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22312.238818
Bet On It reader Ian Fillmore recently sent me a very insightful email on natalism, which I encouraged him to expand upon. In fact, I’ll put it squarely in the obvious-once-you-think-about-it category. …
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40667.239028
In a recent essay, I explained that the right to exit is often given great importance in liberal thought. In some cases, it is almost as if nothing else matters than the guarantee that individuals can —in principle or effectively— exit a group, a community, or a society. …
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85110.239056
Karl Marx rejected the ideal of equality as bourgeois. And yet, the most significant attempt in recent years to distinguish socialist theory from liberal egalitarian theory, G.A. Cohen's critique of John Rawls, relies almost entirely on an egalitarian principle. Although Cohen’s critique often seems to have a great deal of intuitive force, a number of Rawls’ defenders have argued, quite convincingly, that Cohen’s critique is unsuccessful. For those of us attracted to broadly socialist ideals, there does seem to be something importantly right about Cohen’s criticisms of Rawls, and more substantively, something deeply problematic in the kinds of market-based leveraging of productive abilities that would be permitted in a fully just Rawlsian society. My diagnosis is that Cohen has the right target, but the wrong fundamental value. I develop an alternative to these liberal egalitarian approaches in contemporary socialist ethics, building on the famous slogan: ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.’ This alternative ideal of Caring Solidarity draws on rich socialist, Christian, and feminist traditions, and emphasizes the importance of care, recognition, and solidarity in political and economic organisation. This alternative approach leaves a certain amount of inequality legitimately in place, whilst providing a moral framework for a radical reorganisation of production.
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106810.239097
On my flight back from Spain, I watched Subservience, yet another a cautionary tale of artificial general intelligence. I kept laughing at its many absurdities. If Robin Hanson viewed it, I fear that his head might explode in social scientific outrage. …
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279469.239115
This paper argues that lockdown was racist. The terms are broad, but the task of definition is not random, and in §2 we motivate certain definitions as appropriate. In brief: “lockdown” refers to regulatory responses to the Covid-19 (C-19) pandemic involving significant restrictions on leaving the home and on activities outside the home, historically situated in the pandemic and widely known as “lockdowns”; and “racist” indicates what we call negligent racism, a type of racism which we define. Negligent racism does not require intent, but beyond this constraint, we do not endorse any definition of racism in general. With definitions in hand, in §3 we argue that lockdown was harmful in Africa, causing great human suffering that was not offset by benefits and amounted to net harm, far greater than in the circumstances in which most White people live. Since 1.4
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279486.239132
This paper argues against the view, proposed in Langland-Hassan (2020), that attitudinal imaginings are reducible to basic folk-psychological attitudes such as judgments, beliefs, desires, decisions, or combinations thereof. The proposed reduction fails because attitudinal imaginings, though similar to basic attitudes in certain respects, function differently than basic attitudes. I demonstrate this by exploring two types of cases: spontaneous imaginings, and imaginings that arise in response to fiction, showing that in these cases, imaginings cannot be identified with basic attitudes. I conclude that imagining is a distinct attitude: it enables us to freely conjure up scenarios without being bound by the restrictions that govern basic folk-psychological attitudes.
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279502.239151
According to the desire-satisfaction theory of welfare, something is good for me to the extent that I desire it. This theory faces the “scope problem”: many of the things I desire, intuitively, lie beyond the scope of my welfare. Here, I argue that a simple solution to this problem is available. First, I suggest that it is a general feature of desires that they can differ not only in their objects but also in their “targets,” or for the sake of whom one has the desire. For example, I can desire that my child win an award either for their sake or for my own sake. Second, I show that we can use this idea to solve the scope problem by holding that something is good for me to the extent that I desire it for my own sake. Despite first appearances, this solution is not ad hoc, incomplete, or circular.
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279519.239166
Agents are said to be “clueless” if they are unable to predict some ethically important consequences of their actions. Some philosophers have argued that such “cluelessness’’ is widespread and creates problems for certain approaches to ethics. According to Hilary Greaves, a particularly problematic type of cluelessness, namely, “complex” cluelessness, affects attempts to do good as effectively as possible, as suggested by proponents of “Effective Altruism,” because we are typically clueless about the long-term consequences of such interventions. As a reaction, she suggests focusing on interventions that are long-term oriented from the start. This paper argues for three claims: first, that David Lewis’ distinction between sensitive and insensitive causation can help us better understand the differences between genuinely “complex” and more harmless “simple” cluelessness; second, that Greaves’ worry about complex cluelessness can be mitigated for attempts to do near-term good; and, third, that Greaves’ recommendation to focus on long term-oriented interventions in response to complex cluelessness is not promising as a strategy specifically for avoiding complex cluelessness. There are systematic reasons why the actual effects of serious attempts to beneficially shape the long-term future are inherently difficult to predict and why, hence, such attempts are prone to backfiring.
