I argue that when we use ‘probability’ language in epistemic contexts—e.g., when we ask how probable some hypothesis is, given the evidence available to us—we are talking about degrees of support, rather than degrees of belief. The epistemic probability of A given B is the mind-independent degree to which B supports A, not the degree to which someone with B as their evidence believes A, or the degree to which someone would or should believe A if they had (...) B as their evidence. My central argument is that the degree-of-support interpretation lets us better model good reasoning in certain cases involving old evidence. Degree-of-belief interpretations make the wrong predictions not only about whether old evidence confirms new hypotheses, but about the values of the probabilities that enter into Bayes’ Theorem when we calculate the probability of hypotheses conditional on old evidence and new background information. (shrink)

This article argues in defence of human–robot friendship. I begin by outlining the standard Aristotelian view of friendship, according to which there are certain necessary conditions which x must meet in order to ‘be a friend’. I explain how the current literature typically uses this Aristotelian view to object to human–robot friendships on theoretical and ethical grounds. Theoretically, a robot cannot be our friend because it cannot meet the requisite necessary conditions for friendship. Ethically, human–robot friendships are wrong because they (...) are deceptive, and could also make it more likely that we will favour ‘perfect’ robots, and disrespect, exploit, or exclude other human beings. To argue against the above position, I begin by outlining and assessing current attempts to reject the theoretical argument—that we cannot befriend robots. I argue that the current attempts are problematic, and do little to support the claim that we can be friends with robots now. I then use the standard Aristotelian view as a touchstone to develop a new degrees-of-friendship view. On my view, it is theoretically possible for humans to have some degree of friendship with social robots now. I explain how my view avoids ethical concerns about human–robot friendships being deceptive, and/or leading to the disrespect, exploitation, or exclusion of other human beings. (shrink)

Martin Peterson argues for two interesting and appealing claims: multi-dimensionalism and degrees of rightness. Multi-dimensionalism is the view that more than one factor determines whether an act is right. According to Peterson’s multi-dimensionalism, these factors are not simply ways of achieving some greater aggregate good. Degrees of rightness is the view that some actions are more wrong or less right than others without being entirely wrong. It is of course, compatible with this, that some actions are right or (...) wrong to a maximal degree, or entirely right or wrong. Multi-dimensionalism and degrees are taken to be intertwined. On Peterson’s view, if there were only one dimension, we wouldn’t need degrees; where only one dimension applies, an act is entirely right or entirely wrong. Peterson claims that degrees of rightness or wrongness arise only because there are multi-dimensions, and that an act cannot be entirely right if it is wrong on some dimension. I shall argue against both of these claims. (shrink)

It seems intuitively obvious that what I am doing right now is more real than what I did just one second ago, and it seems intuitively obvious that what I did just one second ago is more real than what I did forty years ago. And yet, remarkably, every philosopher of time today, except for the author, denies this obvious fact about reality. What went wrong? How could philosophers get so far away from what is the most experientially evident fact (...) about reality? (shrink)

There is a debate in philosophy of mind about the nature of reason explanations of action, and this volume is testament to a resurgence of interest in non-causal accounts. In Teleological Realism: Mind, Agency, and Explanation,2 I have proposed a non-causal account according to which common-sense reason explanations of action are irreducibly teleological in form. I claim that we explain behavior by citing the state of affairs towards which the agent was directing her behavior, i. e., by citing the purpose (...) or goal of the behavior. I will not be defending that account of action explanation here, but will be assuming it and applying it to the free will debate. I will argue that the teleological account of action explanation leads to a view of free will with some interesting and attractive features. Philosophical accounts of free will typically propose some sort of criterion for determining which behaviors count as free, e. g., that the agent could have done otherwise, or that the behavior was in accord with the agent’s second-order volitions. The account is then usually used to answer the question of whether we have free will, and especially whether we can have free will even if determinism is true. To test these accounts, philosophers make arguments of various sorts, but the primary method is with cases. Here’s the recipe for an objection to an account of free will: come up with a case where the theory says that the agent is free, but our intuition says that the agent is unfree, or vice versa. I won’t question the method of cases in principle; it’s what we have and it makes some sense. On the picture of analytic philosophy as conceptual analysis, it makes perfect sense. Philosophers put forward a precisely spelled out version of our concept of free will; but if such an account is at odds with firm intuitions in particular cases, then it can’t be what we mean. We know that the situation is not really so simple as that. Our ordinary concept of free will might be messy and not perfectly consistent; accordingly, any particular theory might get a few cases ›wrong‹ as judged by our intuitions.. (shrink)

In his recent book, The Dimensions of Consequentialism, Martin Peterson puts forward a new version of consequentialism that he dubs ‘multidimensional consequentialism’. The defining thesis of the new theory is that there are irreducible moral aspects that jointly determine the deontic status of an act. In defending his particular version of multidimensional consequentialism, Peterson advocates the thesis—he calls it DEGREE—that if two or more moral aspects clash, the act under consideration is right to some non-extreme degree. This goes against the (...) orthodoxy according to which—Peterson calls this RESOLUTION—each act is always either entirely right or entirely wrong. The argument against RESOLUTION appeals to the existence of so-called deontic leaps: the idea is that endorsing RESOLUTION would not give each relevant moral aspect its due in the final analysis. Our paper argues that, contrary to Peterson, all moral aspects remain visible in what can properly be called the final analysis of a moral theory that involves RESOLUTION, moral aspects do not have to remain visible in judgements of all-things-considered rightness or wrongness, respectively, introduction of what Peterson calls verdictive reasons does not change the overall picture in favour of DEGREE. We conclude that multi-dimensional consequentialists should accept RESOLUTION rather than DEGREE. (shrink)

