It is tempting to think that, if a person's beliefs are coherent, they are also likely to be true. This truth conduciveness claim is the cornerstone of the popular coherence theory of knowledge and justification. Erik Olsson's new book is the most extensive and detailed study of coherence and probable truth to date. Setting new standards of precision and clarity, Olsson argues that the value of coherence has been widely overestimated. Provocative and readable, Against Coherence will make stimulating reading (...) for epistemologists and anyone with a serious interest in truth. (shrink)

Erik J. Wielenberg draws on recent work in analytic philosophy and empirical moral psychology to defend non-theistic robust normative realism, according to which there are objective ethical features of the universe that do not depend on God for their existence. He goes on to develop an empirically-grounded account of human moral knowledge.

This paper examines some connections between Hume’s epistemology in his Treatise of Human Nature and his political economy. I make three claims: First, I argue that it is the development of Hume’s account of the faculty of reason in Book I of the Treatise that leads him to emphasize social science—including political economy—and the humanities over more abstract modes of intellectual inquiry. Second, I argue that Hume’s conception of reason has implications for his methodology in political economy. His perception of (...) human reason leads him to deploy a method of qualified generalization that emphasizes the by-and-large nature of theoretical statements. Third, when it comes to policy matters, the method of qualified generalization in theory cashes out in terms of practical maxims. I suggest that two central maxims in Hume’s political economy derive from his views of the usefulness of economic liberty and the coordinating nature of the status quo. (shrink)

This article offers a solution to the numbers problem within an individualist moral framework. Its central aims are as follows: to rescue individualist moral theories, such as moral contractualism, from their long-standing problem with interpersonal aggregation; to demonstrate how, proceeding from an individualist mode of justification, we can nevertheless make the numbers count without directly counting the numbers; to provide an individualist rationale for accepting a partially aggregative criterion of adjudication for resolving interpersonal trade-offs; and finally, to develop an extensionally (...) adequate version of partial aggregation that finds application in more structurally complex cases. (shrink)

The price of sequencing all the DNA in a person's genome is falling so fast that, according to one biotech leader, soon it won't cost much more than flushing a toilet. Getting all that genomic data at an ever‐lower cost excites the imaginations not only of biotech investors and researchers but also of the President and many members of Congress. They envision the data ushering in an age of “personalized medicine,” where medical care is tailored to persons’ genomes. The new (...) name “precision medicine” should not distract us from the fact that the genomic information it depends on is more complex, uncertain, and ambiguous than anyone had hoped, nor should it distract us from an important ethical point. Unfortunately, several developments of the last fifteen years suggest that, in our excitement about the technological capacity to gather genomic data at an ever lower cost, we are drifting away from what has long been a basic ethical commitment: to offer persons a process that enables them to provide informed consent before they or anyone else accesses their genetic information. (shrink)

In this article, we review the intrinsic democratic flaws in electoral representation, lay out a set of principles that should guide the construction of a sortition chamber, and argue for the virtue of a bicameral system that combines sortition and elections. We show how sortition could prove inclusive, give citizens greater control of the political agenda, and make their participation more deliberative and influential. We consider various design challenges, such as the sampling method, legislative training, and deliberative procedures. We explain (...) why pairing sortition with an elected chamber could enhance its virtues while dampening its potential vices. In our conclusion, we identify ideal settings for experimenting with sortition. (shrink)

Although black holes are objects of central importance across many fields of physics, there is no agreed upon definition for them, a fact that does not seem to be widely recognized. Physicists in different fields conceive of and reason about them in radi- cally different, and often conflicting, ways. All those ways, however, seem sound in the relevant contexts. After examining and comparing many of the definitions used in practice, I consider the problems that the lack of a universally accepted (...) definition leads to, and discuss whether one is in fact needed for progress in the physics of black holes. I conclude that, within reasonable bounds, the profusion of different definitions is in fact a virtue, making the investigation of black holes possible and fruitful in all the many different kinds of problems about them that physicists consider, although one must take care in trying to translate results between fields. (shrink)

I advance a novel challenge for Divine Command Theory based on the existence of psychopaths. The challenge, in a nutshell, is that Divine Command Theory has the implausible implication that psychopaths have no moral obligations and hence their evil acts, no matter how evil, are morally permissible. After explaining this argument, I respond to three objections to it and then critically examine the prospect that Divine Command Theorists might bite the bullet and accept that psychopaths can do no wrong. I (...) conclude that the Psychopathy Objection constitutes a serious and novel challenge for Divine Command Theory. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to use philosophy and, in particular ethical theory, to identify and explore some potential conflicts.