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279557.239182
I argue that there are Kantian grounds to endorse a Universal Basic Income (UBI) and that Kant’s practical philosophy can contribute to current debates about the ethics of UBI. I will make two points that mutually support each other. Firstly, there is a pro tanto argument for Kantians to work towards a UBI. A UBI, more so than conditional welfare schemes, enables agents to live up to their duty to be a useful member of the world. This should be conceptualized as an indirect duty to implement a UBI. Secondly, Kant’s ethics suggests a way to tackle the most pressing ethical objection against a UBI, the unfairness or surfer objection. The requirement that agents be useful for others is ethical and thus cannot be enforced externally. Yet, there is rational pressure on agents to do their part. Kant and UBI advocates can learn a great deal from each other.
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279606.239198
LOGOS Research Group in Analytic Philosophy, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Perception is said to have assertoric force: It inclines the perceiver to believe its content. In contrast, perceptual imagination is commonly taken to be non-assertoric: Imagining winning a piano contest does not incline the imaginer to believe they actually won. However, abundant evidence from clinical and experimental psychology shows that imagination influences attitudes and behavior in ways similar to perceptual experiences. To account for these phenomena, I propose that perceptual imaginings have implicit assertoric force and put forth a theory—the Prima Facie View—as a unified explanation for the empirical findings reviewed. According to this view, mental images are treated as percepts in operations involving associative memory. Finally, I address alternative explanations that could account for the reviewed empirical evidence—such as a Spinozian model of belief formation or Gendler’s notion of alief—as well as potential objections to the Prima Facie View.
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382935.239213
Philosophers have struggled to explain the mismatch of emotions and their objects across time, as when we stop grieving or feeling angry despite the persistence of the underlying cause. I argue for a sceptical approach that says that these emotional changes often lack rational fit. The key observation is that our emotions must periodically reset for purely functional reasons that have nothing to do with fit. I compare this account to David Hume’s sceptical approach in matters of belief, and conclude that resistance to it rests on a confusion similar to one that he identifies.
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408763.239233
1. Milton’s final work, Samson Agonistes, is built on an historical and aesthetic foundation many layers deep—as one might expect from this poet: ancient greek tragedy; the Aristotelian theory of tragedy it inspired; the Biblical story of Samson, of which this is a transformational re-telling; and Samson’s place in the larger history of Israel. …
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795154.239258
This paper explores the theme of human limitedness and the virtues in David McPherson’s The Virtues of Limits. I survey some of the main themes of his discussion— including kinds of human limits and the idea of “limiting-virtues”—and indicate salient themes in Buddhist and classical Chinese philosophical traditions. I then suggest that McPherson is too quick to dismiss forms of moral quietism and that his discussion of our limitedness rests on a latent pessimism worthy of further articulation.
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880446.239275
We draw on value theory in social psychology to conceptualize the range of motives that can influence researchers’ attitudes, decisions, and actions. To conceptualize academic research values, we integrate theoretical insights from the literature on personal, work, and scientific work values, as well as the outcome of interviews and a survey among 255 participants about values relating to academic research. Finally, we propose a total of 246 academic research value items spread over 11 dimensions and 34 sub-themes. We relate our conceptualization and proposed items to existing work and provide recommendations for future scale development. Gaining a better understanding of researchers’ different values can improve careers in science, attract a more diverse range of people to enter science, and elucidate some of the mechanisms that lead to both exemplary and questionable scientific practices.
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1011081.239295
1. You can make your child learn the cello, and refuse to serve them candy for breakfast. Parents have these, and other, rights. What is the source, and extent, of these rights? As for source, the welfare of the child is a natural answer: in general and on average, granting parents certain rights is in the best interest of children. …
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1054374.239312
Mexican existentialism grows out of the encounter, engagement, and
appropriation with French and German existentialist philosophies in
Mexico mid-way through the twentieth-century. Key players in this
tradition were José Gaos (1900–1969), Antonio Caso
(1883–1946), and, especially, el grupo Hiperión
(the Hyperion Group). Members of Hyperion, but particularly Emilio
Uranga (1921–1988), Leopoldo Zea (1912–2004), Jorge
Portilla (1918–1963), and Luis Villoro (1922–2014),
focused their efforts on existential reinterpretations of that
which is Mexican (“lo mexicano” or Mexicanness), a
focus that lends this tradition its historical and conceptual
uniqueness and importance.
