In Defence of Agent-Based Virtue Ethics

Abstract

In ‘Against Agent-Based Virtue Ethics’ (2004) Michael Brady rejects agent-based virtue ethics on the grounds that it fails to capture the commonsense distinction between an agent's doing the right thing, and her doing it for the right reason. In his view, the failure to account for this distinction has paradoxical results, making it unable to explain why an agent has a duty to perform a given action. I argue that Brady's objection relies on the assumption that an agent-based account is committed to defining obligations in terms of actual motives. If we reject this view, and instead provide a version of agent-basing that determines obligations in terms of the motives of the hypothetical virtuous agent, the paradox disappears.     

Against Fallibilism

In this paper I argue for a doctrine I call ‘infallibilism’, which I stipulate to mean that If S knows that p, then the epistemic probability of p for S is 1. Some fallibilists will claim that this doctrine should be rejected because it leads to scepticism. Though it's not obvious that infallibilism does lead to scepticism, I argue that we should be willing to accept it even if it does. Infallibilism should be preferred because it has greater explanatory power than fallibilism. In particular, I argue that an infallibilist can easily explain why assertions of ‘p, but possibly not-p’ (where the ‘possibly’ is read as referring to epistemic possibility) is infelicitous in terms of the knowledge rule of assertion. But a fallibilist cannot. Furthermore, an infallibilist can explain the infelicity of utterances of ‘p, but I don't know that p’ and ‘p might be true, but I'm not willing to say that for all I know, p is true’, and why when a speaker thinks p is epistemically possible for her, she will agree (if asked) that for all she knows, p is true. The simplest explanation of these facts entails infallibilism. Fallibilists have tried and failed to explain the infelicity of ‘p, but I don't know that p’, but have not even attempted to explain the last two facts. I close by considering two facts that seem to pose a problem for infallibilism, and argue that they don't.     

Of Keys and Gifts: How to Read The Gift of Authority

Abstract

The Gift of Authority has received a cautious welcome from Anglicans. A reason for this, it is said, is that its language or culture are insufficiently Anglican. The article argues that this should not deter anyone because there are non-Anglican ecclesiologies – most notably that of Medard Kehl – which contain a vision of the Church that is basically the same as that behind The Gift, and which at the same time bear a close family resemblance to principles of Anglican ecclesiology. It is argued that using these as an Anglican ‘hermeneutical key’ to The Gift instead of focusing primarily on the language used, would substantially increase Anglican understanding and appreciation of the report.     

The Integrity Objection,Reloaded

Abstract

Bernard Williams’ integrity objection poses a significant challenge to utilitarianism, which has largely been answered by utilitarians. This paper recasts the integrity objection to show that utilitarian agents could be committed to producing the overall best states of affairs and yet not positively act to bring them about. I introduce the ‘Moral Pinch Hitter’ – someone who performs actions at the bequest of another agent – to demonstrate that utilitarianism cannot distinguish between cases in which an agent maximizes utility by positively acting in response to her duty, and cases in which an agent fails morally by relying upon someone else to perform the obligatory act. The inability to distinguish among these cases establishes a new, reloaded integrity objection to utilitarianism: utilitarianism cannot explain why it would be wrong to have someone else make difficult moral decisions, and to act on those decisions, for me.     

Religious political technology: Damir Mukhetdinov’s ‘Russian Islam’

ABSTRACT

This contribution introduces the concept of ‘religious political technology’ (RPT), using as a case study the strategies of Damir Mukhetdinov, deputy mufti of the Moscow-based muftiate DUMRF. RPT encompasses the construction and professional dissemination of an ideological platform that presents religion – in this case Islam – as an asset to the state and the nation. Mukhetdinov’s RPT is historically enrooted in Russia’s Islamic discourse (through references to Tatar intellectuals and theologians of the late imperial period), and presented as loyal, tolerant, peaceful and modern – and at the same time as ‘traditionalist’. His RPT is meant to appeal to mainstream trends in Russian society (including Neo-Eurasianism and Slavophile thought), to the Orthodox Church, and to the Kremlin; it also presents itself as an instrument of Russia’s foreign policy. At the same time, Mukhetdinov’s provocative statements meet strong opposition.     