Moral wrongness comes in degrees. On a consequentialist view of ethics, the wrongness of an act should depend, I argue, in part on how much worse the act's consequences are compared with those of its alternatives and in part on how difficult it is to perform the alternatives with better consequences. I extend act consequentialism to take this into account, and I defend three conditions on consequentialist theories. The first is consequentialist dominance, which says that, if an act has (...) better consequences than some alternative act, then it is not more wrong than the alternative act. The second is consequentialist supervenience, which says that, if two acts have equally good consequences in a situation, then they have the same deontic status in the situation. And the third is consequentialist continuity, which says that, for every act and for any difference in wrongness δ greater than zero, there is an arbitrarily small improvement of the consequences of the act which would, other things being equal, not change the wrongness of that act or any alternative by more than δ. I defend a proposal that satisfies these conditions. (shrink)

This paper offers an alternate explanation of cases from the doxastic wronging literature. These cases violate what I call the degree of inquiry right—a novel account of zetetic obligations to inquire when interests are at stake. The degree of inquiry right is a moral right against other epistemic agents to inquire to a certain threshold when a belief undermines one’s interests. Thus, the agents are sometimes obligated to leave inquiry open. I argue that we have relevant interests in reputation, relationships, (...) and the well-being of our social groups. These interests generate obligations against others to “do their homework” before closing inquiry. This alternate account makes better sense of puzzles that accounts of doxastic wronging fall prey to. (shrink)

Common-sense morality divides acts into those that are right and those that are wrong, but it thinks some wrong acts are more seriously wrong than others, for example murder than breaking a promise. If an act is more seriously wrong, you should feel more guilt about it and, other things equal, are more blameworthy for it and can deserve more punishment; more serious wrongs are also more to be avoided given empirical or moral uncertainty. This paper examines a number of (...) different views about what makes for more serious wrongness and considers the possibility that this may be different for acts that violate deontological vs. consequentialist duties. It also asks whether there’s a parallel concept that admits of degrees on the side of rightness, one of being, as we can say, more importantly right. (shrink)

A central question for ontology is the question of whether numbers really exist. But it seems easy to answer this question in the affirmative. The truth of a sentence like ‘Seven students came to the party’ can be established simply by looking around at the party and counting students. A trivial paraphrase of is ‘The number of students who came to the party is seven’. But appears to entail the existence of a number, and so it seems that we must (...) conclude that numbers exist. This is sometimes called the puzzle of how we can get something from nothing. Most extant attempts to solve the puzzle take it for granted that is ontologically innocent, and focus their attention either on or on the transition from to. We argue that both attempts go wrong at the first step: the assumption that is ontologically innocent is undermined by a highly attractive and independently well-motivated degree-based account of number word constructions. Thus the degree-based account provides a straightforward linguistic resolution of the puzzle of how we can get something from nothing. But the paper also has a second aim. The semantics we present treats ‘seven’ as a referring expression that refers to a degree of a certain sort. But what are degrees? We consider various anti-platonist proposals that seek to account for degrees in terms of relations between concrete entities, and argue that they are incompatible with the Universal Density of Measurement hypothesis of Fox and Hackl. While the UDM cannot yet claim to be the consensus view among degree-based semanticists, our aim is to use it to illustrate how views about the nature of degrees can be evaluated by considering the properties degrees must have if they are to play the explanatory roles they are called upon to play in linguistics. In the present state of development of degree-based semantics there are difficult open questions about what these properties are. These questions need to be addressed if we are to develop a clear picture of what natural language semantics has to contribute to ontology and metaphysics. (shrink)

People react negatively not only to injustices they personally endure but also to injustices that they observe as bystanders at work—and typically, people observe more injustices than they personally experience. It is therefore important to understand how organizations can restore observers’ perceptions of justice after an injustice has occurred. In our paper, we employ a policy capturing design to test and compare the restorative power of monetary compensation, procedure changes and apologies, alone and in combination, from the perspective of third (...) parties. We extend previous research on remedies by including different degrees of compensation and procedural changes, by comparing the effects of sincere versus insincere apologies and by including apologies from additional sources. The results indicate that monetary compensation, procedure changes, and sincere apologies all have a significant and positive effect on how observers perceive the restoration of justice. Insincere apologies, on the other hand, have no significant effect on restoration for third parties. Procedural changes were found to have the strongest remedial effects, a remedy rarely included in previous research. One interpretation of this finding could be that observers of injustice prefer solutions that are not short sighted: changing procedures avoids future injustices that could affect other people. We found that combinations of remedies, such that the presence of a second remedy strengthens the effect of the first remedy, are particularly effective. Our findings regarding interactions underline the importance of studying and administering remedies in conjunction with each other. (shrink)

