We examined participants' reading and recall of informed consent documents presented via paper or computer. Within each presentation medium, we presented the document as a continuous or paginated document to simulate common computer and paper presentation formats. Participants took slightly longer to read paginated and computer informed consent documents and recalled slightly more information from the paginated documents. We concluded that obtaining informed consent online is not substantially different than obtaining it via paper presentation. We also provide suggestions for improving (...) informed consent-in both face-to-face and online experiments. (shrink)

Ioulios Polydeukes, more commonly known as Pollux, was a Greek sophist and lexicographer active in the closing decades of the second century a.d. His Onomasticon is one of the most important lexicographical texts of the Imperial period. It is essentially a set of word lists dedicated to collecting clusters of related words on topics from a vast range of different areas of intellectual activity and everyday life. The text survives only in epitomized form, and shows signs of interpolation as well (...) as abridgement. Nevertheless, the consensus is that the bulk of what survives is Pollux’ own work, and that reading it in Eric Bethe's Teubner edition gives an accurate cumulative impression of Pollux’ standard procedures and preoccupations, even if we cannot be entirely confident that any particular cluster of words had exactly the same form within the text's original design. It is divided into ten books, each with its own dedicatory preface addressed to the Emperor Commodus. Each book has its own distinctive focus on certain key themes, although the ordering principles are much clearer in some than in others. (shrink)

Recent decades have witnessed tremendous progress in artificial intelligence and in the development of autonomous systems that rely on artificial intelligence. Critics, however, have pointed to the difficulty of allocating responsibility for the actions of an autonomous system, especially when the autonomous system causes harm or damage. The highly autonomous behavior of such systems, for which neither the programmer, the manufacturer, nor the operator seems to be responsible, has been suspected to generate responsibility gaps. This has been the cause of (...) much concern. In this article, I propose a more optimistic view on artificial intelligence, raising two challenges for responsibility gap pessimists. First, proponents of responsibility gaps must say more about when responsibility gaps occur. Once we accept a difficult-to-reject plausibility constraint on the emergence of such gaps, it becomes apparent that the situations in which responsibility gaps occur are unclear. Second, assuming that responsibility gaps occur, more must be said about why we should be concerned about such gaps in the first place. I proceed by defusing what I take to be the two most important concerns about responsibility gaps, one relating to the consequences of responsibility gaps and the other relating to violations of jus in bello. (shrink)

The Romans commanded the largest and most complex empire the world had ever seen, or would see until modern times. The challenges, however, were not just political, economic and military: Rome was also the hub of a vast information network, drawing in worldwide expertise and refashioning it for its own purposes. This fascinating collection of essays considers the dialogue between technical literature and imperial society, drawing on, developing and critiquing a range of modern cultural theories. How was knowledge shaped into (...) textual forms, and how did those forms encode relationships between emperor and subjects, theory and practice, Roman and Greek, centre and periphery? Ordering Knowledge in the Roman Empire will be required reading for those concerned with the intellectual and cultural history of the Roman Empire, and its lasting legacy in the medieval world and beyond. (shrink)

Studies suggest that people's moral intuitions are sensitive to morally irrelevant factors, such as personal force, spatial distance, ethnicity or nationality. Findings of this sort have been used to construct debunking arguments. The most prominent champion of this approach is Joshua Greene, who has attempted to undermine deontology by showing that deontological intuitions are triggered by morally irrelevant factors. This article offers a critical analysis of such empirically informed debunking arguments from moral irrelevance, and of Greene’s effort to undermine deontology. (...) One problem with arguments from moral irrelevance concerns the hierarchy between the targeted case-specific intuitions and the more general intuitions about which factors are morally (ir)relevant. If we assume that general intuitions always take precedence over case-specific intuitions, arguments from moral irrelevance become dialectically useless. By contrast, if we assume that both case-specific and general intuitions should be taken seriously, particularly sweeping debunking projects, such as Greene’s, are unlikely to go through. Another problem concerns the experimental aspect of arguments from moral irrelevance. Empirically informed arguments from moral irrelevance have been presented as examples of how empirical moral psychology can advance moral theory. But arguments from moral irrelevance can also be constructed from the armchair. And basing these arguments on empirical findings about laypeople’s intuitions is even counterproductive. (shrink)

