I argue that extant accounts of harm all fail to account for important desiderata, and that we should therefore jettison the concept when doing moral philosophy.

This paper defends the view, put roughly, that to think that p is to guess that p is the answer to the question at hand, and that to think that p rationally is for one’s guess to that question to be in a certain sense non-arbitrary. Some theses that will be argued for along the way include: that thinking is question-sensitive and, correspondingly, that ‘thinks’ is context-sensitive; that it can be rational to think that p while having arbitrarily low credence (...) that p; that, nonetheless, rational thinking is closed under entailment; that thinking does not supervene on credence; and that in many cases what one thinks on certain matters is, in a very literal sense, a choice. Finally, since there are strong reasons to believe that thinking just is believing, there are strong reasons to think that all this goes for belief as well. (shrink)

According to hedonism about well-being, lives can go well or poorly for us just in virtue of our ability to feel pleasure and pain. Hedonism has had many advocates historically, but has relatively few nowadays. This is mainly due to three highly influential objections to it: The Philosophy of Swine, The Experience Machine, and The Resonance Constraint. In this paper, I attempt to revive hedonism. I begin by giving a precise new definition of it. I then argue that the right (...) motivation for it is the ‘experience requirement’ (i.e., that something can benefit or harm a being only if it affects the phenomenology of her experiences in some way). Next, I argue that hedonists should accept a felt-quality theory of pleasure, rather than an attitude-based theory. Finally, I offer new responses to the three objections. Central to my responses are (i) a distinction between experiencing a pleasure (i.e., having some pleasurable phenomenology) and being aware of that pleasure, and (ii) an emphasis on diversity in one’s pleasures. (shrink)

Recent literature on intrinsic value contains a number of disputes about the nature of the concept. On the one hand, there are those who think states of affairs, such as states of pleasure or desire satisfaction, are the bearers of intrinsic value (“Mooreans”); on the other hand, there are those who think concrete objects, like people, are intrinsically valuable (“Kantians”). The contention of this paper is that there is not a single concept of intrinsic value about which Mooreans and Kantians (...) have disagreed, but rather two distinct concepts. I state a number of principles about intrinsic value that have typically (though not universally) been held by Mooreans, all of which are typically denied by Kantians. I show that there are distinct theoretical roles for a concept of intrinsic value to play in a moral framework. When we notice these distinct theoretical roles, we should realize that there is room for two distinct concepts of intrinsic value within a single moral framework: one that accords with some or all of the Moorean principles, and one that does not. (shrink)

An action is agentially perfect if and only if, if a person tries to perform it, they succeed, and, if a person performs it, they try to. We argue that trying itself is agentially perfect: if a person tries to try to do something, they try to do it; and, if a person tries to do something, they try to try to do it. We show how this claim sheds new light on questions about basic action, the logical structure of (...) intentional action, and the notion of "options" in decision theory. On the way to these central ideas, we argue that a person can try to do something even if they believe it is impossible that they will succeed, that a person can try to do something even if they do not want to succeed, and that a person can try to do something even if they do not intend to succeed. (shrink)

The philosophical study of well-being concerns what makes lives good for their subjects. It is now standard among philosophers to distinguish between two kinds of well-being: - lifetime well-being, i.e., how good a person's life was for him or her considered as a whole, and - temporal well-being, i.e., how well off someone was, or how they fared, at a particular moment in time or over a period of time longer than a moment but shorter than a whole life, say, (...) a day, month, year, or chapter of a life. Many theories have been offered of each of these kinds of well-being. A common view is that lifetime well-being is in some way constructed out of temporal well-being. This book argues that much of this literature is premised on a mistake. Lifetime well-being cannot be constructed out of temporal well-being, because there is no such thing as temporal well-being. The only genuine kind of well-being is lifetime well-being. The Passing of Temporal Well-Being will prove essential reading for professional philosophers, especially in moral and political philosophy. It will also be of interest to welfare economists and policy-makers who appeal to well-being. (shrink)

An overview (about 8,000 words) of act utilitarianism, covering the basic idea of the theory, historical examples, how it differs from rule utilitarianism and motive utilitarianism, supporting arguments, and standard objections. A closing section provides a brief introduction to indirect utilitarianism (i.e., a Hare- or Railton-style view distinguishing between a decision procedure and a criterion of rightness).

