The Department of Speculative Facts connects two seemingly contradictory approaches: Speculation which attempts to think and act beyond existing knowledge and structures, and fact-checkers in search for a solid consensus on which our reality can be built. When stretching knowledge and speculating with fiction, what sense of responsibility is needed in times of democratized opinions and fake news? Learning from the other SF--Science Fiction--we think of speculation through facts, and facts through speculation, to situate truth culturally. The backbone of this (...) book is an e-mail exchange between two fact-checkers from the New York Times Magazine, which we handed over to artists to re-write, re-perform, and re-design. The publication includes the original letters, workshop scripts, as well as additional texts by philosophers, journalists, writers, and artists looking at new social contracts, with which we can anchor ourselves in the present. (shrink)

Since heaven is the most perfect state or position possible – namely of loving God perfectly – and sinning is failing to love God, it will not be possible to sin in heaven. However, if freedom is a mark of perfection, and loving God is only possible when one freely loves God, will we be loving God at all if we are not free not to love him? Three cumulative arguments for an affirmative answer are developed. The first is to (...) distinguish the ability to love or sin from the opportunity to do so. In heaven we are loving God in an infinite variety of ways, so we are freely exercising our ability to love, even when God has taken away any opportunities for sinning. However, one might reply that our freedom will only be the freedom to love God in various ways, not the freedom to love God or not. Hence the second argument is that in heaven are only people who have freely chosen to love God while on earth, where there was a real opportunity not to love God. Since the free choice to love God was made before entering heaven, loving God in heaven remains a free choice. Moreover, since in heaven God takes away the opportunity to sin, and stopping to love God would be a sin, you will remain steadfast in that free choice. However, one might reply that also having the opportunity to sin would add an extra possibility for willing something, so one would be 'more free' in heaven, and heaven would be more perfect, if one would also have the opportunity to sin. Hence the third argument is that freedom is a perfection shared by both God and humans, and the freedom of God is in an important respect a freedom to create. Hence, our human freedom is also greater if our creative power is greater. We have no creative power but by participating in God’s creative power, which is necessarily directed towards the good. So by willing what is good we extend and perfect creation and thereby extend and perfect our possibilities for willing, hence we become more free. On the contrary, by sinning we destroy creation and possibilities for willing and we become less free, so an opportunity to sin is not a possibility that increases our freedom. (shrink)

John Duns Scotus distinguished the ‘convertible’ transcendentals, from ‘disjunctive’ transcendental pairs The latter are mutually exclusive pairs that together cover all of being. This paper investigates the distinctive modal metaphysical account based on the necessary-contingent pair of disjunctive transcendentals, developed by Scotus in approaching the problem of divine foreknowledge and future contingents. Although Scotus commented several times on this problem, only in his Reportatio did he explicitly add a succinct exposition distinguishing between two kinds of contingency and two kinds of (...) necessity. This double understanding of the necessary-contingent pair is first of all systematically and schematically presented in the paper. Subsequently, instead of continuing with the problem of divine foreknowledge as such, the implications of this Scotist framework for an adequate metaphysical understanding of the human will and its freedom will be drawn out. Finally, these schemes are compared to recent literature on the central role of contingency in Scotus’s thought, especially to the research of A. Vos on synchronic contingency and J. Söder on operative contingency. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question what the fundamental nature and mode of being of institutional reality is. Besides the recent debate with Tony Lawson, Barry Smith is also one of the relatively few authors to have explicitly challenged John Searle's social ontology on this metaphysical question, with Smith's realism requirement for institutions conflicting with Searle's requirement of a one-world naturalism. This paper proposes that an account of institutions as powers or dispositions is not only congenial to Searle's general account, but (...) can also satisfy both the realism and the one world requirements. Searle's worry that such a dispositional account is unable to account for the deontic nature of institutions is countered by an appeal to higher-order powers as well as Searle's notion of the gap and desire-independent reasons for action. (shrink)

Simon Cushing conducted the following interview with Eric Olson on 1 July 2016.

This paper proposes a theological grounding for the possibility of metaphysics. After a brief critique of the seeming contemporary revival of analytic philosophy as characterized by linguisticism, the two main sections give a Christological and ultimately Mariological foundation for the possibility of metaphysics. The Christological section starts with the role of the second person of the Trinity in creation, and subsequently points to the hypostatic union as ensuring that creation is therefore accessible to the human mind. It also implies that (...) reality is fundamentally of a personal nature, and that personal knowledge can be relatively unproblematically acquired by other persons. The Mariological section starts from Plato’s Diotima as a prefigurement of Mary, and subsequently portrays Mary as the perfect metaphysician, guaranteeing the possibility of metaphysics as an enterprise of natural reason. Doing justice to the critique of an at times overly naive pre-modern metaphysics can then be done by advocating a Christological and Mariological turn for the Copernican revolution, e.g. fully taking into account the historicity of being and thinking. In conclusion, Mary as the handmaid of the Lord is analogous to metaphysics as the handmaid of theology, in a relationship of a loving daughter, mother and bride. (shrink)

During my campaign for president in 1992, I experienced for the first time the full weight of the money-media system of control. Having been so much a part of that system, I had not fully grasped the radical dominance of politics by the top one percent and the complicit role of the media. All this became clear once I swore off donations above $100 and refused to attend the sacred rite of endless political fund raising with the wealthy. This made (...) the media turn aside, for they knew I was not a "serious" candidate committed to the proposition: Money buys media, media buys credibility. (shrink)

Simon Cushing conducted the following interview with Susan Wolf on 29 July 2016.

