Consider the following claim: given the choice between saving a life and preventing any number of people from temporarily experiencing a mild headache, you should always save the life. Many moral theorists accept this claim. In doing so, they commit themselves to some form of ‘moral absolutism’: the view that there are some moral considerations that cannot be outweighed by any number of lesser moral considerations. In contexts of certainty, it is clear what moral absolutism requires of you. However, what (...) does it require of you when deciding under risk? What ought you to do when there is a chance that, say, you will not succeed in saving the life? In recent years, various critics have argued that moral absolutism cannot satisfactorily deal with risk and should, therefore, be abandoned. In this paper, we show that moral absolutism can answer its critics by drawing on—of all things—orthodox expected utility theory. (shrink)

Killing civilians is worse than killing soldiers. If any moral principle commands near universal assent, this one does. Few moral principles have been more widely and more viscerally affirmed. And yet, in recent years it has faced a rising tide of dissent. Political and military leaders seeking to slip the constraints of the laws of war have cavilled and qualified. Their complaints have been unwittingly aided by philosophers who, rebuilding just war theory from its foundations, have concluded that this principle (...) is at best a useful fiction. Sparing Civilians aims to turn this tide, and to vindicate international law, and the ruptured consensus. In doing so, Seth Lazar develops new insights into the morality of harm, relevant to everyone interested in normative and applied ethics. (shrink)

I try to show that agent responsibility is an inadequate basis for the attribution of liability, by discrediting the Risk Argument and showing how the Responsibility Argument in fact collapses into the Risk Argument. I have concentrated on undermining these as philosophical theories of self-defense, although I at times note that our theory of self-defense should not be predicated on assumptions that are inapplicable to the context of war. The potential combatant, I conclude, should not look to the agency view (...) to ease his conscience about the killing he will do in war. If he is to fight without violating rights, then he will need a different theory of self-defense; if there are no more defensible theories, then he must either accept pacifism—which I think is a live possibility—or seek to identify stronger countervailing reasons, which can override the great force of his victims’ rights to life. (shrink)

Why does it matter that those who fight wars be authorized by the communities on whose behalf they claim to fight? I argue that lacking authorization generates a moral cost, which counts against a war's proportionality, and that having authorization allows the transfer of reasons from the members of the community to those who fight, which makes the war more likely to be proportionate. If democratic states are better able than non-democratic states and sub-state groups to gain their community's authorization, (...) this means that some wars will be proportionate if fought by democracies, disproportionate if not. (shrink)

People often think that their special relationships with family, friends, comrades and compatriots, can ground moral reasons. Among these reasons, they understand some to be duties – pro tanto requirements that have genuine weight when they conflict with other considerations. In this paper I ask: what is the underlying moral structure of associative duties? I first consider and reject the orthodox Teleological Welfarist account, which first observes that special relationships are fundamental for human well-being, then claims that we cannot have (...) these relationships, if we do not recognise associative duties, before concluding that we should therefore recognise associative duties. I then introduce a nonteleological alternative, grounded in the Appropriate Response approach to ethical theory. (shrink)

This commentary concentrates on two flaws in Mele's account. The first is Mele's attempt to account for self-deception by appealing to a desire to believe, together with an instrumental belief concerning the means of satisfying this desire. Contrary to Mele, it is argued that such an account requires a recognition on the part of agents that their actions instantiate these means. Second, Mele misidentifies the most essential – and flawed – ingredient of the standard approach to self-deception, the agent's desire (...) to form the belief (the belief that is undermined by the evidence). This ingredient is retained in Mele's own account of self-deception. (shrink)

One of the most profound interactions that can occur between people, apologies have the power to heal humiliations, free the mind from deep-seated guilt, remove the desire for vengeance, and ultimately restore broken relationships. With On Apology, Aaron Lazare offers an eye-opening analysis of this vital interaction, illuminating an often hidden corner of the human heart. He discusses the importance of shame, guilt, and humiliation, the initial reluctance to apologize, the simplicity of the act of apologizing, the spontaneous generosity and (...) forgiveness on the part of the offended, the transfer of power and respect between two parties, and much more. Readers will not only find a wealth of insight that they can apply to their own lives, but also a deeper understanding of national and international conflicts and how we might resolve them. The act of apologizing is quite simply immensely fulfilling. On Apology opens a window onto this common occurrence to reveal the feelings and actions at the heart of this profound interaction. (shrink)

