-
65000.465804
The neurodiversity movement grew out of the autism community but is now being applied to many neurological types, from dyslexia to schizophrenia. The resulting neurodiversity paradigm maintains that these neurological differences are normal variations in the human species, like race and sexual orientation, which should be valued and accommodated, not “fixed” or eliminated. Yet some clear-eyed individuals view their brain differences as deficits and would continue to seek treatment in the absence of discrimination or lack of accommodation. I argue that fully appreciating cognitive diversity requires more nuanced normative claims that respect individual differences and fluid circumstances. Although analogies to minority statuses can be useful, variations in personality traits provide a more flexible and inclusive model for neurodivergence. Despite ultimately rejecting the biodiversity metaphor, a more nuanced neuro-diversity paradigm emphasizing our shared humanity can promote compassion, respect, and support for all.
-
76449.465947
There is no doubt that slurs harm . They do so by denigrating their targets, by putting them down, by marginalizing them . This is why in many legislations around the world, the use of slurs has been banned or penalized . But should all uses of slurs be banned? Many uses of slurs seem to be non-derogatory and to have beneficial effects . However, such uses are double-faceted: as both armchair reflection and experimental studies have shown, they are able to produce harm as well . In this paper, I approach the broad question of whether all non-derogatory uses of slurs should be banned . I first present the main uses of slurs that have been considered to be non-derogatory and recent reactions to those . The upshot of this survey is that uses of slurs that have been considered non-derogatory do, in fact, produce harm . I also flag what various authors have recommended in relation to the issue of banning such uses . Against this background, I engage with a recent view put forward by Alba Moreno Zurita and Eduardo Pérez-Navarro, who urge extreme caution with respect to any uses of slurs, due to their potential to normalize derogation . After presenting their view and their main argument, I raise an objection related to their treatment of neutral uses of slurs . I end with pointing out that, while their endeavour has merit in that it pushes the discussion further, it raises certain issues —of both an empirical and a normative nature— that need to be addressed .
-
76530.465971
Investigation of Indigenous concepts and their meanings is highly inspirational for contemporary science because they represent adaptive solutions in various environmental and social milieus. Past research has shown that the conceptualisations of consciousness can vary widely between cultural groups from different geographical regions. The present study explores variability among a few of the thousands of Indigenous cultural understandings of consciousness. Indigenous concepts of consciousness are often relational and inseparable from environmental and religious concepts. Furthermore, this exploration of variability reveals the layers with which some Indigenous peoples understand the conscious experience of the world. Surprisingly, the Indigenous understandings of global consciousness was found not to stay in opposition to local consciousness. The final concluding section of this study discusses the usability of Indigenous concepts and meanings for recent scientific debates regarding the nature of consciousness. Issues such as material versus non-material sources of consciousness, the energy component of consciousness, or the interconnection of consciousness with the environment arose from the in-depth exploration of Indigenous concepts and their meanings.
-
87309.465998
My paper ‘Preference and Prevention: A New Paradox of Deontology’ has just been published in the inaugural issue of the open access journal Free & Equal.1 As is often the case with ambitious papers, finding a good home took several years and tens of thousands of words of revisions and responses to referees, but I’m very happy with how it turned out in the end!2 I’m especially delighted that it’s open access—and I hope my paper helps contribute to a good start for Free & Equal.3
Overview
The paper undertakes three main tasks. …
-
191926.466012
This paper introduces the concept of regulatory kinds — socially constructed classifications that come to function epistemically like natural kinds through recursive uptake across institutional domains. These kinds do not reflect causal unity or semantic precision, but they acquire stability, portability, and predictive utility by being embedded in the inferential routines of medicine, law, policy, and science. I develop the notion of simulated kindhood to explain how such classifications support explanation and coordination despite lacking metaphysical integrity. Race serves as the central case: a contested and heterogeneous category that nonetheless endures as a diagnostic tool, a policy metric, and a risk factor. By treating race as a regulatory kind, the paper reframes classificatory persistence as an institutional phenomenon, rather than a cognitive or conceptual error. The account challenges traditional views of kindhood, highlights the epistemic logic of infrastructural classification, and raises ethical concerns about the reification of simulated categories.
