In this article I address how one might develop states of freedom in analysis and in the analyst from the tangles of unconsciousness that exist in one’s unconscious mind, within the society that trained one, and from the unspoken depths of our European culture. How can one think about trauma in the individual without thinking of it in generational terms? In a similar way the cultural heritage that formed the backdrop to the development of psychoanalysis from within the Austro-Hungarian Empire (...) and its aftermath has its own value transmitting unconscious imprints on analytic societies. What are the interfaces between personal and historical trauma, and in particular the interface with unconscious processes? What we can grasp of the innermost life of the patient and of the world he or she lives in, and by which he or she is so profoundly affected, is also a part of a broader history and specific culture. Totalitarian regimes in the twentieth century have, of course, had a massive impact on Europe, including analytic societies, which I will argue is ongoing. How can the mind take a measure of history, when history will submit neither to the reason of the world nor to the mind that confronts it? (shrink)

In an important study, Lawrence Sklar has defended a doctrine of methodological conservatism (very roughly, the principle that a proposition derives some sort of epistemic warrant from being believed). I argue that Sklar's careful formulation of methodological conservatism remains too strong, and that a yet weaker version of the doctrine cannot be successfully defended. I also criticize Sklar's argument that the rejection of methodological conservatism would result in total skepticism. Finally, I turn to a closely related issue, (...) and try to show why different people with the same evidence should be justified in believing the same things. (shrink)

Traumatic events happen in every age, yet there is a particularly cataclysmic feeling to our own epoch that is so attractive to some and so terrifying to others. The terrible events of September 11th 2001 still resonate and the repercussions continue to this day: the desperation of immigrants fleeing terror, the uncertainty of Brexit, Donald Trump in the White House, the rise of the alt-right and hard left, increasing fundamentalism, and terror groups intent on causing destruction to the Western way (...) of life. If that were not enough, we also have to grapple with the enormity of climate change and the charge that if we do not act now, it will be too late. Is it any wonder many are left overwhelmed by the events they see on the news? Galvanised by the events outside of his consulting room, in 2015, David Morgan began The Political Mind seminars at the British Psychoanalytical Society and their successful run continues today. A series of superlative seminars, mostly presented by colleagues from the British Society plus a few select external experts, that examine a dazzling array of relevant topics to provide a psychoanalytic understanding of just what is going on in our world. This book is the first in The Political Mind series to bring these seminars to a wider audience. The Unconscious in Political and Social Life contains compelling contributions from Christopher Bollas, Michael Rustin, Jonathan Sklar, David Bell, Philip Stokoe, Roger Kennedy, David Morgan, M. Fakhry Davids, Ruth McCall, R. D. Hinshelwood, Renée Danziger, Josh Cohen, Sally Weintrobe, and Margot Waddell. They investigate so many vital issues affecting us today: the evolution of democracy, right-wing populism, prejudice, the rise of the far right, attitudes to refugees and migrants, neoliberalism, fundamentalism, terrorism, the Palestine-Israel situation, political change, feminism, austerity in the UK, financial globalisation, and climate change. This book needs to be read by all who are concerned by the state of the world today. Psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts with their awareness of what motivates human beings bring clarity and fresh insight to these matters. A deeper understanding of humanity awaits the reader of The Unconscious in Political and Social Life. (shrink)

Western society today is less unified by a set of core values than ever before. Undoubtedly, the concept of moral consensus is a difficult one in a liberal, democratic and pluralistic society. But it is imperative to avoid a rigid majoritarianism where sensitive personal values are at stake, as in bioethics. Bioethics has become an influential part of public and professional discussions of health care. It has helped frame issues of moral values and medicine as part of a more general (...) effort to find consensus about some of the most perplexing questions of our time. But why is it thought that a moral consensus is important or that it deserves respect? How does moral consensus acquire legitimacy in a society that includes diverse value systems? How is moral consensus possible and how do small groups help create or distort consensus processes? Written by a medical school professor trained in philosophy, this timely work tackles these questions from philosophical, historical, and social scientific standpoints. It begins by describing the traditional ambivalence about consensus in Western culture as well as the uncertain relationship in modernity between consensus and expertise. After outlining the current bioethical consensus, the book gives philosophical and political analyses of the idea of consensus, then assesses the role of consensus in national ethics commissions and in the ethics committee movement. Moreno constructs an original, naturalistic philosophy of moral consensus, referred to as "bioethical naturalism", and then applies sociology and social psychology to actual consensus processes. The book concludes with an account of bioethics as a consensus-oriented social reform movement. This insightful volume will be essential reading for bioethicists, philosophers, physicians, members of ethics committees, and all those concerned with ethical and social issues in health care. (shrink)

