Ethicists, policy-makers, and the general public have questioned whether artificial entities such as robots warrant rights or other forms of moral consideration. There is little synthesis of the research on this topic so far. We identify 294 relevant research or discussion items in our literature review of this topic. There is widespread agreement among scholars that some artificial entities could warrant moral consideration in the future, if not also the present. The reasoning varies, such as concern for the effects on (...) artificial entities and concern for the effects on human society. Beyond the conventional consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethicist ethical frameworks, some scholars encourage “information ethics” and “social-relational” approaches, though there are opportunities for more in-depth ethical research on the nuances of moral consideration of artificial entities. There is limited relevant empirical data collection, primarily in a few psychological studies on current moral and social attitudes of humans towards robots and other artificial entities. This suggests an important gap for psychological, sociological, economic, and organizational research on how artificial entities will be integrated into society and the factors that will determine how the interests of artificial entities are considered. (shrink)

In this work, Jamie Mayerfeld undertakes a careful inquiry into the meaning and moral significance of suffering. Understanding suffering in hedonistic terms as an affliction of feeling, he claims that it is an objective psychological condition, amenable to measurement and interpersonal comparison, although its accurate assessment is never easy. Mayerfeld goes on to examine the content of the duty to prevent suffering and the weight it has relative to other moral considerations. He argues that the prevention of suffering is (...) morally more important than the promotion of happiness, and that the duty to relieve suffering is much stronger than most of us acknowledge. (shrink)

Digital technology is playing an increasingly visible role in the organisation of many people’s work—as well as large parts of their lives more broadly. The concerns of emancipatory technology studies, or other critical accounts of technology, are often focused on finding alternative uses of technology. In many workplace contexts—from call centres to platform work—the imperatives of capital are deeply written into these technologies. Yet at the same time, many capitalist technologies are playing a key role facilitating emerging workers’ struggles. For (...) example, in the case study examined here, Deliveroo drivers rely on communication technologies like WhatsApp to organise against algorithmic management. Drawing on an ongoing workers’ inquiry, this paper seeks to consider what a workerist approach to digital technology can add to these debates. The paper outlines the challenges and opportunities for a “digital workers’ inquiry,” considering how this approach combines research with organising. The argument is divided into two main parts: first, the need for inquiries in digital work and the importance of these and second, how the process of inquiry and co-research (and the methods these involve) can be adapted and refined with digital technology. By starting the critique of technology from the workplace, this paper proposes a workerist account of how technologies can be destroyed or re-appropriated, starting from a reading of workers’ struggle. (shrink)

We all know what water is, and we often take it for granted. But the spectre of a worldwide water crisis suggests that there might be something fundamentally wrong with the way we think about water. Jamie Linton dives into the history of water as an abstract concept, stripped of its environmental, social, and cultural contexts. Reduced to a scientific abstraction – to mere H20 – this concept has given modern society licence to dam, divert, and manipulate water with (...) apparent impunity. Part of the solution to the water crisis involves reinvesting water with social content, thus altering the way we see water. An original take on a deceptively complex issue, What Is Water? offers a fresh approach to a fundamental problem. (shrink)

This paper develops some respects in which the philosophy of mathematics can fruitfully be informed by mathematical practice, through examining Frege's Grundlagen in its historical setting. The first sections of the paper are devoted to elaborating some aspects of nineteenth century mathematics which informed Frege's early work. (These events are of considerable philosophical significance even apart from the connection with Frege.) In the middle sections, some minor themes of Grundlagen are developed: the relationship Frege envisions between arithmetic and geometry and (...) the way in which the study of reasoning is to illuminate this. In the final section, it is argued that the sorts of issues Frege attempted to address concerning the character of mathematical reasoning are still in need of a satisfying answer. (shrink)