-
249706.466026
This article offers a hybrid account of regulatory kinds and subjective fit to explain why the oft-invoked analogy between gender transition and so-called race transition fails both conceptually and normatively. The argument—recently circulated in popular commentary and endorsed by figures such as Richard Dawkins—suggests that if gender transition is legitimate on the basis of social construction, then racial transition should be equally so. Yet since racial transition is generally regarded as illegitimate, the analogy concludes that gender transition must be suspect. I argue that this inference rests on a category error: it conflates social construction with norm-governed intelligibility.
-
249772.46604
This article analyzes some of the methodological tensions that can be observed in the regulation of science and technology, and that often manifest themselves as controversies. We offer a three-way classification of such tensions. The latter can arise from: 1) external (non-cognitive) factors that are specific to a particular regulation; 2) external (non-cognitive) factors of wider societal importance that are not related to any particular regulatory process; and 3) internal (non-cognitive, as well as cognitive) factors related to the cognitive, as well as practical limitations of a particular scientific methodology in the context of regulatory decision making. We analyze case studies of regulation of, among other, pharmaceuticals, chemical products, health claims on foods, as well as genetically modified organisms. The analysis shows that most often such methodological tensions are driven, directly or indirectly, by different stances with respect to non-cognitive factors that underlie the fundamental choices of methods and standards, and therefore the data that underpin regulatory decisions. Our paper makes clear an important feature of regulatory science: cognitive factors (like improved scientific data or accepted best practices), that in academic science facilitate the resolution of debates, in regulatory science do not suffice for achieving closure with respect to such tensions. Any attempt at closure has to deal primarily with the relevant non-cognitive factors.
-
365250.466054
Ecosystems are increasingly being represented as marketplaces that produce goods for humanity, and because of this, economic metaphors for increasing efficiency have been introduced into conservation. A powerful model for economic growth is the globalised free market and some are implicitly deploying it to suggest changes in conservation practice. Ecological globalisation is the position that we should not control the free movement of species and re-wilding occurs most efficiently through non-intervention. When species can move and interact with new ecological systems, they create novel ecosystems. These novel arrangements create experimental markets in nature's economy, providing opportunities for the efficient production of goods for humans, also known as ecosystem services. When invasive species supersede local populations, it indicates previous biotic systems were inefficient, which is why they were replaced, and therefore it is wrong to protect indigenous ‘losers’ from extinction. Those who defend indigenous species are accused of being xenophobic against recent biotic migrants. This position is flawed both empirically and morally as there is a disconnect between these economic and political arguments when applied to human economies and nature's economy.
-
413718.466072
Our adversarial system of international relations poses substantial risks of violent catastrophe and impedes morally urgent initiatives and reform collaborations. The domestic politics of more evolved societies provide guidance toward a better world governed by just rules, which ensure that basic human needs are met, inequalities constrained, and weapons and wealth marginalized as tools for influencing political and judicial outcomes. Impartial administration, adjudication, and enforcement of just rules require a strong normative expectation on officials and citizens to fully subordinate their personal and national loyalties to their shared commitment to the just and fair functioning of the global order. As we have fought nepotism within states, we must fight nepotism on behalf of states to overcome humanity’s great common challenges. To moralize international relations, states can plausibly begin with reforming the world economy toward ending severe poverty, thereby building the trust and respect needed for more difficult reforms.
-
414030.466086
I argue that moral dialogue concerning an agent’s standing to blame facilitates moral understanding about the purported wrongdoing that her blame targets. Challenges to a blamer’s standing serve a communicative function: they initiate dialogue or reflection meant to align the moral understanding of the blamer and challenger. On standard accounts of standing to blame, challenges to standing facilitate shared moral understanding about the blamer herself: it matters per se whether the blamer has a stake in the purported wrongdoing at issue, is blaming hypocritically, or is complicit in the wrongdoing at issue. In contrast, I argue that three widely recognized conditions on standing to blame—the business, non-hypocrisy, and non-complicity conditions—serve as epistemically tractable proxies through which we evaluate the accuracy and proportionality of blame. Standing matters because, and to the extent that, it indirectly informs our understanding of the purported wrongdoing that an act of blaming targets.