I present a critical discussion of dual-process theories of reasoning and decision making with particular attention to the nature and role of Type 2 processes. The original theory proposed...

Jonathan Bennett's analysis of the second half of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, in which Kant concerns himself with topics such as substance, the nature of the self, the cosmos, freedom and the existence of God, continues to be an engaging and accessible exploration of Kant's major work. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface written by Karl Ameriks, illuminating its enduring importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this influential work has been revived (...) for a new generation of readers. (shrink)

The rapid development in healthcare technologies in recent years has resulted in the need for health services, whether publicly funded or insurance based, to identify means to maximise the benefits and provide equitable distribution of limited resources. This has resulted in the need for rationing decisions, and there has been considerable debate regarding the substantive and procedural ethical principles that promote distributive justice when making such decisions. In this paper, I argue that while the scientifically rigorous approaches of evidence-based healthcare (...) are claimed as aspects of procedural justice that legitimise such guidance, there are biases and distortions in all aspects of the process that may lead to epistemic injustices. Regardless of adherence to principles of distributive justice in the decision-making process, evidential failings may undermine the fairness and legitimacy of such decisions. In particular, I identify epistemic exclusion that denies certain patient and professional groups the opportunity to contribute to the epistemic endeavour. This occurs at all stages of the process, from the generation, analysis and reporting of the underlying evidence, through the interpretation of such evidence, to the decision-making that determines access to healthcare resources. I further argue that this is compounded by processes which confer unwarranted epistemic privilege on experts in relation to explicit or implicit value judgements, which are not within their remit. I suggest a number of areas in which changes to the processes for developing, regulating, reporting and evaluating evidence may improve the legitimacy of such processes. (shrink)

This paper argues that contemporary child and youth experiences of globalization call for retheorizing global justice around a new concept of empowered inclusion. The first part of the paper examines three case studies in globalization – child labour movements, child and youth migration, and young people’s organization around climate change – and shows how, in each case, young people, through their struggles against injustice, are simultaneously disempowered and empowered by their deep global interdependency. The second part proposes new theoretical advances (...) in global justice that better respond to child and youth experiences through a childist concept of the empowered inclusion of both children and other marginalized groups. And the third part advances some preliminary suggestions about how a more child-responsive conception of global power and justice might be operationalized in practice across global policies, institutions, and culture. (shrink)

The knowability paradox threatens metaphysical or semantical antirealism, the view that truth is epistemic, by revealing an awful consequence of the claim [i] that all truths are knowable. Various attempts have been made to find a way out of the paradox.

COVID-19 vaccine requirements have generated significant debate. Here, we argue that, on the evidence available, such policies should have recognised proof of natural immunity as a sufficient basis for exemption to vaccination requirements. We begin by distinguishing our argument from two implausible claims about natural immunity: natural immunity is superior to ‘artificial’ vaccine-induced immunity simply because it is ‘natural’ and it is better to acquire immunity through natural infection than via vaccination. We then briefly survey the evidence base for the (...) comparison between naturally acquired immunity and vaccine-induced immunity. While we clearly cannot settle the scientific debates on this point, we suggest that we lack clear and convincing scientific evidence that vaccine-induced immunity has a significantly higher protective effect than natural immunity. Since vaccine requirements represent a substantial infringement of individual liberty, as well as imposing other significant costs, they can only be justified if they are necessary for achieving a proportionate public health benefit. Without compelling evidence for the superiority of vaccine-induced immunity, it cannot be deemed necessary to require vaccination for those with natural immunity. Subjecting them to vaccine mandates is therefore not justified. We conclude by defending the standard of proof that this argument from necessity invokes, and address other pragmatic and practical considerations that may speak against natural immunity exemptions. There are no data in this work. (shrink)