A cluster of recent papers on Frege have urged variations on the theme that Frege’s conception of logic is in some crucial way incompatible with ‘metatheoretic’ investigation. From this observation, significant consequences for our interpretation of Frege’s understanding of his enterprise are taken to follow. This chapter aims to critically examine this view, and to isolate what I take to be the core of truth in it. However, I will also argue that once we have isolated the defensible kernel, the (...) sense in which Frege was committed to rejecting ‘metatheory’ is too narrow and uninteresting to support the con-. (shrink)

Jamie Dow presents an original treatment of Aristotle's views on rhetoric and the passions, and the first major study of Aristotle's Rhetoric in recent years. He attributes to Aristotle a normative view of rhetoric and its role in the state, and ascribes to him a particular view of the kinds of cognitions involved in the passions.

The issues surrounding the Caesar problem are assumed to be inert as far as ongoing mathematics is concerned. This paper aims to correct this impression by spelling out the ways that, in their historical context, Frege's remarks would have had considerable resonance with work that other mathematicians such as Riemann and Dedekind were doing. The search for presentation‐independent characterizations of objects and global definitions was seen as bound up with fundamental methodological questions in complex analysis and number theory.

Recent philosophical literature has turned its attention towards assessments of how to judge scientific proposals as worthy of further inquiry. Previous work, as well as papers contained within this special issue, propose criteria for pursuitworthiness (Achinstein, 1993; Whitt, 1992; DiMarco & Khalifa, 2019; Laudan, 1977; Shan, 2020; Šešelja et al., 2012). The purpose of this paper is to assess the grounds on which pursuitworthiness demands can be legitimately made. To do this, I propose a challenge to the possibility of even (...) minimal criteria of pursuitworthiness, inspired by Paul Feyerabend. I go on to provide a framework for identifying the contexts in which pursuitworthiness criteria may promote the efficiency of scientific inquiry. I then spell out some implications this framework has for values and pursuit. (shrink)

This investigation is motivated by the lack of scholarship examining the content of what firms are communicating to various stakeholders about their commitment to socially responsible behaviors. To address this query, a qualitative study of the legal, ethical and moral statements available on the websites of Forbes Magazine''s top 50 U.S. and top 50 multinational firms of non-U.S. origin were analyzed within the context of stakeholder theory. The results are presented thematically, and the close provides implications for social responsibility among (...) managers of global organizations as well as researchers interested in business ethics. (shrink)

Soren Kierkegaard's Works of Love, a series of deliberations on the commandment to love one's neighbor, has often been condemned by critics. Here, Ferreira seeks to rehabilitate Works of Love as one of Kierkegaard's most important works. He shows that Kierkegaard's deliberations on love are highly relevant to some important themes in contemporary ethics, including impartiality, duty, equality, mutuality, reciprocity, self-love, sympathy, and sacrifice. Ferreira also argues that Works of Love bears on issues peculiar to a religious ethic, such as (...) the role of God as "middle term," and the possibility of preserving the aesthetic dimensions of love in a religious ethic of relation. (shrink)

The past thirty years have seen a surge of empirical research into political decision making and the influence of framing effects — the phenomenon that occurs when different but equivalent presentations of a decision problem elicit different judgments or preferences. During the same period, political philosophers have become increasingly interested in democratic theory, particularly in deliberative theories of democracy. Unfortunately, the empirical and philosophical studies of democracy have largely proceeded in isolation from each other. As a result, philosophical treatments of (...) democracy have overlooked recent developments in psychology, while the empirical study of framing effects has ignored much contemporary work in political philosophy. In Framing Democracy, Jamie Terence Kelly bridges this divide by explaining the relevance of framing effects for normative theories of democracy. -/- Employing a behavioral approach, Kelly argues for rejecting the rational actor model of decision making and replacing it with an understanding of choice imported from psychology and social science. After surveying the wide array of theories that go under the name of democratic theory, he argues that a behavioral approach enables a focus on three important concerns: moral reasons for endorsing democracy, feasibility considerations governing particular theories, and implications for institutional design. Finally, Kelly assesses a number of methods for addressing framing effects, including proposals to increase the amount of political speech, mechanisms designed to insulate democratic outcomes from flawed decision making, and programs of public education. -/- The first book to develop a behavioral theory of democracy, Framing Democracy has important insights for democratic theory, the social scientific understanding of political decision making, economics, and legal theory. (shrink)