-
451867.466102
A general challenge in life is how to avoid being duped or exploited by clever-sounding but ultimately facile reasoning. One thing’s for sure, you don’t want to internalize the following norm:
(Easy Dupe): Whenever you hear an argument for doing X, and you can’t immediately refute it, you are thereby rationally committed to doing X. …
-
538121.466115
|A University Occupation in The Netherlands - via de Volkskrant|
Here is my best effort to reconstruct the reasoning behind these occupations. Premise 1. The Israeli government is doing terrible things in Gaza and should stop
P2. …
-
636821.466128
My daughter, S, who is five, has a special stuffed unicorn who she received for her third Christmas. Once white, she is now gray: the color of love—and drool. Once replete with a magnificent mane of pale pink yarn, she now boasts a tangled, grizzled, dishwater-colored ‘do. …
-
769678.466141
How ought scarce health research resources be allocated, where health research spans “basic”, translational, clinical, health systems and public health research? In this paper I first outline a previously suggested answer to this question: the “fair-share principle” stipulates that total health research funding ought to be allocated in direct proportion with suffering caused by each disease. Second, I highlight a variety of problems the fair-share principle faces. The principle is inattentive to problems of aggregation and distribution of harms incurred from disease and benefits accrued from research, and neglects considerations of cost-effectiveness. Moreover, the principle fails to recognise that using Global Burden of Disease Study estimates as proxies for “suffering” underdetermines health research resource allocation. Importantly, in drawing on these estimates, which are disease-centric and only take “proximal” causes of health loss into account, the fair-share principle disregards the social determinants of health. Along with them, the principle ignores public health research, which often focusses on “distal” causes of health loss to improve population health and reduce health inequalities. Following the principle therefore leads to inequitable priority-setting. I conclude that despite relatively widespread appeals to it, the fair-share principle is not an ideal to aim for during priority-setting.
-
875920.466157
In the early 1830s, Black abolitionist Maria Stewart articulated a republican politics suited to the political condition of Black Americans in the antebellum United States. She did so by reimagining the core republican concepts of domination and civic virtue. Stewart argued that Black Americans, both enslaved and nominally free, were reduced by the white-dominated polity to a position of servitude: as merely fit to serve the good of the white Americans who dominated them and lacking any claim upon the polity’s common good themselves. At the same time, Stewart drew a nuanced distinction between servitude and service that cast Black mothers as exemplars of republican virtue, engaged in social reproductive labor that supported the common good of Black Americans as a people, in which Black mothers themselves partook. Furthermore, Stewart emphasized the liberatory power of partial sympathy- - fellow feeling among the dominated-- as a foundation for racialized civic virtue and solidarity organized around the common good of Black Americans as a people. Stewart’s is a republican politics in which the dominated struggle for their common good in the face of a polity that denies them a claim upon its own.
-
939876.466174
The notion of malfunction is critical to biological explanation. It provides a test bed for the normative character of functional attribution. Theories of biological functioning must permit traits to operate but, at the same time, be judged as malfunctioning (in some naturalized, nonarbitrary sense). Whereas malfunctioning has attracted the most attention and discussion in evolutionary etiological approaches, in systemic and organizational theories it has been less discussed.
-
942830.466187
In this critical response to John Doris's book "Character Trouble: Undisciplined Essays on Moral Agency and Personality," I analyze his updated take on character skepticism—the view that character traits have surprisingly limited influence on behavior across diverse situations—from a philosophy of science perspective. While I find his updated view compelling, I challenge his reliance on Cohen's conventional effect size benchmarks, arguing that qualitative labels for effect sizes obscure rather than clarify the practical significance of results. I propose that Doris's strongest argument lies in what I call the "disproportion thesis"—the view that personality variables exert less influence, and situational variables more influence, on behavior than our intuitive expectations would predict, creating a disconcerting gap. However, I argue that this thesis requires a more explicit quantification of those prior expectations. I conclude that character skepticism would benefit from formulations of its insights in a way that directly addresses character theorists' empirical commitments, avoiding vague benchmarks and contextualizing effects.
