The Guise of the Bad in Augustine’s Pear Theft

In the second book of his Confessions, Augustine of Hippo presents his famous juvenile Pear Theft as an apparent case of acting under the guise of the bad. At least since Thomas Aquinas’ influential interpretation, scholars have usually taken Augustine’s detailed discussion of the case to be dispelling this “guise of the guise of the bad”, and to offer a solid “guise of the good”-explanation. This paper addresses an important challenge to this view: Augustine offers two different “guise of the good”-explanations in his text rather than just one, and the two explanations seem to be mutually exclusive. A number of more recent attempts to reconcile Augustine’s two lines of explanation are discussed and found wanting, and a new suggestion is made. The proposed solution focuses on the Pear Theft as a joint action, and it departs from the Aquinian interpretation in that it accounts for a way in which the “guise of the bad”-hypothesis survives the explanation.     

On Some Counter-Examples to the Guise of the Good-Thesis: Intelligibility without Desirability

This paper argues that there are cases, which various guise of the good-theses concerning desires, intentions and actions would not allow. In these cases the agent acts for considerations that the agent does not regard as good reasons. The considerations render the actions intelligible but not desirable (where desirability and intelligibility can be objective or subjective). These cases are atypical, but nonetheless show that those guise of the good-theses which do not allow them, should be revised. In typical cases the intelligibility of desires, intentions and actions co-varies with their desirability: there are both unintelligible cases without suitable desirability characteristics and cases where desirability characteristics make the desire, intention and action intelligible. The claim here is that there are further more atypical and puzzling, but equally possible cases, where intelligibility and desirability come apart. The paper first introduces the Guise of the Good - debates about desires, intentions, and actions, and suggests distinguishing the category of “acting for a reason” from “acting for a consideration not taken to be a reason”. It then argues that while desirability entails intelligibility, and lack of intelligibility entails lack of desirability, these two cases leave conceptual room for a third category, which is that of intelligibility without desirability. This is so, whether we examine objective or subjective intelligibility and desirability. The claim is meant to apply mutatis mutandis to characteristics of desires, intentions and actions. The paper then provides possible cases of intelligibility without desirability, and defends the view against some objections.     

AD HOMINEM ARGUMENTS AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN: REPLY TO KOPERSKI

Abstract Jeffrey Koperski claims in Zygon (2008) that critics of Intelligent Design engage in fallacious ad hominem attacks on ID proponents and that this is a “bad way” to engage them. I show that Koperski has made several errors in his evaluation of the ID critics. He does not distinguish legitimate, relevant ad hominem arguments from fallacious ad hominem attacks. He conflates (or equates) the logical use of valid with the colloquial use of valid. Moreover, Koperski doesn't take seriously the legitimate concerns of the ID critics, and in doing so, commits the straw man fallacy. In the end, I show that no one disagrees with the criticism of improper use of fallacies as methods of evaluation. But what constitutes proper, relevant evaluation of the ID theorists and their motivation is a matter of dispute. And sometimes attacking a person as a method of evaluation is justified, and thus is not fallacious. The definition of ad hominem arguments as either a “good way” or a “bad way” rests on justification, which I argue ID opponents have. The basis for these good objections relies on the motivation many Christians have to share their faith with non‐Christians, which they call the “great commission.”     

Interests without history? Some difficulties for a negative Aristotelianism

This paper focuses on 3 features of Freyenhagen's Aristotelian version of Adorno. (a) It challenges the strict negativism Freyenhagen finds in Adorno. If we have morally relevant interests in ourselves, it is implicit that we have a standard by which to understand what is both good and bad for us (our interests). Because strict negativism operates without reference to what is good, it seems to be detached from real interests too. Torture, it is argued, is, among other things, a violation of those interests. (b) Freyenhagen identifies the “impulse” in Adorno as an untutored yet moral reaction to morally demanding situations. The plausibility of this primitivism and its compatibility with Adorno's general worries about immediacy are considered. (c) The disruptive character of Adorno's version of the categorical imperative, its willingness to complicate action through wholesale reflection on the norms of what we are committing ourselves to, is set in contrast with Freyenhagen's Aristotelian claim that certain notions, such as “humanity,” cannot be intelligibly questioned.     