This article discusses inspiration, chance and the role of the unconscious mind in the creation of literature and art. Neurophysiological factors are considered, especially the aminergic – cholinergic brain chemistry system and how this relates to inspiration and original creativity. Surrealist poetry, computer-generated poetry and the Oulipo project are analysed to provide practical examples. Chance is discussed in some detail, as this phenomenon is a vital, though often overlooked, component in all creative endeavours. Though the article concentrates on the role (...) of the unconscious mind in the production of creative literature, the processes discussed are equally applicable to all forms of creativity. (shrink)

Transhumanism and Extropianism are two recent ‘movements’ which aspire to transcend the perceived limitations of human biological evolution. This paper takes a critical look at two of the most controversial aspects of Extropianism—Uploading and Immortality. Uploading is the process by which a human will be able to transfer the entire contents of their brain to a more suitable supercomputational medium. When the newentity exist as software, immortality is virtually assured. This should be possible, it is claimed, within the next fifty (...) years! From both a pragmatic and philosophical perspective, I argue that these claims are at best misguided and at worst absurd. (shrink)

Was ist Religion in der Religionsphilosophie von Heinrich Scholz? / Theodor Mahlmann -- Husserls phänomenologischer Zugangsweg zu den Problemen der Religion / Ludwig Landgrebe -- Religion, Religionsphilosophie und Theologie bei Geradus van der Leeuw / Hubertus G. Hubbeling -- Anders Nygrens Religionsbegriff / Hampus Lyttkens -- Charles S. Peirce's Religionsphilosophie als Metaphysik der Evolution / Hermann Deuser -- Die theoretische Theologie der Prozessphilosophie Whiteheads / Ingolf U. Dalferth -- Metaphysik und Religion im Spätwerk Knud Logstrups / Svend Andersen.

In the present study, I sought to more fully understand stakeholder organizations’ strategies for influencing business firms. I conducted interviews with 28 representatives of four environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs): Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Greenpeace, Environmental Defense (ED), and Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). Qualitative methods were used to analyze this data, and additional data in the form of reviews of websites and other documents was conducted when provided by interviewees or needed to more fully comprehend interviewee’s comments. Six propositions (...) derived from Frooman (1999) formed the basis for the initial data analysis; all six propositions were supported to some extent. Perhaps more interestingly, the data revealed that Frooman’s model is too parsimonious to adequately describe stakeholder influence strategies and related alliances, necessitating the development of an alternative theoretical model grounded in the data collected. (shrink)

The provider–patient relationship is typically regarded as an expert-to-novice relationship, and with good reason. Providers have extensive education and experience that have developed in them the competence to treat conditions better and with fewer harms than anyone else. However, some researchers argue that many patients with long-term conditions (LTCs), such as arthritis and chronic pain, have become “experts” at managing their LTC. Unfortunately, there is no generally agreed-upon conception of “patient expertise” or what it implies for the provider–patient relationship. I (...) review three prominent accounts of patient expertise and argue that all face serious objections. I contend, however, that a plausible account of patient expertise is available and that it provides a framework both for further empirical studies and for enhancing the provider–patient relationship. (shrink)