-
943063.4662
Social scripts specify the normal way for people to interact in certain situations. For example, a social script for a restaurant conversation explains why the world over, these conversations take a similar form. I develop an account of how social scripts can structure people’s sexual agency—sometimes, for the worse. I show how people’s sexual agency can be constrained by the presence of a linear social script for heteronormative sexual encounters that escalate in intimacy and terminate in male orgasm. By marking off certain sexual options as deviant, as breaches of social obligations, or as sanctionable, this script can combine with certain motivations and circumstances to explain why people voluntarily take part in sexual encounters that they would ideally like to avoid. I discuss how this situation could be ameliorated by alternative social scripts. For example, in conjunction with changes to ancillary social norms, people would be more empowered if they had social scripts for using safe words to end sexual encounters.
-
943083.466213
I offer a new interpretation of Heidegger’s analysis of anxiety in Being and Time as an account of the relationship between individual agents and the public normative practices of their communities. According to a prominent recent interpretation, Heidegger’s discussions of anxiety, death and the “call of conscience” together explain how we can respond to the norms of our practices as reasons and subject them to critical reflection. I argue that this is only part of the story. Anxiety is an occasion for Dasein to take responsibility for its ongoing activity of interpreting the possibilities for living and acting made available by the normative practices of its community, which is presupposed and overlooked from the perspective of everyday Dasein. Public normativity underdetermines Dasein’s conception of what it would mean to take up any of the possibilities available in its world as a way of living its own life.
-
943106.466226
This paper critically assesses Tommie Shelby’s Marxist definition of racism as a kind of ideology. I argue that institutional racism does not necessarily presuppose the Marxist idea of racist ideology, although it always presupposes the idea of race. The idea of race that is necessary to account for institutional racism is clarified. This paper has three main sections. I first analyze (in §1) the Marxist conception of ideology and explain its relationship to institutional racism. Marxist ideology is pejorative in that it entails cognitive distortion for those in the grip of ideology. Hence, Shelby’s Marxist conception of racism—“racism is racist ideology”—entails that racists are necessarily in the grip of cognitively distorted beliefs. Against this view, I argue (in §2) that it is possible to imagine a form of institutional racism that involves racial cognition but no cognitive distortion, hence no ideology in the pejorative sense. The theoretical portion of my paper (§3) analyzes Shelby’s analysis of race and draws attention to a significant theoretical problem (that I call “Shelby’s dilemma”) plaguing Shelby’s conception of racism.
-
943173.46624
Utilitarianism is often contrasted with egalitarianism, and sometimes rejected for its alleged neglect of egalitarian concerns. Utilitarians, it appears, do not care who gets what or how we relate to one another, so long as overall well-being is maximized. Egalitarians, on the other hand, prefer social arrangements in which the degree to which some have more than others, or that some are placed above others, is less. I argue, however, that utilitarianism should be considered an egalitarian theory. Real-world egalitarian movements aim to reduce inequalities in wealth and hierarchical social relations. Utilitarianism, I argue, shares these aims, and does so in similar way to contemporary egalitarian theories. If I am right, utilitarianism should not be rejected for failing to be egalitarian, but engaged with as an egalitarian theory—and utilitarians should take egalitarian concerns seriously.
-
943302.466253
Many people think there is something objectionable about “selective outrage.” After investigating how to best characterise what selective outrage is and what these objections target, this paper argues that selective outrage can actually have important positive effects. Because we often have limited resources with which to enforce norms, it can be collectively prudent to prioritise enforcing norms that are well-established or collectively recognisable over those that are not. This will sometimes require responding to individual wrongs that seem less immoral, outrageous or in need of attention than others. We argue that when we encounter agents who are outraged about a violation of a genuinely valuable norm but not another relevantly similar violation, we should generally refrain from objecting unless we have good independent evidence the agent’s outrage stems from objectionable motives.
-
1168753.466266
Completeness says that, for every pair of prospects, at least one of the prospects is at least as preferred as the other. I present a new money-pump argument that Completeness is a requirement of rationality. In comparison with earlier money-pump arguments for Completeness, this argument relies on a unidimensional form of stochastic dominance and the behavioural assumption that agents pick in a probabilistic manner when no option is optimal. Moreover, unlike some of the previous arguments, the new argument is based on a forcing money pump, that is, an exploitation scheme where the agent is rationally required at each step to go along with the scheme.