May you sell your vote? May you sell your kidney? May gay men pay surrogates to bear them children? May spouses pay each other to watch the kids, do the dishes, or have sex? Should we allow the rich to genetically engineer gifted, beautiful children? Should we allow betting markets on terrorist attacks and natural disasters? Most people shudder at the thought. To put some goods and services for sale offends human dignity. If everything is commodified , then nothing is (...) sacred. The market corrodes our character. Or so most people say. In Markets without Limits , Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski give markets a fair hearing. The market does not introduce wrongness where there was not any previously. Thus, the authors claim, the question of what rightfully may be bought and sold has a simple answer: if you may do it for free, you may do it for money. Contrary to the conservative consensus, they claim there are no inherent limits to what can be bought and sold, but only restrictions on how we buy and sell. (shrink)

According to the dual-process account of moral judgment, deontological and utilitarian judgments stem from two different cognitive systems. Deontological judgments are effortless, intuitive and emotion-driven, whereas utilitarian judgments are effortful, reasoned and dispassionate. The most notable evidence for dual-process theory comes from neuroimaging studies by Joshua Greene and colleagues. Greene has suggested that these empirical findings undermine deontology and support utilitarianism. It has been pointed out, however, that the most promising interpretation of his argument does not make use of the (...) empirical findings. In this paper, I engage with recent attempts by Greene to vindicate the moral significance of dual-process theory and the supporting neuroscientific findings. I consider their potential moral significance with regard to three aspects of Greene’s case against deontology: the argument from morally irrelevant factors, the functionalist argument and the argument from confabulation. I conclude that Greene fails to demonstrate how neuroscience and dual-process theory in general can advance moral theorizing. (shrink)

Debunking arguments are arguments that seek to undermine a belief or doctrine by exposing its causal origins. Two prominent proponents of such arguments are the utilitarians Joshua Greene and Peter Singer. They draw on evidence from moral psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary theory in an effort to show that there is something wrong with how deontological judgments are typically formed and with where our deontological intuitions come from. They offer debunking explanations of our emotion-driven deontological intuitions and dismiss complex deontological (...) theories as products of confabulatory post hoc rationalization. Through my discussion of Greene and Singer’s empirically informed debunking of deontology, I introduce the distinction between two different types of debunking arguments. The first type of debunking argument operates through regular undercutting defeat, whereas the second type relies on higher-order evidence. I argue that the latter type of debunking argument, of which the argument from confabulation is an example, is objectionably sloppy and therefore inadmissible in academic discussion. (shrink)

Crashes involving self-driving cars at least superficially resemble trolley dilemmas. This article discusses what lessons machine ethicists working on the ethics of self-driving cars can learn from trolleyology. The article proceeds by providing an account of the trolley problem as a paradox and by distinguishing two types of solutions to the trolley problem. According to an optimistic solution, our case intuitions about trolley dilemmas are responding to morally relevant differences. The pessimistic solution denies that this is the case. An optimistic (...) solution would yield first-order moral insights for the ethics of self-driving cars, but such a solution is difficult to come by. More plausible is the pessimistic solution, and it teaches us a methodological lesson. The lesson is that machine ethicists should discount case intuitions and instead rely on intuitions and judgments at a higher level of generality. (shrink)

Semiotic objections to commodification hold that buying and selling certain goods and services is wrong because of what market exchange communicates or because it violates the meaning of certain goods, services, and relationships. We argue that such objections fail. The meaning of markets and of money is a contingent, socially constructed fact. Cultures often impute meaning to markets in harmful, socially destructive, or costly ways. Rather than semiotic objections giving us reason to judge certain markets as immoral, the usefulness of (...) certain markets gives us reason to judge certain semiotic codes as immoral. (shrink)