Folk theories—untutored people’s (often implicit) theories about various features of the world—have been fashionable objects of inquiry in psychology for almost two decades now (e.g., Hirschfeld and Gelman 1994), and more recently they have been of interest in experimental philosophy (Nichols 2004). Folk theories of psy- chology, physics, biology, and ethics have all come under investigation. Folk meta- physics, however, has not been as extensively studied. That so little is known about folk metaphysics is unfortunate for (at least) two reasons. (...) First, folk metaphysics is almost certainly implicit, and it is likely to be our default way of thinking about metaphysical problems. Moreover, one’s metaphysical commitments can have pro- found consequences—in scientific, religious, and ethical contexts, for example. Thus, folk metaphysics ought to be dragged out into the open and exposed to criticism. As Peirce eloquently remarked (1994, 1.129; see also 1994, 7.579). (shrink)

Measures of algorithmic bias can be roughly classified into four categories, distinguished by the conditional probabilistic dependencies to which they are sensitive. First, measures of "procedural bias" diagnose bias when the score returned by an algorithm is probabilistically dependent on a sensitive class variable (e.g. race or sex). Second, measures of "outcome bias" capture probabilistic dependence between class variables and the outcome for each subject (e.g. parole granted or loan denied). Third, measures of "behavior-relative error bias" capture probabilistic dependence between (...) class variables and the algorithmic score, conditional on target behaviors (e.g. recidivism or loan default). Fourth, measures of "score-relative error bias" capture probabilistic dependence between class variables and behavior, conditional on score. Several recent discussions have demonstrated a tradeoff between these different measures of algorithmic bias, and at least one recent paper has suggested conditions under which tradeoffs may be minimized. -/- In this paper we use the machinery of causal graphical models to show that, under standard assumptions, the underlying causal relations among variables forces some tradeoffs. We delineate a number of normative considerations that are encoded in different measures of bias, with reference to the philosophical literature on the wrongfulness of disparate treatment and disparate impact. While both kinds of error bias are nominally motivated by concern to avoid disparate impact, we argue that consideration of causal structures shows that these measures are better understood as complicated and unreliable measures of procedural biases (i.e. disparate treatment). Moreover, while procedural bias is indicative of disparate treatment, we show that the measure of procedural bias one ought to adopt is dependent on the account of the wrongfulness of disparate treatment one endorses. Finally, given that neither score-relative nor behavior-relative measures of error bias capture the relevant normative considerations, we suggest that error bias proper is best measured by score-based measures of accuracy, such as the Brier score. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 1, January 2022.

Journal of Religious Ethics, Volume 50, Issue 1, Page 40-59, March 2022.

Saltzstein and Kasachkoff (2004) critique the social intuitionist model (Haidt, 2001), but the model that they critique is a stripped-down version that should be called the “possum” model. They make three charges about the possum model that are not true about the social intuitionist model: that it includes no role for reasoning, that it reduces social influence to compliance, and that it does not take a developmental perspective. After I defend the honor of the social intuitionist model, I raise two (...) areas of legitimate dispute: the scope and nature of moral reasoning, and the usefulness of appealing to innate ideas, rather than to learning and reasoning, as the origin of moral knowledge. I present three clusters of innate moral intuitions, related to sympathy, hierarchy, and reciprocity. (shrink)

In this essay I examine a recent argument by Steven Weinberg that seeks to establish local quantum field theory as the only type of quantum theory in accord with the relevent evidence and satisfying two basic physical principles. I reconstruct the argument as a demonstrative induction and indicate it's role as a foil to the underdetermination argument in the debate over scientific realism.

"--Daniel Callahan, cofounder of the Hastings Center "Doctors and people who have no choice but to trust doctors--which means all of us--need to read this book.