A popular response to the Exclusion Argument for physicalism maintains that mental events depend on their physical bases in such a way that the causation of a physical effect by a mental event and its physical base needn’t generate any problematic form of causal overdetermination, even if mental events are numerically distinct from and irreducible to their physical bases. This paper presents and defends a form of dualism that implements this response by using a dispositional essentialist view of properties to (...) argue that the psychophysical laws linking mental events to their physical bases are metaphysically necessary. I show the advantages of such a position over an alternative form of dualism that merely places more “modal weight” on psychophysical laws than on physical laws. The position is then defended against the objection that it is inconsistent with dualism. Lastly, some suggestions are made as to how dualists might clarify the contribution that mental causes make to their physical effects. (shrink)

The evil God challenge is an argumentative strategy that has been pursued by a number of philosophers in recent years. It is apt to be understood as a parody argument: a wholly evil, omnipotent and omniscient God is absurd, as both theists and atheists will agree. But according to the challenge, belief in evil God is about as reasonable as belief in a wholly good, omnipotent and omniscient God; the two hypotheses are roughly epistemically symmetrical. Given this symmetry, thesis belief (...) in an evil God and belief in a good God are taken to be similarly preposterous. In this paper, we argue that the challenge can be met, suggesting why the three symmetries that need to hold between evil God and good God – intrinsic, natural theology and theodicy symmetries – can all be broken. As such, we take it that the evil God challenge can be met. (shrink)

This paper defends the simple view that in asserting that p, one lies iff one knows that p is false. Along the way it draws some morals about deception, knowledge, Gettier cases, belief, assertion, and the relationship between first- and higher-order norms.

The interactive theorem prover Isabelle/HOL is used to verify elementary theorems of classical extensional mereology.

This paper considers some puzzling knowledge ascriptions and argues that they present prima facie counterexamples to credence, belief, and justification conditions on knowledge, as well as to many of the standard meta-semantic assumptions about the context-sensitivity of ‘know’. It argues that these ascriptions provide new evidence in favor of contextualist theories of knowledge—in particular those that take the interpretation of ‘know’ to be sensitive to the mechanisms of constraint.

This paper considers whether an analogy between distance and dissimilarlity supports the thesis that degree of dissimilarity is distance in a metric space. A straightforward way to justify the thesis would be to define degree of dissimilarity as a function of number of properties in common and not in common. But, infamously, this approach has problems with infinity. An alternative approach would be to prove representation and uniqueness theorems, according to which if comparative dissimilarity meets certain qualitative conditions, then it (...) is representable by distance in a metric space. I will argue that this approach faces equally severe problems with infinity. (shrink)

Mill’s harm principle is commonly supposed to rest on a distinction between self-regarding conduct, which is not liable to interference, and other-regarding conduct, which is. As critics have noted, this distinction is difficult to draw. Furthermore, some of Mill’s own applications of the principle, such as his forbidding of slavery contracts, do not appear to fit with it. This article proposes that the self-regarding/other-regarding distinction is not in fact fundamental to Mill’s harm principle. The sphere of protected liberty includes not (...) only self-regarding conduct, but also actions that affect only consenting others. On the other hand, the occasional permissibility of interfering with self-regarding conduct can plausibly be explained by reference to the agent’s consent. Thus, the more important distinction appears to be that between consensual and non-consensual harm, rather than that between the self-regarding and non-self-regarding action. That is, interference can be justified in order to prevent non-consensual harms, but not to prevent consensual harms. It is argued that the harm principle, thus reformulated, both captures Mill’s intentions and is a substantively plausible position. (shrink)