Postmodern Identity and Object-Relations Theory: On the Seeming Obsolescence of Psychoanalysis

Abstract

In face of the postmodern ideal of a ‘mutiple’ subject, there has been talk at regular classical psychoanalysis's normative orientation toward intervals since the end of the the ego's capacity to cope consistently with reality may Second World War of psy seem obsolete. However, a psychoanalytic theory choanalysis being obsolete. which is revised in the light of object-relations theory, In these fields – where the integrationist social psychology, and an intersubjectivist notion is not just an ideolo account of the formation of the drives can answer the gical weapon – this signifies postmodern challenge. According to this alternative the tendency of a growing psychoanalytic view, the goal of a ‘healthy’ development discrepancy said to have of personality is a state of an inner capacity for dialo opened up between the origue, able to account normatively for altering forms of ginal and the current socio-ego-identity under changing social conditions.     

How to Reverse the Organ Shortage

Thousands of lives are lost each year because of a lack of organs available for transplant, but currently, in the UK and many other countries, organs cannot be taken from a deceased donor without explicit consent from the donor or his or her relatives. Switching to an ‘opt‐out’ (or ‘presumed consent’) system for organ donation could substantially increase the supply of organs, and save many lives. However, it has been argued in some quarters that there are serious ethical objections to an opt‐out policy, and that it would be better to adopt a different policy known as the ‘presumptive approach’, that requires explicit consent while also attempting to sway the choices of potential donors and family in the direction of donating, using various persuasive techniques. This article shows how reflection on the impact of a well‐known cognitive bias known as ‘status quo bias’ can explain (i) why moving from the status quo to an opt‐out policy might be effective in increasing organ availability, even without impinging on anyone's autonomous choices, (ii) why we might have overestimated the strength of the objections to an opt‐out policy, and (iii) why the presumptive approach is morally objectionable, while an opt‐out policy is not.     

Semantics and the sacred

ABSTRACT

This article looks at four different scholarly perspectives on ‘sacred’ – the ineffable sacred, the experienced sacred, the polarized sacred and the contextualized sacred – in order to draw out their implicit presuppositions about meaning. The first two stances presuppose that meaning depends on what bits of language are about (referentialism), and the other two stances presuppose that meaning depends on relations between bits of language (holism). The article concludes three things: these prominent views of ‘sacred’ rest on usually implicit or unrecognized assumptions about the nature of meaning; some of those assumptions explain why certain theories are contentious and problematic and others ground more promising and productive approaches.     

Self-notions and top-down distortion

Abstract

John Perry offers an unusually substantive, and initially plausible, account of the conceptual role of first-person thought. This paper critiques Perry’s account, particularly in what it says about action explanation, and offers a partial alternative. It also identifies three high-level assumptions about what accounts of conceptual roles should look like that plausibly explain why Perry’s account goes off track in the ways that it does – this is the top-down distortion of the title. Identifying and arguing against the three assumptions helps point in the direction of a better account.     

Freudian modalities of disbelief

This article can be characterized as a ‘rediscovery’ of a notion of psychoanalysis that had disappeared or had been confused by later operations. The authors explore a Freudian notion that has been unjustly misunderstood, especially because of the multiple ways in which ‘Unglaube’ – disbelief – has been translated. We shall establish the archaeology of this term in Freud by extracting its three significant modes. Firstly, paranoiac disbelief designates an unconscious process of the rejection of belief in the subject's first encounter with a sexual reality that is always traumatic. Secondly, the obsessional neurotic's disbelief, which we shall call ‘incredulity’, is a secondary, less radical refusal of belief, one that is different from its paranoiac counterpart. Finally, we shall envision a third – dialectical – type of disbelief, which Freud called ‘act of disbelief’ and which will enable us to approach the fundamental epistemic and ethical stakes for psychoanalysis.     