Common-sense morality divides acts into those that are right and those that are wrong, but it thinks some wrong acts are more seriously wrong than others, for example murder than breaking a promise. If an act is more seriously wrong, you should feel more guilt about it and, other things equal, are more blameworthy for it and can deserve more punishment; more serious wrongs are also more to be avoided given empirical or moral uncertainty. This paper examines a number of (...) different views about what makes for more serious wrongness and considers the possibility that this may be different for acts that violate deontological vs. consequentialist duties. It also asks whether there’s a parallel concept that admits of degrees on the side of rightness, one of being, as we can say, more importantly right. (shrink)

A prominent view of psychopathic moral reasoning suggests that psychopathic individuals cannot properly distinguish between moral wrongs and other types of wrongs. The present study evaluated this view by examining the extent to which 109 incarcerated offenders with varying degrees of psychopathy could distinguish between moral and conventional transgressions relative to each other and to nonincarcerated healthy controls. Using a modified version of the classic Moral/Conventional Transgressions task that uses a forced-choice format to minimize strategic responding, the present study (...) found that total psychopathy score did not predict performance on the task. Task performance was explained by some individual subfacets of psychopathy and by other variables unrelated to psychopathy, such as IQ. The authors conclude that, contrary to earlier claims, insufficient data exist to infer that psychopathic individuals cannot know what is morally wrong. (shrink)

This paper takes up the question of whether the consequences of a person’s volitional actions can contribute to their blameworthiness. On the one hand it is intuitively plausible to hold that if D1 volitionally shoots V with the intention of killing V then D1 is blameworthy for V’s death. On the other hand, if the only difference between D1 and D2 is resultant luck, many find it counter-intuitive to hold that D1 is more blameworthy than D2. There are three broad (...) (non-skeptical) strategies for resolving this tension: accept resultant moral luck, deny that one can be morally responsible for outcomes, or accept that outcomes can be within the scope of things one is morally responsible for while denying that they can affect the degree of blameworthiness. This paper aims to defend resultant moral luck against both the scoping and the internalist strategies by drawing on an “inclusive conception” of blameworthiness, according to which how much blame one deserves is a function of two independent variables: the wrongfulness of the offense and the offender’s degree of moral responsibility. The view defended here holds that consequences affect degree of blameworthiness by affecting the wrongfulness of that for which one is being blamed. (shrink)

I offer ten arguments to demonstrate why student plagiarism is unethical. In sum, plagiarism may be theft; involve deception that treats professors as a mere means; violate the trust upon which the professor-student relationship depends; be unfair to other students in more than one way; diminish the student’s education; indulge vices such as indolence and cowardice; foreclose access to the internal goods of the discipline; diminish the value of a university degree; undercut creative self-expression and acceptance of epistemic limitations; and (...) undermine the vital interpersonal component of higher education. Plagiarism warrants severe penalties that effectively combat the student’s presumptive competitive strategy for individual success. (shrink)

A network sample of 162 employees from across the U.S. was studied to assess the relationship between individual spirituality and perceptions of unethical business activities. Analyses indicate that degree of individual spirituality influences whether an individual perceives a questionable business practice as ethical or unethical. Ramifications of these findings regarding the role of spirituality in enhancing workplace ethicality, as well as directions for future research, are discussed.

I offer ten arguments to demonstrate why student plagiarism is unethical. In sum, plagiarism may be theft; involve deception that treats professors as a mere means; violate the trust upon which the professor-student relationship depends; be unfair to other students in more than one way; diminish the student’s education; indulge vices such as indolence and cowardice; foreclose access to the internal goods of the discipline; diminish the value of a university degree; undercut creative self-expression and acceptance of epistemic limitations; and (...) undermine the vital interpersonal component of higher education. Plagiarism warrants severe penalties that effectively combat the student’s presumptive competitive strategy for individual success. (shrink)

The death of a person is a tragedy while the explosion of a lifeless galaxy is a mere firework. The moral difference is grounded in the nature of humans: humans have intrinsic worth, a worth that makes their fate really matter. This is the worth proposed as the foundation of ethics. Ethics in the usual sense of right and wrong actions, rights and virtues, and how to live a good life, is founded on something more basic that is not itself (...) about actions, namely the worth of persons. Human moral worth arises from certain properties that distinguish humans from the rest of creation (though some animals share a lesser degree of those properties): rationality, consciousness, the ability to act for reasons, emotional structure and love, individuality. This complex package makes humans the "piece of work" of which Hamlet says, “How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty." The Worth of Persons establishes a foundation for ethics in the equal worth of persons, which makes ethics absolutely objective and immune to relativist attacks because it is based on the metaphysical truth about humans. Endless debate about ethical dilemmas, rules, and principles fails to connect with what is really important ethically, that is, what makes humans matter. (shrink)

