Svirsky, Howard, and Berman address the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ’s oversight of tobacco products, the newest major area of regulation Congress assigned to the FDA. They discus...

It is difficult to start a discussion about religion. The topic irritates the modern public, especially the part that has been schooled in Critical Theory. Enlightenment hostility toward religion, which regularly goes far beyond skepticism, has profoundly shaped sensibilities and the habits of debate. Spoken or unspoken assumptions in the secular public sphere relegate religion to a fully private matter, and, therefore, not an appropriate topic for consideration, let alone a possible source for reflection on current theoretical or political matters. (...) The elaboration of theory within the project of modernity is taken to be fully separate from religion, or perhaps…. (shrink)

Does a commitment to mereological universalism automatically bring along a commitment to the controversial doctrine of mereological extensionalism—the view that objects with the same proper parts are identical? A recent argument suggests the answer is ‘yes’. This paper attempts a systematic response to the argument, considering nearly every available line of reply. It argues that only one approach—the mutual parts view—can yield a viable mereology where universalism does not entail extensionalism.

We argue that corporate social performance (CSP) has become a legitimizing identity (brand) for researchers in the business and society field, but it has not developed into a viable theoretical or operational construct. Because measuring CSP is contingent on the operational setting (industry, issues, etc.), it is difficult to produce worthwhile comparisons across studies or generalizing beyond the boundaries of a specific study. The authors suggest that researchers remove the CSP label from their operational variables, and instead narrowly define their (...) studies in operational terms. They provide aworking example of the proposed research direction by examining the theory underlying the popular CSP–financial performance (FP) debate. In the authors’ conceptualization, stakeholder action provides the underlying logic connecting CSP-FP, and we recast the research question to investigate the conditions under which stakeholders will take action to influence the focal organization and when those actions will influence the CSP-FP link. (shrink)

Proponents of political liberalism standardly assume that the citizens of an ideal liberal society would be overwhelmingly reasonable. I argue that this assumption violates political liberalism's own constraints of realism—constraints that are necessary to frame the central problem that political liberalism aims to solve, that is, the problem of reasonable pluralism. To be consistent with these constraints, political liberalism must recognize that, as with reasonable pluralism, widespread support for unreasonable moral and political views is an inevitable feature of any liberal (...) society. I call this the fact of unreasonable pluralism. This fact threatens Rawlsian political liberalism's account of stability because an overlapping consensus cannot stably order a society pervaded by unreasonable views. My argument also raises questions about the coherence of Rawls's conception of ideal theory. (shrink)

Research on brain or cognitive/affective processes, culture, social interaction, and structural analysis are overlapping but often independent ways humans have attempted to understand the origins of their evolution, historical, and contemporary development. Each level seeks to employ its own theoretical concepts and methods for depicting human nature and categorizing objects and events in the world, and often relies on different sources of evidence to support theoretical claims. Each level makes reference to different temporal bandwidths (milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, (...) years, decades, and centuries) and focuses on different spatio-temporal activities and controlled and non-controlled stimulus conditions. Biological mechanisms and environmental pressures for survival simultaneously created a gradual intersection and enhancement of cognitive/affective skills, cultural practices, and changes in collaborative social interaction and communicative skills. The evolution of a given level of analysis is assumed to have been incremental and overlapping. These innovative and independent ways humans have learned to characterize their brain or cognitive/affective and social/economic/political life often depend on unexamined, representational re-descriptions or cognitive/affective and socio-cultural devices and forms of communication that facilitate the depiction of practices and beliefs we attribute to respondents or subjects and research colleagues. (shrink)

I investigate whether degreed beliefs are able to play the predictive, explanatory, and modeling roles that they are frequently taken to play. The investigation focuses on evidence—both from sources familiar in epistemology as well as recent work in behavioral economics and cognitive psychology—of variability in agents' apparent degrees of belief. Although such variability has been noticed before, there has been little philosophical discussion of its breadth or of the psychological mechanisms underlying it. Once these are appreciated, the inadequacy of degrees (...) of belief becomes clear. I offer a theoretical alternative to degrees of belief, what I call the filter theory. (shrink)

