Authority arguments generate support for claims by appealing to an agent’s authority status, rather than to reasons independent of it. With few exceptions, the current literature on argument schemes acknowledges two basic authority types. The _epistemic_ type grounds in knowledge, the_ deontic_ type grounds in power. We review how historically earlier scholarship acknowledged an_ attractiveness-based_ and a _majority-based_ authority type as equally basic type. Crossing these with basic speech act types thus yields authority argument sub-schemes. Focusing on the_ epistemic-assertive_ sub-scheme (...) (‘an epistemic authority _A_ _E_ asserts a proposition _P_’), we apply a meta-level approach to specifying critical questions. Results improve the evaluation of this sub-scheme and show how similar improvements are obtainable for other schemes. (shrink)

We attempt to extend the nominalistic project initiated in Hartry Field's Science Without Numbers to modern physical theories based in differential geometry.

The common cause principle states that correlations have prior common causes which screen off those correlations. I argue that the common cause principle is false in many circumstances, some of which are very general. I then suggest that more restricted versions of the common cause principle might hold, and I prove such a restricted version.

In this article, I will provide a critical overview of the form of non-deductive reasoning commonly known as “Inference to the Best Explanation” (IBE). Roughly speaking, according to IBE, we ought to infer the hypothesis that provides the best explanation of our evidence. In section 2, I survey some contemporary formulations of IBE and highlight some of its putative applications. In section 3, I distinguish IBE from C.S. Peirce’s notion of abduction. After underlining some of the essential elements of IBE, (...) the rest of the entry is organized around an examination of various problems that IBE confronts, along with some extant attempts to address these problems. In section 4, I consider the question of when a fact requires an explanation, since presumably IBE applies only in cases where some explanation is called for. In section 5, I consider the difficult question of how we ought to understand IBE in light of the fact that among philosophers, there is significant disagreement about what constitutes an explanation. In section 6, I consider different strategies for justifying the truth-conduciveness of the explanatory virtues, e.g., simplicity, unification, scope, etc., criteria which play an indispensable role in any given application of IBE. In section 7, I survey some of the most recent literature on IBE, much of which consists of investigations of the status of IBE from the standpoint of the Bayesian philosophy of science. (shrink)

There are infinitely many ways the world might be, and there may well be infinitely many people in it. These facts raise moral paradoxes. We explore a conflict between two highly attractive principles: a Pareto principle that says that what is better for everyone is better overall, and a statewise dominance principle that says that what is sure to turn out better is better on balance. We refine and generalize this paradox, showing that the problem is faced by many theories (...) of interpersonal aggregation besides utilitarianism, and by many decision theories besides expected value theory. Considering the range of consistent responses, we find all of them to be quite radical. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that in a certain sense evidence is normative. Neither a bit of evidence nor the fact that it is evidence for a certain proposition is a normative fact, but it is still the case that evidence provides normative reason for belief. An argument for the main thesis will be presented. It will rely on evidentialist norms of belief and a Broomean conception of normative reasons. Two important objections will be discussed, one from A. Steglich-Petersen on (...) whether having evidence is sufficient for having a normative reason for belief and another one from S. Street. (shrink)

The two envelope paradox can be dissolved by looking closely at the connection between conditional and unconditional expectation and by being careful when summing an infinite series of positive and negative terms. The two envelope paradox is not another St. Petersburg paradox and that one does not need to ban talk of infinite expectation values in order to dissolve it. The article ends by posing a new puzzle to do with infinite expectations.

Moral agents possess a moral point of view: they have a moral identity or a moral self-conception. This implies that, in order for an organization to be a moral agent, it must have a moral point of view. Importantly, acquiring such a point of view is a social process. In light of this, I argue that collective moral agency is a social construct. It follows that organizations can but need not be moral agents. This raises questions about the validity of (...) our corporate responsibility practices. In particular, as an organization might lack moral agency, it can be illegitimate to hold it responsible for its actions. I go on to investigate the interests that members might have in preventing or promoting collective moral agency and thereby address the political dimension of this social construct. (shrink)

In this paper I present an account of the rational abilities that make our decisions free. Following the lead of new dispositionalists, a leeway account of free decisions is developed, and the rational abilities that ground our abilities to decide otherwise are described in detail. A main result will be that the best account of the relevant rational abilities makes them two-way abilities: abilities to decide to do or not to do x in accordance with one’s apparent reasons. Dispositionalism about (...) rational abilities will be vindicated, since it helps to see why and how these two-way abilities entail an ability to decide otherwise and, thus, free will. (shrink)