The aim of this investigation is to answer the question of why it is prima facie morally wrong to cause or contribute to the extinction of species. The first potential answer investigated in the book is that other species are instrumentally valuable for human beings. The results of this part of the investigation are that many species are instrumentally valuable for human beings but that not all species are equally valuable in all cases. The instrumental values of different species also (...) have to compete with other human values. Sometimes these other values probably outweigh the value of the continued existence of the species. In general the degree of uncertainty is very high and the precautionaty principle is recommended to deal with these uncertainties. We also found that we have a duty to consider the interests of future generations of human beings and that these duties, in general, speak in favour of preservation. Anthropocentric instrumentalism therefore provides us with rather strong reasons to consider many cases of human caused extinction as prima facie morally wrong. Even so, anthropocentric instrumentalism does not fully account for the moral intuition we set out to investigate. The next potential answer that is investigated in the book is that species have a moral standing in their own right. The result of this part of the investigation is that this idea is highly unlikely, in particular because species cannot have any interests to consider. Anotgher potential answer is that species have intrinsic value in some other meaning that does not imply moral standing. We concluded that it is possible to be subjectively valued as an end and that many species have properties that make them highly suitable for being valued as ends by human beings. Finally, we found that our contributions to the extinction of species in most cases frustrate the interests of many non-human sentient beings. This is true if the species in question is made up of sentient individuals, and it is also true when the species in question is made up of non-sentient individuals that have instrumental value for sentient individuals of other species. There are exceptions to this rule, but all in all it seems that the inclusion of non-human sentient individuals together with us humans as moral objects, in most cases, tip the scale drastically in favour of preservation. The main result of the investigation is that there is not one but several explanations to why it is prima facie morally wrong to contribute to the extinction of species – and all of them are about duties to respect the interests of individual sentient animals, including human beings. (shrink)

I consider Kant’s use of claims about “nature’s ends” in his arguments to establish maxims of homosexual sex, masturbation, and bestiality as constituting “unnatural” sexual vices, which are contrary to one’s duties to oneself as an animal and moral being. I argue, first, that the formula of humanity is the principle best suited for understanding duties to oneself as an animal and moral being; and second, that although natural teleology is relevant to some degree in specifying these duties, it cannot (...) play a sufficiently robust role to establish Kant’s conclusion. I also discuss what the formula of humanity (along with warranted attention to natural teleology) suggests about the morality of homosexual sex, masturbation, and bestiality. (shrink)

The master narrative of Apartheid South Africa created a specific identity for white boys and men and, together with this identity, a very particular role and place within the South African context. This identity was exemplified in the men who were conscripted into the military from 1967 until 1994, and who participated in operations on the border regions of Namibia and Angola as well as within local townships in the war of liberation against apartheid and minority rule. Many veterans have (...) been left grappling not only with the traumas associated with combat but also with the loss of their identities as war heroes in a country under changed political control. As a result, many of their personal stories and experiences of combat have been silenced by society at large and also, to varying degrees, within their own families, the Church, and among the younger generation who have grown up under a different dispensation. The conflict between vacillating narratives of villains who fought on the wrong side of history and victims of a closed socialisation system has supported the identity struggle faced by many veterans today. Against this backstory, this article explores the effects of storytelling as a trauma release using a narrative approach.Contribution: This article offers a contribution to the use of storytelling in pastoral conversations as a trauma release for untold stories. This insight links to the focus and scope of the journal as a pastoral narrative approach has been used under the umbrella of Practical Theology. (shrink)

The debate over the civilian use of nuclear power is highly polarised. We argue that a reasonable response to this deep disagreement is to maintain that advocates of both camps should modify their positions. According to the analysis we propose, nuclear power is neither entirely right nor entirely wrong, but rather right and wrong to some degree. We are aware that this non-binary analysis of nuclear power is controversial from a theoretical point of view. Utilitarians, Kantians, and other moral theorists (...) make sharp, binary distinctions between right and wrong acts. However, an important argument speaking in favour of our non-binary analysis is that it better reflects our considered intuitions about the ethical trade-offs we face in discussions of nuclear power. The aim of this article is to make this argument sharp by explaining how it can be rendered compatible with, and supported by, the Capability Approach, which is quickly becoming one of the most influential frameworks for thinking about human development. (shrink)

Michael Blake holds that liberal states are precluded from introducing compulsory medical service to improve access to health care under conditions of critical health worker shortage. "Emergency circumstances" are the only exception when the suspension of liberty may be justified. I argue that there are three problems with Blake's emergency justification of compulsory service. First, his concept of emergency is vague. Second, his account does not really rely on emergency as much as liberty. Third, his conception of permissible restrictions of (...) liberty is too narrow. I argue that liberties may be limited to some degree, temporarily, for the sake of attaining the capacities necessary for the exercise of liberties and for safeguarding the social conditions of the right to health. I conclude that in poor societies, temporarily delaying emigration through a highly qualified compulsory medical service can sometimes be justified. (shrink)

In a rational system defences should interlock with the elements of the offence to ensure that conviction labels are differentiated according to the defendant’s degree of wrongdoing and culpability. The overall grading structure of criminal homicide, as represented in contemporary doctrine, goes some way to reflect this ethic. But the substance lacks precision and, in some key details, moral coherence. The recent Law Commission Consultation Paper, in a pragmatic and sensible attempt to rid the law and procedure of murder of (...) the malign influence of the mandatory sentence, has unnecessarily compromised such structural coherence as it currently enjoys and which could properly form a satisfactory basis for reform already precise and morally coherent. This is evident both in relation to the abandonment of the attack based template for the fault element in murder, and also in the unwillingness to view the partial defences as affecting the wrong in homicide as opposed to the grade. (shrink)

We argue against Thomson’s view that abortion is permissible even if fetuses have high moral status. Against this, we argue that, because many mothers are morally responsible for their pregnancies, they have a special obligation to assist. Finally, we address an objection according to which many mothers whose pregnancies are not a product of rape are not morally responsible to a sufficient degree, and so an obligation to assist is not generated. This objection assumes that the force of the mother’s (...) right to bodily integrity is not diminished if she is insufficiently morally responsible. We challenge this assumption. Our complete thesis is as follows: If a mother is morally responsible to a sufficient degree, she acquires an obligation to assist. If she is not, the force of her right to bodily integrity may be reduced. (shrink)