To anyone vaguely aware of Feyerabend, the title of this paper would appear as an oxymoron. For Feyerabend, it is often thought, science is an anarchic practice with no discernible structure. Against this trend, I elaborate the groundwork that Feyerabend has provided for the beginnings of an approach to organizing scientific research. Specifically, I argue that Feyerabend’s pluralism, once suitably modified, provides a plausible account of how to organize science. These modifications come from C.S. Peirce’s account of the economics of (...) theory pursuit, which has since been corroborated by empirical findings in the social sciences. I go on to contrast this approach with the conception of a ‘well-ordered science’ as outlined by Kitcher (Science, truth, and democracy, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001), Cartwright (Philos Sci 73(5):981–990, 2006), which rests on the assumption that we can predict the content of future research. I show how Feyerabend has already given us reasons to think that this model is much more limited than it is usually understood. I conclude by showing how models of resource allocation, specifically those of Kitcher (J Philos 87:5–22, 1990), Strevens (J Philos 100(2):55–79, 2003) and Weisberg and Muldoon (Philos Sci 76(2):225–252, 2009), unwittingly make use of this problematic assumption. I conclude by outlining a proposed model of resource allocation where funding is determined by lottery and briefly examining the extent to which it is compatible with the position defended in this paper. (shrink)

Mathematical investigation, when done well, can confer understanding. This bare observation shouldn’t be controversial; where obstacles appear is rather in the effort to engage this observation with epistemology. The complexity of the issue of course precludes addressing it tout court in one paper, and I’ll just be laying some early foundations here. To this end I’ll narrow the field in two ways. First, I’ll address a specific account of explanation and understanding that applies naturally to mathematical reasoning: the view proposed (...) by Philip Kitcher and Michael Friedman of explanation or understanding as involving the unification of theories that had antecedently appeared heterogeneous. For the second narrowing, I’ll take up one specific feature (among many) of theories and their basic concepts that is sometimes taken to make the theories and concepts preferred: in some fields, for some problems, what is counted as understanding a problem may involve finding a way to represent the problem so that it (or some aspect of it) can be visualized. The final section develops a case study which exemplifies the way that this consideration – the potential for visualizability – can rationally inform decisions as to what the proper framework and axioms should be. The discussion of unification (in sections 3 and 4) leads to a mathematical analogue of Goodman’s problem of identifying a principled basis for distinguishing grue and green. Just as there is a philosophical issue about how we arrive at the predicates we should use when making empirical predictions, so too there is an issue about what properties best support many kinds of mathematical reasoning that are especially valuable to us. The issue becomes pressing via an examination of some physical and mathematical cases that make it seem unlikely that treatments of unification can be as straightforward as the philosophical literature has hoped. Though unification accounts have a grain of truth (since a phenomenon (or cluster of phenomena) called “unification” is in fact important in many cases) we are far from an analysis of what “unification” is.. (shrink)

Future Politics confronts the most important question of our time: how will digital technology change society?

There was a methodological revolution in the mathematics of the nineteenth century, and philosophers have, for the most part, failed to notice.2 My objective in this chapter is to convince you of this, and further to convince you of the following points. The philosophy of mathematics has been informed by an inaccurately narrow picture of the emergence of rigour and logical foundations in the nineteenth century. This blinkered vision encourages a picture of philosophical and logical foundations as essentially disengaged from (...) ongoing mathematical practice. Frege is a telling example: we have misunderstood much of what Frege was trying to do, and missed the intended significance of much of what he wrote, because our received stories underestimate the complexity of nineteenth-century mathematics and mislocate Frege’s work within that context. Given Frege’s perceived status as a paradigmatic analytic philosopher, this mislocation translates into an unduly narrow vision of the relation between mathematics and philosophy. This chapter surveys one part of a larger project that takes Frege as a benchmark to fix some of the broader interest and philosophical significance of nineteenth-century developments. To keep this contribution to a manageable.. (shrink)

Social scientific evidence suggests that labor migration can increase resilience to climate change. For that reason, some have recently advocated using labor migration policy as a tool for climate adaptation. This paper engages with the normative question of whether, and under what conditions, states may permissibly use labor migration policy as a tool for climate adaptation. I argue that states may use labor migration policy as a tool for climate adaptation and may even have a duty to do so, subject (...) to two moral constraints. First, states must also provide acceptable alternative options for adaptation so that the vulnerable are not forced to sacrifice their morally important interests in being able to remain where they are. Second, states may not impose restrictive terms on labor migrants to make accepting greater numbers less costly for themselves because doing so unfairly shifts the costs of adaptation onto the most vulnerable. (shrink)

