds of an objector's refusal are reasonable. It defends a detailed, contextual account of public reasonability suited for healthcare, which builds from the overarching concept of Rawlsian public reason. The author analyzes the main competing positions and maintains that these other views fail precisely due to their systematic inattention to the grounding reasons behind a conscientious objection; he argues that any such view is plausible (...) to the extent that it mimics the 'reason-giving requirement' for conscience objections defended in this work. Only reasonable objections can defeat the prior professional obligation to assign primacy to patient well-being, therefore one who refuses a patient's request for a legally available, medically indicated, and safe service must be able to explain the grounds of their objection in terms understandable to other citizens within the public institutional structure of medicine. The book further offers a novel policy proposal to deploy the Reasonability View: establishing conscientious objector status in medicine. It concludes that the Reasonability View is a viable and attractive position in this debate. A New Theory of Conscientious Objection in Medicine: Justification and Reasonability will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in bioethics, medical ethics, and philosophy of medicine, as well as thinkers interested in the intersections between law, medical humanities, and philosophy. (shrink)

The culture conveyed by global firms becomes the perfect tool to embody and strengthen the spirit of our time. Nothing is capable of enhancing and strengthening the values of the individual and his passions as the capitalist company. This is why the words and virtues of ‘business’ are becoming the words and virtues of our social life including politics, health care, education, and so on. Merit, efficiency, competition, leadership, incentives and innovation are now the only ‘good’ words of communal life. (...) In the absence of other safe places capable of producing a different culture and values, the virtues of companies present themselves as the only ones to be recognized and cultivated. This essay discusses virtues that, although not considered important by the current business culture, nevertheless are becoming more and more crucial for the survival and growth of organizations. In particular, work-related suffering shows that there are virtues that are not ‘buyable’. This advances a point about the necessity of welcoming vulnerability in work communities to prevent the systematic destruction of its values, creating a global culture of immunity. Conversely, such destruction will eventually lead to the dismantling of most of the world organizations. (shrink)

This essay challenges a growing consensus among Aquinas scholars who attribute to him a pro-passion attitude, linking his virtue theory to accounts of emotion that see the emotions in a primarily positive light. There are good reasons for thinking Aquinas far more skeptical of the role to be played by emotion in the virtuous life—indeed, one can safely argue, in agreement with Aquinas, that the emotions are often threats to and so in need of control by the virtues. I focus (...) on the ideal of reason’s control over the emotions in the essay in contrast with the work of Robert Miner whose understanding of Aquinas on the passions and virtues tends to downplay the dominating role that reason plays in the moral theory of Aquinas. For Aquinas IRC is central to the normativity of the virtues that relate to the emotions. In contrast, Miner appears to minimize the need for the emotions to be controlled, which entails a certain elevation of the emotions to a nearly co-equal status with reason in Aquinas’s moral theory. Miner adopts two argumentative strategies to achieve this valorization of emotion in Aquinas, but I find both exegetically inaccurate and experientially deficient. (shrink)

This research examines how the meaning of risk, safety, and accidents are constructed in a military context. We compare meanings of these constructs among members working for three organizations (Health and Safety Executive, Ministry of Defence, and Royal Marine Commandos) jointly responsible for planning and executing "safe" military training and maneuvres in a particular unit of the United Kingdom's Royal Marine Commandos. The discourse among these members embodies the inter-organizational collaboration over military safety, and through an analysis of this (...) discourse we situate and frame shared and contested meanings of risk, safety, and accidents within this particular community of practice. We discuss implications of these findings for theory and practice, rallying for a more contextualized understanding of what risk, safety, and accidents mean in organizational life and thus the relative nature of the standards to which organizations are expected to adhere. (shrink)