A puzzling feature of paradigmatic cases of dehumanization is that the perpetrators often attribute uniquely human traits to their victims. This has become known as the “paradox of dehumanization.” We address the paradox by arguing that the perpetrators think of their victims as human in one sense, while denying that they are human in another sense. We do so by providing evidence that people harbor a dual character concept of humanity. Research has found that dual character concepts have two independent (...) sets of criteria for their application, one of which is descriptive and one of which is normative. Across four experiments, we found evidence that people deploy a descriptive criterion according to which being human is a matter of being a Homo sapiens; as well as a normative criterion according to which being human is a matter of possessing a deep-seated commitment to do the morally right thing. Importantly, we found that people are willing to affirm that someone is human in the descriptive sense, while denying that they are human in the normative sense, and vice versa. In addition to providing a solution to the paradox of dehumanization, these findings suggest that perceptions of moral character have a central role to play in driving dehumanization. (shrink)

The introduction (about 6,000 words) to _The Cambridge Companion to Utilitarianism_, in three sections: utilitarianism’s place in recent and contemporary moral philosophy (including the opinions of critics such as Rawls and Scanlon), a brief history of the view (again, including the opinions of critics, such as Marx and Nietzsche), and an overview of the chapters of the book.

In this paper I argue that the analysis of natural properties as convex subsets of a metric space in which the distances are degrees of dissimilarity is incompatible with both the definition of degree of dissimilarity as number of natural properties not in common and the definition of degree of dissimilarity as proportion of natural properties not in common, since in combination with either of these definitions it entails that every property is a natural property, which is absurd. I suggest (...) it follows that we should think of the convex class analysis of natural properties as a variety of resemblance nominalism. (shrink)

I provide an argument from consciousness for God’s existence. I first consider a version of the argument which is ultimately difficult to evaluate. I then consider a stronger argument, on which consciousness, given our worldly laws of nature, is rather substantial evidence for God’s existence. It is this latter argument the paper largely focuses on, both in setting it out and defending it from various objections.

In this paper, I consider intellectualist and anti-intellectualist approaches to knowledge-how and propose a third solution: a virtue-based account of knowledge-how. I sketch the advantages of a virtue-based account of knowledge-how and consider whether we should prefer a reliabilist or a responsibilist virtue-account of knowledge-how. I argue that only a responsibilist account will maintain the crucial distinction between knowing how to do something and merely being able to do it. Such an account, I hold, must incorporate ‘learning how to do (...) something’ as an essential part. Drawing on an argument by Craig, I hold that the function of the concept of knowing how is to mark out practical experts whom one can trust either to perform an action on one's behalf, or to teach one how to perform that action oneself. The best way to identify practical experts, I hold, is to discover what they have learned about performing the action in question. In arguing for the importance of the concept ‘learning’ to the field of knowledge-how, I argue for a new connection between the philosophy of education and virtue epistemology. (shrink)

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues, on the relationship between individual emissions and climate change, that “we cannot claim to know that it is morally wrong to drive a gas guzzler just for fun” or engage in other inessential emissions-producing individual activities. His concern is not uncertainty about the phenomenon of climate change, nor about human contribution to it. Rather, on Sinnott-Armstrong’s analysis the claim of individual moral responsibility for emissions must be grounded in a defensible moral principle, yet no principle withstands scrutiny. (...) I argue thatthe moral significance of individual emissions is obscured by this critique. I offer a moral principle, the threshold-contribution principle, capable of withstanding Sinnott-Armstrong’s criticisms while also plausibly explaining what’s wrong with gas-guzzling joyrides and other gratuitous emissions-producing individual acts. (shrink)

I examine the origins of ordinary racial thinking. In doing so, I argue against the thesis that it is the byproduct of a unique module. Instead, I defend a pluralistic thesis according to which different forms of racial thinking are driven by distinct mechanisms, each with their own etiology. I begin with the belief that visible features are diagnostic of race. I argue that the mechanisms responsible for face recognition have an important, albeit delimited, role to play in sustaining this (...) belief. I then argue that essentialist beliefs about race are driven by some of the mechanisms responsible for “entitativity perception”: the tendency to perceive some aggregates of people as more genuine groups than others. Finally, I argue that coalitional thinking about race is driven by a distinctive form of entitativity perception. However, I suggest that more data is needed to determine the prevalence of this form of racial thinking. (shrink)