Die Idee der Toleranz führt in unserer liberalen Gesellschaft eine Art Doppelleben. Einerseits gibt es einen breiten öffentlichen Konsens darüber, dass Toleranz eine gute Sache ist. Andererseits haben die begrifflichen und normativen Paradoxien, die dem Toleranzkonzept offenbar inhärent sind, in der politischen Philosophie für Verwirrung gesorgt. In dieser Abhandlung verteidige und spezifiziere ich die Auffassung, dass Toleranz eine Kombination aus Ablehnung und Akzeptanz beinhaltet. Ich fokussiere mich vor allem auf die Akzeptanzkomponente, die bislang vernachlässigt worden ist. Diese Vernachlässigung erklärt einen (...) Großteil der Verwirrung, für die das Konzept der Toleranz gesorgt hat. Wenn wir einsehen, dass Akzeptanz den Verzicht auf besonders grausame oder gemeine Arten der Intervention meint, sollte klar sein, warum Toleranz moralisch geboten ist. Ich schließe mit einigen methodologischen Ausführungen dazu, wie die Toleranzproblematik angegangen werden sollte und wie nicht. (shrink)

The recent decades have seen established liberal democracies expand their surveillance capacities on a massive scale. This article explores what is problematic about government surveillance by democracies. It proceeds by distinguishing three potential sources of concern: the concern that governments diminish citizens’ privacy by collecting their data, the concern that they diminish their privacy by accessing their data, and the concern that the collected data may be used for objectionable purposes. Discussing the meaning and value of privacy, the article argues (...) that only the latter two constitute compelling independent concerns. It then focuses particularly on the third concern, exploring the risk of government surveillance being used to enforce illegitimate laws. It discusses three legitimacy-related reasons why we should be worried about the expansion of surveillance capacities in established democracies: Even established democracies might decay. There is a risk that surveillance capacities that are used for democratically legitimated purposes today will be used for poorly legitimated purposes in the future. Surveillance may be used to enforce laws that lack legitimacy due to the disproportionate punishment attached to their violation. The democratic procedures in established democracies fail to conform to the requirements formulated by mainstream theories of democratic legitimacy. Surveillance is thus used to enforce laws whose legitimacy is in doubt. (shrink)

One the most interesting debates in moral philosophy revolves around the significance of empirical moral psychology for moral philosophy. Genealogical arguments that rely on empirical findings about the origins of moral beliefs, so-called debunking arguments, take center stage in this debate. Looking at debunking arguments based on evidence from evolutionary moral psychology, experimental ethics and neuroscience, this book explores what ethicists can learn from the science of morality, and what they cannot. Among other things, the book offers a new take (...) on the deontology/utilitarianism debate, discusses the usefulness of experiments in ethics, investigates whether morality should be thought of as a problem-solving device, shows how debunking arguments can tell us something about the structure of philosophical debate, and argues that debunking arguments lead to both moral and prudential skepticism. Presenting a new picture of the relationship between empirical moral psychology and moral philosophy, this book is essential reading for moral philosophers and moral psychologists alike. (shrink)

Toleration is one of the core elements of a liberal polity, and yet it has come to be seen as puzzling, paradoxical and difficult. The aim of the present paper is to dispel three puzzles surrounding toleration. First, I will challenge the notion that it is difficult to see why tolerance should be a virtue given that it involves putting up with what one deems wrong. Second, I defuse the worry that the ideal of toleration is not fully realizable as (...) toleration must necessarily be limited. Third, I take issue with the assumption that ‘true’ tolerance requires meta-tolerance, that is, that the issue of toleration must itself be approached in a ‘tolerant’ way. (shrink)

Papers from the Tagung zur Rezeptionsgeshichte Vicos held May 19-29, 2008 at Universit'at Heidelberg).