Can AI developers be held epistemically responsible for the processing of their AI systems when these systems are epistemically opaque? And can explainable AI (XAI) provide public justificatory reasons for opaque AI systems’ outputs? Koskinen (2024) gives negative answers to both questions. Here, I respond to her and argue for affirmative answers. More generally, I suggest that when considering people’s uncertainty about the factors causally determining an opaque AI’s output, it might be worth keeping in mind that a degree of (...) uncertainty about conclusions is inevitable even in entirely human-based empirical science because in induction there’s always a risk of getting it wrong. Keeping this in mind may help appreciate that requiring full transparency from AI systems before epistemically trusting their outputs might be unusually (and potentially overly) demanding. (shrink)

'The unconsidered life is not worth living' - Socrates. Thinking about life, what it means and what it holds in store does not have to be a despondent experience, but rather can be enlightening and uplifting. A life truly worth living is one that is informed and considered so a degree of philosophical insight into the inevitabilities of the human condition is inherently important and such an approach will help us to deal with real personal dilemmas. This book is an (...) accessible, lively and thought-provoking series of linked commentaries, based on A. C. Grayling's 'The Last Word' column in the Guardian. Its aim is not to persuade readers to accept one particular philosophical point of view or theory, but to help us consider the wonderful range of insights which can be drawn from an immeasurably rich history of philosophical thought. Concepts covered include courage, love, betrayal, ambition, cruelty, wisdom, passion, beauty and death. This will be a wonderfully stimulating read and act as an invaluable guide as to what is truly important in living life, whether facing success, failure, justice, wrong, love, loss or any of the other profound experience life throws out. (shrink)

This paper argues that certain central tenets of the traditional theory of the just war cannot be correct. It then advances an alternative account grounded in the same considerations of justice that govern self-defense at the individual level. The implications of this account are unorthodox. It implies that, with few exceptions, combatants who fight for an unjust cause act impermissibly when they attack enemy combatants, and that combatants who fight in a just war may, in certain circumstances, legitimately target noncombatants (...) who bear a significant degree of moral responsibility for a wrong, when the prevention or rectification of that wrong constitutes a just cause for war. (shrink)

Humanoid robots used for sexual purposes are beginning to look increasingly lifelike. It is possible for a user to have a bespoke sexbot created which matches their exact requirements in skin pigmentation, hair and eye colour, body shape, and genital design. This means that it is possible—and increasingly easy—for a sexbot to be created which bears a very high degree of resemblance to a particular person. There is a small but steadily increasing literature exploring some of the ethical issues surrounding (...) sexbots, however sexbots made to look like particular people is something which, as yet, has not been philosophically addressed in the literature. In this essay I argue that creating a lifelike sexbot to represent and resemble someone is an act of sexual objectification which morally requires consent, and that doing so without the person’s consent is intrinsically wrong. I consider two sexbot creators: Roy and Fred. Roy creates a sexbot of Katie with her consent, and Fred creates a sexbot of Jane without her consent. I draw on the work of Alan Goldman, Rae Langton, and Martha Nussbaum in particular to demonstrate that creating a sexbot of a particular person requires consent if it is to be intrinsically permissible. (shrink)

What's wrong with joining corona parties? In this article, I defend the idea that reasons to avoid such parties come in degrees. I approach this issue from a participation-based perspective. Specifically, I argue that the more people are already joining the party, and the more likely it is that the virus will spread among everyone, the stronger the participation-based reason not to join. In defense of these degrees, I argue that they covary with the expression of certain attitudes.

This paper argues that certain central tenets of the traditional theory of the just war cannot be correct. It then advances an alternative account grounded in the same considerations of justice that govern self-defense at the individual level. The implications of this account are unorthodox. It implies that, with few exceptions, combatants who fight for an unjust cause act impermissibly when they attack enemy combatants, and that combatants who fight in a just war may, in certain circumstances, legitimately target noncombatants (...) who bear a significant degree of moral responsibility for a wrong, when the prevention or rectification of that wrong constitutes a just cause for war. (shrink)

Singer and Regan predicate their arguments -- for ethical vegetarianism, against animal experimentation, and for an end to animal exploitation generally -- on the equal considerability premise (EC). According to (EC), we owe humans and sentient nonhumans exactly the same degree of moral considerability. While Singer's and Regan's conclusions follow from (EC), many philosophers reject their arguments because they find (EC)'s implications morally repugnant and intuitively unacceptable. Like most people, you probably reject (EC). Never the less, you're already committed to (...) the mere considerability premise -- the premise that sentient nonhuman animals deserve some moral consideration, although not as much consideration as that owed humans. I argue that the mere considerability premise entails that vegetarianism is morally obligatory in most contexts and that animal experimentation is almost always wrong. Since you accept the mere considerability premise, you are already rationally committed to the immorality of eating meat and the wrongfulness of most animal experimentation. Hence, moral consistency requires that you stop eating meat and stop purchasing products tested on animals. (shrink)

