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10550.057791
Organ sale – for example, allowing or encouraging consenting
adults to become living kidney donors in return for money – has
been proposed as a possible solution to the seemingly chronic shortage
of organs for transplantation. Many people however regard this idea as
abhorrent and argue both that the practice would be unethical and that
it should be banned. This entry outlines some of the different
possible kinds of organ sale, briefly states the case in favour, and
then examines the main arguments against.
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155824.057861
A. I guess because I'm exploring the format in some of my own writing. Q. A. It's not ready to show to anyone. In fact the project is more notional than actual—a few notes in a plain text file, which I peek at from time to time. …
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293000.057871
As always, please ‘like’ this post via the heart below and restack it on notes if you get something out of it. It’s the best way to help others find my work. Of course, the very best way to support my work is with a paid subscription. …
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384952.057877
Does science have any aim(s)? If not, does it follow that the debate about scientific progress is somehow misguided or problematically non-objective? These are two of the central questions posed in Rowbottom’s Scientific Progress. In this paper, I argue that we should answer both questions in the negative. Science probably has no aims, certainly not a single aim; but it does not follow from this that the debate about scientific progress is somehow misguided or problematically non-objective.
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395260.057886
I’ve been watching the TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale” lately. The series is an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same title. For the readers who have never heard about it, this dystopia takes place in the context of worldwide infertility where the United States of America has disappeared following a civil war. …
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483382.057892
According to the model of exchange as mutual assistance, an exchange can be perceived as a joint activity for mutual benefit – and needn’t involve any self-directed motives at all. This essay pushes back against this new defence of market motives. The essay develops an alternative ideal of production as caring solidarity, in which production is a joint activity of caring about one another. Points of overlap and difference are developed in some detail. The essay concludes by discussing the implications for an economics of caring solidarity, with discussion of the limitations of various market socialist strategies.
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500016.057901
For Karl Marx, ideological forms of consciousness are false, but how and in what respects? Ideologies must include some beliefs in order to be false, even if not all the beliefs that are inferentially related in the ideology are false, and even if there are (causally) related attitudes in the ideology that are neither true nor false. “Ideological” beliefs, however, are not simply false; their falsity has the specific property of not being in the interests of the agents who accept the ideology. One can make two kinds of mistakes about interests. One can mistake what is in one’s intrinsic interest or one can mistake what is in one’s extrinsic interest (that is, the means required to realize one’s intrinsic interests). Marx is mostly, but not exclusively, focused on mistakes about extrinsic interests; this is important in understanding how “morality” (which is not a matter of beliefs, but attitudes) can be ideological for Marx. I illustrate this analysis with some of Marx’s paradigmatic examples of ideological mistakes and offer an account of Marx’s conception of “interests.”
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544036.057909
Attachment is deeply important to human life. When one person becomes ‘attached’ to another, their sense of security turns on their emotional, social, and physical engagement with that person. This kind of security-based attachment has been extensively studied in psychology. Yet attachment theory (in the specific sense studied by psychologists) has not received adequate attention in analytic theories of social justice. In this paper, we conceptualize attachment’s nature and value, addressing when and why attachments place justice-based claims on individuals and institutions, in an attempt to establish the centrality of attachment theory to liberal political philosophy. We first characterize security-based attachment and differentiate it from related phenomena (§1). We then explore its value, theorizing the connection between attachment, care, and companionship, drawing on the ethics of care (§2). We explain when and why security-based attachment generates claims of justice within liberal theory, noting some important difficulties (§3). Finally, we sketch some implications in three domains: the rights of those who have suffered pregnancy loss, the rights of grandparents vis-à-vis grandchildren, and the rights of attached friends to social and political recognition (§4).
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626409.057915
Last week something world-shaking happened, something that could change the whole trajectory of humanity’s future. No, not that—we’ll get to that later. For now I’m talking about Anthropic’s “Emergent Misalignment” paper. …
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767242.057921
If Moby Dick overflows with boundless energy, the narration in Billy Budd, written at the other end of Melville’s life, is carefully controlled. But neither book can simply tell its tale; both are driven by a need to pause over each moment’s significance, psychological, political, and spiritual. …
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843437.057927
There is a genre of moral philosophy for which I have particular affection, in which a thinker subjects an aspect of ordinary life to rigorous scrutiny, revealing it to be more puzzling or more profound that is typically acknowledged. …
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900826.057932
Years ago, in ‘Expected Value without Expecting Value’, I noted that “The vast majority of students would prefer to save 1000 lives for sure, than to have a 10% chance of saving a million lives. This, even though the latter choice has 100 times the expected value.”