There is an objection to divine timelessness which claims that timelessness shouldn’t be adopted since on this view evil is never “destroyed,” “vanquished,” “eradicated” or defeated. By contrast, some divine temporalists think that presentism is the key that allows evil to be destroyed/vanquished/eradicated/defeated. However, since presentism is often considered to be inconsistent with timelessness, it is thought that the presentist solution is not available for defenders of timelessness. In this paper I first show how divine timelessness is consistent with a (...) presentist view of time and then how defenders of Presentist-Timelessness can adopt the presentist solution to the removal of evil. After this, I conclude the paper by showing that it’s far from clear that the presentist solution is successful and that unless one weakens what is meant by the destruction/vanquishing/eradication/defeat of evil, one can only make the presentist solution work by adopting a number of additional assumptions that many will find unattractive. (shrink)

One prominent argument in international law and religious thought for abolishing capital punishment is that it violates individuals’ right to life. Notably, this _right-to-life argument_ emerged from normative and legal frameworks that recognize deadly force against aggressors as justified when necessary to stop their unjust threat of grave harm. Can capital punishment be necessary in this sense—and thus justified defensive killing? If so, the right-to-life argument would have to admit certain exceptions where executions are justified. Drawing on work by Hugo (...) Bedau, I identify a thought experiment where executions are justified defensive killing but explain why they cannot be in our world. A state’s obligations to its prisoners include the _obligation to use nonlethal incapacitation_ (ONI), which applies as long as prisoners pose no imminent threat. ONI precludes executions for reasons of future dangerousness. By subjecting the right-to-life argument to closer scrutiny, this article ultimately places it on firmer ground. (shrink)

A plausible principle about the felicitous use of indicative conditionals says that there is something strange about asserting an indicative conditional when you know whether its antecedent is true. But in most contexts there is nothing strange at all about asserting indicative conditionals like ‘If Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy, then someone else did’. This paper argues that the only compelling explanation of these facts requires the resources of contextualism about knowledge.

This paper develops a language for distinguishing more rigorously between various senses of the term ‘anthropocentrism.’ Specifically, it differentiates between:1. Perceptual anthropocentrism (which characterizes paradigms informed by sense-data from human sensory organs);2. Descriptive anthropocentrism (which characterizes paradigms that begin from, center upon, or are ordered around Homo sapiens / ‘the human’)3. Normative anthropocentrism (which characterizes paradigms that constrain inquiry in a way that somehow privileges Homo sapiens / ‘the human’ [passive normative anthropocentrism]; and which characterizes paradigms that make assumptions or (...) assertions about the superiority of Homo sapiens, its capacities, the primacy of its values, its position in the universe, and/or make prescriptions based on these assertions and assumptions [active normative anthropocentrism]). (shrink)

This paper defends an ‘opt-out’ scheme for organ procurement, by distinguishing this system from ‘presumed consent’ (which the author regards as an erroneous justification of it). It, first, stresses the moral importance of increasing the supply of organs and argues that making donation easier need not conflict with altruism. It then goes on to explore one way that donation can be increased, namely by adopting an opt-out system, in which cadaveric organs are used unless the deceased (or their family) registered (...) an objection. Such policies are often labelled ‘presumed consent’, but it is argued that critics are right to be sceptical of this idea—consent is shown to be an action, rather than a mental attitude, and thus not something that can be presumed. Either someone has consented or they have not, whatever their attitude to the use of their organs. Thankfully, an opt-out scheme need not rest on the presumption of consent. Actual consent can be given implicitly, by one's actions, so it is argued that the failure to register an objection (given certain background conditions) should itself be taken as sign of consent. Therefore, it is permissible to use the organs of someone who did not opt out, because they have—by their silence—actually consented. (shrink)

The historical sciences, such as geology, evolutionary biology, and archaeology, appear to have no means to test hypotheses. However, on closer examination, reasoning in the historical sciences relies upon regularities, regularities that can be tested. I outline the role of regularities in the historical sciences, and in the process, blur the distinction between the historical sciences and the experimental sciences: all sciences deploy theories about the world in their investigations.