Explaining normative reasons

In this paper, we present and defend a natural yet novel analysis of normative reasons. According to what we call support-explanationism, for a fact to be a normative reason to φ is for it to explain why there's normative support for φ-ing. We critically consider the two main rival forms of explanationism—ought-explanationism, on which reasons explain facts about ought, and good-explanationism, on which reasons explain facts about goodness—as well as the popular Reasons-First view, which takes the notion of a normative reason to be normatively fundamental. Support-explanationism, we argue, enjoys many of the virtues of these views while avoiding their drawbacks. We conclude by exploring several further important implications: among other things, we argue that the influential metaphor of ‘weighing’ reasons is inapt, and propose a better one; that, contrary to what Berker (2019) suggests, there's no reason for non-naturalists about normativity to accept the Reasons-First view; and that, contrary to what Wodak (2020b) suggests, explanationist views can successfully accommodate what he calls ‘redundant reasons’.     

Misreadings,Clarifications and Reminders: A Reply to Hutchinson and Read

ABSTRACT

Analytic philosophy is often associated with a physicalistic naturalism that privileges natural-scientific modes of explanation. Nevertheless there has since the 1980s been a heterodox, somewhat subterranean trend within analytic philosophy that seeks to articulate a more expansive, ‘non-reductive‘ conception of nature. This trend can be traced back to P.F. Strawson’s 1985 book Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties. However, Strawson has long been ignored in the literature around ‘soft naturalism’ – especially in comparison to John McDowell. One of the reasons for this is that Strawson’s account of soft naturalism is not often viewed as particularly plausible – it has come in for heavy criticism from the likes of Sebastian Gardner (2007) and Robert Stern (2003). In this paper, I argue that Strawson’s soft naturalism ought to be re-assessed: that his critics can be refuted, and that his naturalism remains a compelling alternative to the likes of McDowell’s. I attempt this through a ‘radicalisation’ of the modest Strawson’s position, demonstrating that his naturalism has implicit in it something like Marx’s conception of human ‘species-being’.     

Why Durkheim really thought that Buddhism was a ‘religion’ (in memoriam Massimo Rosati)

ABSTRACT

In The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, and in ‘On the Definition of Religious Phenomena,' Durkheim famously asserted both that Buddhism was a ‘religion' and an ‘atheistic' one at that. Why he did so is a problem long-considered settled. Of two possible answers, one is commonplace, while the other is uncommon and consequential. I shall attempt to explicate Durkheim's uncommon and far- reaching, but overlooked, reasons for declaring atheistic Buddhism a ‘religion.' This essay concurs with Martin Southwold that Durkheim believed – wrongly – that religion was ‘monothetic' class, when, in fact, it was ‘polythetic.' In order to admit Buddhism as a ‘religion,' Durkheim discovered that he had to apply different criteria for defining Buddhism as ‘religion’ than to theistic religions. Buddhism did not radiate dynamogenic force or induce a sense of existential dependence. Buddhism was a religion because it was an agent in making a meaningful life.     

Transcendental Arguments and the Problem of Dogmatism

Abstract

Transcendental arguments have been described as undogmatic or non‐dogmatic arguments. This paper examines this contention critically and addresses the question of what is required from an argument for which the characterization is valid. I shall argue that although transcendental arguments do in certain respects meet what one should require from non‐dogmatic arguments, they – or more specifically, what I shall call ‘general transcendental arguments’ – involve an assumption about conceptual unity that constitutes a reason for not attributing to them the status of non‐dogmatic arguments. As a solution to this problem I distinguish general transcendental arguments from what I shall call ‘specific transcendental arguments’ and seek to explain how by limiting the use of transcendental arguments to the latter type it would be possible to avoid dogmatism. This methodological adjustment also opens up a possibility of re‐interpreting transcendental arguments from the past in a novel non‐dogmatic fashion.     