In 1953, Richard McKeon contacted Hans-Georg Gadamer with the proposal to conduct a joint conference on the nature of philosophic controversies, their relation with ideological conflicts and the possible ways to handle and solve them. He suggested to treat this subject in the concrete by discussing problems connected with the opposed views and standpoints of philosophers concerning freedom. Gadamer was given a free hand to select the German participants, and the meeting finally took place in the following year in a (...) small castle near Darmstadt. There were 18 German philosophers attending and McKeon himself as the sole non German discussant. The paper explores the background of McKeon's initiative, the aims and results of the conference, and the way the discussions proceeded, using some yet unpublished material and documents. Whereas the conference seemed to have been a rather disappointing event for both parties, the German and the American, showing all the deficiencies of philosophical communication that McKeon wanted to analyze, it might have played a minor role in the genesis and development of the »begriffsgeschichtliche Forschung« in years following the meeting from 1954. Herbert G. Wells, explicitely in his 1920 edition for the British reader in which he states: »Human history is in essence a history of ideas«. From here the article follows the further use and development of the concept by British, American and European scholars. (shrink)

In der 1970 gegr ndeten Reihe erscheinen Arbeiten, die philosophiehistorische Studien mit einem systematischen Ansatz oder systematische Studien mit philosophiehistorischen Rekonstruktionen verbinden. Neben deutschsprachigen werden auch englischsprachige Monographien ver ffentlicht. Gr ndungsherausgeber sind: Erhard Scheibe (Herausgeber bis 1991), G nther Patzig (bis 1999) und Wolfgang Wieland (bis 2003). Von 1990 bis 2007 wurde die Reihe von J rgen Mittelstra mitherausgegeben.

War and Border Crossings brings together renowned scholars to address some of the most pressing problems in public policy, international affairs, and the intercultural issues of our day. Contributors from widely varying disciplines discuss cross-cultural ethical issues and international topics ranging from American international policy and the invasion and occupation of Iraq to domestic topics such as immigration, the war on drugs, cross-cultural bioethics and ethical issues involving American Indian tribes. The culture clashes discussed in these essays raise serious questions (...) about what principles ought to inform the negotiating of conflicts in order to achieve, or at least approach, outcomes that are fundamentally just, fair, responsible, and ethical. (shrink)

Debunking arguments aim at defeating the justification of a belief by revealing the belief to have a dubious genealogy. One prominent example of such a debunking argument is Richard Joyce’s evolutionary debunking explanation of morality. Joyce’s argument targets only our belief in moral facts, while our belief in prudential facts is exempt from his evolutionary critique. In this paper, I suggest that our belief in prudential facts falls victim to evolutionary debunking, too. Just as our moral sense can be explained (...) in evolutionary terms, so presumably can our tendency to judge our actions in prudential terms. And if the evolutionary explanation of our moral sense has an undermining effect, then so does the evolutionary explanation of our belief in prudential facts. This also undermines moral fictionalism, the view that we have prudential reasons to maintain moral discourse as a fiction. I consider and refute four possible objections to the suggested debunking of our belief in prudential normativity. (shrink)

Toleranz wird für gewöhnlich als eine Einstellung definiert, die sich aus Akzeptanz und Ablehnung gegenüber der tolerierten Praxis zusammensetzt. In einem Aufsatz in dieser Zeitschrift hat Achim Lohmar dieses klassische Verständnis von Toleranz angegriffen und einen alternativen Toleranzbegriff stark gemacht. Ich werde argumentieren, dass Lohmars Analyse von Toleranz verfehlt ist, und zeigen, wie sich der klassische Toleranzbegriff gegen Lohmars Kritik verteidigen lässt. Dennoch ist Lohmars Kritik nicht uninteressant. Denn obwohl Lohmars begriffliche Kritik unzutreffend ist, lässt sich auf Lohmars Kritik aufbauend (...) ein inhaltliches Argument gegen die derzeit prominenteste Rechtfertigung von Toleranz formulieren, das Rawls’sche Argument von vernünftiger Meinungsverschiedenheit. Abschließend argumentiere ich gegen Lohmar, dass der personale Toleranzbegriff vom politischen nicht kategorial verschieden ist. (shrink)