WITTGENSTEIN AND DEFINING CRITERIA

Let us introduce two antithetical terms in order to avoid certain elementary confusions: To the question “How do you know that so-and-so is the case?”, we sometimes answer by giving ‘criteria’ and sometimes by giving ‘symptoms. If medical science calls angina an inflammation caused by a particular bacillus, and we ask in a particular case “Why do you say this man has got angina?” then the answer “I have found the bacillus so-and-so in his blood” gives us the criterion, or what we may call the defining criterion of angina. If on the other hand the answer was, “His throat is inflamed”, this might give us a symptom of angina, I call “sympton” a phenomenon of which experience has taught us that it coincided, in some way or other, with the phenomenon which is our defining criterion, Then to say “A man has angina if this bacillus is found in him” is a tautology or it is a loose way of stating the definition of “angina”. But to say, “A man has angina whenever he has an inflamed throat” is to make a hypothesis. (BB, pp. 24–25)¹     

The Elusive Notion of “Argument Quality”

We all seem to have a sense of what good and bad arguments are, and there is a long history—focusing on fallacies—of trying to provide objective standards that would allow a clear separation of good and bad arguments. This contribution discusses the limits of attempts to determine the quality of arguments. It begins with defining bad arguments as those that deviate from an established standard of good arguments. Since there are different conceptualizations of “argument”—as controversy, as debate, and as justification—and since arguments in each of these senses can be used for different purposes, a first problem is that we would need a large variety of standards for “good” arguments. After this, the contribution focuses in particular on proposals made in the literature on how to assess the quality of arguments in the sense of justification. It distinguishes three problems of assessment: How to determine (1) whether reasons are acceptable, (2) whether reasons are sufficient to justify the conclusion, and (3) how to identify arguments in real-world speech acts and texts? It is argued that limitations of argument assessment result from unavoidable relativism: The assessment of many—if not most—arguments depends on the epistemic situation of the evaluator.     

A Comparison of Modalities in Modeling

Organizational display rules (e.g., “service with a smile”) have had mixed relationships with employee emotional labor—either in the form of “bad faith” surface acting (suppressing or faking expressions) or “good faith” deep acting (modifying inner feelings). We draw on the motivational perspective of emotional labor to argue that individual differences in customer orientation will directly and indirectly relate to these acting strategies in response to display rules. With a survey of more than 500 working adults in customer contact positions, and controlling for affective disposition, we find that customer orientation directly increases “good faith” acting while it moderates the relationship of display rules with “bad faith” acting.     

The diagnostic process,the diagnosis and homeostasis

In this paper I shall try to analyse appropriate logic and actual methods as a preliminary to developing expert systems that will simulate clinical diagnosis. It is doubtful that all diagnoses address the same kind of problem and hence no one logic will suffice. Sometimes the signs and symptoms manifest an underlying disorder that cannot be observed directly (“the substantialist model”); sometimes there seems to be no underlying disorder and the diagnosis is a rearrangement of the data (“the nominalist model”). In deciding their merits in the particular case, we must identify the sources of variation; what is meant by saying that the data are independent; and what can be meant by “wrong” diagnosis and misclassification. Problems arise in human diagnosis because the data may be false, even lies; because the known list of diseases is not exhaustive; and because the probability of multiple unrelated diseases increases with age. Special difficulties arise from homeostasis (which is fundamental in defining and understanding disease) because the primary disturbances may be hard to distinguish from the homeostatic responses to them.     

Metalinguistic negotiation and logical pluralism

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one right logic. A particular version of the view, what is sometimes called domain-specific logical pluralism, has it that the right logic and connectives depend somehow on the domain of use, or context of use, or the linguistic framework. This type of view has a problem with cross-framework communication, though: it seems that all such communication turns into merely verbal disputes. If two people approach the same domain with different logics as their guide, then they may be using different connectives, and hence talking past each other. In this situation, if we think we are having a conversation about “\(\lnot A\)”, but are using different “\(\lnot \)”s, then we are not really talking about the same thing. The communication problem prevents legitimate disagreements about logic, which is a bad result. In this paper I articulate a possible solution to this problem, without giving up pluralism, which requires adopting a notion of metalinguistic negotiation, and allows people to communicate and disagree across domains/contexts/frameworks.