Nearly a decade ago, Ingrid Robeyns formulated a distributive justice doctrine known as economic limitarianism. This article posits that Robeyns’ limitarianism is a politically plausible, practically feasible and morally justifiable doctrine. The doctrine effectively addresses concerns regarding incentives, efficacy and unequal opportunities. The article identifies a problem of scope or extensity, which it refers to as an asymmetric argument. The article proposes that this issue can be resolved by fully extending limitarianism to non-democratic states. This extension is justified by the (...) relationship between surplus money and political inequality, which can be explained through various avenues, including causal and constitutive explanations, structural injustice and systemic causation. While this list of avenues is not exhaustive, it is representative of the possible avenues that can be explored. Fully extending the doctrine to non-democratic states would enhance its robustness. (shrink)

It is very natural to think that if two people, x and y, are qualitatively identical and have committed qualitatively identical actions, then it cannot be the case that one has committed something wrong whereas the other did not. That is to say, if x and y differ in their moral status, then it must be because x and y are qualitatively different, and not simply because x is identical to x and not identical to y. In this fictional dialogue (...) between Socrates and Cantor involving infinitely many qualitatively identical agents, this assumption is challenged. (shrink)

If a future AI system can enjoy far more well-being than a human per resource, what would be the best way to allocate resources between these future AI and our future descendants? It is obvious that on total utilitarianism, one should give everything to the AI. However, it turns out that every Welfarist axiology on the market also gives this same recommendation, at least if we assume consequentialism. Without resorting to non-consequentialist normative theories that suggest that we ought not always (...) create the world with the most value, or non-welfarist theories that tell us that the best world may not be the world with the most welfare, I propose a new theory that justifies giving some resources to humanity in the face of overwhelming AI well-being. I call this new theory, “Group Prioritarianism". (shrink)

Introduction -- The Complexity of Resource Curse -- Resource Curse as a Complex Case of Global Justice -- General Theory of Global Justice -- The Robustness of the General Theory -- Conclusion.

I argue that the three drugs example makes trouble for the role Smith gives to being fully rational in his solution to the moral problem, given his understanding of what it takes to be fully rational. I conclude by suggesting he might have drawn on a different understanding of what it takes to be fully rational.

The second volume of _Islam and Rationality: The Impact of al-Ghazālī_ brings together twelve leading experts in the field of Ghazālī-studies who write about his thought and the influence he had on later Muslim thinkers.

Discusses the ethical, moral, legal, and philosophical aspects of controversial medical issues, such as abortion, euthanasia, genetic engineering, and determination of death.

According to Michael Rescorla’s recent defense of dialectical egalitarianism reasoned discourse lacks a foundational structure, but saves the foundational intuition that some propositions are basic. On this view, I may select the reasons forwarded in support of a claim according to their being accepted by particular communities/audiences. I discuss the epistemic risk of doing so, and clarify if Rescorla’s is an epistemic approach in disguise.

This paper discusses an example of social policy argumentation from an opinion of the 2007 majority among the German National Ethics Council. It is employed to problematize argument reconstruction with respect to the Informal Logic quality criteria relevance, sufficiency, acceptability. The main thesis is conditional and rather weak: If the RSA criteria are sub-stitutes for the notion of soundness, then—next to premise-truth and validity—they also substitute recon-structive charity.

The General Formal Ontology (GFO) is a top-level ontology that is being developed at the University of Leipzig since 1999. Besides introducing some of the basic principles of the ontology, we expound axiomatic fragments of its formalization and present ontological models of several use cases. GFO is a top-level ontology that integrates objects and processes into a unified framework, in a way that differs significantly from other ontologies. Another unique selling feature of GFO is its meta-ontological architecture, which includes set (...) theory into ontology and which accounts for its specific role in common representation approaches. The second level of that architecture starts from the distinction of categories and individuals, which forms the backbone of the world’s structure. Furthermore, GFO comprises several kinds of categories, among them universals and concepts, and it considers several ontological regions and levels. In the context of this special issue paper, we study five pre-determined use cases from the perspective of GFO. The results of these analyses yield insights into how the ontology treats several important notions. Very abridged, this covers material objects and their composition; roles and social entities; properties with their relations to objects and processes, and their changing; changes of processes, including a functional perspective; and, eventually, the nature and changing of concepts as well as terminology. A final part summarizes application projects that use GFO in various contexts. (shrink)