Concepts of ‘public reason’ vary according to the underlying understandings of theoretical and practical reason; they make a difference to what can be argued for in the public sphere as justified expectations to oneself and fellow-citizens. What is the significance for the scope of ethics when two neo-Kantian theorists of public reason, John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, propose a reduced reading of the ‘antinomy’ highlighted in Kant’s analysis of practical reason? The desire for meaning, unrelinquishable for humans, is frustrated when (...) moral initiatives are met with hostility. Kant resolves the antinomy between morality and happiness by invoking the concept of a creator God whose concern that our anticipatory moral actions should not fail encourages the hope on which human agency relies. Defining the scope of ethics by the unconditional character of reason rules out the minimisation of ethics to what can safely be expected to be delivered. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Schaefer et al. proposed to enhance autonomy via improving reasoning abilities through cognitive enhancement [1]. While initially their idea additionally seems to elegantly avoid objections against genetic enhancements based on the value of autonomy, we want to draw attention to several problems their approach poses. First, we will show that it is not at all clear that safe and meaningful methods to genetically or pharmaceutically enhance cognition will be feasible any time soon. Second, we (...) want to provide a deeper discussion of the role of cognition and reasoning abilities in philosophical concepts of autonomy, as discussed in the mentioned paper. In doing so, we wish to demonstrate that using reasoning abilities as the common denominator in different accounts of autonomy in the context of enhancement does not do justice to the highly complex interrelations between cognition, reasoning abilities and autonomy. Neither should this way of arguing be accepted as a basis to call for practical outcomes, such as funding research into e. g. genetic cognitive enhancements, if the examined concepts of autonomy are taken seriously. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Ladder, Volume I: The Pilgrimage of Reason by Henry Silton HarrisLawrence S. StepelevichHenry Silton Harris. Hegel’s Ladder, Volume I: The Pilgrimage of Reason. Pp. xvi+ 658. Volume II: The Odyssey of Spirit. Pp. xiii + 909. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997. Cloth, $150.00, the set.This commentary upon Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is the concentrated result of over three decades of sustained study by one of the most (...) renowned of contemporary Hegelian scholars.The Phenomenology stands in the course of philosophic history as (depending upon one’s point of view) either an opportunity or an obstacle—an unavoidable Sphinx. Both admirers and detractors of this famous work will often assign themselves or, more readily, their students, the task of reading it as a introduction to Hegel’s philosophy. However, what occurs is not usually what is intended. After a short perusal, the reader finds that the Phenomenology itself needs an introduction. This need has not been lost on scholars, and their various introductory observations, when expanded and duly annotated, are entered into the ever-growing list of commentaries upon the Phenomenology. Needless to say, given the hundreds of studies which, either in whole or in part, are devoted to commenting upon this work, there are some grand failures, as Lowenberg’s elegantly vapid Dialogues on the Phenomenology, or Heidegger’s inconclusive “critical debate with Hegel.” There are also a few successes, such as Jean Hyppolite’s Genesis and Structure. Without doubt, Harris’s commentary is a success, and surely the most successful of all Anglophone commentaries upon the Phenomenology. [End Page 473]Hegel’s Ladder, which assumes a learned readership, embarks upon the same long and tortured path facing any reader of the Phenomenology. It is no small thing to follow where one thinks Hegel leads, as he had a somewhat perverse tendency to avoid both clarifying examples and a tendency to, as J. N. Findlay described it, “wanton obscurity.” To make matters worse, there is also the complex ordering of the text itself, a palimpsest character which has led more than a few commentators to take the work as a disorderly juvenalia, best left ignored in favor of the more lucid Encyclopaedia. And finally, there is also the extratextual matter of whether or not one “buys into” Hegel’s thought—which Harris does. In any case, a superficial reading will not do, and readers will be reminded of Hegel’s own “path of despair” when they follow the course of Harris’s 1,500-page commentary. It is not an “easy read,” nor could it be.Professor Harris is well aware of the problems confronting any commentator, but addresses them in an way which would assure the reader that the commentary is directly linked to the text, and does not simply follow “paths of one’s own, offering variations, elaborations, and applications instead of faithful analysis” (xii). To this end, a “logical commentary” is developed, one which follows a serial paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the text. Each paragraph-analysis is referenced to the Phenomenology, which allows the reader a direct reference to Hegel’s own words. These “safe” and constrained analytic paragraphs are each followed by an extensive and free-ranging commentary. The intention of this procedure is not only to assure the reader that Harris’s commentary is textually grounded, but to convince the reader that Harris’s contention regarding the nature of the Phenomenology is correct—that it is a profoundly cohesive and extended logical argument. In short, for Harris, the Phenomenology is exactly what what Hegel claimed it to be: a science of experience. Most commentators have not accepted this claim of either the unity or the logical course of the text, but this “received view” is, for Harris, the “view that I want to challenge and, if possible, to overthrow. If I am right, an acceptably continuous chain of argument, paragraph by paragraph, ought to be discoverable in the text” (xii).In the total context of Hegel’s philosophy, Harris understands the Phenomenology to be the “necessary preamble to speculative logic.” Once this is accepted, then “we ought to know at once, by the simplest of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Ladder, Volume I: The Pilgrimage of Reason by Henry Silton HarrisLawrence S. StepelevichHenry Silton Harris. Hegel’s Ladder, Volume I: The Pilgrimage of Reason. Pp. xvi+ 658. Volume II: The Odyssey of Spirit. Pp. xiii + 909. