One of the major challenges facing agricultural and food systems today is the loss of agrobiodiversity. Considering the current impasse of preventing the worldwide loss of crop diversity, this paper highlights the possibility for a radical reorientation of current legal seed frameworks that could provide more space for alternative seed systems to evolve which centre on norms that support on-farm agrobiodiversity. Understanding the underlying norms that shape seed commons are important, since norms both delimit and contribute to what ultimately will (...) constitute the seeds and who will ultimately have access to the seeds and thus to the extent to which agrobiodiversity is upheld and supported. This paper applies a commoning approach to explore the underpinning norms of a Swedish seed commons initiative and discusses the potential for furthering agrobiodiversity in the context of wider legal and authoritative discourses on seed enclosure. The paper shows how the seed commoning system is shaped and protected by a particular set of farming norms, which allows for sharing seeds among those who adhere to the norms but excludes those who will not. The paper further illustrates how farmers have been able to navigate fragile legal and economic pathways to collectively organize around landrace seeds, which function as an epistemic farming community, that maintain landraces from the past and shape new landraces for the present, adapted to diverse agro-ecological environments for low-input agriculture. The paper reveals how the ascribed norms to the seed commons in combination with the current seed laws set a certain limit to the extent to which agrobiodiversity is upheld and supported and discusses why prescriptions of “getting institutions right” for seed governance are difficult at best, when considering the shifting socio-nature of seeds. To further increase agrobiodiversity, the paper suggests future seed laws are redirected to the sustenance of a proliferation of protected seed commoning systems that can supply locally adapted plant material for diverse groups of farmers and farming systems. (shrink)

Erik Carlson puts forward a new way of defining monadic value predicates, such as ‘good’, in terms of dyadic value relations, such as ‘better’. Earlier definitions of this kind have the unwanted feature that they rule out some reasonable axiologies by conceptual fiat. Carlson claims that his definitions do not have this drawback. In this paper, I argue that they do.

This article develops a new measure of freedom of choice based on the proposal that a set offers more freedom of choice than another if, and only if, the expected degree of dissimilarity between a random alternative from the set of possible alternatives and the most similar offered alternative in the set is smaller. Furthermore, a version of this measure is developed, which is able to take into account the values of the possible options.

One of the principles on how to act under moral uncertainty, My Favourite Theory, says roughly that a morally conscientious agent chooses an option that is permitted by the most credible moral theory. In defence of this principle, we argue that it prescribes consistent choices over time, without relying on intertheoretic comparisons of value, while its main rivals are either plagued by moral analogues of money pumps or in need of a method for making non-arbitrary intertheoretic comparisons. We rebut the (...) arguments that have been levelled against My Favourite Theory and offer some arguments against intertheoretic comparisons of value. (shrink)

The small-improvement argument is usually considered the most powerful argument against comparability, viz the view that for any two alternatives an agent is rationally required either to prefer one of the alternatives to the other or to be indifferent between them. We argue that while there might be reasons to believe each of the premises in the small-improvement argument, there is a conflict between these reasons. As a result, the reasons do not provide support for believing the conjunction of the (...) premises. Without support for the conjunction of the premises, the small-improvement argument for incomparability fails. (shrink)

Anna Mahtani describes a puzzle meant to show that the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle is incomplete as it stands and, since it cannot be completed in a satisfactory manner, decades of debate in welfare economics and ethics are undermined. In this paper, we provide a better solution to the puzzle which saves the Ex-Ante Pareto Principle from this challenge. We also explain how the plausibility of our solution is reinforced by its similarity to a standard solution to an analogous puzzle in (...) quantified epistemic logic. We also show that even if the puzzle were to remain unsolved, its impact on welfare economics and ethics would be limited. (shrink)