     

Anti-Skepticism Under a Linguistic Guise

In this paper I consider the plausibility of developing anti-skepticism by framing the question in linguistic terms: instead of asking whether we know, we ask what falls within the extension of the word “know”. I first trace two previous attempts to develop anti-skepticism in this way, from Austin (particularly as presented by Kaplan) and from epistemic contextualism, and I present reasons to think that both approaches are unsuccessful. I then focus on a recently popular attempt to develop anti-skepticism from the “function-first” approach associated with Craig, which I also show to be problematic. I then argue that the apparent prima facie plausibility of fighting skepticism on linguistic grounds is due to a methodological spill-over from linguistics. Once we recognize this, it becomes clear that the skepticism debate should not be conducted in linguistic terms.

     

Towards a Richer Debate on Tissue Engineering: A Consideration on the Basis of NEST-Ethics

In their 2007 paper, Swierstra and Rip identify characteristic tropes and patterns of moral argumentation in the debate about the ethics of new and emerging science and technologies (or “NEST-ethics”). Taking their NEST-ethics structure as a starting point, we considered the debate about tissue engineering (TE), and argue what aspects we think ought to be a part of a rich and high-quality debate of TE. The debate surrounding TE seems to be predominantly a debate among experts. When considering the NEST-ethics arguments that deal directly with technology, we can generally conclude that consequentialist arguments are by far the most prominently featured in discussions of TE. In addition, many papers discuss principles, rights and duties relevant to aspects of TE, both in a positive and in a critical sense. Justice arguments are only sporadically made, some “good life” arguments are used, others less so (such as the explicit articulation of perceived limits, or the technology as a technological fix for a social problem). Missing topics in the discussion, at least from the perspective of NEST-ethics, are second “level” arguments—those referring to techno-moral change connected to tissue engineering. Currently, the discussion about tissue engineering mostly focuses on its so-called “hard impacts”—quantifiable risks and benefits of the technology. Its “soft impacts”—effects that cannot easily be quantified, such as changes to experience, habits and perceptions, should receive more attention.     

A Problem with Societal Desirability as a Component of Responsible Research and Innovation: the “If we don’t somebody else will” Argument

The implementation of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is not without its challenges, and one of these is raised when societal desirability is included amongst the RRI principles. We will argue that societal desirability is problematic even though it appears to fit well with the overall ideal. This discord occurs partly because the idea of societal desirability is inherently ambiguous, but more importantly because its scope is unclear. This paper asks: is societal desirability in the spirit of RRI? On von Schomberg’s account, it seems clear that it is, but societal desirability can easily clash with what is ethically permissible; for example, when what is desirable in a particular society is bad for the global community. If that society chose not to do what was desirable for it, the world would be better off than if they did it. Yet our concern here is with a more complex situation, where there is a clash with ethical acceptability, but where the world would not be better off if the society chose not do what was societally desirable for itself. This is the situation where it is argued that someone else will do it if we do not. The first section of the paper gives an outline of what we take technology to be, and the second is a discussion of which criteria should be the basis for choosing research and innovation projects. This will draw on the account of technology outlined in the first section. This will be followed by an examination of a common argument, “If we don’t do it, others will”. This argument is important because it appears to justify acting in morally dubious ways. Finally, it will be argued that societal desirability gives support to the “If we don’t…” argument and that this raises some difficulties for RRI.     

The Problem of Justified Harm: a Reply to Gardner

In this paper, we critically examine Molly Gardner’s favored solution to what she calls “the problem of justified harm.” We argue that Gardner’s view is false and that her arguments in support of it are unconvincing. Finally, we briefly suggest an alternative solution to the problem which avoids the difficulties that beset Gardner’s proposal.     

Rationalizing flow: agency in skilled unreflective action

In recent work, Peter Railton, Julia Annas, and David Velleman aim to reconcile the phenomenon of “flow”—broadly understood as describing the “unreflective” aspect of skilled action—with one or another familiar conception of agency. While there are important differences between their arguments, Railton, Annas, and Velleman all make, or are committed to, at least one similar pivotal claim. Each argues, directly or indirectly, that agents who perform skilled unreflective actions can, in principle, accurately answer “Anscombean” questions—”what” and “why” questions— about what they do. I argue against this claim and explore the ramifications for theories of skilled action and agency.     