This paper provides a discussion of the role that emotions may play in the justification of punishment. On the expressivist account of punishment, punishment has the purpose of expressing appropriate emotional reactions to wrongdoing, such as indignation, resentment or guilt. I will argue that this expressivist approach fails as these emotions can be expressed other than through the infliction of punishment. Another argument for hard treatment put forward by expressivists states that punitive sanctions are necessary in order for the law (...) to be valid. But this justification of punishment, too, is unconvincing. There are no good reasons to assume that we have to resort to punitive measures in order to vindicate the law. I will then raise the more general worry whether there is any intelligible link at all between moral emotions such as indignation, resentment or guilt and retributive behaviour. I will finally conclude with some sceptical remarks on the moral worth of retribution. (shrink)

When the U.S. conducts warfare, elements of a force are drawn from different services and work together as a single team to accomplish an assigned mission. To achieve such unified action, it is necessary that the doctrines governing the actions of members of specific services be both consistent with and subservient to joint Doctrine. Because warfighting today increasingly involves not only live forces but also automated systems, unified action requires that information technology that is used in joint warfare must be (...) aligned with joint doctrine. It requires also that the separate information systems used by the different elements of a joint force must be interoperable, in the sense that data and information that is generated by each element must be usable (understandable, processable) by all the other elements that need them. Currently, such interoperability is impeded by multiple inconsistencies among the different data and software standards used by warfighters. We describe here the on-going project of creating a Joint Doctrine Ontology (JDO), which uses joint doctrine to provide shared computer-accessible content valid for any field of military endeavor, organization, and information system. JDO addresses the two previously mentioned requirements of unified action by providing a widely applicable benchmark for use by developers of information systems that will both guarantee alignment with joint doctrine and support interoperability. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz beschäftigt sich mit der Stellung der Kritik der Urteilskraft im System der Kantischen Kritiken. Es wird die These vertreten, dass die Dreiteiligkeit des Kantischen Systems mit der Dreizahl der transzendentallogischen Erfordernisse der Erkenntnis zusammenhängt, die Kant mit den Begriffen des unum, verum und bonum verbindet. Daraus wird der Schluss gezogen, dass die Kritik der Urteilskraft zum übergreifenden Thema die Bedingungen materialer Wahrheit hat, sofern diese sich a priori, in der Form von Ideen, angeben lassen, im Unterschied zur Kritik (...) der reinen Vernunft, deren Thema die Einheit, und zur Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, deren Thema die Vollkommenheit bildet. (shrink)

The response to the special 2019 issue of Studia Gilsoniana on economics was so positive that it led to the creation of the Aquinas School of Leadership School of Economics (ASLSE). This 2021 publication is, therefore, a second special issue of Studia Gilsoniana on the same theme and the second installment of ASLSE’s economic journals. We are delighted to present here further fruits of thought from the maturing Studia Gilsoniana and ASLSE partnership. Economics is held to be a value-free, scientific (...) enterprise, and as such there can be no relationship between economics and religion. Ayn Rand, a well-known novelist-turned-philosopher, took this position in an unapologetic way in her writings, specifically in her novel Atlas Shrugged. The contrary position to what we might call the Randian “strict separation” thesis holds that economics and religion are related, in some way and to some degree, and therefore should be considered in tandem. The papers in this special edition of Studia Gilsoniana set out to show the extent and quality of the relationship between economics and religion from a variety of viewpoints and historical periods. (shrink)

Critics of Big Tech often describe ‘surveillance capitalism’ in grim terms, blaming it for all kinds of political and social ills. This article counters this pessimistic narrative, offering a more favorable take on companies like Google, YouTube, and Twitter/X. It argues that the downsides of surveillance capitalism are overstated, while the benefits are largely overlooked. Specifically, the article examines six critical areas: i) targeted advertising, ii) the influence of surveillance capitalism on politics, iii) its impact on mental health, iv) its (...) connection with government surveillance, v) its effects on the rule of law and social trust, and vi) privacy concerns. For each area, it will be argued that concerns about surveillance capitalism are unfounded or exaggerated. The article also explores some benefits of the services provided by these technology companies and concludes with a discussion of the practical implications. Throughout, the article draws on empirical evidence relating to the societal and political impact of digital technologies. (shrink)