In Morals From Motives, Michael Slote defends an agent-based theory of right action according to which right acts are those that express virtuous motives like benevolence or care. Critics have claimed that Slote’s view— and agent-based views more generally— cannot account for several basic tenets of commonsense morality. In particular, the critics maintain that agent-based theories: (i) violate the deontic axiom that ought implies can , (ii) cannot allow for a person’s doing the right thing for the wrong reason, and (...) (iii) do not yield clear verdicts in a number of cases involving conflicting motives and motivational over-determination . In this paper I develop a new agent-based theory of right action designed to avoid the problems presented for Slote’s view. This view makes morally right action a matter of expressing an optimal balance of virtue over vice and commands agents in each situation to improve their degree of excellence to the greatest extent possible. (shrink)

This paper examines whether the prospect of compensation may render otherwise disproportionate harms proportionate. It argues that we should reject this possibility. Instead, it distinguishes duties of compensation as a requirement of rectificatory justice from a harm’s degree of compensability, and argues that only the latter is relevant to proportionality. On this view, failing to compensate constitutes a distinct wrong, while harms that are not adequately compensable carry extra weight in proportionality calculations. This explains how the prospect of compensation affects (...) permissions to harm, without relying on the dubious assumption that disproportionate harms may be rendered proportionate by future compensation. (shrink)

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that “the good [that] men do separately is small compared with what they may do collectively” (Isaacson 2004). The ability to join with others in groups to accomplish goals collectively that would hopelessly overwhelm the time, energy, and resources of individuals is indeed one of the greatest assets of our species. In the history of humankind, groups have been among the greatest workers, builders, producers, protectors, entertainers, explorers, discoverers, planners, problem-solvers, and decision-makers. During the late 19th (...) and early 20th century, many social scientists employed the notorious “group mind” idiom to express the sensible idea that groups can function as the seats of cognition, intelligence, and agency in their own right (Allport 1968; Wilson 2004). In their quest to stress (rightly) that group phenomena are something “over and above” the sum of individual contributions, a fondness for vitalist metaphors led them to believe (wrongly) that genuine group cognition must be the result of tapping into individualistically inaccessible, “holistic” forces. Today, inspired in part by historically unparalleled forms of mass collaboration enabled by the internet, it has once again become popular to speak of collective intelligence, group agency, or even the emergence of a “global brain” (cf. the wiki-edited MIT Handbook of Collective Intelligence). -/- In this chapter, I review some contemporary developments of the idea of group cognition, defined broadly as the collaborative performance of cognitive tasks such as remembering, problem-solving, decision-making, or verbal creativity for the purpose of producing a group-level outcome. My discussion serves a two-fold purpose. First, by discussing how the idea of group cognition can be operationalized, I seek to show that we can retain some central theoretical insights of the “group mind” thesis without succumbing to its eccentric metaphysical overtones. Second, by providing a useful array of generalizable taxonomic resources, I hope to foster greater degrees of mutual awareness among insufficiently integrated areas of research on group performance. (shrink)

A growing number of philosophers are concerned with the epistemic status of culturally nurtured beliefs, beliefs found especially in domains of morals, politics, philosophy, and religion. Plausibly, worries about the deep impact of cultural contingencies on beliefs in these domains of controversial views is a question about well-foundedness: Does it defeat well-foundedness if the agent is rationally convinced that she would take her own reasons for belief as insufficiently well-founded, or would take her own belief as biased, had she been (...) nurtured in a different psychographic community? This chapter will examine the proper scope and force of this epistemic location problem. It sketches an account of well and ill-founded nurtured belief based upon the many markers of doxastic strategies exhibiting low to high degrees of inductive risk: the moral and epistemic risk of ‘getting it wrong’ in an inductive context of inquiry. (shrink)