In 'A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs' Donald Davidson attacks a picture of language which, he says, is prevalent among philosophers and linguists. Davidson's criticism, even if correct, is not radical enough. The common irregularities of everyday language, such as malapropisms, nicknames, and slips of the tongue, not only imply that linguistic meanings are not governed by conventions that are learned in advance of occasions of interpretation, but undermine the very idea that linguistic meaning can be accounted for in terms of (...) systematic meaning-theories. Davidson continues to hold that Tarskian truth-definitions should play a central role in philosophical accounts of language, but if the goal is to describe rather than to improve or otherwise change language, we must give up the aspiration towards theoretical systematicity altogether. In this connection, Davidson's approach is compared with those of Quine and Wittgenstein. It is argued that Davidson's unwillingness to give up the notion that meaning is systematic is best explained in terms of his vacillating between treating meaning-theories as mere representations of the linguistic abilities of a speaker and seeing them as playing a more substantial role in communication. (shrink)

Suppose that you prefer A to B, B to C, and C to A. Your preferences violate Expected Utility Theory by being cyclic. Money-pump arguments offer a way to show that such violations are irrational. Suppose that you start with A. Then you should be willing to trade A for C and then C for B. But then, once you have B, you are offered a trade back to A for a small cost. Since you prefer A to B, you (...) pay the small sum to trade from B to A. But now you have been turned into a money pump. You are back to the alternative you started with but with less money. This Element shows how each of the axioms of Expected Utility Theory can be defended by money-pump arguments of this kind. The Element also defends money-pump arguments from the standard objections to this kind of approach. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

I show, in words of one block of sound, that, while those whose likes form a loop could stop some wealth pumps if they now did what they would like most based on what they thought they would do next, there are wealth pumps they could not stop in that way.

In the field of clinical practice, there does not seem to be too much contention about what schizophrenia is, at least from a high level. After all, there are various diagnostic systems and guidelines, all of which point toward schizophrenia as a psychotic syndrome which likely forms a continuum with other psychotic disorders. It may sound obvious that, according to the current definitions, the major commonality between schizophrenia and all other psychoses is psychotic symptoms; more precisely, delusions and hallucinations. Any (...) description, or ‘phenomenology’ as most clinicians view it, can be found in these diagnostic manuals. However, is there anything at all that sets schizophrenia apart from the other... (shrink)

Organisations have implemented intensive home-based teleworking in response to global COVID-19 lockdowns and other pandemic-related restrictions. Financial pressures are driving organisations to continue intensive teleworking after the pandemic. Understanding employees’ teleworking inclinations post COVID-19, and how these inclinations are influenced by different factors, is important to ensure any future, more permanent changes to teleworking policies are sustainable for both employees and organisations. This study, therefore, investigated the relationships between the context of home-based teleworking during the pandemic, productivity perceptions during home-based (...) teleworking, and employees’ future teleworking inclinations beyond the pandemic. Specifically, the study examined whether pandemic-teleworking conditions related to the job, and the physical and social environments at home, influenced employees’ FTI, and if perceptions of improved or reduced productivity mediated these relationships. Data were collected during April and May 2020 with a cross-sectional online survey of teleworkers in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and other countries during the first COVID-19 lockdowns. Reported FTI were mixed. Most participants reported wanting to telework more post-pandemic compared to before the pandemic; however, 18% wanted to telework less. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that some teleworking conditions were positively associated with FTI. Other teleworking conditions were not associated with FTI. Perceived changes in productivity mediated the relationship between work privacy fit and FTI. Findings highlight the role of work privacy fit and job demands in influencing pandemic productivity perceptions and teleworking inclinations post-pandemic. Results raise questions about the suitability and sustainability of home-based teleworking for all staff. As organisations plan to increase the proportion of teleworking post-pandemic, this study suggests there is a need to support employees who perceived their productivity to be poor while home-working during the pandemic. (shrink)

Critical-Range Utilitarianism is a variant of Total Utilitarianism which can avoid both the Repugnant Conclusion and the Sadistic Conclusion in population ethics. Yet Standard Critical-Range Utilitarianism entails the Weak Sadistic Conclusion, that is, it entails that each population consisting of lives at a bad well-being level is not worse than some population consisting of lives at a good well-being level. In this paper, I defend a version of Critical-Range Utilitarianism which does not entail the Weak Sadistic Conclusion. This is made (...) possible by a fourth category of absolute value in addition to goodness, badness, and neutrality. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the small-improvement argument fails since some of the comparisons involved in the argument might be indeterminate. I defend this view from two objections by Ruth Chang, namely the argument from phenomenology and the argument from perplexity. There are some other objections to the small-improvement argument that also hinge on claims about indeterminacy. John Broome argues that alleged cases of value incomparability are merely examples of indeterminacy in the betterness relation. The main premise of his (...) argument is the much-discussed collapsing principle. I offer a new counterexample to this principle and argue that Broome's defence of the principle is not cogent. On the other hand, Nicolas Espinoza argues that the small-improvement argument fails as a result of the mere possibility of evaluative indeterminacy. I argue that his objection is unsuccessful. (shrink)