Are there normative reasons for love? More specifically, is it possible to rationally justify love? Or can we at best provide explanations for why we love? In Part I of this entry, I discuss the nature of love, theories of emotion, and what it takes to justify an attitude. In Part II, I provide an overview of the various positions one might take on the rational justification of love. I focus on the debate between defenders of the no-reasons view and (...) the reasons view. Along the way, I discuss the significance of falling in love, the problem of trading up, and the notion of irreplaceability. I evaluate attempts to justify love based on the intrinsic and the relational properties of the beloved. (shrink)

I criticize the idea that theories of ‘fragmented’ or ‘compartmentalized’ belief (as found in, e.g., Lewis 1982, Egan 2008) can help to account for the puzzling phenomena they are often taken to account for. After introducing fragmentationalism and a paradigm case that purportedly motivates it, I criticize the view primarily on the grounds that the models and explanations it offers are at best trivial—as witnessed by examples of over-generation—and should be seen as merely re-describing in figurative terms the phenomena it (...) is designed to account for. I also point out that fragments, as used in these theories, are not likely to be psychologically real in any robust sense and so cannot be appealed to on such grounds. (shrink)

Here we focus on two questions: What is the proper semantics for deontic modal expressions in English? And what is the connection between true deontic modal statements and normative reasons? Our contribution towards thinking about the first, which makes up the bulk of our paper, considers a representative sample of recent challenges to a Kratzer-style formal semantics for modal expressions, as well as the rival views—Fabrizio Cariani’s contrastivism, John MacFarlane’s relativism, and Mark Schroeder’s ambiguity theory—those challenges are thought to motivate. (...) These include the Professor Procrastinate challenge to Inheritance (the principle that ‘If ought p and p entails q, then ought q), as well as Parfit’s miners puzzle regarding information-sensitive deontic modals. Here we argue that a Kratzer-style view is able to meet all of the challenges we’ll consider. In addition, we’ll identify challenges for each of those rival views. Our overall conclusion is that a Kratzer-style semantics remains the one to beat. With this assumption in place, we then ask how we should understand the relationship between true deontic modal statements and normative reasons. Should, for example, we hold that the truth of such a statement entails the existence of a normative reason for some agent to comply? Here we argue that, in many cases, acceptance of Kratzer’s semantics for deontic modals leaves open for substantive normative theorizing the question of whether an agent has a normative reason to comply with what she ought to do. (shrink)

Midrash Genesis Rabbah takes aim at a variety of ideological adversaries, but the most subtle polemic is directed at sages who went beyond standard hermeneutical practices to embrace mystical approaches to Torah learning. This essay seeks to expose the use of satire and other literary forms of critique among passages treating cosmology and Torah study. Analytic tools developed by Pierre Bourdieu, especially as they pertain to exposing the use of the symbolic language intrinsic to the establishment of systems of social (...) authority, will be employed to delineate the ideological conflict among sages developing diverse approaches to ascending the religious hierarchy within early rabbinism. (shrink)

This article focuses on how aesthetic values permeate Nietzsche’s philosophy. Artistry is not confined to the creation of conventional works of art but occurs in the form-giving that is essential to all human forms of life. Since Nietzsche was committed to the view that the world is in some basic sense chaotic and meaningless, he held that only by imposing forms can we create a cognizable world. This close association between the conditions of life itself and the aesthetic activity of (...) giving form belies that Kantian conception that any appreciation of aesthetic phenomena is essentially disinterested. (shrink)

Christopher Wellman is the strongest proponent of the natural-duty theory of political obligations and argues that his version of the theory can satisfy the key requirement of ; namely, justifying to members of a state the system of political obligations they share in. Critics argue that natural-duty theories like Wellman's actually require well-ordered states and/or their members to dedicate resources to providing the goods associated with political order to needy outsiders. The implication is that natural-duty approaches weaken the particularity requirement (...) and cannot justify to citizens the systems of political obligation they share in. I argue that the critics’ diagnosis of natural-duty approaches is correct, whereas the proposed implication is false. I maintain that 1) only natural-duty approaches can justify political obligations, and that 2) weakening the particularity requirement contributes to the theory's ability to justify a range-limited system of political obligations among compatriots. (shrink)