Certain recent experiments are often taken to show that people are far more likely to classify a foreseen side-effect of an action as intentional when that side-effect has some negative normative valence. While there is some disagreement over the details, there is broad consensus among experimental philosophers that this is the finding. We challenge this consensus by presenting an alternative interpretation of the experiments, according to which they show that a side-effect is classified as intentional only if the agent considered (...) its relative importance when deciding on the action. We present two new experiments whose results can be explained by our hypothesis but not by any version of the consensus view. In the course of doing so, we develop a methodological critique of the previous literature on this topic and draw from it lessons for future experimental philosophy research. (shrink)

This paper discusses Jessica Flanigan’s book, _Pharmaceutical Freedom_. The paper advances two main claims. First, the paper argues that, despite what Flanigan claims, there is a coherent way to endorse the Doctrine of Informed Consent while resisting the view that there is a right to self-medicate. Second, the paper argues that Flanigan is committed to a more radical conclusion than she acknowledges in the book; namely, that under some conditions it is morally permissible for people to take medications from drug (...) manufacturers or pharmacies without paying the full price for those medications. The paper concludes by suggesting that this thesis about permissible theft, when combined with some further premises regarding the morality of defensive force, implies some even more radical conclusions regarding the use of force to obtain these medications. (shrink)

Many instances of scientific research impose risks, not just on participants and scientists but also on third parties. This class of social risks unifies a range of problems previously treated as distinct phenomena, including so-called bystander risks, biosafety concerns arising from gain-of-function research, the misuse of the results of dual-use research, and the harm caused by inductive risks. The standard approach to these problems has been to extend two familiar principles from human subjects research regulations—a favorable risk-benefit ratio and informed (...) consent. We argue, however, that these moral principles will be difficult to satisfy in the context of widely distributed social risks about which affected parties may reasonably disagree. We propose that framing these risks as political rather than moral problems may offer another way. By borrowing lessons from political philosophy, we propose a framework that unifies our discussion of social risks and the possible solutions to them. (shrink)

A major work in moral philosophy by the noted Puritan divine.

Introduction : ethical economics? -- The sovereign consumer -- Two myths about economic growth -- The politics of pay -- Happiness -- Pricing life and nature -- New worlds of money : public services and beyond -- Conclusion.

"To some people, life is very simple . . . no shadings and grays, all blacks and whites. . . . Now, others of us find that good, bad, right, wrong, are many-sided, complex things. We try to see every side; but the more we see, the less sure we are." —Sir John Talbot, The Wolf Man (Universal Pictures, 1941).

Solar radiation management (SRM) has been proposed as a means of mitigating climate change. Although SRM poses new risks, it is sometimes proposed as the ‘lesser evil’. I consider how research and implementation of SRM could be regulated, drawing on what I call a ‘precautionary checklist’, which includes consideration of the longer term political implications of technical change. Particular attention is given to the moral hazard of ‘regulatory drift’, in which strong initial regulation softens through complacency, deliberate deregulation (‘regulatory gift’) (...) and the limited constituency of people with the skills to regulate (‘thin markets’). I propose the strengthening of civil society groups to keep regulators in check. (shrink)

In the first section the problem of political obligation is motivated, and in Section 2 the core structure of the problem is laid bare. A recognition ofthis structure prompts reflection that the problem will appear very different to different thinkers, depending on their moral theories. It also invites the speculation that the problem will be incapable of solution on some moral theories while trivial on others. This polarity does reflect the state of much of the literature until fairly recently. However (...) this picture is seen to be too crude, and in the third section it is shown how an interesting solution has been proposed by advocates of the ‘theory of fairness’. In Section 4 this theory is evaluated, concentrating particularly on George Klosko’s version, which is, in part, rejected. However it is argued that no version of the theory is able to guarantee universal political obligations. In Section 5 it is argued that this is an unnoticed advantage of the theory, for it may well be that, morally at least, we should allow those who do not benefit from the existence of the state to escape political obligations. The consequences of this view are examined and found not to be as threatening as they might first have appeared. (shrink)

We study the definability of ultrafilter bases on \ in the sense of descriptive set theory. As a main result we show that there is no coanalytic base for a Ramsey ultrafilter, while in L we can construct \ P-point and Q-point bases. We also show that the existence of a \ ultrafilter is equivalent to that of a \ ultrafilter base, for \. Moreover we introduce a Borel version of the classical ultrafilter number and make some observations.