This paper questions the shifting meaning of the ethical categories of proximity and alterity in the light of the technological and social changes that virtual social worlds went through. It takes Roger Silverstone’s key theme of “proper distance” as a point of departure, and discusses the significance of this concept by linking it up with the more media-theoretical approaches on virtual communication as developed in McLuhan’s and Baudrillard’s body of thought. It is argued that today’s virtual realities ask for both (...) a philosophical and media-sociological reconsideration of the traditional ethical category of alterity. As such, it links up with Feenberg’s idea that “online groups are indeed a qualitatively new medium” (A. Feenberg and M. Bakardjieva, “Virtual Community: No ‘Killer Implication,’” New Media & Society 6(1) (2004): 37–43, 41), but at the same time challenges Feenberg’s reservations about a theory of media centrism. (shrink)

Simon Cushing conducted the following interview with Marya Schechtman on 24 June 2015.

Simon Cushing conducted the following interview with Allen Buchanan on 2 June 2014.

In a context where the amount of red tape in healthcare organizations continues to rise, head nurses’ job satisfaction is constantly under pressure. By building on the Job Demands-Resources model, we developed a theoretical model investigating the relationship between red tape and job satisfaction. By investigating the mediating role of discretionary room and the moderating role of autonomous motivation in this relationship, this study does not only aim to provide additional knowledge regarding the underlying mechanisms in this relationship, but also (...) to increase our understanding of how this suffering at work can be mitigated. Our conditional process analyses indicate that red tape undermines head nurses’ job satisfaction and that discretionary room acts as an underlying mechanism in this process. By revealing the mediating role of discretionary room, this study advances our understanding of the risks originating from red tape for leaders. Furthermore, our findings also indicate that autonomous motivation mitigates the negative relation between red tape and discretionary room and between red tape and job satisfaction. As autonomous motivation turns out to be an important protection mechanism against the negative consequences of red tape, organizations should put extra effort into stimulating the autonomous motivation of their leaders. When organizations make sure that their leaders’ job designs and work environments meet the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, leaders will become more autonomously motivated, which will buffer the negative impact of red tape. (shrink)

This article explores young children’s moral sensitivity regarding online disclosure. Drawing on psychological theory, moral sensitivity is defined as the ability to express and show moral consideration in terms of empathy, role-taking and pro-social moral reasoning. Twenty-five preadolescent children aged 9 to 11, all living in Belgium, were asked in focus group interviews to share their reflections about and experiences with self-disclosure and privacy in internet environments. The findings demonstrate that young children are capable of imagining the moral consequences of (...) disclosing personal information about oneself and about others. Their moral reflections are embedded in a more general concern of children’s vulnerability to other, more powerful information circulators in their social networks, such as older children, siblings, but also parents or the internet crowd. A strong sense of children’s entitlements to online privacy is articulated. Also, the decision of disclosing personal information about the other is carefully considered when the other is emotionally important to the children. (shrink)

In his stimulating contribution, Corrado Roversi uses speech act theory to propose a more nuanced and shaded account of how agents can relate themselves to institutions than H. Hart’s binary distinction between the internal and external point of view. Although we agree on the central importance of Hart in charting recent work in social ontology, we propose to recast Roversi’s contribution in terms of the various ways in which an agent’s commitment to an institution can corrode or strengthen an institution. (...) In the first part we highlight several features of the internal/external distinction as developed by Hart and others. Whereas the internal point of view is manifested by following the rules and criticizing others for failing to do so, the external point of view can be characterized by, amongst others, a rejection of the rules or a theoretical understanding from the outside. The second part critically examines Roversi’s proposal as exemplified with the different kinds of chess players. Instead, several points at which a player might fail to commit himself to the institution of chess are identified, arguing that this provides a better taxonomy than the one proposed by Roversi. The last section deals with the ‘perlocutionary’ goal of institutions, stressing that all institutions attempt to solve pre-institutional coordination problems. (shrink)

The New Yorker calls him "the most influential living philosopher." His critics call him "the most dangerous man in the world." Peter Singer, the De Camp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, is most widely and controversially known for his view that animals have the same moral status as humans. He is the author of many books, including Practical Ethics (1979), Rethinking Life and Death (1995), and Animal Liberation (1975), which has sold more than 450,000 copies. (...) This year he published Writings on an Ethical Life (Ecco Press) and A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation (Yale University Press), which argues that the left must replace Marx with Darwin if it is to remain a viable force. (shrink)

Simon Cushing conducted the following interview with Elizabeth Anderson on 18 June 2014.

Simon Cushing conducted the following interview with Robert Kane on 24 August 2017.