Subjectivism about wellbeing rests on the idea that what is good for a person must ‘fit’ her, ‘resonate’ with her, not be ‘alien’ to her, etc. This idea has been called the ‘beating heart’ of subjectivism. In this article, I present the No-Beating-Heart Challenge for subjectivism, which holds that there is no satisfactory statement of this idea. I proceed by first identifying three criteria that any statement of the idea must meet if it is to provide support for subjectivism: Distinctness, (...) Exclusiveness, and Explicitness. I then argue that no statement of this idea meets these criteria. (shrink)

James Stacey Taylor offers three interpretations of our thesis, and argues that only one of them goes through. His point is to clarify our view rather than critique our position. In this brief response, we argue that, upon further clarification, we could endorse at least one of the other interpretations, though as Taylor notes, we don’t need to for our book’s thesis to go through.

We aim to show anti-commodification theorists that their complaints about the scope of the market are exaggerated. There are we agree things that should not be bought and sold but that’s only because they are things people shouldn’t have or do or exchange in the first place. Beyond that we argue there are legitimate moral worries about how we buy trade and sell but no legitimate worries about what we buy trade and sell. In almost every interesting case where they (...) have argued markets are morally impermissible on the contrary we argue such markets are permissible. Where they see the market as having a fundamentally amoral ethos or as tending to corrupt us we see it as moral and morally ameliorative. Where they think the solution is to contract the market we think the solution is to expand it. (shrink)

Recent decades have seen an unprecedented proliferation of surveillance programs by government agencies. This development has been driven both by technological progress, which has made large scale surveillance operations relatively cheap and easy, and by the threat of terrorism, organized crime and pandemics, which supplies a ready justification for surveillance. For a long time, mass surveillance programs have been associated with autocratic regimes, most notoriously with the German Democratic Republic and the Stasi, its secret police. A more recent case in (...) point is the efforts of the People’s Republic of China to set up a comprehensive surveillance system that assigns citizens a score reflecting their social and political conformity. But the current rise of state mass surveillance is mostly attributable to the new readiness of liberal democracies to monitor their populations. The vast surveillance system uncovered by whistleblower Edward Snowden is maintained and supported by a group of established liberal democracies, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and many others. While surveillance programs of authoritarian regimes, installed to monitor and quash political dissidents, are uncontroversially unjust, surveillance operations carried out by liberal democracies possess at least some prima facie legitimacy. They are set up with the stated objective of protecting citizens against terrorism, organized crime and pandemics, which few would deny is the duty of any state. Still, the expansion of large-scale surveillance by democratic governments has widely been perceived as objectionable or at least problematic on account of its harmful effects on both individuals and liberal society at large. (shrink)

A central question in AI ethics concerns the moral status of robots. This article argues against the idea that they have moral status. It proceeds by defending the assumption that consciousness is necessary for welfare subjectivity. Since robots most likely lack consciousness, and welfare subjectivity is necessary for moral status, it follows that robots lack moral status. The assumption that consciousness is necessary for welfare subjectivity appears to be in tension with certain widely accepted theories of wellbeing, especially versions of (...) Desire Satisfaction Theory and Objective List Theory. However, instead of elevating non-conscious robots to welfare subjects, this tension should lead us to reject versions of these theories that have this implausible implication. (shrink)

Bayle is famous for his defence of religious toleration. In this paper, I will call into question his main argument for toleration, his defence of the erring conscience. While it is often maintained that the argument is self-defeating, my claim will be more fundamental: His defence of the erring conscience does not even qualify as an argument for toleration in the first place, at least not for toleration as it is commonly understood. The argument has been misconceived by both Bayle (...) himself and his commentators. I will conclude by showing that this turns out to have positive effects on Bayle's other arguments for toleration, among which is a Lockean and a Rawlsian defence of toleration. (shrink)