In the 1960’s, Lars Bergström and Hector-Neri Castañeda noticed a problem with alternative acts and consequentialism. The source of the problem is that some performable acts are versions of other performable acts and the versions need not have the same consequences as the originals. Therefore, if all performable acts are among the agent’s alternatives, act consequentialism yields deontic paradoxes. A standard response is to restrict the application of act consequentialism to certain relevant alternative sets. Many proposals are based on some (...) variation of maximalism, that is, the view that act consequentialism should only be applied to maximally specific acts. In this paper, I argue that maximalism cannot yield the right prescriptions in some cases where one can either (i) form at once the intention to do an immediate act and form at a later time the intention to do a succeeding act or (ii) form at once the intention to do both acts and where the consequences of (i) and (ii) differ in value. Maximalism also violates normative invariance, that is, the condition that if an act is performable in a situation, then the normative status of the act does not depend on what acts are performed in the situation. Instead of maximalism, I propose that the relevant alternatives should be the exhaustive combinations of acts the agent can jointly perform without performing any other act in the situation. In this way, one avoids the problem of act versions without violating normative invariance. Another advantage is that one can adequately differentiate between possibilities like (i) and (ii). (shrink)

John Locke’s account of personal identity is usually thought to have been proved false by Thomas Reid’s simple ‘Gallant Officer’ argument. Locke is traditionally interpreted as holding that your having memories of a past person’s thoughts or actions is necessary and sufficient for your being identical to that person. This paper argues that the traditional memory interpretation of Locke’s account is mistaken and defends a memory continuity view according to which a sequence of overlapping memories is necessary and sufficient for (...) personal identity. On this view Locke is not vulnerable to the Gallant Officer argument. (shrink)

According to Longtermism, our acts’ expected influence on the expected value of the world is mainly determined by their effects in the far future. There is, given total utilitarianism, a straightforward argument for Longtermism due to the enormous number of people that might exist in the future, but this argument does not work on person-affecting views. In this paper, we will argue that these views might also lead to Longtermism if Prudential Longtermism is true. Prudential Longtermism holds for a person (...) if and only if our acts’ overall influence on that person’s expected well-being is mainly determined by the acts’ effects in the far future. We argue that (due to a small chance of anti-ageing and uploading) there could be an enormous amount of prudential value for some contemporary person in the far future and that value may be so large that it dominates their overall expectation of lifetime well-being. (shrink)

Schizophrenia as a pathology of self-awareness has attracted much attention from philosophical theorists and empirical scientists alike. I view schizophrenia as a basic self-disturbance leading to a lifeworld of solipsism adopted by the sufferer and explain how this adoption takes place, which then manifests in ways such as first-rank psychotic symptoms. I then discuss the relationships between these symptoms, not as isolated mental events, but as end-products of a loss of agency and ownership, and argue that symptoms like thought insertion (...) and other ego-boundary disorders are by nature a multitude of paradoxes created by a fragmented awareness. I argue that such fragmentation does not always require or lead to a delusional elaboration as the definitive feature of its phenomenology, and present reasons for the role of the first-person pronoun as a mere metaphor used to represent the patient’s bizarre experiences where sensory perception and thinking processes converge. Further, I discuss the initi... (shrink)