Philosophers commonly wonder what a constructivist theory as applied to practical reasons might look like. For the methods or procedures of reasoning familiar from moral constructivism do not clearly apply generally, to all practical reasons. The paper argues that procedural specification is not necessary, so long as our aims are not first‐order but explanatory. We can seek to explain how there could be facts of the matter about reasons for action without saying what reasons we have. Explanatory constructivism must assume (...) constructive “norms of practical reasoning” which yield particular truths without assuming them. But philosophers often mistakenly assume that only “formal” norms of reasoning could fulfill this role. The paper describes a further possibility: norms of reasoning can be “situation‐specific” and yet retain truth‐independent authority. Though we might doubt whether such norms can be independently defended, we should not doubt the possibility or coherence of constructivism about practical reasons. (shrink)

This paper suggests that “systemic risk” has a distinctive kind of moral significance. Two intuitive data points need to be explained. The first is that the systematic imposition of risk can be wrongful or unjust in and of itself, even if harm never ensues. The second is that, even so, there may be no one in particular to blame. We can explain both ideas in terms of what I call responsibilities of “Collective Due Care.” Collective Due Care arguably precludes purely (...) aggregative cost-benefit decision-making and requires one kind of “precautionary” attitude in public choice. (shrink)

The coupling-constitution fallacy claims that arguments for extended cognition involve the inference of “x and y constitute z” from “x is coupled to y” and that such inferences are fallacious. We argue that the coupling-constitution fallacy fails in its goal to undermine the hypothesis of extended cognition: appeal to the coupling-constitution fallacy to rule out possible empirical counterexamples to intracranialism is fallacious. We demonstrate that appeals to coupling-constitution worries are problematic by constructing the fallacious argument against the hypothesis of extended (...) cognition. We consider several objections to our argument and find them insufficient to rebut our conclusion. (shrink)

This panel considered the uses of and prospects for the stakeholder theory/approach. After 20 years of popularity, the stakeholder concept has still notemerged as a true theory. However, it offers some unique perspectives on business organizations and there is plenty of room to develop stakeholder theory and research. These session notes are offered to further the scholarly discussion.

Several years ago I began a mentoring relationship with an undergraduate student named Sadie.1 By all traditional measures, Sadie was a common student, earning slightly above average grades and participating in all the activities one might expect of a typical undergraduate. Our relationship lasted through her third and fourth years in school, and the longer I knew her, the more I understood her uniqueness. Sadie was incredibly self-reflective and had a profound love of learning, yet she took the types of (...) academic risks that, though personally and intellectually gratifying, yielded neither a narrow disciplinary focus nor the strongest grade-point average.While Sadie's approach to her own education embodies what .. (shrink)

Locke characterizes sensitive knowledge as knowledge of the existence of external objects present to the senses, and in terms of an ‘assurance’ that falls short of the certainty of intuition and demonstration. But it is unclear how this fits with his general definition of knowledge, as the perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, and it is unclear how that assurance can amount to knowledge, rather than amounting to mere probability (which he contrasts with knowledge). Some contend that Locke (...) does not regard sensitive knowledge as genuine knowledge, but only honourifically calls it knowledge. In contrast, I argue that Locke holds that sensitive knowledge is knowledge, though he takes the conditions for it to be very different from the conditions for intuitive and demonstrative knowledge. It is not the assurance alone which Locke thinks qualifies sensitive knowledge as such: it is also the fact that the assurance arises from the actual employment of the senses upon external objects, and the fact that the senses do not generally deceive us, which he thinks qualifies sensitive knowledge as genuine knowledge. That there is a (tacit) form of externalism in Locke's account of sensitive knowledge is the main thesis of this paper. (shrink)

The practice-based method of justification requires sensitivity to social practices. This raises difficult questions: Must the practices in question be established or at least realistic? How “constructive” can we be in our interpretation of their form or aims? This paper suggests that our answers to these questions can vary with our explanatory purposes. Requirements of realism and sociological accuracy are relatively thin given purely intellectual aims of moral understanding, thicker given the aim of addressing humanity, and thicker still given the (...) aim of justifying principles as normative for us , in our current world historical situation. I suggest that we have no reason to insist on one set of animating justice concerns to the exclusion of all the others, even as normative requirements rightly take center stage. (shrink)

The paper suggests that the state is subject to assessment according to principles of social justice because state institutions or practices exercise forms of power over which no particular person has control. This rationale for assessment of social justice equally applies to legally optional or informal social practices. But it does not apply to individual conduct. Indeed, it follows that principles of social justice cannot provide a basis for the assessment and guidance of individual choice. The paper develops this practice-based (...) conception of the subject of justice by rejoining G. A. Cohen's influential critique of Rawls’ focus on the “basic structure” of society. (shrink)