The false attribution of autonomy and related concepts to artificial agents that lack the attributed levels of the respective characteristic is problematic in many ways. In this article, we contrast this view with a positive viewpoint that emphasizes the potential role of such false attributions in the context of robotic language acquisition. By adding emotional displays and congruent body behaviors to a child-like humanoid robot’s behavioral repertoire, we were able to bring naïve human tutors to engage in so called intent (...) interpretations. In developmental psychology, intent interpretations can be hypothesized to play a central role in the acquisition of emotion, volition, and similar autonomy-related words. The aforementioned experiments originally targeted the acquisition of linguistic negation. However, participants produced other affect- and motivation-related words with high frequencies too and, as a consequence, these entered the robot’s active vocabulary. We will analyze participants’ non-negative emotional and volitional speech and contrast it with participants’ speech in a non-affective baseline scenario. Implications of these findings for robotic language acquisition in particular and artificial intelligence and robotics more generally will also be discussed. (shrink)

Der in Leipzig lehrende Philosoph und Theologe Christian August Crusius (1715-1775) ist bisher vorwiegend im Rahmen der Kant-Forschung berücksichtigt worden. Dabei war Crusius einer der ersten ernstzunehmenden Kritiker der Philosophie von Christian Wolff, der entscheidende Impulse von Christian Thomasius aufgriff, philosophisch vertiefte und bis in die zweite Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts wirkungsvoll tradierte. Der Sammelband nimmt die unterschiedlichen Aspekte des philosophischen und theologischen Schaffens von Crusius in den Blick und rekonstruiert die eigenständige Kontur eines Denkers, der einerseits auf allen Gebieten (...) der Philosophie tätig war und andererseits nach seiner Berufung zum Professor der Theologie ausschließlich an seinem theologischen OEuvre arbeitete. Auf der damit greifbaren Spannung zwischen Philosophie und Theologie liegt ein Hauptaugenmerk des interdisziplinären Sammelbandes. (shrink)

Many morally significant outcomes can be brought about only if several individuals contribute to them. However, individual contributions to collective outcomes often fail to have morally significant effects on their own. Some have concluded from this that it is permissible to do nothing. What I call ‘the problem of insignificant hands’ is the challenge of determining whether and when people are obligated to contribute. For this to be the case, I argue, the prospect of helping to bring about the outcome (...) has to be good enough. Furthermore, the individual must be in a position to increase the probability of its being brought about to an appropriate extent. Finally, I argue that when too few are willing to contribute, people may have a duty to increase their number. Thus, someone can be obligated to contribute or to get others to contribute. This prospect account is consistent with Kantianism, contractualism and rule consequentialism but inconsistent with act consequentialism. (shrink)

The Pentecostal understandings of baptism in the Holy Spirit hold potential for a more substantively pneumatological understanding of spiritual formation, but there are conceptual barriers to overcome before this potential can be realized. Specifically, the emphasis of revivalism on crisis experience and individualistic piety must be set within a larger framework that is more expansively ecclesiological and eschatological. A more expansively eschatological view of Spirit baptism can provide this framework, opening breathing room for prioritizing a pneumatological vision of spiritual formation (...) in the life and mission of the church. Spirit baptism can still refer to new breakthroughs in the life of the Spirit but those experiences would be couched within a larger vision of spiritual formation. (shrink)

Kunstmatige intelligentie (AI) en systemen die met machine learning (ML) werken, kunnen veel onderdelen van het medische besluitvormingsproces ondersteunen of vervangen. Ook zouden ze artsen kunnen helpen bij het omgaan met klinische, morele dilemma’s. AI/ML-beslissingen kunnen zo in de plaats komen van professionele beslissingen. We betogen dat dit belangrijke gevolgen heeft voor de relatie tussen een patiënt en de medische professie als instelling, en dat dit onvermijdelijk zal leiden tot uitholling van het institutionele vertrouwen in de geneeskunde.

Traces the history of human beliefs concerning the nature of the universe and offers profiles of the scientists most responsible for our current understanding of the universe and its origins.

O'Keeffe, Frank A recent report tabled in the Victorian Parliament has proposed that the Victorian Crimes Act 1958 be amended, allowing Victoria to become the only Australian state where euthanasia would be legal. Against this proposed legislation, this article contends the suggested amendments pose a threat to the fiduciary obligations that medical professionals owe to their patients. Moreover, that the parliamentary recommendation poses a considerable risk to the sick and dying, while creating tension within existing, currently overburdened, palliative care (...) services. Any reforms that seek to treat dying patients in a more holistic manner, incorporating their emotional equilibrium, will instead make further provision for expanding the provision of palliative care services. (shrink)

Diese Einleitung liefert eine Skizze der Genese des Bandes, eine Einführung in die im Sammelband diskutierten Themenkomplexe und Fragestellungen sowie Zusammenfassungen aller in ihm enthaltenen Beiträge.