What's Wrong with Prepunishment?

Punishing someone for a crime before they have committed it is widely considered morally abhorrent. But there is little agreement on what exactly is supposed to be wrong with it. In this paper, I critically evaluate several objections to the permissibility of prepunishment, making points along the way about the connections between time, knowledge, desert, deterrence and duty. I conclude that, although the conditions under which it could permissibly be administered are unlikely ever to arise in practice, nevertheless in principle, nothing is wrong with prepunishment after all.     

What's Wrong with the Experience Machine?

Nozick's thought experiment is less effective than is often believed. Certainly, there could be reasons to enter the machine. Possibly, life there might be among the best of all those available. Yet we need to distinguish between two versions. On the first, I retain my beliefs, memories, dispositions, some knowledge. On the second, all these too are determined by the scientists. Nozick alludes to both versions. But only on the first will machine life have appeal.     

What's Really Wrong with the Limited Quantity View?

In Part Four of Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit seeks Theory X – the Utilitarian account of the morality of choices where the number of people who will ever exist depends upon our actions. Parfit argues that X has yet to be found. The two simplest versions of Theory X are Total Utilitarianism and Average Utilitarianism. Unfortunately, Parfit argues, each of these leads to unacceptable results. Parfit explores various alternatives and finds them all unsatisfactory. This paper deals with one of those alternatives: the Limited Quantity View. I argue that ParfitÕs argument against this view fails. However, I then present a new and more general objection which defeats a broad range of utilitarian views, including the Limited Quantity View.     

What's Wrong With Methodism?

I distinguish between two theses, DPJ and DGP. DPJ asserts that one's justification for accepting particular epistemic propositions positively depends on one's being justified in believing general epistemic principles. DGP claims that one's justification in believing general epistemic propositions positively depends on one's being justified in believing particular epistemic propositions. I claim that methodism accepts DPJ and rejects DGP and particularism accepts DGP and rejects DPJ. I argue that we should reject DGP and methodism roughly because these views imply that many of us do not know epistemic propositions that we do know. This point is made by Roderick Chisholm in The Problem of the Criterion and challenged by Robert Amico. I consider Chisholm's arguments and Amico's objections. Finally, I argue that even if we reject DPJ and methodism, we need not embrace particularism, since we could reject both DPJ and DGP.     

What's Wrong With Indispensability?

For many philosophers not automatically inclined to Platonism, the indispensability argument for the existence of mathematical objectshas provided the best (and perhaps only) evidence for mathematicalrealism. Recently, however, this argument has been subject to attack, most notably by Penelope Maddy (1992, 1997),on the grounds that its conclusions do not sit well with mathematical practice. I offer a diagnosis of what has gone wrong with the indispensability argument (I claim that mathematics is indispensable in the wrong way), and, taking my cue from Mark Colyvan's (1998) attempt to provide a Quinean account of unapplied mathematics as `recreational', suggest that, if one approaches the problem from a Quinean naturalist starting point, one must conclude that all mathematics is recreational in this way.     

What's Wrong with Rex? Hegel on Animal Defect and Individuality

In his Logic, Hegel argues that evaluative judgments are comparisons between the reality of an individual object and the standard for that reality found in the object's own concept. Understood in this way, an object is bad (ugly, etc.) insofar as it fails to be what it is according to its concept. In his recent Life and Action, Michael Thompson has suggested that we can understand various kinds of natural defect (i.e., defects in living things) in a similar way, and that if we do, we can helpfully see intellectual and moral badness—irrationality and vice—as themselves varieties of natural defect. In this paper, I argue that Hegel's position on animal individuality denies the claim that irrationality and vice are forms of natural defect. Hegel's account of the individuality proper to the animal organism in the Philosophy of Nature clearly disallows evaluative judgments about animals and thereby establishes a well‐defined conceptual distinction between natural defect and intellectual or ethical—i.e., broadly spiritual or geistliche—defect. Hegel thus provides a way of maintaining the difference between nature and spirit within his broader commitment to a post‐Kantian conception of substantial form.     

Probing The Politics of Difference: What's Wrong with an All-Male Priesthood?

