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117215.720464
The development of reasoning skills is often regarded as a central goal of ethics and philosophy classes in school education. In light of recent studies from the field of moral psychology, however, it could be objected that the promotion of such skills might fail to meet another important objective, namely the moral education of students. In this paper, I will argue against such pessimism by suggesting that the fostering of reasoning skills can still contribute to the aims of moral education. To do so, I will engage with the concept of moral education, point out different ways in which reasoning skills play an essential role in it, and support these considerations by appealing to further empirical studies. My conclusion will be that the promotion of ethical reasoning skills fulfils two important aims of moral education: First, it enables students to critically reflect on their ethical beliefs. Second, it allows them to explore ethical questions in a joint conversation with others. Lastly, I will refer to education in the field of sustainable development in order to exemplify the importance of these abilities.
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126857.720731
This paper first proposes the concept of " graph ecology " , an emerging discipline that combines graph theory and complex network theory with ecological research. The article begins by introducing the influence of Western philosophy (including holism and systems theory) and Eastern philosophy (especially Taoism) on ecological theory and practice. Then, we deeply explore the roots of graph theory and complex network theory in Eastern and Western philosophy and their application in ecosystem analysis, highlighting the importance of graph ecology in understanding the complexity of ecosystems, especially in revealing ecological networks. Structural and functional role. The article further discusses the differences and complementarities between graph ecology and traditional ecology, and how graph ecology promotes the development of the entire field of ecology. Finally, the application prospects and challenges of graph ecology are discussed, as well as calls for future research directions and interdisciplinary cooperation. This article highlights the critical role of graph ecology in promoting the development of ecological theory and effectively addressing environmental challenges.
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172289.720755
The main message of Neuroethics is that neuroscience forces us to reconceptualize human agency as marvelously diverse and flexible. Free will can arise from unconscious brain processes. Individuals with mental disorders, including addiction and psychopathy, exhibit more agency than is often recognized. Brain interventions should be embraced with cautious optimism. Our moral intuitions, which arise from entangled reason and emotion, can generally be trusted. Nevertheless, we can and should safely enhance our brain chemistry, partly because motivated reasoning crops up in everyday life and in the practice of neuroscience itself. Despite serious limitations, brain science can be useful in the courtroom and marketplace. Recognizing all this nuance leaves little room for anxious alarmism or overhype and urges an emphasis on neurodiversity. The result is a highly opinionated tour of neuroethics as an exciting field full of implications for philosophy, science, medicine, law, and public policy.
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187350.720777
In 2005, I debated my then-colleague Larry Iannaccone on the economics of religion. The turnout — around 300 people at GMU back when it was clearly a commuter school — surprised me and totally shocked Larry. …
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236213.720792
GeneBcally complete yet authorless artworks seem possible, yet it’s hard to understand how they might really be possible. A natural way to try to resolve this puzzle is by construcBng an account of artwork compleBon on the model of accounts of artwork meaning that are compaBble with meaningful yet authorless artworks. I argue, however, that such an account of artwork compleBon is implausible. So, I leave the puzzle unresolved.
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301059.720807
The culture of the Akan people of West Africa dates from before the
13th century. Like other long-established cultures the world over, the
Akan have developed a rich conceptual system complete with
metaphysical, moral, and epistemological aspects. Of particular
interest is the Akan conception of persons, a conception that
informs a variety of social institutions, practices, and judgments
about personal identity, moral responsibility, and the proper
relationship both among individuals and between individuals and
community. This overview presents the Akan conception of persons as seen by two
major contemporary Akan philosophers, Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye.
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348243.720821
Emotional hardcore and other music genres featuring screamed vocals are puzzling for the appreciator. The typical fan attaches appreciative value to musical screams of emotional pain all the while acknowledging it would be inappropriate to hold similar attitudes towards their sonically similar everyday counterpart: actual human screaming. Call this the screamed vocals problem. To solve the problem, I argue we must attend to the anti-sublimating aims that get expressed in the emotional hardcore vocalist’s choice to scream the lyrics. Screamed vocals help us see the value in rejecting (a) restrictive social norms of emotional expressiveness and (b) restrictive artistic norms about how one ought to express or represent pain in art, namely that if one is going to do so they must ensure the pain has been ‘beautified’. In developing this second point I argue that emotional hardcore is well-suited (though not individually so) for putting pressure on longstanding views in the history of aesthetics about the formal relationship between art and human pain.