Swedish Muslims and Secular Society: Faith-Based Engagement and Place

This article sets out to explore how Muslims in Sweden identify with and create social life in the place where they live, that is, in their neighbourhood, in their town/city and in Swedish society at large. In a paradoxical religious landscape that includes a strong Lutheran state church heritage and a Christian free-church tradition, in what is, nevertheless, a very secular society, Muslims may choose different strategies to express their faith, here roughly described as “retreatist,” “engaged” or “essentialist/antagonistic.” Focusing on a non-antagonistic, engaged stance, and drawing upon a combination of authors' interviews, and materials published in newspapers and on the Internet, we first bring to the fore arguments by Muslim leaders in favour of creating a Muslim identity with a Swedish brand, and second give some examples of local Muslim individuals, acting as everyday makers in their neighbourhood, town or city. Third, we also give attention to an aggressively negative Islamophobic stance expressed both in words and in physical violence in parts of Swedish society. In conclusion, we reflect upon the challenges and potentialities of an emotionally engaged, dialogue-orientated Muslim position facing antagonistic interpretations of Islam, and an ignorant, sometimes Islamophobic, environment.     

“Im Anfang liegt alles beschlossen”: Hannah Arendts politisches Denken im Schatten eines Heideggerschen Problems

The article seeks to understand Hannah Arendt's political thinking by relating it to an issue which is crucial to the thinking of the later Heidegger, i.e., the problem of originality ( Anfänglichkeit) and history. In opposition to Hegel's thesis of the “end of art,” Heidegger envisages in “great art” such as Hölderlin's poetry a new origin of thinking and history. The end of art, which Hegel holds to be necessary, is in Heidegger's view to be overcome precisely because art, for him, entails an origin which is not a “Not yet” of a teleological perfection in Hegel's sense, but a “Not yet” of a future history. However, Heidegger's orientation towards a “pure” origin qua future leads him to poietically escape the realm of the Political and the questions of praxis and practical rationality. Like Heidegger, Arendt is taken with the problem of origin; but in contrast to her former teacher, she tries to regain what Heidegger thought he could leave, viz., the dimension of the genuine Political and of acting. The original sense of acting (for Arendt, the capability of human beings to make a new beginning) can be observed in the Greek polis as well as in the American Revolution in modern times: The revolutionary act of a total new beginning elucidates, according to Arendt, what “acting” means in the full and truly political sense. However, Arendt's notion of an epochal beginning seems one-sided, and her abstract concept of acting seems to foster a mere actionism and anarchy. Therefore, contrary to Arendt's claims, the concept of the Political which she shapes in accordance with the extraordinary experiences of an epochal acting has apolitical consequences. The task of thinking after Heidegger and Arendt thus remains one of determining the political character of action in a convincing manner. In this respect, the paper pleads for a rethinking of Hegel's concept of ethical life ( Sittlichkeit).     

Understanding the “Why” as Well as the “How”: Service Performance is a Function of Prosocial Motives and Emotional Labor

Which employees tend to better perform with customers? We suggest a combination of individual differences; specifically, we consider both why employees are working (prosocial motivation) and how (emotional labor). Deep acting should enhance the positive relationship between prosocial motivation and performance, while surface acting should dampen this relationship. Using a field sample of 214 grocery clerks and supervisor ratings of interpersonal performance with customers, we did not find the amplifying effect of deep acting. We do find the dampening effect for surface acting, such that surface acting buffers those with low prosocial motives, presumably by allowing them to “act” like they want to help others. This helps to explain the weak relationship of prosocial motives with performance and suggests implications for research and practice.     

Acting Under the Guise of the Bad – Editorial Introduction

I introduce the topic of the Special Issue and highlight the central themes that the six contributors address in their essays. The moral-philosophical problem of the possibility of bad action is situated within the broader context of its action-theoretical significance, that is, as the most important challenge to the influential idea that an intentional action is necessarily performed under the guise of the good. J. David Velleman’s discussion of the character of Milton’s Satan is mentioned to illustrate the Special Issue’s main question of whether instantiations of individual and collective agency are conceivable that deliberately act for the sake of the bad.     

Willpower Satisficing

Satisficing Consequentialism is often rejected as hopeless. Perhaps its greatest problem is that it risks condoning the gratuitous prevention of goodness above the baseline of what qualifies as “good enough”. I propose a radical new willpower‐based version of the view that avoids this problem, and that better fits with the motivation of avoiding an excessively demanding conception of morality. I further demonstrate how, by drawing on the resources of an independent theory of blameworthiness, we may obtain a principled specification of what counts as “good enough”.