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997. Cloth, $150.00, the set.This commentary upon Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is the concentrated result of over three decades of sustained study by one of the most (...) renowned of contemporary Hegelian scholars.The Phenomenology stands in the course of philosophic history as (depending upon one’s point of view) either an opportunity or an obstacle—an unavoidable Sphinx. Both admirers and detractors of this famous work will often assign themselves or, more readily, their students, the task of reading it as a introduction to Hegel’s philosophy. However, what occurs is not usually what is intended. After a short perusal, the reader finds that the Phenomenology itself needs an introduction. This need has not been lost on scholars, and their various introductory observations, when expanded and duly annotated, are entered into the ever-growing list of commentaries upon the Phenomenology. Needless to say, given the hundreds of studies which, either in whole or in part, are devoted to commenting upon this work, there are some grand failures, as Lowenberg’s elegantly vapid Dialogues on the Phenomenology, or Heidegger’s inconclusive “critical debate with Hegel.” There are also a few successes, such as Jean Hyppolite’s Genesis and Structure. Without doubt, Harris’s commentary is a success, and surely the most successful of all Anglophone commentaries upon the Phenomenology. [End Page 473]Hegel’s Ladder, which assumes a learned readership, embarks upon the same long and tortured path facing any reader of the Phenomenology. It is no small thing to follow where one thinks Hegel leads, as he had a somewhat perverse tendency to avoid both clarifying examples and a tendency to, as J. N. Findlay described it, “wanton obscurity.” To make matters worse, there is also the complex ordering of the text itself, a palimpsest character which has led more than a few commentators to take the work as a disorderly juvenalia, best left ignored in favor of the more lucid Encyclopaedia. And finally, there is also the extratextual matter of whether or not one “buys into” Hegel’s thought—which Harris does. In any case, a superficial reading will not do, and readers will be reminded of Hegel’s own “path of despair” when they follow the course of Harris’s 1,500-page commentary. It is not an “easy read,” nor could it be.Professor Harris is well aware of the problems confronting any commentator, but addresses them in an way which would assure the reader that the commentary is directly linked to the text, and does not simply follow “paths of one’s own, offering variations, elaborations, and applications instead of faithful analysis” (xii). To this end, a “logical commentary” is developed, one which follows a serial paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of the text. Each paragraph-analysis is referenced to the Phenomenology, which allows the reader a direct reference to Hegel’s own words. These “safe” and constrained analytic paragraphs are each followed by an extensive and free-ranging commentary. The intention of this procedure is not only to assure the reader that Harris’s commentary is textually grounded, but to convince the reader that Harris’s contention regarding the nature of the Phenomenology is correct—that it is a profoundly cohesive and extended logical argument. In short, for Harris, the Phenomenology is exactly what what Hegel claimed it to be: a science of experience. Most commentators have not accepted this claim of either the unity or the logical course of the text, but this “received view” is, for Harris, the “view that I want to challenge and, if possible, to overthrow. If I am right, an acceptably continuous chain of argument, paragraph by paragraph, ought to be discoverable in the text” (xii).In the total context of Hegel’s philosophy, Harris understands the Phenomenology to be the “necessary preamble to speculative logic.” Once this is accepted, then “we ought to know at once, by the simplest of... (shrink)

As Kant claimed in the Groundwork, and as the idea has been developed by Korsgaard 1997, Bratman 1987, and Broome 2002. This formulation is agnostic on whether reasons for ends derive from our desiring those ends, or from the relation of those ends to things of independent value. However, desire-based theorists may deny, against Hubin 1999, that their theory is a combination of a principle of instrumental transmission and the principle that reasons for ends are provided by desires. Instead, they (...) may say, there is just one principle, a principle of, if you will, instrumental transmutation: if one desires the end, then one has reason to take the means. See the discussion of General Production, in section 8, for a doubt about this. (shrink)

The 'no-supervenience' theorem (Reason, 2019; Reason and Shah, 2021) is a proof that no fully self-aware system can entirely supervene on any objectively observable system. I here present a simple, non-technical summary of the proof and demonstrate its implications for four separate theories of consciousness: the 'property dualism' theory of David Chalmers; the 'reflexive monism' of Max Velmans; Galen Strawson's 'realistic monism'; and the 'illusionism' of Keith Frankish. It is shown that all are ruled out in their current form by (...) the no-supervenience theorem, except for Chalmers' theory, which I show requires humans to behave irrationally. (shrink)