W. V. Quine wished to restrict the interests that matter to those of actual people. Actual-Population Utilitarianism is a version of utilitarianism where, following Quine, only the interests of actual people matter. It is well known that ethical theories of this kind, which depend on what is actual, typically lead to normative variance. In this paper, I put forward a new objection to Actual-Population Utilitarianism. I present a case in which Actual-Population Utilitarianism prescribes choices that are worse for everyone whose (...) interests matter than the opposite choices. Moreover, I put forward a case in which total and average versions of Actual-Population Utilitarianism prescribe choices that are worse than the opposite choice for everyone (full stop). This objection also applies if the Actual-Population Restriction is combined with non-utilitarian views, given some minimal assumptions. (shrink)

Moral wrongness comes in degrees. On a consequentialist view of ethics, the wrongness of an act should depend, I argue, in part on how much worse the act's consequences are compared with those of its alternatives and in part on how difficult it is to perform the alternatives with better consequences. I extend act consequentialism to take this into account, and I defend three conditions on consequentialist theories. The first is consequentialist dominance, which says that, if an act has better (...) consequences than some alternative act, then it is not more wrong than the alternative act. The second is consequentialist supervenience, which says that, if two acts have equally good consequences in a situation, then they have the same deontic status in the situation. And the third is consequentialist continuity, which says that, for every act and for any difference in wrongness δ greater than zero, there is an arbitrarily small improvement of the consequences of the act which would, other things being equal, not change the wrongness of that act or any alternative by more than δ. I defend a proposal that satisfies these conditions. (shrink)

Background: Nurses who are constantly being exposed to patients’ suffering can lead to compassion fatigue. There is a gap in the latest research regarding nurses’ experiences of compassion fatigue. Little is known about how compassion fatigue affects the nurse as a person, and indications of how it affects the profession are scarce. Aim: The aim of this study was to explore compassion fatigue experienced by nurses and how it affects them as persons and professionals. Research design, participants, and research context: (...) A qualitative explorative approach was used. The data consisted of texts from interviews with seven nurses in various nursing contexts. Content analysis was used. Ethical consideration: Ethical approval was sought and granted from an ethics committee at the university where the researchers were based, and written, informed consent was obtained from all the participants. Findings: Five themes were discovered: Compassion as an empathic gift and compassion fatigue as a result of compassion overload, Compassion fatigue as exhausting the nurse as a professional and private person, Compassion fatigue as a crisis with potentially valuable insights, Compassion fatigue can be handled by self-care and focus on self, and Compassion fatigue is affected by life itself and multifaceted factors. Discussion: Compassion stress and overload can lead to compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue affects the nurse’s ability to compassion, and the caring is no longer experienced in the same way; the nurses experienced it as being deprived of the gift of compassion. Compassion fatigue implicates a crisis with potentially valuable insights. Conclusion: Compassion fatigue can be symbolized as bruises in the soul, hurtful, but with time it can fade away, although it leaves a sense of caution within the nurse, which can affect the suffering patient. (shrink)

This study focuses on the meaningful encounters of patients and next of kin, as seen from their perspective. Identifying the attributes within meaningful encounters is important for increased understanding of caring and to expand and develop earlier formulated knowledge about caring relationships. Caring theory about the caring relationship provided a point of departure to illuminate the meaningful encounter in healthcare contexts. A qualitative explorative design with a hermeneutic narrative approach was used to analyze and interpret written narratives. The phases of (...) the analysis were naïve interpretation, structure analysis on two different levels (narrative structure, and deep structure through metaphors) and finally a dialectic interpretation. The narratives revealed the meaning of the meaningful encounter as sharing, a nourishing fellowship, common responsibility and coming together, experienced as safety and warmth, that gives, by extension, life‐changing moments, a healing force and dissipated insight. The meaningful encounter can be seen as a complex phenomenon with various attributes. Understanding the meaningful encounter will enable nurses to plan and provide professional care, based on caring science, focusing on patient and next‐of‐kin experiences. (shrink)

This thesis consists of an introduction and five essays on decision theory.