This article reports the findings from a study of discursive representations of the future role of technology in the work of the US National Intelligence Council. Specifically, it investigates the interplay of ‘techno-optimism’ and propositional certainty in the NIC’s ‘Future Global Trends Reports’. In doing so, it answers the following questions: To what extent was techno-optimism present in the discourse? What level of propositional certainty was expressed in the discourse? How did the discourse deal with the inherent uncertainty of the (...) future? Overall, the discourse was pronouncedly techno-optimist in its stance towards the future role of technology: high-technological solutions were portrayed as solving a host of problems, despite the readily available presence of low-technology or no-technology solutions. In all, 75.1% of the representations were presented as future categorical certainties, meaning the future was predominantly presented as a known and closed inevitability. The discourse dealt with the inherent uncertainty of the subject matter, that is, the future, by projecting the past and present into the future. This was particularly the case in relation to the idea of technological military dominance as a guarantee of global peace, and the role of technology as an inevitable force free from societal censorship. (shrink)

This paper uses the strengthened liar paradox as a springboard to illuminate two more general topics: i) the negation operator and the speech act of denial among speakers of English and ii) some ways the potential for acceptable language change is constrained by linguistic meaning. The general and special problems interact in reciprocally illuminating ways. The ultimate objective of the paper is, however, less to solve certain problems than to create others, by illustrating how the issues that form the topic (...) of this paper are more intricate than previously realised, and that they are related in delicate and somewhat surprising ways. (shrink)

Amongst intellectuals and activists, neoliberalism has become a potent signifier for the kind of free-market thinking that has dominated politics for the past three decades. Forever associated with the conviction politics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the free-market project has since become synonymous with the 'Washington consensus' on international development policy and the phenomenon of corporate globalization, where it has come to mean privatization, deregulation, and the opening up of new markets. But beyond its utility as a protest slogan (...) or buzzword as shorthand for the political-economic Zeitgeist, what do we know about where neoliberalism came from and how it spread? Who are the neoliberals, and why do they studiously avoid the label? Constructions of Neoliberal Reason presents a radical critique of the free-market project, from its origins in the first half of the 20th Century through to the recent global economic crisis, from the utopian dreams of Friedrich von Hayek through the dogmatic theories of the Chicago School to the hope and hubris of Obamanomics. The book traces how neoliberalism went from crank science to common sense in the period between the Great Depression and the age of Obama. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason dramatizes the rise of neoliberalism and its uneven spread as an intellectual, political, and cultural project, combining genealogical analysis with situated case studies of formative moments throughout the world, like New York City's bankruptcy, Hurricane Katrina, and the Wall Street crisis of 2008. The book names and tracks some of neoliberalism's key protagonists, as well as some of the less visible bit-part players. It explores how this adaptive regime of market rule was produced and reproduced, its logics and limits, its faults and its fate. (shrink)

Loosely connected reflections on some issues raised by Susanne Bobzien concerning the extent to which Frege interacted with scholars in his environment, and what he may have learned from them. I first note a pattern in Frege's pre-Grundlagen writings: his references to other logicians tend to be in response to criticism. I then discuss the period 1885–1891, suggesting that Frege may have been more engaged with his teaching and his colleagues than is sometimes believed, in response to the ‘unsatisfied need (...) for communication’ that he describes in an 1882 letter. Finally, I explore one of the ways that the influence of Frege's environment may be reflected in the language and philosophical framing he uses to communicated with a philosophical audience, noting the ways that the philosophical language and metaphors of Grundlagen, §88 may have been shaped by Frege's relationship with Rudolf Eucken. (shrink)