Other Things Being Equal

Philosophical Studies -     

Equal treatment for belief

Philosophical Studies - This paper proposes that the question “What should I believe?” is to be answered in the same way as the question “What should I do?,” a view I call...     

审美主体与伦理主体的比较研究

本文通过对审美主体和伦理主体的比较研究揭示了个体存在的伦理层面的含义。首先考察了老庄和海德格尔的后现代宗教式的主体和儒家形而上的宗教主体,以及儒家就伦理问题对于老庄的挑战。结论是他们都缺乏把他者的生存作为自己的绝对的责任的伦理含义,因而是审美主体：其次,通过对于环境主体和伦理主体及审美主体的关系的讨论,阐释了这样一个哲学基本问题：伦理存在必须以有限性存在为前提;而后者只是一个哲学的抽象。片面地强调人的有限性(尼采),片面强调有限存在与超越者的关系(老庄和海德格尔),或否认人的有限性,这些观点都忽略了人在这个世界上的伦理责任。后现代伦理学是指我,作为一个个体(me),对于他者的一切负有不可推卸的责任。     

Equal Citizenship and Convergence

I argue against Lori Watson and Christie Hartley's recent criticisms of convergence approaches to public justification. In particular, I argue that convergence approaches can capture what is distinctive about democratic decision-making and provide an attractive account of stability for the right reasons.     

Index of Subjects

Subject Index

Index of Subjects     

Index of Subjects

Subject Index

Index of Subjects     

Index of Subjects

Authors Index

Index of Subjects     

Are All Species Equal?

Species egalitarianism is the view that all species have equal moral standing. To have moral standing is, at a minimum, to command respect, to be something more than a mere thing. Is there any reason to believe that all species have moral standing in even this most minimal sense? If so — that is, if all species command respect — is there any reason to believe they all command equal respect. The article summarises critical responses to Paul Taylor’s argument for species egalitarianism, then explains why other species command our respect but also why they do not command equal respect. The intuition that we should have respect for nature is part of what motivates people to embrace species egalitarianism, but one need not be a species egalitarian to have respect for nature. The article closes by questioning whether species egalitarianism is even compatible with respect for nature.     

Equal opportunity versus employment equity

This paper calls for the abolition of employment equity, which is Canada’s equivalent of affirmative action for females. It argues that equal opportunity and meritocrary are necessary and sufficient for social justice, and that preferential treatment only engenders and protracts injustice. To illustrate its claims, the paper presents a case study treating the Canadian Philosophical Association’s notorious 1991 Report by the Committee to Study Hiring Policies Affecting Women. Some debilitating effects of Canada’s radical politicization of sexuality on the general culture are also mentioned. An early version of this paper was presented at The First Annual Laurier Conference on Business and Professional Ethics, at Wilfrid Laurier University in October 1996. I wish to thank Miro Todorovitch for inspiring the paper; Leo Groarke for inviting, discussing, and editing it; Andrew Irvine, Michael Levin, and Judith Wubnig for their helpful discussions; and Grant Brown for providing evidence of explicit quota systems cited in it. I further thank John Furedy and the Directors of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS) for their defense of free and reasoned scholarship, and the referees and editors of Sexuality & Culture for their helpful suggestions in preparing this publication.     

On Judgments of Approximately Equal

Although precision is often important in quantitative judgment, sometimes, it is valuable to recognize that two quantities are roughly the same. Fuzzy‐trace theory suggests that approximately equal judgments rely on gist representations (i.e., meaningful fuzzy categories of quantity). We conducted three experiments to investigate approximately equal judgments with number pairs presented in different formats, both with and without semantic content (breast cancer statistics). In each study, the ratio of the smaller divided by larger number predicted approximately equal judgments. Experiment 1 also examined how knowledge of breast cancer, presentation format (frequencies vs. percentages), and differences in gist comprehension of breast cancer information influence fuzzy equality judgments. As predicted by the fuzzy‐trace theory concept of denominator neglect, approximately equal judgments were more sensitive, as measured by signal detection theory (SDT) analyses, when presented as percentages. In both experiments with breast cancer statistics, people were more likely to judge number pairs approximately equal when they were embedded in sentences about breast cancer, and breast cancer knowledge predicted increased perception of equality, when appropriately consistent with reliable sources, and increased judgment sensitivity. In Experiment 2, a simple intervention focusing on gist meaning increased source‐consistent approximately equal judgments, increased SDT judgment sensitivity, and decreased SDT response bias. In Experiment 3, using number pairs devoid of semantic context spanning four orders of magnitude, we further examined ratio similarity. Overall, more knowledgeable judges and those who better understood the gist of meaningful numbers were more likely to judge literally different numbers as “approximately equal” rather than make precise discriminations that were meaningless. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.