As one of the tools used to express feelings and thoughts, music has been utilised by people in many fields throughout history. Music is seen as a means of expressing religious feelings, being used as an educational tool, as a way for military bands to invoke heroic feelings in soldiers, and as way of expressing emotions in joyful and melancholic days. Music was especially born and shaped by rituals of religious origin. With the spread of the religion of Islam, music (...) became an issue that paved the way for many religious discussions. It should be clearly noted that while many verses in the Qur'an are cited as a source for these discussions, it is very difficult to deduce from these verses whether music is halal (permissible) or haram (prohibited). Additionally, many permissible matters in Islam become prohibited when used maliciously or out of their intended purpose, however, if everything that has a possibility of being used maliciously or outside of its intended purpose is considered haram, this will lead to a path of denying many blessings that Allah has bestowed upon people in this world. Restricting issues out of the possibility of their wrongful misuse and depriving others of this blessings cannot be just. Nevertheless, although the discussion of music as permissible or prohibited has largely existed within the religion of Islam, those involved with Tasawwuf (Islamic Mysticism), also known as Sufis, have generally perceived music as nutrient for the soul. Consequently, Sufis have incorporated music into their worship in order to invoke religious feelings over the centuries. Religious music is divided into two; the first is Mosque Recitations, and the second is Tekke music (also known as Tasawwuf Music). Mosque Recitation is that which is performed without instrumentals using only vocals and an improvised approach. On the other hand, Tekke music is performed with an instrument and a composed written piece. Within the Mosque Recitation is the Qur’an recitation, which when read in accordance with its rules has a natural phonetic style, meaning that when the Qur’an is recited according to the Maqam (Melodic modes of recitation) requirements, it evokes spiritual feelings to the listeners. Accordingly, there is a connection between the recitation of the Qur'an and the scientific understanding of music. When a connection between the Qur’an and disciplined recitation is established, this causes an artistic sensation to the listener, which experts in the field have name “Fem-i Muhsin”.Hafız (a title used for a person who has memorised the Qur’an in its entirety) Bekir Sıdkı Sezgin is one of the important musicians to have left his mark on Turkish music, where a discipline was formed after him. He has a very high status due to the value he gave to Turkish music as he became one of the leading names in Turkish music, especially considering the large yet unknown number of students that he personally trained. Hafız Bekir states in interviews that he especially owed his success in the science of music to the Qur'an education he received at a young age, and he emphasises that those who are on the way to becoming good musicians must receive a Qur'an education; additionally, because classical Turkish music lyrics are Arabic and Persian, he argues that the way to correctly pronounce these lyrics is to also know Ottoman Turkish to a high degree. Hafız Bekir was also able to recite the Qur'an to a degree of perfection and was proud of being a Hafız, where he believed that the Qur'an harmonised between his memory and excellent musical knowledge. Hafız Bekir recited the Qur’an according to the suitable Istanbul Maqam of reading, and by using the Maqam befitting the Qur’an recitation, Hafız Bekir was able to take the listeners on a spiritual journey.A survey of the works produced about Hafız Bekir shows that although there have been many theses, articles, and interviews published about him, there is no specific study on his Qur’an recitation according to the Istanbul Maqam style. In this study, Hafız Bekir’s dual identity as both a musician and Qur’an Hafız is underlined as a way to contribute to the field by revealing this side of Hafız Bekir, and also examining the Qur'an education that he recommends to his students. The recitation of verses 189-194 of the chapter Âli İmrân, which Hafız Bekir recited in the Istanbul Maqam style, is notated with the Mus notation system, and analysed according to the Maqam reading style. The notation is formed based on a sensory evaluation with assistance from experts in the field. This study, as a musical analysis, was produced to reveal the importance of this subject to interested parties. (shrink)

It is common to focus on the duties of the wrongdoer in cases that involve injustice. Presumably, the wrongdoer owes her victim an apology for having wronged her and perhaps compensation for having harmed her. But, these are not the only duties that may arise. Are other beneficiaries of an injustice permitted to retain the fruits of the injustice? If not, who becomes entitled to those funds? In recent years, the Connection Account has emerged as an influential account that purports (...) to explain cases such as Embezzlement. This account holds that benefiting from injustice can give rise to a corrective duty - that is, a duty of compensation - owed specifically to the victim of the injustice from which the recipient benefits. This duty is grounded in the connection between the victim and the beneficiary of a given injustice. This paper has two aims. First, I show that we must reject the Connection Account on the grounds that it risks failing correctly to identify those who become entitled to the fruits of injustice. I achieve this by developing and defending the fairness objection. Second, I offer an alternative account: the Moral Taintedness Account. This account states that, when identifying who is entitled to the fruits of injustice, the cause and the degree of the harm suffered by a victim are both relevant considerations, though it does not matter whether the victim is the victim of the injustice that gave rise to the fruits in question. This account avoids the problem associated with the Connection Account, and yields intuitive conclusions in an important range of test cases. (shrink)

According to pragmatic encroachment, whether an epistemic attitude towards p has some positive epistemic status (e.g., whether a belief is epistemically rational or justified, or it amounts to knowledge) partially depends on practical factors such as the costs of being wrong or the practical goals of the agent. Pragmatic encroachment comes in many varieties. This survey article provides an overview of different kinds of pragmatic encroachment. It focuses on three dimensions under which kinds of pragmatic encroachment differ: the type of (...) epistemic status affected by practical factors, the type of practical factors affecting the epistemic status, and the type of normative considerations encroaching on the epistemic status. (shrink)

This article questions the traditional view that moral rightness and wrongness are discrete predicates with sharp boundaries. I contend that moral rightness and wrongness come in degrees: Some acts are somewhat rightandsomewhat wrong. My argument is based on the assumption that meaning tracks use. If an overwhelming majority of competent language users frequently say that some acts are a bit right and a bit wrong, this indicates that rightness and wrongnessaregradable concepts. To support the empirical part of the argument (...) I use the tools of experimental philosophy. Results from three surveys (n= 715, 578, and 182) indicate that respondents userightandwrongas gradable terms to approximately the same extent as color terms, meaning that rightness and wrongness come in degrees roughly as much as colors do. In the largest study, only 4 percent persistently usedrightandwrongas non-gradable terms. (shrink)

If there is something (P) that every possible agent is committed to value, and certain actions or attitudes either enhance or diminish P, then normative claims about a range of intentional actions can be objectively and non-trivially evaluated. I argue that the degree of existence as an agent depends on the consistency of reflexive-relating with other individuals of the agent-kind: the ontological thesis. I then show that in intending to act on a reason, every agent is rationally committed to value (...) ‘above all else’ being an agent, what consists in exercising the capacity to act and having the freedom to discriminate between more or less valuable actions: the transcendental thesis. Since the degree of possession of this personal but non-contingent good depends on relating to other agents in a special way, certain actions and attitudes may be objectively right or wrong for all agents. (shrink)