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360212.720834
Welcome to our newest PEA Soup Blog Ethics discussion! This discussion focuses on David Estlund‘s recent paper ‘What’s Unjust About Structural Injustice?‘. To begin, we will pass things over to Peter de Marneffe for a critical précis. …
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368399.720858
A typical feature that is singled out in characterizations of the “open society” or the “great society” is its impersonal nature. Karl Popper characterizes the relationships taking place in the open society as “abstract” and “depersonalized”:
“As a consequence of its loss of organic character, an open society may become, by degrees, what I should like to term an ‘abstract society.’ It may, to a considerable extent, lose the character of a concrete or real group of men, or of a system of such real groups. …
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431981.720881
First, we suggest and discuss second-order versions of properties for solutions for TU games used to characterize the Banzhaf value, in particular, of standardness for two-player games, of the dummy player property, and of 2-efficiency. Then, we provide a number of characterizations of the Banzhaf value invoking the following properties: (i) [second-order standardness for two-player games or the second-order dummy player property] and 2-efficiency, (ii) standardness for one-player games, standardness for two-player games, and second-order 2-efficiency, (iii) standardness for one-player games, [second-order standardness for two-player games or the second-order dummy player property], and second-order 2-efficiency. These characterizations also work within the classes of simple games, of superadditive games, and of simple superadditive games.
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431996.7209
Judith Harris’ The Nurture Assumption was a huge influence on me, and the top inspiration for my Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. Her book’s first main lesson is that family resemblance, defined in the broadest possible way to include physical, psychological, and social outcomes, is mostly driven by genetics rather than upbringing. …
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432105.720916
The advanced division of cognitive labor generates a set of challenges and opportunities for professional philosophers. In this paper, I re-characterize the nature of synthetic philosophy in light of these challenges and opportunities. For my definition of synthetic philosophy see part 2. In part 1, I’ll remind you of the centrality of the division of labor to Plato’s Republic, and why this is especially salient in his banishment of the poets from his Kallipolis. I’ll then focus on the significance of an easily overlooked albeit rather significant character, Damon, mentioned in that dialogue. I’ll argue that if we take the relationship between Socrates and Damon seriously, we’ll notice that in modeling imperfect polities, Plato inscribes Socrates within the advanced division of cognitive labor who defers to Damon as an expert on a key feature of the art of government. In fact, I’ll argue that in Republic, Plato offers us at least two ways to conceptualize philosophy’s relationship to the sciences, and that he alerts us to the social significance of this.
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483360.720932
One does not just walk into Mordor. The same might be said of Hamlet criticism. But in my naive, Hobbit-like way, I read Nicholas Brooke’s essay on Hamlet, and only that.1
Like a shady contractor, Brooke complains that the last guy did the baseboards and appliances all wrong, but he’d be happy to tear it all out and do it right, for a few extra grand. …
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533281.720955
It is tempting to think that legitimate and illegitimate authorities are both types of a single thing. One might not want to call that single thing “authority”. After all, one doesn’t want to say that real and fake money are both types of money. …
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579105.720977
Almost everyone believes that freedom from deprivation should have significant weight in specifying what justice between generations requires. Some theorists hold that it should always trump other distributive concerns. Other theorists hold that it should have some but not lexical priority. I argue instead that freedom from deprivation should have lexical priority in some cases, yet weighted priority in others. More specifically, I defend semi-strong sufficientarianism. This view posits a deprivation threshold at which people are free from deprivation, and an affluence threshold at which people can live an affluent life, even though their lives may be even further improved beyond that point. I argue that freedom from deprivation in one generation lexically outweighs providing affluence in another generation; in all other cases, freedom from deprivation does not have lexical priority.
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689686.720991
Here you are, just trying to eat your BLT in peace, and someone at your table starts going on about being a vegan. Your eyes roll as your blood pressure rises. You wish they would just shut up. It’s not that you don’t care about animal suffering. In other contexts, you actually care quite a bit – you would definitely do something if you thought a neighbor was mistreating their dog. You’re a good person—an animal lover even! But it’s hard to care that much about the ethics of meat-eating when these vegan types are just so preachy and annoying. This is, we suspect, a very common experience. When we’re told that something we see as ordinary— like eating meat—is actually wrong, our first reaction is to get irritated and dismissive. If it’s not about bacon, it’s about plastic straws. Or a phrase we’ve been using for years but that’s now considered offensive. Or having to share your pronouns.