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1062313.239328
"Pirate" training of generative AI is fair use and in the public interest
Property is essentially coercive: property rights exclude others from use of the “owned” good. But there are obvious reasons why property is nonetheless a socially valuable institution (especially for “rival” goods, like a sandwich, that cannot be shared without loss). …
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1266785.239344
This is a bit of a shaggy dog story, but I think it’s fun, and there’s a moral about the nature of mathematical research. Act 1
Once I was interested in the McGee graph, nicely animated here by Mamouka Jibladze:
This is the unique (3,7)-cage, meaning a graph such that each vertex has 3 neighbors and the shortest cycle has length 7. …
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1400533.23936
Critical theory arose as a response to perceived inadequacies in
Marxist theory, and perceived changes in modern capitalism. Critical
theorists emphasized the ability of capitalism to shape the thought
and experience of individuals: it distorts how modern society and its
products appear to us, and how we think about them. So, aesthetic
experience – like all other experience – is moulded to and
compromised by capitalism. For critical theory, if we seek to
understand aesthetics we need to acknowledge this distorting
effect. Critical theorists ask us to pay attention to how art, and aesthetic
experience, suffer under capitalism, and become part of the way in
which capitalism prevents the formation of a better life.
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1458205.239376
Prioritarianism is generally understood as a kind of moral
axiology. An axiology provides an account of what makes items, in
this case outcomes, good or bad, better or worse. A moral
axiology focuses on moral value: on what makes outcomes
morally good or bad, morally better or worse. Prioritarianism, specifically, posits that the moral-betterness
ranking of outcomes gives extra weight (“priority”) to
well-being gains and losses affecting those at lower levels of
well-being. It differs from utilitarianism, which is indifferent to
the well-being levels of those affected by gains and
losses.[ 1 ]
Although it is possible to construe prioritarianism as a
non-axiological moral view, this entry follows the prevailing approach
and trains its attention on axiological prioritarianism.
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1487547.239391
In a recent publication, Kukla (2014) has argued that we should we abandon naturalistic and social constructivist considerations in attempts to define health due to their alleged failure to account for their normativity and instead define them purely in terms of ‘social justice’. Here, I shall argue that such a purely normativist project is self-defeating, and hence, that health and disease cannot be defined through recourse to social justice alone.
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1568522.239407
Political disagreement tends to display a “radical” nature that is partly related to the fact that political beliefs and judgments are generally firmly held. This makes people unlikely to revise and compromise on them. …
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1662722.239423
Common moral intuitions are an unprincipled mess. That’s “the trolley problem” in a nutshell. It’s also demonstrated by attempts to distinguish Singer’s drowning child case from our everyday failures to donate to life-saving charities. …
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2035695.23944
Edith Landmann-Kalischer (1877–1951) is the author of several
significant studies on topics in the philosophy of art, aesthetics,
value, mind, and knowledge in the first half of the twentieth century. Influenced by Franz Brentano, Georg Simmel, Carl Stumpf, and Stefan
George, her studies were initiated at a time when the academic, often
tendentious borders between psychology and philosophy, like those
between aesthetics and art history, were still being drawn. While
clearly also influenced by Edmund Husserl, she takes his phenomenology
to task for its idealism and, in her view, its unfounded isolation
from the sciences, especially psychology.
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2108819.239457
I've been exploring in this newsletter recently how people's growing inability to understand and control the institutions that shape their lives affects their political views (see here or here for instance). …
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2295021.239474
In a recent TLS, I wrote about the spoils of pessimism—whether we should be quietists, retreating from the world, or activists who fight for it—but my real subject was despair. I did not get to write about the best book on despair I’ve read: Christian Wiman’s prose-poetic Zero at the Bone. …
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2462872.2395
According to classical utilitarianism, well-being consists in pleasure or happiness, the good consists in the sum of well-being, and moral rightness consists in maximizing the good. Leibniz was perhaps the first to formulate this doctrine. Bentham made it widely known. For a long time, however, the second, summing part lacked any clear foundation. John Stuart Mill, Henry Sidgwick, and Richard Hare all gave arguments for utilitarianism, but they took this summing part for granted. It was John Harsanyi who finally presented compelling arguments for this controversial part of the utilitarian doctrine.
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2497099.239518
[Editor’s Note: The following new entry by Juliana
Bidadanure and David Axelsen replaces the
former entry
on this topic by the previous author.]
Egalitarianism is a school of thought in contemporary political
philosophy that treats equality as the chief value of a just political
system. Simply put, egalitarians argue for equality. They
have a presumption in favor of social arrangements that advance
equality, and they treat deviations from equality as prima
facie suspect. They recommend a far greater degree of equality
than we currently have, and they do so for distinctly egalitarian
reasons.
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2670208.239554
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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2815482.239573
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. …