Every Child Still Matters: interdisciplinary approaches to the spirituality of the child

Abstract

Ten years ago, I was a researcher with the Evaluation of Children’s Trusts which examined a key aspect of U.K. government policy, Every Child Matters. Every Child Matters was partly a response to Lord Laming’s 2003 report into the murder of 8-year old Victoria Climbié, which concluded that children’s services needed to be better integrated to avoid such tragedies in the future. Children’s Trusts were regional hubs, set-up across England to facilitate integrated professional practice; but Every Child Matters was bigger than this because it set out a policy vision for rethinking the child as a whole person. At the time, I was struck by the absence of any reference to spirituality in this new holistic view of the child, and this led me to write an article which was published in 2006 entitled, ‘Every Child Matters and children’s spiritual rights: does the new holistic approach to children’s care address children’s spiritual well-being?’.

This article was originally a keynote talk at the 2016 International Conference on Children’s Spirituality with the theme Spirituality and the whole child: interdisciplinary approaches, and this provided the opportunity both to see where we are now with integrated working for children and young people more generally, and to focus our attention on interdisciplinary approaches to children’s spirituality and the whole child in particular. The article begins by summarising some of the current thinking spirituality, the whole child and interdisciplinary working. The article then goes on to consider a long-standing concern of mine, and one which was highlighted in my 2006 article, which is what we intend to mean – collectively, as academics and professional practitioners concerned with children’s (and adults’) spirituality – when we use the term ‘spirituality’ in the professional context. In my view, it is time to stop stating that spirituality is hard to define, and come to an agreement about what we mean when we use it. Interdisciplinary approaches to children’s (and adults’) spirituality, and holistic approaches to the child (and adult), will not be successful unless there is a clear, shared agreement about what we mean, and the article ends with suggestions for ways forward.     

Beyond the politics of positionality: deconstruction and feminism

Abstract

The article commences with a discussion of Derrida's alleged anti-feminist position. We argue that, given his distinction between ‘reactive’ and ‘maverick’ feminism, this is an over-simplification. A correlation is drawn between the latter form of feminism and deconstruction by showing that both maintain a relation to the ‘beyond’ of the established logocentric system. The second section of the article deals with the placing of woman in Derrida's Spurs. It is shown that Derrida affirms Nietzsche's idea of the ‘Dionysiac woman’ who is, like the maverick feminist, not totally determined within the phallogocentric system. Woman, in Derrida's reading, becomes that which is not fully determinable. We conclude that this undecidability, rather than hindering its political activity, helps feminism in dealing with the diversities within the movement.     

Autonomy and the Authority of Personal Commitments: From Internal Coherence to Social Normativity

Abstract

It has been argued – most prominently in Harry Frankfurt's recent work – that the normative authority of personal commitments derives not from their intrinsic worth but from the way in which one's will is invested in what one cares about. In this essay, I argue that even if this approach is construed broadly and supplemented in various ways, its intrasubjective character leaves it ill-prepared to explain the normative grip of commitments in cases of purported self-betrayal. As an alternative, I sketch a view that focuses on intersubjective constraints of intelligibility built into social practices and on the pragmatics of how those norms are contested in an ongoing fashion.     

Career guidance in England today: reform,accidental injury or attempted murder?

ABSTRACT

In 2011 England's career guidance profession lost its ‘own’ public service organisation and its former dedicated stream of public funding. The immediate causes lay in decisions by the government of the day, but this article revisits the profession's history to seek explanations for its later vulnerability. It is argued that decisions taken early in the profession's history, specifically its complete separation from adult employment services and basing claims to professional expertise almost wholly on occupational psychology, though maybe right at the time, were to have fateful consequences. The article proceeds to argue that career guidance will certainly survive its recent trauma, but the most likely outcome of the current ‘reforms’ – a market in career guidance services – will not create the kind of comprehensive education-to-work bridging service that was once intended and which is still needed.