I argue that in addressing worries about the validity and reliability of implicit measures of social cognition, theorists should draw on research concerning “entitativity perception.” In brief, an aggregate of people is perceived as highly “entitative” when its members exhibit a certain sort of unity. For example, think of the difference between the aggregate of people waiting in line at a bank versus a tight-knit group of friends: The latter seems more “groupy” than the former. I start by arguing that (...) entitativity perception modulates the activation of implicit biases and stereotypes. I then argue that recognizing this modulatory role will help researchers to address concerns surrounding the validity and reliability of implicit measures. (shrink)

This article identifies an argument in Hobbes’s writings often overlooked but relevant to current philosophical debates. Political philosophers tend to categorize his thought as representing consent or rescue theories of political authority. Though these interpretations have textual support and are understandable, they leave out one of his most compelling arguments – what we call the lesser evil argument for political authority, expressed most explicitly in Chapter 20 of Leviathan. Hobbes frankly admits the state’s evils but appeals to the significant disparity (...) between those evils and the greater evils outside the state as a basis for political authority. More than a passing observation, aspects of the lesser evil argument appear in each of his three major political works. In addition to outlining this argument, the article examines its significance both for Hobbes scholarship and recent philosophical debates on political authority. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, when it comes to explaining what can be described as “representational” properties of propositions, Soames’s new conception of propositions—on which the proposition that Seattle is sunny is the act of predicating the property being sunny of Seattle and to entertain that proposition is to perform that act—does not have an advantage over traditional ones.

The Exclusion Argument for physicalism maintains that since (1) every physical effect has a sufficient physical cause, and (2) cases of causal overdetermination are rare, it follows that if (3) mental events cause physical events as frequently as they seem to, then (4) mental events must be physical in nature. In defence of (1), it is sometimes said that (1) is supported if not entailed by conservation laws. Against this, I argue that conservation laws do not lend sufficient support to (...) (1) to render its denial ‘unscientific’, and that those who accept (3) and deny (4) may consequently respond to the Exclusion Argument by denying (1) without thereby setting themselves at odds with current science. I also argue that conservation laws are compatible with (3) and the negation of (4), and that one can therefore accept conservation laws and (3) while denying both (1) and (4). (shrink)

Something is good insofar as it achieves its end, so says a neo-Aristotelian view of goodness. Powers/dispositions are paradigm cases of entities that have an end, so say many metaphysicians. A question therefore arises, namely, can one account for neo-Aristotelian goodness in terms of an ontology of powers? This is what I shallbeginto explore in this paper. I will first provide a brief explication of both neo-Aristotelian goodness and the metaphysics of powers, before turning to investigate whether one can give (...) an account of neo-Aristotelian goodness in terms of powers. I will suggest that the answer to this question is yes. (shrink)

Defenses of political obligation—the pro tanto obligation to obey the law because the state commands it—often operate at or near the level of ideal theory. Critics, though, increasingly question that approach’s relevance for the imperfect states that exist. This article develops a lesser evil framework to evaluate political obligation with several advantages over more ideal approaches: (1) avoids the questionable assumption that some actual states are reasonably just, (2) recognizes that context matters for political obligation, (3) captures the complicity involved (...) in obeying the state, and (4) identifies a basis—varying intuitions on lesser evil justifications—to distinguish philosophical anarchism from conceptions of political obligation without the former collapsing into the latter. We remain agnostic on whether this framework establishes political obligation to any state but argue that it offers a compelling account of the moral dilemma of obeying the state under nonideal conditions. (shrink)

We reply to Scheffler's "Doing and Allowing.".

Power metaphysicians are concerned with, well, powers. Theists claim interest in the most powerful entity there is, God. As such, recent work on the ontology of powers may well have much to offer theists when thinking about God’s power. In this paper I start to provide a metaphysics of God’s ‘power’, something many definitions of omnipotence make reference to. In particular I will be interested in explicating how a power ontology can account for the strength and range of God’s power, (...) as well as showing how this account of divine power can fit with a timeless conception of God. (shrink)

In Parts of Classes and "Mathematics is Megethology" David Lewis shows how the ideology of set membership can be dispensed with in favor of parthood and plural quantification. Lewis's theory has it that singletons are mereologically simple and leaves the relationship between a thing and its singleton unexplained. We show how, by exploiting Kit Fine's mereology, we can resolve Lewis's mysteries about the singleton relation and vindicate the claim that a thing is a part of its singleton.