Joe Carlsmith’s essay on Expected Utility Maximization nicely explains “Why it’s OK to predictably lose” in this sort of situation. …
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1012750.057938
Researchers worried about catastrophic risks from advanced AI have argued that we should expect sufficiently capable AI agents to pursue power over humanity because power is a convergent instrumental goal, something that is useful for a wide range of final goals. Others have recently expressed skepticism of these claims. This paper aims to formalize the concepts of instrumental convergence and power-seeking in an abstract, decision-theoretic framework, and to assess the claim that power is a convergent instrumental goal. I conclude that this claim contains at least an element of truth, but might turn out to have limited predictive utility, since an agent’s options cannot always be ranked in terms of power in the absence of substantive information about the agent’s final goals. However, the fact of instrumental convergence is more predictive for agents who have a good shot at attaining absolute or near-absolute power.
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1052169.057947
Violent video games (VVGs) are a source of serious and continuing controversy. They are not unique in this respect, though. Other entertainment products have been criticized on moral grounds, from pornography to heavy metal, horror films, and Harry Potter books. Some of these controversies have fizzled out over time and have come to be viewed as cases of moral panic. Others, including moral objections to VVGs, have persisted. The aim of this paper is to determine which, if any, of the concerns raised about VVGs are legitimate. We argue that common moral objections to VVGs are unsuccessful, but that a plausible critique can be developed that captures the insights of these objections while avoiding their pitfalls. Our view suggests that the moral badness of a game depends on how well its internal logic expresses or encourages the play‑ ers’ objectionable attitudes. This allows us to recognize that some games are morally worse than others—and that it can be morally wrong to design and play some VVGs—but that the moral badness of these games is not necessarily dependent on how violent they are.
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1077241.057952
There is an "under-representation problem” in philosophy departments and journals. Empirical data suggest that while we have seen some improvements since the 1990s, the rate of change has slowed down. Some posit that philosophy has disciplinary norms making it uniquely resistant to change (Antony and Cudd 2012; Dotson 2012; Hassoun et al. 2022). In this paper, we present results from an empirical case study of a philosophy department that achieved and maintained male-female gender parity among its faculty as early as 2014. Our analysis extends beyond matters of gender parity because that is only one, albeit important, dimension of inclusion. We build from the case study to reflect on strategies that may catalyze change.
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1077392.057962
According to the traditional understanding, ethical normativity is about what you should do and epistemic normativity is about what you should believe. Singer’s topic in Right Belief and True Belief is the latter. However, though he later rejects this traditional understanding of the distinction (pp. 205–7), he thinks we can learn a great deal from looking at the parallels between these two species of normativity, and his book provides a masterclass in how to do that: this is epistemology as practised by someone very much at home in ethics and well versed in its contemporary literature, its arguments, distinctions, and central positions. In the rst chapter, Singer distinguishes a number of di erent normative notions to which we appeal when we evaluate beliefs: Is the belief correct? Is it right? Should we believe it? Ought we to? Must we? These he calls ‘deontic notions’, and we use them to evaluate the belief with respect to the believer. But there are also these: Is it praiseworthy or blameworthy to have the belief? Is the believer at fault if they do? Are they rational? Is the belief justi ed for them? These he calls ‘responsibility notions’, and we use them to evaluate the believer with respect to the belief (pp. 73–74). This distinction he calls bipartite (p. 189).
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1077409.057974
Lewens, T. [2024]: ‘Matteo Mameli’s Why Human Nature Matters and Marco J Nathan’s The Quest for Human Nature’, BJPS Review of Books, 2024 When philosophers of biology write about human nature, their goal is typically to see what sense can be made of the very idea that there might be a human nature, prior to the provision of details about what the exact features of such a nature might be. The great majority of the work done in this area over the past forty years or so falls into one of two genres. First, there are positive proposals for naturalistic analyses. They all aim to identify human nature with some set of biologically or psychologically salient patterns, processes, or properties. Second, there are equally naturalistic expressions of scepticism about human nature; ‘naturalistic’, because this type of work proposes that an up-to-date understanding of evolution and development leaves no room for any notion of human nature.
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1179726.057987
I’m back from a short trip to Oslo, Norway. Compared to other Scandinavian capitals like Stockholm and Helsinki (I’ve never been to Copenhagen, yet), I find Oslo more modern and “cold.” There is beauty in modernity of course, but it lacks the charm of Stockholm’s downtown. …
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1186838.057993
Critical-Level Utilitarianism entails one of the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion (both of which are counter-intuitive), depending on the critical level. Indeterminate Critical-Level Utilitarianism is a version of Critical- Level Utilitarianism where it is indeterminate which well-being level is the critical level. Undistinguished Critical-Range Utilitarianism is variant of Critical-Level Utilitarianism where additions of lives in a range of well-being between the good and the bad lives makes the resulting outcome incomparable to the original outcome. These views both avoid the Repugnant Conclusion and avoid the Sadistic Conclusion. And they agree about all comparisons of outcomes that do not involve indeterminacy or incomparability. So it is unclear whether we have any reason to favour one of these theories over the other. I argue that Indeterminate Critical-Level Utilitarianism still entails the disjunction of the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion, which is also repugnant. Whereas, Undistinguished Critical- Range Utilitarianism does not entail this conclusion.