This article examines the legitimacy attached to different types of multi-stakeholder data partnerships occurring in the context of sustainable development. We develop a framework to assess the democratic legitimacy of two types of data partnerships: open data partnerships and closed data partnerships. Our framework specifies criteria for assessing the legitimacy of relevant partnerships with regard to their input legitimacy as well as their output legitimacy. We demonstrate which particular characteristics of open and closed partnerships can be expected to influence an (...) analysis of their input and output legitimacy. (shrink)

Logical pluralism is commonly described as the view that there is more than one correct logic. It has been claimed that, in order for that view to be interesting, there has to be at least a potential for rivalry between the correct logics. This paper offers a detailed assessment of this suggestion. I argue that an interesting version of logical pluralism is hard, if not impossible, to achieve. I first outline an intuitive understanding of the notions of rivalry and correctness. (...) I then discuss a natural account of rivalry in terms of disagreement about validity claims and the argument from meaning variance that has been raised against it. I explore a more refined picture of the meaning of validity claims that makes use of the character-content distinction of classical two dimensional semantics. There are three ways in which pluralists can use that framework to argue for the view that different logics may be rivals but could nevertheless be equally correct. I argue that none of them is convincing. (shrink)

This paper is a reaction to ‘Styles of Thought on the Continental Drift Debate’ by Pablo Pellegrini, published in this journal. The author argues that rationalist accounts of the continental drift debate fail because they overlook important issues. In this discussion we distinguish various forms of rationalism. Then we present a sophisticated rationalist account of the continental drift debate and argue that it is satisfactory because it explains all the central developments in that debate. Finally, we point to a problematic (...) tension in Pellegrini’s paper and unravel an underlying ambiguity. (shrink)

This article redescribes early modern European defenses of private property in terms of a theoretical project of seeking to establish the true or essential nature of property. Most of the scholarly literature has focused on the historical and normative issues relating to the various accounts of original acquisition around which these defenses were organized. However, in my redescription, these so-called “original acquisition stories” appear as methodological devices for an analytic reduction and resolution of property into its fundamental elements and axioms. (...) Through these stories, property is “created” in the form of the classical liberal paradigm of presumptively exclusive, private ownership of material things. The problem is that this project of “creation” is also a project which arbitrarily excludes or marginalizes other forms and systems of property, and especially usufructuary forms of common property. After critically explicating this early modern project of creation, I go on to argue that the classical liberal paradigm and its problems continue to inform property theory and discourse in the late modern era. (shrink)

For over a century, scientists have sought to see through the protective shield of the human skull and into the living brain. Today, an array of technologies allows researchers and clinicians to create astonishingly detailed images of our brain's structure as well as colorful depictions of the electrical and physiological changes that occur within it when we see, hear, think and feel. These technologies—and the images they generate—are an increasingly important tool in medicine and science.Given the role that neuroimaging technologies (...) now play in biomedical research, both neuroscientists and nonexperts should aim to be as clear as possible about how neuroimages are made and what they can—and cannot—tell us. Add to this that neuroimages have begun to be used in courtrooms at both the determination of guilt and sentencing stages, that they are being employed by marketers to refine advertisements and develop new products, that they are being sold to consumers for the diagnosis of mental disorders and for the detection of lies, and that they are being employed in arguments about the nature (or absence) of powerful concepts like free will and personhood, and the need for citizens to have a basic understanding of how this technology works and what it can and cannot tell us becomes even more pressing. (shrink)

Thomas More’s 281 epigrams form a diverse and seemingly haphazard collection of occasional and programmatic pieces written in a variety of meters on diverse topics. Since most of More’s papers disappeared in the years immediately following his death, it is difficult and perhaps impossible to reconstruct on the basis of external evidence the rationale behind the selection and distribution of his epigrams. Despite this challenge, internal evidence provides some clues. Nearly half of the epigrams are translations of Greek originals. Some (...) of these Greek originals serve as the basis for sequences of epigrams, one of which is the “Lame Beggars Sequence.” Through a process of iterative amplificatio, More progressively cultivates eloquence as he extends the meaning of his original to encompass moral and political themes. In turn, he develops the theme into original compositions before producing a final translation that encompasses both the literal and moral senses of the original Greek. (shrink)

The concept of exploitation and potentially exploitative real-world practices are the subject of increasing philosophical attention. However, while philosophers have extensively debated what exploitation is and what makes it wrong, they have said surprisingly little about what might be required to remediate it. By asking how the consequences of exploitation should be addressed, this article seeks to contribute to filling this gap. We raise two questions. First, what are the victims of exploitation owed by way of remediation? Second, who ought (...) to remediate? Our answers to these questions are connected by the idea that exploitation cannot be fully remediated by redistributing the exploiter's gain in order to repair or compensate the victim's loss. This is because exploitation causes not only distributive but also relational harm. Therefore, redistributive measures are necessary but not sufficient for adequate remediation. Moreover, this relational focus highlights the fact that exploitative real-world practices commonly involve agents other than the exploiter who stand to benefit from the exploitation. Insofar as these third parties are implicated in the distributive and relational harms caused by exploitation, there is, we argue, good reason to assign part of the burden of remediation to them. (shrink)

Intensive research is carried out to develop a disease-modifying drug for Alzheimer’s disease. The development of drug candidates that reduce Aß or tau in the brain seems particularly promising. However, these drugs target people at risk for AD, who must be identified before they have any, or only moderate, symptoms associated with the disease. There are different strategies that may be used to identify these individuals. Each of these strategies raises different ethical challenges. In this paper, we analyse these challenges (...) in relation to the risk stratification for AD necessary for using these drugs. We conclude that the new drugs must generate large health benefits for people at risk of developing AD to justify the ethical costs associated with current risk stratification methods, benefits much larger than current drug candidates have. This conclusion raises a new set of ethical questions that should be further discussed. No data are available. (shrink)