Though it is often taken for granted that feminists necessarily must condemn the exclusion of women from the Roman Catholic priesthood, the author demonstrates that the politics of difference, if pursued consistently, reopens this question. International feminist arguments for honoring gender differences, the teachings of John Paul II concerning women, and Catholic social justice teachings, taken jointly, suggest that the current Catholic exclusion of women from the priesthood is unjust not because the reservation of a social role to a single sex is inherently unacceptable, but because of the asymmetry in power between the roles accorded men and women in the governance of the Catholic Church. To be just, sex-specific reservation of roles must meet the criteria of balance, proportion, power, and particularity.     

On a Promise or on the Game: What's Wrong with Selling Consent?

Is selling sex a service like any other? Philosophers have given a range of answers to this question: (a) sex has a specific value that is debased by commercial markets in sex; (b) sex work is a service like any other; (c) markets in sex perpetuate structural systems of inequality. This article takes seriously the suggestion that there is something special about sex itself which raises a specific set of concerns when traded for money. The challenge is to explain this without drawing on contentious essentialist claims about the value of sex. It proceeds by analysing a parallel between sexual promises and selling sexual consent. On an expectational theory of promising, commercial agreements to sex generate obligations in a way that is normatively analogous to sexual promises. Understanding the normative release conditions for such assurance-providing agreements provides a way of analysing the justifiability of various ways of enforcing such agreements. I argue that the release conditions for agreements involving sex are not conducive to being codified under typical forms of service contract. As such, regulation aimed at legitimising sex work must provide adequate protections to workers without codifying it under typical forms of service contract.     

What's Wrong with Speciesism? (Society for Applied Philosophy Annual Lecture 2015)

Peter Singer famously argued in Animal Liberation that almost all of us are speciesists, unjustifiably favoring the interests of humans over the similar interests of other animals. Although I long found that charge compelling, I now find myself having doubts. This article starts by trying to get clear about the nature of speciesism, and then argues that Singer's attempt to show that speciesism is a mere prejudice is unsuccessful. I also argue that most of us are not actually speciesists at all, but rather accept a view I call modal personism. Although I am not confident that modal personism can be adequately defended, it is, at the very least, a philosophical view worthy of further consideration.     

What Is Wrong with Lying?

One thing wrong with lying is that it can be manipulative. Understanding why lying can be a form of manipulation involves understanding how our telling someone something can give them a reason to believe it, and understanding this requires seeing both how our telling things can invite trust and how trust can be a reason to believe someone. This paper aims to outline the mechanism by means of which lies can be manipulative and through doing so identify a unique reason for accepting testimony; a reason based on trusting a speaker's telling.     

What is Wrong with Sufficiency?

In this paper, I ask what is wrong with sufficiency. I formulate a generic sufficiency principle in relation to which I discuss possible problems for sufficientarianism. I argue against the arbitrariness–concern, that sufficiency theory need only to identify a possible space for determining a plausible threshold, and I argue against the high–low threshold dilemma concern, that multiple-threshold views can solve this dilemma. I then distinguish between currency-pluralist and currency-monist multiple-threshold views and test them against two different versions of the widely shared ‘ignorance of inequality objection’ to sufficientarianism—a benefit-driven and a burden-driven version. I argue that currency-pluralist sufficiency views are better capable of responding to the former than currency-monist views. However, I show that no existing sufficiency view can provide a plausible response to the burden-driven version. Hence, I conclude that the problem of unequal distribution of burdens above the thresholds represents an overlooked threat to the sufficiency view, in any version.

     

What’s Wrong with Joyguzzling?

Our thesis is that there is no moral requirement to refrain from emitting reasonable amounts of greenhouse gases (GHGs) solely in order to enjoy oneself. Joyriding in a gas guzzler (joyguzzling) provides our paradigm example. We first distinguish this claim that there is no moral requirement to refrain from joyguzzling from other more radical claims. We then review several different proposed objections to our view. These include: the claim that joyguzzling exemplifies a vice, causes or contributes to harm, has negative expected value, exceeds our fair share of global emissions, and undermines political duties. We show why none of these objections succeeds and conclude that no good reason has yet been proposed that shows why joyguzzling violates a moral requirement.     

What Is Wrong with External Reasons?