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1300659.058
Moral arguments against the consumption of animal products from factory farms are traditionally categorical. The conclusions require people to eliminate from their diets all animal products (veganism), all animal flesh (vegetarianism), all animals except seafood (pescetarianism), etc. An alternative “reducetarian” approach prescribes progressive reduction in one's consumption of animal products, not categorical abstention. We articulate a much-needed moral defense of this more ecumenical approach. We start with a presumptive case in favor of reducetarianism before moving on to address three objections—that it falls short of our obligations to address such an egregious practice, is a rationalization of the status quo, and cannot fix systemic injustices in animal agriculture. We conclude that reducetarianism is a defensible approach for many people and is a promising route to moral progress on factory farming.
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1325444.058011
This post is free to read, so please share it widely. And, as always, please ‘like’ it via the heart below and restack it on notes if you get something out of it. It’s the best way to help others find my work. …
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1337426.05802
Maria Montessori (1870–1952) was one of the most influential
pedagogues of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
developing an educational method that currently guides over 15,000
schools in dozens of countries. Montessori was never merely a teacher,
however. She was a psychologist, anthropologist, doctor, cultural
critic, and philosopher. Her writings span a wide range of
philosophical issues, from metaphysics to political philosophy, but
she always discusses philosophical issues in ways that make use of
insights—what she calls revelations—gleaned from her work
with children. In recent years, philosophers have begun to attend to
her work.
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1365396.058026
In Family Values, Harry Brighouse and Adam Smith ask whether children need parents. That inquiry seems a wild project, but then philosophers are supposed to question everything and follow the argument where it leads. …
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1481248.058031
In epidemiology, an effect of a dichotomous exposure on a dichotomous outcome is a comparison of risks between the exposed and the unexposed. Causally interpreted, this comparison is assumed to equal a comparison in counterfactual risks if, hypothetically, both exposure states were to occur at once for each subject (Hernán and Robins, 2020). These comparisons are summarized by effect measures like risk difference or risk ratio. Risk difference describes the additive influence of an exposure on an outcome, and is often called an absolute effect measure. Trials occasionally report the inverse of a risk difference, which can also be classified as an absolute measure, as inverting it again returns the risk difference. Measures like risk ratio, which describe a multiplier of risk, are called relative, or ratio measures.
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1485560.058036
Suppose for simplicity that everyone is a good Bayesian and has the same priors for a hypothesis H, and also the same epistemic interests with respect to H. I now observe some evidence E relevant to H. My credence now diverges from everyone else’s, because I have new evidence. …
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1593278.058042
Bet On It reader Dan Barrett wrote these notes for his Book Nook book club on my Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids: Why Being a Great Parent Is Less Work and More Fun Than You Think. Dan’s idea:
I’m organizing reading groups packaged as the Book Nook to help colleagues (1) guide their own learning journeys, (2) connect with people they’d otherwise not meet, & (3) deepen their understanding of the Principles of Human Progress. …
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1654261.058047
In this paper, we provide a critical overview of Feyerabend’s unpublished manuscript “On the Responsibility of Scientists.” Specifically, we locate the paper within Feyerabend’s corpus and show how it relates to his published remarks on topics such as expertise, democracy and science, opportunism, science funding, and the value of scientific knowledge. We also show how Feyerabend’s views anticipate and point novel directions for contemporary philosophical literature on values in science.
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1698665.058054
Regular readers may know that I’ve been interested in epistocracy for quite some time now. Epistocracy is a political regime in which political power is allocated according to criteria of competence and knowledge. …
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2087389.058059
Nietzsche’s first book was entitled The Birth of Tragedy out
of the Spirit of Music (1872), and one of his very last works was
called The Case of Wagner: A Musician’s Problem (1888). As this simple fact indicates, reflection on art (and especially, on
music and drama) is an abiding and central feature of
Nietzsche’s thought. Indeed, very nearly all of his works
address aesthetic questions at least in passing. Some of these
questions are familiar from the philosophical tradition: e.g., how
should we explain the effect tragedy has on us? What is the relation
of aesthetic value to other kinds of value?
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2348475.058064
It now seems the switch of Cancel Culture has only two settings:
- everything is cancellable—including giving intellectual arguments against specific DEI policies, or teaching students about a Chinese filler word (“ne-ge”) that sounds a little like the N-word, or else
- nothing is cancellable—not even tweeting “normalize Indian hate” and “I was racist before it was cool,” shortly before getting empowered to remake the US federal government. …