In a world of industralized farming and feed lots, is eating meat ever a morally responsible choice? Is eating organic or free range sufficient to change the moral equation? Is there a moral cost in not eating meat? As billions of animals continue to be raised and killed by human beings for human consumption, affecting the significance and urgency in answering these questions grow. This volume collects twelve new essays by leading moral philosophers who address the difficult questions surrounding meat (...) eating by examining various implications and consequences of our food choices. Some argue for the moral permissibility of eating meat by suggesting views such as farm animals would not exist and flourish otherwise, and the painless death that awaits is no loss to them. Others consider more specific examples like whether buying french fries at McDonalds is just as problematic as ordering a Big Mac due to the action's indirect support of a major purveyor of meat. The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat is a stimulating contribution to the ongoing debate on meat consumption and actively challenges readers to reevlaute their stand on food and animal ethics. (shrink)

In recent years Mullins and Craig have argued that there is a problem for a timeless God creating, with Mullins formulating the argument as follows: (1) If God begins to be related to creation, then God changes. (2) God begins to be related to creation. (3) Therefore, God changes. (4) If God changes, then God is neither immutable nor timeless. (5) Therefore, God is neither immutable nor timeless. In this paper I argue that all the premises, (1), (2), and (4) (...) are false, and then provide a revised formulation of the argument which more clearly represents what Mullins and Craig wish to argue, given the explication and commentary they give when discussing this objection to timelessness. I then call into question this argument, and conclude by stating what I think Mullins and Craig should really be arguing given the specific views they have about creation ex nihilo and in virtue of what timelessness requires. (shrink)

The 70th anniversary of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac (1949) approaches. For philosophers—environmental ethicists in particular—this text has been highly influential, especially the ‘Land Ethic’ essay contained therein. Given philosophers’ acumen for identifying and critiquing arguments, one might reasonably think a firm grasp of Leopold’s ideas to have emerged from such attention. I argue that this is not the case. Specifically, Leopold’s main interpreter and systematiser, philosopher J. Baird Callicott, has shoehorned Aldo Leopold’s ideas into differing monistic moral theories (...) that ill-serve a proper understanding. Against Callicott, my paper argues that Aldo Leopold embraces a robust moral pluralism, one that goes beyond mere pragmatics, and he does so while seeking a consistency maximisation of values. A new, improved understanding of Leopold’s ideas thus emerges. (shrink)

This article offers a normative analysis of some of the most controversial incidents involving police—what I call police-generated killings. In these cases, bad police tactics create a situation where deadly force becomes necessary, becomes perceived as necessary, or occurs unintentionally. Police deserve blame for such killings because they choose tactics that unnecessarily raise the risk of deadly force, thus violating their obligation to prioritize the protection of life. Since current law in the United States fails to ban many bad tactics, (...) police- generated killings often are treated as “lawful but awful.” To address these killings, some call on changes to departmental policies or voluntary reparations by local governments, yet such measures leave in place a troubling gap between ethics and law. I argue that police-generated killings merit legal sanctions by appealing to a relevant analogy: self-generated self-defense, where the person who engages in self-defense started the trouble. The persistent lack of accountability for police-generated killings threatens life, police legitimacy, and trust in democratic institutions. The article closes by identifying tools in law and policy to address this challenge. (shrink)

The devastating impact of the COVID‐19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic is prompting renewed scrutiny of practices that heighten the risk of infectious disease. One such practice is refusing available vaccines known to be effective at preventing dangerous communicable diseases. For reasons of preventing individual harm, avoiding complicity in collective harm, and fairness, there is a growing consensus among ethicists that individuals have a duty to get vaccinated. I argue that these same grounds establish an analogous duty to avoid buying and (...) eating most meat sold today, based solely on a concern for human welfare. Meat consumption is a leading driver of infectious disease. Wildlife sales at wet markets, bushmeat hunting, and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are all exceptionally risky activities that facilitate disease spread and impose immense harms on human populations. If there is a moral duty to vaccinate, we also should recognize a moral duty to avoid most meat. The paper concludes by considering the implications of this duty for policy. (shrink)