In this paper I argue that only a subset of the reason statementsWilliams defines as external must be rejected as false. `A has areason to ' is necessarily false when the ends and aimsconstitutive of A's good close off the deliberative route from her S to the conclusion she has reason to . But when less important ends are at stake, it seems that a person's needs generally provide reasons for action, contrary to Williams's internalist account. I suspect, however, that there may remain inexorable disagreementover these claims because people value things in two distinct ways. Tosupport my suspicion, I explain how people's valuation can take either an agency-prioritizing or an end-prioritizing form. I then argue thatresolving the disagreement over Williams's internalist account ofreasons depends on whether it can be established that the agency-prioritizingform is the rationally superior form of valuation.     

Does Scope of Attention Affect Creativity? Testing the Attentional Priming Hypothesis

Creativity is linked to broad scope of attention, a state or trait that allocates attentional resources over a wide range of perceptual stimuli. According to the attentional priming hypothesis, a mechanism underlying the creativity–attention link is that broad perceptual attention scope primes broad conceptual attention scope—the activation of a wide range of memory contents—which therefore facilitates creative ideation. This study aimed to test the hypothesis in three experiments using three manipulations and two creativity tasks. Experiment 1 used the Navon letter task to prime attention to global patterns or local details of composite stimuli and measured creativity via the task to generate alternative uses of daily objects. Experiment 2 modified a cue-size procedure in which participants repeatedly attended to large or small visual cues before a target stimulus appeared. Experiment 3 devised a manipulation that required participants to view and visualize images associated with broad or narrow attention and adopted the alternative uses task and the task to invent alien creatures. Across the experiments, although the results were in the predicted direction, they were non-significant. This study found no evidence that broadness of perceptual attention affects creativity.     

What’s Wrong with Motive Manipulation?

Consider manipulation in which one agent, avoiding force, threat, or fraud mobilizes some non-concern motive of another so as to induce this other to behave or move differently than she would otherwise have behaved or moved, given her circumstances and her initial ranking of concerns. As an instance, imagine that I get us to miss the opening of a play that I have grudgingly agreed to attend by engaging your sublimated compulsive tendency to check the stove when we are halfway to the theatre. Such motive manipulation is, I take it, widely regarded as morally worrisome. If it really is morally worrisome, then we should be able to explain adequately why it is so. But existing condemnations of manipulation come up short in this regard. In this paper, I develop and defend a more plausible account of the moral status of this phenomenon.

What is Wrong with Husserl's Scientific Anti-Realism?

It is widely thought that focusing on highly skilled movements while performing them hinders their execution. Once you have developed the ability to tee off in golf, play an arpeggio on the piano, or perform a pirouette in ballet, attention to what your body is doing is thought to lead to inaccuracies, blunders, and sometimes even utter paralysis. Here I re-examine this view and argue that it lacks support when taken as a general thesis. Although bodily awareness may often interfere with well-developed rote skills, like climbing stairs, I suggest that it is typically not detrimental to the skills of expert athletes, performing artists, and other individuals who endeavor to achieve excellence. Along the way, I present a critical analysis of some philosophical theories and behavioral studies on the relationship between attention and bodily movement, an explanation of why attention may be beneficial at the highest level of performance and an error theory that explains why many have thought the contrary. Though tentative, I present my view as a challenge to the widespread starting assumption in research on highly skilled movement that at the pinnacle of skill attention to one's movement is detrimental.     

Whence Creativity?

In this article, I explicate where my theoretical work on creativity has been and where it is going. I describe earlier three‐facet and investment theories, as well as a propulsion model. I then describe my new triangular theory of creativity.     

What is Wrong with “What is Wrong with Rational Suicide”

In “What is Wrong with Rational Suicide,” Pilpel and Amsel develop a counterexample that allegedly confounds attempts to condition the moral permissibility of suicide on its rationality. In this counterexample, a healthy middle aged woman with significant life accomplishments, but no dependents, disease, or mental disorder opts to end her life painlessly after reading philosophical texts that persuade her that life is meaningless and bereft of intrinsic value. Many people would judge her suicide “a bad mistake” despite its meeting “robust” conditions for rationality. Hence, Pilpel and Amsel conclude, even robust conditions for the rationality of suicide “fail to do their job: to exclude intuitively unacceptable suicides from being permissible.” I argue here that this counterexample fails to cast doubt on philosophical attempts to account for the moral permissibility of suicide in terms of its rationality.