The Presentist’s Dilemma

This paper defends three theses: (i) that presentism is either trivial or untenable; (ii) that the debate between tensed and tenseless theories of time is not about the status of presentism; and (iii) that there is no temporal analogue of the modal thesis of actualism.     

The Moral Oracle’s Test

When presented with a situation involving an agent’s choice between alternative actions, a moral oracle says what the agent is allowed to do. The oracle bases her advice on some moral theory, but the nature of that theory is not known by us. The moral oracle’s test consists in determining whether a series of questions to the oracle can be so constructed that her answers will reveal which of two given types of theories she adheres to. The test can be applied to moral theories in order to determine if they differ in their recommendations for action. Based on this test, a terminology is developed to specify different forms and degrees of distinguishability between moral theories, or types of theories, in terms of their recommendations for action. In conclusion, the test is applied to consequentialism and utilitarianism.     

The imprecise impermissivist’s dilemma

Synthese - Impermissivists hold that an agent with a given body of evidence has at most one rationally permitted attitude that she should adopt towards any particular proposition. Permissivists...     

The Devil’s Lying Wonders

That demonic agents can work wonders is a staple of much Judeo-Christian theology. Believers have proposed various means by which the Devil's work can be distinguished from the miracles wrought by God, primarily so that no one is led astray by the Devil's ‘lying wonders.’ I consider the likelihood of our using the suggested criteria with any success. Given certain claims about the demonic nature and certain facts about the way theists often handle the problem of inscrutable evil, it seems unlikely that any of the criteria I examine can be relied upon.

The Fictionalist’s Attitude Problem

According to John Mackie, moral talk is representational (the realists go that bit right) but its metaphysical presuppositions are wildly implausible (the non-cognitivists got that bit right). This is the basis of Mackie’s now famous error theory: that moral judgments are cognitively meaningful but systematically false. Of course, Mackie went on to recommend various substantive moral judgments, and, in the light of his error theory, that has seemed odd to a lot of folk. Richard Joyce has argued that Mackie’s approach can be vindicated by a fictionalist account of moral discourse. And Mark Kalderon has argued that moral fictionalism is attractive quite independently of Mackie’s error-theory. Kalderon argues that the Frege–Geach problem shows that we need moral propositions, but that a fictionalist can and should embrace propositional content together with a non-cognitivist account of acceptance of a moral proposition. Indeed, it is clear that any fictionalist is going to have to postulate more than one kind of acceptance attitude. We argue that this double-approach to acceptance generates a new problem – a descendent of Frege–Geach – which we call the acceptance–transfer problem. Although we develop the problem in the context of Kalderon’s version of non-cognitivist fictionalism, we show that it is not the non-cognitivist aspect of Kalderon’s account that generates the problem. A closely related problem surfaces for the more typical variants of fictionalism according to which accepting a moral proposition is believing some closely related non-moral proposition. Fictionalists of both stripes thus have an attitude problem.

The Political Egalitarian’s Dilemma

Political egalitarianism is at the core of most normative conceptions of democratic legitimacy. It finds its minimal expression in the “one person one vote” formula. In the literature on deliberative democracy, political equality is typically interpreted in a more demanding sense, but different interpretations of what political equality requires can be identified. In this paper I shall argue that the attempt to specify political equality in deliberative democracy is affected by a dilemma. I shall illustrate the political egalitarian’s dilemma by a hypothetical choice between two informational bases for political equality: Rawlsian primary goods and Amartya Sen’s capability approach. The political egalitarian’s dilemma reveals a clash between the requirement of ensuring equal possibilities to participate in the democratic process and the requirement of subjecting substantive judgments to deliberative evaluation. As such, the dilemma is a variant of the procedure vs. substance dilemma that is well-known in democratic theory. While it has sometimes been argued that deliberative democracy solves the tension between procedure and substance, the political egalitarian’s dilemma shows that this tension continues within deliberative democracy.

The Choice Architect’s Trilemma

Critics have long dismissed paternalistic choice architecture as conceptually muddled at best and oxymoronic at worst. In this article, I argue that this criticism remains true despite recent replies to the contrary. Further, I suggest that a similar conceptual criticism also applies to non-paternalistic choice architecture. This is due to a three-way tension between the effectiveness, avoidability, and distinctiveness of each nudge. To illustrate this tension, I provide a novel explanation of the mechanics of nudging and a taxonomy of these interventions. I then argue that choice architects who defend the distinctiveness of nudging according to how it guides our behaviour via our unreflective intuitive reasoning encounter a trilemma because the distinctiveness of nudging hinges on interventions being both avoidable and effective. Choice architects cannot achieve this aim without harnessing both our automatic and reflective systems of thought in tandem. However, this diminishes the distinctive character of nudging by bringing it closer to other traditional policy interventions. This establishes the choice architect’s trilemma: a nudge is likely to be either ineffective, effective via some morally unacceptable means, or effective in a manner that is conceptually indistinct from other evidence-based policy interventions.     