It is natural to assume that every value bearer must be good, bad, or neutral. This paper argues that this assumption is false if value incomparability is possible. More precisely, if value incommensurability is possible, then there is a fourth category of absolute value, in addition to the good, the bad, and the neutral.

s distinction between perfect and imperfect procedural justice relies on the notion of a procedure that is guaranteed to lead to a certain independently specifiable result. Clarification of this notion shows that it makes the distinction between perfect and imperfect procedural justice unreal, in the following sense: whether, in a particular case, we have an instance of perfect or imperfect procedural justice depends only on how we choose to specify the procedure that is being followed. Key Words: procedural justice • (...) John Rawls. (shrink)

In their discussions and criticisms of the idea that language use is essentially a matter of following rules, Davidson and Cavell both invoke as counterexamples instances of intelligible linguistic innovation. Davidson’s favorite examples are malapropisms. Cavell focuses instead on what he calls projections. This paper clarifies some important differences between malapropisms and projections, conceived as paradigmatic forms of linguistic innovation. If malapropisms are treated as exemplary it will be natural to conclude, with Davidson, that a shared practice, be it rule-governed (...) or not, matters only instrumentally – as something that may enhance but is neither necessary nor sufficient for successful communication. By contrast, if Cavellian projections are seen as exemplary, a shared practice will be conceived not only as essential to the possibility of meaningful linguistic innovation, but as already permeated by the sort of creativity of which projections are only particularly striking examples. It is also argued that malapropisms are not particularly convincing as counterexamples to the sort of view Davidson wants to reject. Cavellian projections, on the other hand, are powerful as counterexamples, and reflecting on the nature of their inventiveness is crucial to understanding and seeing the plausibility of Cavell’s own conception of language. (shrink)

This book explores how different corporate governance strategies affect community mobilization and the scope for influence when an area’s population is faced with the arrival of the extraction industry. Drawing on ethnographic research into Peruvian mining localities, the author analyses a series of relationships which are characterized by confrontations, clientelism, demobilization and strategic collaboration. By presenting a detailed account of micro practices and showing how these processes are interpreted by different groups, Gustafsson offers a refined understanding of the multiple (...) layers and informal workings of power between transnational corporations and local communities. (shrink)

This paper offers an interpretation of Anscombe’s account of animal versus human intention, and of her notorious claim that the expression of intention is purely conventional. It engages in a criticism of Richard Moran’s and Martin Stone’s recent exegesis of these views of Anscombe’s, and proposes an alternative reading which explains how she can accept both that speechless brutes have intentions and that human intention is essentially linguistic.

This paper discusses Austin’s goldfinch example from “Other Minds,” which plays a central role in Kaplan’s Austin’s Way with Skepticism. The paper aims to clarify the obscure distinction Austin makes in connection with this example, between cases in which we know and can prove and cases in which we know but can’t prove. By discussing a couple of remarks that Austin makes in passing, a view is extracted from his text that stands in conflict with Kaplan’s reading at a fundamental (...) point. The view proposed emphasizes the role of law-like generics in our practice of knowledge attribution, and brings out the disjunctivist elements in Austin’s conception. It is argued that the response to skepticism that Kaplan ascribes to Austin is not fully satisfactory, since it fails to tell us what makes some challenges to our knowledge claims appropriate and others outrageous. The alternative view proposed in this paper can handle this problem without postulating the sort of general external criterion that Kaplan’s Austin rightly rejects. (shrink)

Moral obligation and permissibility are usually thought to be interdefinable. Following the pattern of the duality definitions of necessity and possibility, we have that something’s being permissible could be defined as its not being obligatory to not do it. And that something’s being obligatory could be defined as its not being permissible to not do it. In this paper, I argue that neither direction of this alleged interdefinability works. Roughly, the problem is that a claim that some act is obligatory (...) or permissible entails that there is a moral law, whereas a negative claim that some act is not obligatory or not permissible does not. Nevertheless, one direction of the interdefinability can potentially be salvaged. I argue that, if we do not require the conceptual possibility of moral dilemmas, then there is a way to plausibly define obligation in terms of permissibility. I conclude that permissibility is the only feasible deontic primitive. (shrink)