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752346.721007
What is it to say, “they are my child?” The semantics of possessives such as ‘my’ are intriguing for a number of reasons, but here I wish to pick up on a particular ambiguity present in many uses of possessives. That is, an ambiguity between the sense of a possessive that merely indicates that the subject of an utterance stands in some relationship to the object of the utterance, and the sense of a possessive that indicates that the subject of the utterance owns the object of the utterance: that the object is the property of the subject. Call the former sense of such possessives the relational sense, and the latter the propertarian sense. This ambiguity is noted by Peters and Westerståhl, who write that in fact many possessive utterances actually have very little to do with ‘real’ possession or ownership (Peters and Westerståhl 2013 715). To give a couple of examples, take the following possessive utterances, which on their most natural reading are relational possessives:
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810187.721021
Current work in language models (LMs) helps us speed up or even skip thinking by accelerating and automating cognitive work. But can LMs help us with critical thinking – thinking in deeper, more reflective ways which challenge assumptions, clarify ideas, and engineer new concepts? We treat philosophy as a case study in critical thinking, and interview 21 professional philosophers about how they engage in critical thinking and on their experiences with LMs. We find that philosophers do not find LMs to be useful because they lack a sense of selfhood (memory, beliefs, consistency) and initiative (curiosity, proactivity). We propose the selfhood-initiative model for critical thinking tools to characterize this gap. Using the model, we formulate three roles LMs could play as critical thinking tools: the Interlocutor, the Monitor, and the Respondent. We hope that our work inspires LM researchers to further develop LMs as critical thinking tools and philosophers and other ‘critical thinkers’ to imagine intellectually substantive uses of LMs.
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879392.721035
Broadcasting Versus Narrowcasting
Some weeks ago, while lazily scrolling on Substack Notes, I noticed an interesting comment made by someone (I don’t remember who) about an essay on Noah Smith’s blog. …
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925657.721051
Pragmatic vindicatory genealogies provide both a cause and a rationale and can thus affect the space of reasons. But how far is the space of reasons affected by this kind of genealogical argument? What normative and evaluative implications do these arguments have? In this paper, I unpack this issue into three different sub-questions and explain what kinds of reasons they provide, for whom are these reasons, and for what. In relation to this final sub-question I argue, most importantly, that these arguments are ambiguous about what they give us reasons for, meaning that they can be interpreted both as justifications for recognizing the normative standing of certain norms, values, and practices - and thus for living by them - and as excuses for those that do so. I illustrate this point by reference to the genealogical vindication of honour cultures, showing how the vindicatory argument can illuminate such case as one of excusing moral ignorance. Drawing on legal theory and moral philosophy, I show that different evaluative and normative implications hang on the result of the interpretation as either justification or excuse, and show that this ambiguity is a virtue rather than a limitation.
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925679.721065
Consider the project of using one’s time, money, and/or other resources to help others, and specifically to help them the most—or, as some like to call it, effective altruism (following the definition in MacAskill, 2019). Do we have moral reason to engage in that project? Are we, in many practical circumstances, morally required to do so?
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1090948.721079
Part I treated Romantic ideas about reality, and knowledge, and virtue (as understood by Isaiah Berlin), but wasn’t Romanticism primarily a movement in the arts? Yes and here also is effected a revaluation of values. …
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1098775.721101
In this paper, I examine Max Deutsch’s dilemma for the implementation of newly engineered concepts. In the debate over this dilemma, the goal of conceptual engineering tends to be set either too high or too low. As a result, implementation tends to be seen as either very unlikely to succeed or too easily achievable. This paper aims to offer a way out of this dilemma. I argue that the success conditions for implementation can be better understood if we distinguish between different stages in the implementation process. Implementation is a complex process involving several stages, each of which can be evaluated as a success or a failure. I argue that even if an implementation does not reach the final stage in which a new concept is widely used in the society at large, it may not be a complete failure: conceptual engineers may not even aim for a new concept to be widely used in the society at large; or even if they do and a new concept only circulates in a smaller subgroup, this can still be a significant achievement. The upshot is that we should take more seriously the possibility that conceptual engineering can be implemented locally at the subgroup level.
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1098800.72111
There are two tensions in Smith’s system of ideas: the first is between the postulate of an invisible “noumenal” order of the Universe and the imaginary principles through which we connect the phenomena; the second is between a hypothetical noumenal order of the world where “is” and “ought” converge and the partial and imperfect normative order issued by our sympathetic judgements and a never perfectly impartial spectator. These tensions, which gave occasion to old misrepresentations and recent ones, are tensions in a unitary (though rhapsodically completed) system of ideas where the final unanswered question was the problem of evil. Against a widespread belief, Smith was no secularist but a fideist who took Bayle’s question seriously: why is man wicked and unhappy? The private ethics of prudence, justice, benevolence and the public ethics of liberty, justice, and equality were modest proposals for coping with the problem of social evil, of a “practical” kind, the only one available after Smith’s refutation of natural theology, his last word on the causes for evil.