Forgiveness: The Victim’s Prerogative

Abstract

This article explores and offers a qualified defence of the claim that the entitlement to forgive a wrongdoer belongs to the victim of the wrong. A summary account of forgiveness is given, followed by arguments in favor of the victim’s prerogative to forgive. Primary, or direct victims are then distinguished from secondary and tertiary ones, which point to a plurality of prerogatives to forgive. In cases of conflicts between these prerogatives it is emphasized that special care should be taken to protect the primary victim’s entitlement, without giving an absolute and exclusive status to the latter prerogative. Grounds for limiting the primary victim’s prerogative regarding forgiveness include (a) cases where harm to secondary and/or tertiary victims are greater than the harm resulting from the original wrong committed against the primary victim, (b) the social dimensions of the elements of forgiveness, and (c) the need for self-forgiveness when a repentant wrongdoer is not forgiven by any of the victims. The practical significance of these arguments are illustrated by considering the criticism that the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission have forgiven perpetrators in ways that inappropriately pre-empted the primary victims’ entitlement to forgive.     

The engineer’s responsibility for quality

This paper offers a definition of quality for products, explains why engineers are morally responsible for quality, and outlines how engineers can fulfill this responsibility. This paper was presented at the Engineering Foundation Conference on “Ethics for Science and Engineering Based International Industries”, Durham, NC, USA, 14–17 September 1997.     

The Revisionist’s Guide to Responsibility

Revisionism in the theory of moral responsibility is the idea that some aspect of responsibility practices, attitudes, or concept is in need of revision. While the increased frequency of revisionist language in the literature on free will and moral responsibility is striking, what discussion there has been of revisionism about responsibility and free will tends to be critical. In this paper, I argue that at least one species of revisionism, moderate revisionism, is considerably more sophisticated and defensible than critics have realized. I go on to argue for the advantages of moderate revisionist theories over standard compatibilist and incompatibilist theories.     

The lesson of Newcomb’s paradox

In Newcomb’s paradox you can choose to receive either the contents of a particular closed box, or the contents of both that closed box and another one. Before you choose though, an antagonist uses a prediction algorithm to accurately deduce your choice, and uses that deduction to fill the two boxes. The way they do this guarantees that you made the wrong choice. Newcomb’s paradox is that game theory’s expected utility and dominance principles appear to provide conflicting recommendations for what you should choose. Here we show that the conflicting recommendations assume different probabilistic structures relating your choice and the algorithm’s prediction. This resolves the paradox: the reason there appears to be two conflicting recommendations is that the probabilistic structure relating the problem’s random variables is open to two, conflicting interpretations. We then show that the accuracy of the prediction algorithm in Newcomb’s paradox, the focus of much previous work, is irrelevant. We end by showing that Newcomb’s paradox is time-reversal invariant; both the paradox and its resolution are unchanged if the algorithm makes its ‘prediction’ after you make your choice rather than before.     

The Music of Dan’s Life

ABSTRACT

In a persistent quest for understanding of what animates life and produces human experience, Daniel Stern was able to put the unspeakable into words. Impregnated with the world of childhood, he described the Forms of Vitality, rendering as never before the ubiquity of the music of life that animates and underlies the unfolding of movement and action. This concept opens new horizons for many disciplines.

Examples will describe advances in neuroscience or for the diagnosis of autism, as well as the essential function of human relationships in early development.     

The atheist’s free will offence

This paper criticizes the assumption,omnipresent in contemporary philosophy ofreligion, that a perfectly good and loving Godwould wish to confer on (at least some) finitepersons free will. An alternative mode ofDivine-human relationship is introduced andshown to be as conducive to the realization ofvalue as one involving free will.Certain implications of this result are thenrevealed, to wit, that the theists free willdefence against the problem of evil isunsuccessful, and what is more, that free will,if it exists, provides positive support foratheism.     

The logic of Simpson’s paradox

There are three distinct questions associated with Simpson’s paradox. (i) Why or in what sense is Simpson’s paradox a paradox? (ii) What is the proper analysis of the paradox? (iii) How one should proceed when confronted with a typical case of the paradox? We propose a “formal” answer to the first two questions which, among other things, includes deductive proofs for important theorems regarding Simpson’s paradox. Our account contrasts sharply with Pearl’s causal (and questionable) account of the first two questions. We argue that the “how to proceed question?” does not have a unique response, and that it depends on the context of the problem. We evaluate an objection to our account by comparing ours with Blyth’s account of the paradox. Our research on the paradox suggests that the “how to proceed question” needs to be divorced from what makes Simpson’s paradox “paradoxical.”