The money-pump argument is the standard argument for the acyclicity of rational preferences. The argument purports to show that agents with cyclic preferences are in some possible situations forced to act against their preference. In the usual, diachronic version of the money-pump argument, such agents accept a series of trades that leaves them worse off than before. Two stock objections are (i) that one may get the drift and refuse the trades and (ii) that one may adopt a plan to (...) only accept some of the trades. This article argues that these objections are irrelevant. If the diachronic money-pump argument is cogent, so is a more direct synchronic argument. The upshot is that the standard objections to the diachronic money-pump argument do not affect this simpler synchronic argument. Hence the standard objections to the money-pump argument for acyclicity are irrelevant. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against defining either of ‘good’ and ‘better’ in terms of the other. According to definitions of ‘good’ in terms of ‘better’, something is good if and only if it is better than some indifference point. Against this approach, I argue that the indifference point cannot be defined in terms of ‘better’ without ruling out some reasonable axiologies. Against defining ‘better’ in terms of ‘good’, I argue that this approach either cannot allow for the incorruptibility of (...) intrinsic goodness or it breaks down in cases where both of the relata of ‘better’ are bad. (shrink)

Derek Parfit argues that fission is prudentially better for you than ordinary death. But is having more fission products with good lives prudentially better for you than having just one? In this paper, we argue that it is. We argue that, if your brain is split and the halves are transplanted into two recipients (who both have good lives), then it is prudentially better for you if both transplants succeed than if only one of them does (other things being equal). (...) This upshot rules out, among other things, that the prudential value of standing in the relation that matters in survival to multiple people is equal to their average well-being. (shrink)

This special issue explores the relevance of shame to feminist theory and practice. Across a number of contexts, theoretical frames, and disciplines, the articles collated here provide a stimulating engagement with shame, posing questions and developing analyses that have a direct bearing on feminism. For, the significance of shame to feminists lies in the complex and often troubling implications it holds as a feeling that may be experienced differently by people of certain genders (and none), and in its relation to (...) power. Indeed, as the contributions to this special issue highlight, shame may play a role in our moral development, but given its often readily acknowledged harmful effects, shame is frequently put to politically problematic and morally questionable ends. In patriarchal societies the outgrowths of this regularly entail gendered consequences, as gendered shame may form a disciplining device operating through structures of oppression, such as gender, but also class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, and related intersectional categories. The question of a politics of shame therefore arises in the context of a consideration of the social and political deployment and manipulation of shame, and the reported divergence in the shame experience itself, which feminists have attributed to its manifestation through, among others, gender. (shrink)

Patients with psychotic disorders experience a range of reality distortions. These often include auditory-verbal hallucinations, and thought insertion to a lesser degree; however, their mechanisms and relationships between each other remain largely elusive. Here we attempt to establish a integrative model drawing from the phenomenology of both AVHs and TI and argue that they in fact can be seen as ‘spectra’ of experiences with varying degrees of agency and ownership, with ‘silent and internal own thoughts’ on one extreme and ‘fully (...) external and clearly audible voices’ in the absence of a speaker on the other. We believe a spectral model will add emphasis to the continuity of experience and help to better understand how one type of psychotic symptom may interact with another, and put forward the argument that the experience of TI itself is not sufficient to classify as a delusion. In addition we aim to discuss some of the conceptual issues surrounding AVHs and TI with first-person accounts and current philosophical and neuropsychological theories in mind. We propose that the mechanisms behind AVHs and TI are more complex than source-monitoring deficits; indeed, to understand such phenomena one must appreciate that their very ‘existence’ and ‘reality’ as experienced by the individual have much deeper implications and meaning, both philosophically and clinically. (shrink)

These new essays on J. L. Austin's philosophy constitute the first major study of his thought in decades.

This unique collection of articles on emotion by Wittgensteinian philosophers provides a fresh perspective on the questions framing the current philosophical and scientific debates about emotions and offers significant insights into the role of emotions for understanding interpersonal relations and the relation between emotion and ethics.