In their recent article, Glannon and Ross remind us that family members have obligations to help each other that strangers do not have. They argue, I believe correctly, that what creates moral obligations within families is not genetic relationship but rather a sharing of intimacy. For no one are these obligations stronger than they are for parents of young children. This observation leads the authors to the logical conclusion that organ donation by a parent to her child is not optional (...) but rather a prima facie duty. However, Glannon and Ross go a step further by suggesting that because parent-to-child organ donation is a duty, it cannot be altruistic. They assert that “altruistic acts are optional, nonobligatory…supererogatory…. Given that altruism consists in purely optional actions presupposing no duty to aid others, any parental act that counts as meeting a child's needs cannot be altruistic.” Here I think the authors go too far. (shrink)

The careful historical and metaphilosophical attention recently bestowed upon analytic philosophy has revealed that traditional ways of defining it are inadequate. In the face of this inadequacy, contemporary authors have proposed new definitions that detach analytic philosophy from its turn of the twentieth century origins. I argue that this contemporary trend in defining analytic philosophy is misguided, and that it diminishes the likelihood of our coming to an accurate historical and metaphilosophical understanding of it. This is especially unsatisfactory since such (...) understanding is essential to finding an adequate remedy for the widely perceived ills of contemporary analytic philosophy. I suggest that a more fruitful approach to developing such understanding might begin with treating the unity of analytic philosophy as illusory. (shrink)

Political constructivism is associated with John Rawls more than any other contemporary philosopher. This chapter suggests that Rawls's political constructivism is better understood as a general method of justification which runs throughout his work as a whole, including his early work and A Theory of Justice. The chapter develops the general characterization of Rawls's political constructivism. Its main elements are taken in turn and developed with special attention to the two places where Rawls discusses the topic in depth – his (...) Dewey Lectures on Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory and its substantially revised version called “Political Constructivism” (PL, Lecture III). The main elements include social role, sources, interpretive basis, representation and conclusion. Rawls endorsed a Kantian metaethical constructivism in part because it offered a way of more deeply characterizing how his previous political constructivism could be a live and distinct possibility. (shrink)

Surprisingly often Kant asserts that it is possible to behave in such a degrading way that one ‘throws oneself away’ and turns oneself ‘into a thing’, as a result of which others may treat one ‘as they please’. Rather than dismiss these claims out of hand, I argue that they force us to reconsider what is meant and required by ‘respect for humanity’. I argue that to ‘throw away’ humanity is not to lose or extinguish it, but rather to refuse (...) or otherwise fail to claim the respect that it authorizes one to claim. If I refuse or fail to make this claim, there is a sense in which I become a thing, and I leave others no choice but to treat me as such. This is compatible with their respect for humanity in my person. (shrink)

Many of the reforms being required or recommended to ensure that for-profit companies achieve greater transparency and more effective governance are similarly being promoted for adoption by nonprofit health care organizations. The demands are coming from a variety of sources - government officials, donors, business partners, companies that provide directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance, the media, and directors themselves. To meet these demands, nonprofit health care boards and executives need to assess whether they have the right number, mix, and (...) caliber of board members, and to modify their recruitment and/or retention strategies where they don't. -/- The following discussion is another in an ongoing Inquiry series called "Dialogue," a collaboration with the Alliance for Advancing Nonprofit Health Care to provide a variety of voices on current, major issues in the nonprofit health care sector. (shrink)

Humans have now amassed a sizable knowledge of widespread, nonconscious cognitive biases which affect our behavior, especially in social and economic contexts. I contend that a democratic government is uniquely justified in using knowledge of cognitive biases to promote pro-democratic behavior, conditionally justified in using it to accomplish ends traditionally within the scope of government authority, and unjustified in using it for any other purpose. I also contend that the government ought to redesign institutional infrastructure to avoid triggering cognitive biases (...) where it is not permitted intentionally to manipulate such biases and to optimize the effects of such biases where permissible. I shall use the United States of America as an example throughout, but my conclusions apply equally to any democracy which values the political autonomy of its populace. (shrink)