In this paper, I present and defend a novel account of doubt. In Part 1, I make some preliminary observations about the nature of doubt. In Part 2, I introduce a new puzzle about the relationship between three psychological states: doubt, belief, and confidence. I present this puzzle because my account of doubt emerges as a possible solution to it. Lastly, in Part 3, I elaborate on and defend my account of doubt. Roughly, one has doubt if and only if (...) one believes one might be wrong; I argue that this is superior to the account that says that one has doubt if and only if one has less than the highest degree of confidence. (shrink)

This paper investigates a certain puzzling argument concerning number expressions and their meanings, the Easy Argument for Numbers. After finding faults with previous views, I offer a new take on what’s ultimately wrong with the Argument: it equivocates. I develop a semantics for number expressions which relates various of their uses, including those relevant to the Easy Argument, via type-shifting. By marrying Romero ’s :687–737, 2005) analysis of specificational clauses with Scontras ’ semantics for Degree Nouns, I show how to (...) extend Landman ’s Adjectival Theory to numerical specificational clauses. The resulting semantics can explain various contrasts observed by Moltmann, but only if Scontras’ contention that degrees and numbers are sortally distinct is correct. At the same time, the Easy Argument can establish its intended conclusion only if numbers and degrees are mistakenly assumed to be identical. (shrink)

All morally wrong actions deserve some form of moral condemnation. But the degree of that condemnation is not the same in all cases. Some wrongs are so morally extreme that they seem to belong to a different category because they deserve our very strongest form of moral condemnation. For example, telling a white lie to make a friend feel better might be morally wrong, but intuitively such an act is in a different moral category to the sadistic, brutal, and violent (...) rape and torture of a child. The former act is merely wrong and not evil. In contrast, the latter act seems so morally extreme that we need to call it “evil” and not merely “wrong” if we are to do justice both to the moral seriousness of that act and the strength of our condemnation of it. The task of a theory or substantive conception of evil is to spell out what is an evil action and how it differs from a merely wrongful action. But what does a plausible substantive theory of evil look like? To explore this question, I spell out the concept of evil and illustrate four different types of substantive conceptions of evil actions: victim, perpetrator, spectator, and mixed theories. Of these four options, I argue that mixed theories are the most plausible type of theory, before investigating in detail the promising mixed theory recently defended by Matthew Kramer (2014b). Finally, in light of my analysis of Kramer’s view, I present a reformulated version of my combination theory of evil (Formosa 2008; Formosa 2013). (shrink)

Alastair Norcross argues that the basic judgments of morality are essentially comparative: alternatives are judged to be better or worse than each other. Notions such as right and wrong are not part of the fundamental subject matter of moral theory, but are constructed in a context-relative fashion out of the basic comparative judgments.

Christopher Boehm proposes that morality began when a society of hunter-gatherers punished a member for violating its rules. He claims social control of this kind is universal, and that apes have related tendencies. Emile Durkheim had a similar conception of social control in the simplest and earliest societies. But both are wrong: Hunter-gatherers rarely, if ever, handle conflict in a law-like and penal fashion, and the society as a whole rarely if ever is the agent of social control. Individuals typically (...) handle their own conflicts, and avoidance is more common than punishment. Pure sociology predicts and explains the handling of conflict with its location and direction in social space -- its social structure. The nature of morality depends, for example, on the social distance and degree of inequality between the parties, whether humans or nonhumans. Morality varies from case to case. It is relative rather than universal. Boehm therefore describes the origin of something that has never existed. All that is universal are the principles of structural relativity. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that, under a specific set of circumstances, designing and employing certain kinds of virtual reality (VR) experiences can be unethical. After a general discussion of simulations and their ethical context, we begin our argu-ment by distinguishing between the experiences generated by different media (text, film, computer game simulation, and VR simulation), and argue that VR experiences offer an unprecedented degree of what we call “perspectival fidelity” that prior modes of simulation lack. Additionally, we argue that (...) when VR experiences couple this perspectival fidelity with what we call “context realism,” VR experiences have the ability to produce “virtually real experiences.” We claim that virtually real experiences generate ethical issues for VR technologies that are unique to the medium. Because subjects of these experiences treat them as if they were real, a higher degree of ethical scrutiny should be applied to any VR scenario with the potential to generate virtually real experiences. To mitigate this unique moral hazard, we propose and defend what we call “The Equivalence Principle.” This principle states that “if it would be wrong to allow subjects to have a certain experience in reality, then it would be wrong to allow subjects to have that experience in a virtually real setting.” We argue that such a principle, although limited in scope, should be part of the risk analysis conducted by any Institutional Review Boards, psychologists, empirically oriented philosophers, or game designers who are using VR technology in their work. (shrink)

An assumption central to some forms of retributivism is that it is noninstrumentally good that a culpable wrongdoer suffers in receiving a deserved punishment. A justification for this can be built from a conversational theory of moral responsibility, and in particular deserved blame. On such a theory, deserved blame is fitting as a response to a wrongdoer insofar as it is conversationally meaningful as a reply to a wrong done. Punishment, it might be argued, has this feature too. The conversational (...) aim in both deserved blame and punishment is for the guilty to grasp the meaning conveyed by those who blame or punish and then respond meaningfully by, for example, apologizing or expressing remorse. Ideally, a culpable agent would experience a form and degree of guilt suitable for a wrong done. So, a conversational theory of punishment can then be justified in terms of providing conditions conducive for a culpable wrongdoer to respond to punishment by manifesting an appropriately pained response of guilt. (shrink)