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1098833.721118
The weaponizing of scientific expertise to oppose regulation has been extensively studied. However, the relevant studies, belonging to the emerging discipline of agnotology, remain focused on the analysis of empirical corruption: of misinformation, doubt mongering, and other practices that cynically deploy expertise to render audiences ignorant of empirical facts. This paper explores the wrongful deployment of expertise beyond empirical corruption. To do so, I develop a broader framework of morally subversive expertise, building on recent work in political philosophy (Howard, 2016). Expertise is subversive if it sets up its audience to fail morally, either intentionally or negligently. I distinguish three modes of subversive expertise: empirical subversion (the focus of agnotology), normative subversion and motivational subversion. Drawing on these distinctions, I offer a revisionary account of the Trump Administration’s regulatory science as a case study. I show that the Trump Administration’s use of expertise to dismantle climate regulation, contra the standard charge, cannot be explained using the resources of agnotology alone: the Administration produced highly reliable climate assessments, detailing the risks of climate change, candidly admitting the harms of its proposed policies, and still successfully deployed these findings to justify massive climate deregulation. The lesson of the analysis is that dismissing the expertise that underpins climate deregulation as empirically corrupt ‘anti-science’ both obscures its actual role in the politics of climate change and understates its wrongfulness: it misses the breadth of the assault on moral agency that sustains climate injustice.
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1108612.721127
Feminist philosophers of biology bring the tools of feminist theory,
and in particular the tools of feminist philosophy of science, to
investigations of the life sciences. While the critical examination of
the categories of sex and gender (which will be explained below) takes
a central place, the methods, ontological assumptions, and
foundational concepts of biology more generally have also enjoyed
considerable feminist scrutiny. Through such investigations, feminist
philosophers of biology reveal the extent to which the theory and
practice of particular scientific disciplines and research programs
(and, indeed, their philosophical study) are intertwined with both
value judgments and social hierarchies.
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1115472.721142
[For this post, I’ll assume some familiarity with the concept of moral trade and the distinction between consequentialist and deontological values.] In earlier work, I claimed that (in the specific context of ECL) if you are trying to benefit someone’s moral view as part of some cooperative arrangement, only the consequentialist aspects of their moral values are relevant to you. …
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1141837.721161
A persistent right-wing discourse on poverty insists that, in many cases, poverty is, the result of domestic incompetence, improvidence, or male irresponsibility. Poverty is, on this view, to some significant degree, the result of poor management and irresponsible choices. Poverty researchers, by contrast, typically argue that there is very little evidence to support this diagnosis, and that poverty is largely simply a matter of lack of financial resources to live the type of life that is regarded as normal or socially expected, at a minimal level, in the affected person or family’s society. Nevertheless, for people on very low incomes there are normally difficult choices to be made, especially in terms of provision for children, particularly in the light of social expectations. Here I draw on a framework inspired by Sen’s capability approach, coupled with Rowntree’s distinction between primary and secondary poverty, and Townsend’s distinction between absolute and relative poverty. It allows us to see that even though the role of choice and behaviour in the causation and persistence of poverty is far less significant than structural factors, nevertheless individual choices will shape the type of poverty a family may face. In sum, I argue that a significant proportion of parents place themselves in secondary poverty in order to avoid a form of relative poverty for their children, especially so that they can meet the social expectations of their peers.
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1156552.721181
After 50 years of debate, the ethics of aggregation has reached a curious stalemate, with both sides arguing that only their theory treats people as equals. I argue that, on the issue of equality, both sides are wrong. From the premise that “each counts for one,” we cannot derive the conclusion that “more count for more”—or its negation.
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1167008.721202
According to stereotype, analytic philosophers love nothing more than analyzing concepts, filling the ellipsis in
x is F if and only if …
with conditions held to be implicit in the meaning of a word. It’s an anachronistic vision, both because “analytic truth” plays a minimal role in contemporary philosophy—there’s more interest in “real definition,” the metaphysical project of explaining what it is to be F—and because philosophers are willing to treat concepts as primitive: undefined but well-understood. …