Sequences of numbers representing prior resource size were presented to participants in a common-pool resource dilemma. The numbers were sampled from uniform probability distributions with either a low variance (low resource uncertainty) or a high variance (high resource uncertainty). Presentations were both sequential and simultaneous. Three groups of 16 undergraduates either estimated the size of the resource when it did not represent value to them; requested an amount from the resource, identified with a sum of money, when the outcome of (...) the requests only depended on resource size; or requested from the resource (sum of money) when the outcome of the requests depended on both resource size and how much others in a group requested. In support of an individual outcome-desirability bias due to selective recall of the number sequences, after sequential presentation larger requests were observed when resource uncertainty was high than when it was low. No effects of resource uncertainty or presentation were found on the estimates of resource size. Whether or not the outcome of the requests depended on others' requests made little difference. (shrink)

The concept of natural, common life is distinguished from life as political existence in the opening lines of Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer – a schism within ‘life’ that has profound consequences for Agamben’s political theory and ontology. Agamben claims that bare life now “dwells in the biological body of every living being” . As such, it is necessary to ascertain what the ‘life’ of biopolitics is – the life capable of politicization. The notion of natural living being is central to (...) Agamben’s account, and yet it remains an ambiguous and indeterminate concept. This conceptual ambiguity is informed by Agamben’s account of anthropogenesis and the relation between the ‘human’ and the realm of animality, to which the concept of negativity is pivotal. Negativity is also central to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. However, for Merleau-Ponty the ontology of Nature and man constitute “the leaves of one sole Being” . Animality and human being are emergent; Merleau-Ponty adamantly maintains, “there is no rupture” . This paper analyzes the notion of negativity in Agamben and Merleau-Ponty’s accounts of Being and life, and contends that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy gives rise to an ontology that offers a more open and productive account of animality and nature. In Agamben’s account, negativity is constitutive of man, which gives rise to an irreducible disjuncture between Being and life. For Merleau-Ponty, negativity is ‘in’ Being. There is no tension between Being and ‘life’: Nature is “a leaf or layer of total Being,” and we must conceive of “the ontology of Nature as the way toward ontology”. (shrink)

Pour penser le moment de l’après-expulsion, il faut franchir les limites de la souveraineté politique et des territoires qui lui sont attachés, pour envisager les effets sociaux et politiques induits par les mesures d’expulsion dans les pays d’origine et/ou de passage des migrants. Les refuges des migrants expulsés à la frontière du Mali et de l’Algérie montrent comment, dans une situation extrême d’abandon et d’isolement, ceux-ci s’organisent pour survivre, mais mettent également en place des stratégies de dépassement de la coercition (...) exercée à leur endroit par les pouvoirs étatiques. Les murs de leurs abris précaires marquent l’amorce d’une opposition organisée contre les murs des États.Any thinking on the moment that follows expulsion has to cross the bounds of political sovereignty and the territories it governs, to move into the social and political effects of expulsion that arise in migrants’ countries of origin and/or transit. The shelters erected by migrants expelled at the frontier between Mali and Algeria show how, in a situation of extreme abandonment and isolation, migrants not only organise their own survival but also develop strategies to overcome the coercion that the State apparatus exerts upon them. The walls that form these precarious shelters are the beginnings of organised opposition to the barriers erected by states. (shrink)

A straightforward way to handle moral uncertainty is simply to follow the moral theory in which you have most credence. This approach is known as My Favourite Theory. In this paper, I argue that, in some cases, My Favourite Theory prescribes choices that are, sequentially, worse in expected moral value than the opposite choices according to each moral theory you have any credence in. In addition this, problem generalizes to other approaches that avoid intertheoretic comparisons of value, such as My (...) Favourite Option, the Borda Rule, Variance Normalization, and the Principle of Maximizing Expected Normalized Moral Value. (shrink)

Derek Parfit’s argument against the platitude that identity is what matters in survival does not work given his intended reading of the platitude, namely, that what matters in survival to some future time is being identical with someone who is alive at that time. I develop Parfit’s argument so that it works against the platitude on this intended reading.

John Rawls argues that the Difference Principle would be chosen by parties trying to advance their individual interests behind the Veil of Ignorance. Behind this veil, the parties do not know who they are and they are unable to assign or estimate probabilities to their turning out to be any particular person in society. Much discussion of Rawls’s argument concerns whether he can plausibly rule out the parties’ having access to probabilities about who they are. Nevertheless, I argue that, even (...) if the parties lacked access to probabilities about who they are in society, they would still reject the Difference Principle. I argue that there are cases where it is still clear to the parties that it is not in any of their individual interests that the Difference Principle is adopted. (shrink)