Recently, I presented evidence that there are two broad kinds of dehumanization: descriptive dehumanization and normative dehumanization. An individual is descriptively dehumanized when they are perceived as less than fully human in the biological-species sense; whereas an individual is normatively dehumanized when they are perceived as lacking a deep-seated commitment to good moral values. Here, I develop the concept of normative dehumanization by addressing skepticism about two hypotheses that are widely held by dehumanization researchers. The first hypothesis is that dehumanization (...) is distinct from mere dislike and other non-dehumanizing attitudes. The second hypothesis is that dehumanization is an important predictor of intergroup hostility. Across four studies, I found evidence that normative dehumanization is distinct from mere dislike, and denials of ideal humanness. I also found that it is a unique predictor of intergroup hostility. These findings suggest that research into dehumanization and intergroup hostility will benefit from recognizing the distinction between descriptive and normative dehumanization. (shrink)

According to dialetheism, some contradictions are true. In a recent paper, Aaron Cotnoir has suggested that theists who are also dialetheists can resolve the paradox of the stone by accepting a contradiction, and arguing that God both can and can't make the stone. However, Zach Weber has replied that dialetheism is no help for avoiding one of the most serious problems for theism, namely the problem of evil. In this paper, I argue the situation is even worse than this for (...) dialetheist theists, since one motivation for dialetheism closes off what otherwise might be a loophole in a classic version of the problem of evil. (shrink)

This article presents a novel set of ten play scenarios for robot-assisted play for children with special needs. This set of scenarios is one of the key outcomes of the IROMEC project that investigated how robotic toys can become social mediators, encouraging children with special needs to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to collaborative play. The target user groups in the project were children with Mild Mental Retardation,1 children with Severe Motor Impairment and children with Autism. The (...) play scenarios were developed against specific educational and therapeutic objectives that were discussed with panels of experts in various countries, during several user panel meetings for each of the above mentioned target user groups. These objectives were classified with reference to the ICF-CY, the International Classification of Functioning – version for Children and Youth. The article presents a detailed description of the play scenarios, each with its relevant educational and therapeutic objectives in five key developmental areas. While the play scenarios described in this paper originally were developed for and tested with the above user groups and with the IROMEC robot, the play scenarios can potentially be applied to other user groups and to a wide range of other applications involving human-robot interaction using different robotic toys. Keywords: human-robot interaction; assistive technology; play scenarios; autism; mild mental retardation; sever motor impairment; assisted play. (shrink)

Counterfactuals are context-sensitive. However, we argue that various debates and doctrines in metaphysics and the philosophy of science are premised on ignoring the full extent of counterfactual context-sensitivity. Our focus is on the prominent "miracle" versus "no-miracle" debate about counterfactuals under the assumption that our laws of nature are deterministic. But we also discuss doctrines that employ counterfactuals in theories of rational decision, as well as doctrines that explain what it is to be a law of nature in terms of (...) counterfactuals. We conclude by drawing some morals about the use of counterfactuals in philosophical theorizing more generally. (shrink)

I argue that we can visually perceive others as seeing agents. I start by characterizing perceptual processes as those that are causally controlled by proximal stimuli. I then distinguish between various forms of visual perspective-taking, before presenting evidence that most of them come in perceptual varieties. In doing so, I clarify and defend the view that some forms of visual perspective-taking are “automatic”—a view that has been marshalled in support of dual-process accounts of mindreading.

It is widely believed to be permissible for a physician to discontinue any treatment upon the request of a competent patient. Many also believe it is never permissible for a physician to intentionally kill a patient. I argue that the prospect of deactivating a patient’s artificial heart presents us with a dilemma: either the first belief just mentioned is false or the second one is. Whichever horn of the dilemma we choose has significant implications for contemporary medical ethics.

There is this view propounded by some theorists which claims that some conceptions of the nature of time are incompatible with the Christian position on the defeat of evil. The aim of this article is twofold. First, to clarify exactly which thesis about time’s nature is taken to be problematic for the defeat of evil. And second, to show that scriptural support for understanding the defeat of evil as requiring that evil not be in the range of the existential quantifier, (...) something implicitly contended by those who put forward this problem, is weak and that these passages can be read in plausible ways which are affirmable by those who endorse the ‘problematic’ thesis. (shrink)