The general-case glass ceiling hypothesis states that not only is it more difficult for women than for men to be promoted up levels of authority hierarchies within workplaces but also that the obstacles women face relative to men become greater as they move up the hierarchy. Gender-based discrimination in promotions is not simply present across levels of hierarchy but is more intense at higher levels. Empirically, this implies that the relative rates of women being promoted to higher levels compared to (...) men should decline with the level of the hierarchy. This article explores this hypothesis with data from three countries: the United States, Australia, and Sweden. The basic conclusion is that while there is strong evidence for a general gender gap in authority—the odds of women having authority are less than those of men—there is no evidence for systematic glass ceiling effects in the United States and only weak evidence for such effects in the other two countries. (shrink)

Stuart White argues that egalitarians need a diverse toolkit of policy proposals in order to move closer to a just economic system. In particular he argues that a policy of Basic Capital grants should be included in this toolkit along with a variety of other more familiar instruments such as unconditional Basic Income, welfare state services and income supports, and support for worker cooperatives. The various policies in the egalitarian toolkit, however, have implications for issues other than contributing to a (...) more just economic system. In particular, they have implications for the long term stability, transformation, or even transcendence, of capitalism as an economic system. In this article I will argue that unconditional Basic Income has a greater potential to erode capitalism than does Basic Capital. While both of these policies in the egalitarian toolkit may make the economic system statically more just, over time Basic Capital grants are likely to strengthen capitalism as the core structure of the economic system, whereas unconditional Basic Income has the potential to erode the dominance of capitalism. As part of a long-term project of human emancipation, therefore, unconditional Basic Income should have priority over Basic Capital. (shrink)

There is a growing body of literature which suggests that decisions about healthcare priority setting should take into account the extent to which patients are worse off. However, such decisions are often based on how badly off patients are with respect to the condition targeted by the treatment whose priority is under consideration (condition‐specific severity). In this paper I argue that giving priority to the worse off in terms of condition‐specific severity does not reflect the morally relevant sense of being (...) worse off. I conclude that an account of giving priority to the worse off relevant for healthcare priority setting should take into account how badly off patients are when all of their conditions are considered (holistic severity). (shrink)

We began this special report by suggesting that neuroimaging technologies are tools that can, when used carefully and in conjunction with the other tools of neuroscience and psychology, help illuminate the capacities and behaviors that constitute our minds. In the course of this special report we have called attention to some basic points that are worth remembering as we encounter more and more claims about human psychology that are based on evidence from imaging technologies like fMRI.

In a previous paper we constructed a full and faithful functor ℳ from the category of locally compact metric spaces to the category of formal topologies . Here we show that for a real-valued continuous function f, ℳ factors through the localic positive reals if, and only if, f has a uniform positive lower bound on each ball in the locally compact space. We work within the framework of Bishop constructive mathematics, where the latter notion is strictly stronger than point-wise (...) positivity. (shrink)

In Robust Ethics, I defend a nontheistic version of moral realism according to which moral properties are sui generis, not reducible to other kinds of properties (e.g., natural properties or supernatural properties) and objective morality requires no foundation external to itself. I seek to provide a plausible account of the metaphysics and epistemology of the robust brand of moral realism I favor that draws on both analytic philosophy and contemporary empirical moral psychology. In this paper, I respond to some objections (...) to my view advanced by William Craig, Mark Murphy, Tyler McNabb, and Adam Johnson. (shrink)

The present work is an attempt to analyse critically Plato's views on mind and body and more particularly on the mind-body relationship within the wider setting of Plato's metaphysics. We seek to achieve this by a philosophical examination"-of the dialogues on the basis of a generally accepted order. Strictly speaking "soul" ought perhaps to be substituted for "mind" in the above. But it seems to be in terms of "mind" that modern philosophers deal with and refer to the problem that (...) Plato tackled in terms of psyche, and as it is part of the motivation for dealing with Plato's treatment that it is of importance for the modern debate, it has been felt necessary to stress the rough identity* of the problem in the title of the book. Below this superordinate level we try to keep "mind" as a translation typically of nous and "soul" as a translation of psyche. (shrink)

Since our visual perception of physical things essentially involves our identifying objects by their colours, any theory of visual perception must contain some account of the colours of things. The central problem with colour has to do with relating our normal, everyday colour perceptions to what science, i.e. physics, teaches us about physical objects and their qualities. Although we perceive colours as categorical surface properties of things, colour perceptions are explained by introducing physical properties like reflectance profiles or dispositions to (...) cause certain experiences in normal human perceivers. Hence, it seems as if colours as they are experienced by us have no place in the physical world, because they are fundamentally different from the properties which we ascribe to physical objects in scientific accounts of colour perceptions. This special issue on perspectives on colour perception presents new suggestions to solve to this major problem. (shrink)

We give a short proof of the Marker–Steinhorn theorem for o-minimal expansions of ordered groups. The key tool is Ramakrishnan’s classification of definable linear orders in such structures.