-
1211347.466279
This target-article proposes a solution to a puzzle: why is it that, across a wide range of domains, evaluative beliefs are apt to shift our evaluative experience in both short-term and long-term ways? And why are these top-down influences on affective valuation so powerful? The explanation is that it was a vitally-important adaptive problem for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to swiftly acquire the values of the tribe, including not just tastes in food, fear of local predators and dangers, and so on, but also a whole suite of local norms, as well as a default positive valuation of co-tribal members themselves.
-
1437185.466292
Consultant Statistician
Edinburgh
Relevant significance? Be careful what you wish for
Despised and Rejected
Scarcely a good word can be had for statistical significance these days. We are admonished (as if we did not know) that just because a null hypothesis has been ‘rejected’ by some statistical test, it does not mean it is not true and thus it does not follow that significance implies a genuine effect of treatment. …
-
1506179.466307
This chapter begins by explaining why it is important to attend to duties when theorizing human rights. It then assesses four constraints on the duties associated with human rights: the constraints of correlativity, ability, agency, and demandingness. Finally, it compares two approaches to the duties associated with human rights: practice-based approaches and naturalistic approaches. It concludes that both approaches successfully produce duties, though neither abides by all four constraints.
-
1611306.466323
Classical liberalism tends to respond to the criticism of any voluntary market contract by promoting a wider choice of options and increased information and bargaining power so that no one would seem to be ‘forced’ or ‘tricked’ into an ‘unconscionable’ contract. Hence, at first glance, the strict logic of the classical liberal freedom-of-contract philosophy would seem to argue against ever abolishing any mutually voluntary contract between knowledgeable and consenting adults. Yet the modern liberal democratic societies have abolished (i.e., treated as invalid) at least three types of historical contracts: the voluntary slavery or perpetual servitude contract, the coverture marriage contract, and an undemocratic constitution to establish an autocratic government. Thus, the rights associated with those contracts are considered as inalienable. This paper analyzes these three contracts and shows that there is indeed a deeper democratic or Enlightenment classical liberal tradition of jurisprudence that rules out those contracts. The ‘problem’ is that the same principles imply the abolition of the employment contract, the contract for renting human beings, which is the foundation for the economic system that is often (but superficially) identified with classical liberalism itself. Frank Knight is taken throughout as the exemplary advocate of the economics of conventional classical liberalism.
-
1635478.466336
This article introduces the concept of authoritarian recursion to describe how artificial intelligence (AI) systems increasingly mediate control across education, warfare, and digital discourse. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and sociotechnical theory, the study reveals how AI-driven platforms delegate judgment to algorithmic processes, normalize opacity, and recursively reinforce behavioral norms under the guise of neutrality and optimization. Case studies include generative AI models in classroom surveillance, autonomous targeting in military AI systems, and content curation logics in platform governance. Rather than treating these domains as disparate, the paper maps their structural convergence within recursive architectures of abstraction, surveillance, and classification. These feedback systems do not simply automate tasks—they encode modes of epistemic authority that disperse accountability while intensifying political asymmetries. Through cultural and policy analysis, the article argues that authoritarian recursion operates as a hybrid logic, fusing technical abstraction with state and market imperatives. The paper concludes by outlining implications for democratic legitimacy, human oversight, and the political design of AI governance frameworks.
-
1676413.466349
T.M. Scanlon, following John Rawls, sought to change the landscape of moral theory by establishing an alternative to both intuitionism and consequentialism: contractualism. One of Scanlon’s most prominent arguments for contractualism is that it alone captures the value of mutual recognition and the role of norms of recognition in enacting this ideal moral relationship. Moreover, Scanlon argues that this ideal moral relationship explains the distinctive authority and force of morality. We concur. Nevertheless, we wish to offer an alternative to Scanlon’s account of mutual recognition and to the moral theory that emerges from it. Instead of construing mutual recognition in terms of justifiability to others, as Scanlon does, we propose to construe such relations as relations of caring solidarity with others as human. This alternative retains the overall benefits of the moral recognition approach, while offering quite different structural features, including a different account of the scope of morality. This essay is programmatic. The primary goal is to disentangle the infrastructure of moral recognition from the specific idea of justifiability, thereby to open up a range of striking new questions for moral theory.
-
1681647.466364
Very short summary: In this essay, I explore a potential tension in Chandran Kukathas’s account of the liberal archipelago, between the idea of morality conceived as a commons and the politics of indifference of the liberal state. …