The revisionist critique of conventional just war theory has undoubtedly scored some important victories. Walzer’s elegantly unified defense of combatant legal equality and noncombatant immunity has been seriously undermined. This critical success has not, however, been matched by positive arguments, which when applied to the messy reality of war would deprive states and soldiers of the permission to fight wars that are plausibly thought to be justified. The appeal to law that is sought to resolve this objection by casting it (...) as a practical concern, a pragmatic worry about implementation, which while germane to debates over the laws of war, need not undermine our convictions in the fundamental principles the revisionists advocate. This response is inadequate. Revisionists have not shown that soldiers should obey the laws of war, in practice, when they conflict with their other moral reasons – our worries about application remain intact. Moreover, a theory of war that offers only an account of the laws of war, and a set of fundamental principles developed in abstraction from feasibility constraints, is radically incomplete. We need to know how to apply those fundamental principles, and whether, when applied, they lead to defensible conclusions. Only two options seem to remain. Perhaps the revisionists’ arguments for their chosen fundamental principles are sufficiently compelling that we should stick with them, and accept their troubling conclusions – in other words, accept pacifism. Alternatively, we need to revise our fundamental principles, so that when applied they yield conclusions that we can more confidently endorse. -/- Though it does not save the revisionist view from the responsibility dilemma and cognate objections, the appeal to law does raise an important, and previously inadequately theorized, question – or, rather, resurrects a neglected topic, discussed in depth by historical just war theorists such as Grotius and Vattel. There are good grounds for distinguishing the laws of war from the morality of war, and for adjusting the former to accommodate predictable noncompliance, that should not impact on our account of the latter. Nonetheless, I have argued that there are some profound moral insights underlying both combatant legal equality and noncombatant immunity: specifically, we cannot infer from a combatant’s side having not satisfied jus ad bellum that he may not justifiably use lethal force; and other things equal, it is more wrongful to harm a nonliable noncombatant than to harm a nonliable combatant. (shrink)

Optimism about our ability to enhance societal decision‐making by leaning on Machine Learning (ML) for cheap, accurate predictions has palled in recent years, as these ‘cheap’ predictions have come at significant social cost, contributing to systematic harms suffered by already disadvantaged populations. But what precisely goes wrong when ML goes wrong? We argue that, as well as more obvious concerns about the downstream effects of ML‐based decision‐making, there can be moral grounds for the criticism of these predictions themselves. We introduce (...) and defend a theory of predictive justice, according to which differential model performance for systematically disadvantaged groups can be grounds for moral criticism of the model, independently of its downstream effects. As well as helping resolve some urgent disputes around algorithmic fairness, this theory points the way to a novel dimension of epistemic ethics, related to the recently discussed category of doxastic wrong. (shrink)

Killing civilians is worse than killing soldiers. Although this principle is widely affirmed, recent military practice and contemporary just war theory have undermined it. This article argues that killing an innocent person is worse the likelier it was, when you acted, that he would be innocent: riskier killings are worse than less risky killings. In war, killing innocent civilians is almost always riskier than killing innocent soldiers. So killing innocent civilians is worse than killing innocent soldiers. Since almost all civilians (...) are innocent in war, and since killing innocent civilians is worse than killing liable soldiers, killing civilians is worse than killing soldiers. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that using lethal or otherwise serious force in self-defense is justified only when three conditions are satisfied: first, there are some grounds for the defender to give priority to his own interests over those of the attacker (whether because the attacker has lost the protection of his right to life, for example, or because of the defender’s prerogative to prefer himself to others); second, the harm used is proportionate to the threat thereby averted; third, the harm (...) is necessary to avert that threat. The first and second conditions have been exhaustively discussed, but the third has been oddly neglected. Meanwhile a prominent school of thought has arisen, in the ethics of war, which seeks to ground the justification of killing in war in principles of individual self-defense. They too have failed to offer any substantive analysis of necessity, while at the same time appealing to it when it suits them to do so. In this paper, I attempt a detailed analysis of the necessity constraint on defensive force, and explore the implications of that analysis for the attempt to transpose principles of individual self-defense into the context of warfare. (shrink)

Au sein de la tradition bouddhiste, les questions sur l’existence et la nature du sujet des actions et des pensées reposent non seulement sur une métaphysique de la personne mais aussi sur une ontologie considérant les dharmas (choses et phénomènes) comme vides de nature propre. Cette idée se retrouve dans la doctrine du non-soi, qui nie l’existence d’un quelconque moi comme principe sous-jacent d’une personne, au risque de rendre difficilement compréhensible l’idée de subjectivité, d’agentivité et de responsabilité en matière morale. (...) Il s’agira d’en analyser ici la portée notamment, mais non exclusivement, à travers l’enseignement bouddhiste transmis par Nāgārjuna (env. 150-250), dont la démarche sotériologique appréhende la continuité psychologique de la personne en l’absence d’une nature propre stable. (shrink)

The temple is a pivotal event in the religious life of the different cultures. In the article some aspects of the experience of the temple as sacred space are addressed. Qualitative dimensions of sacred space in Christianity and Islam as their directionality, hierarchy and dynamics are analyzed. In this perspective, it attempts to shed light on the genesis and the different meaning of the bell tower and the minaret as specific configurations of the sacred architecture of Christianity and Islam.Key words: (...) sacred architecture, space of the temple, bell tower, minaret. (shrink)

Ce texte est un ambitieux programme qui se résume en trois idées-forées. Nourri aux sources d'Aristote, de Kant et de Habermas, l'article s'offre avant tout comme un effort de reconstruction-réhabilitation du champ de la pratique face à l'invasion de la rationalité technique. Sur la base de cette reconstruction, il tente une transformation de la philosophie de la technique qui prend ici la dénomination de praktische Philosophie der Technik. Fort de ce qui précède, l'article ambitionne de déterminer les tâches de la (...) praktische Philosophie der Technik qui se réduisent à trois principales : d'abord proposer une définition systématique de la technique qui prenne en compte la spécificité de la technique contemporaine ; ensuite, élaborer une méthode d'approche du phénomène technique et enfin, évaluer la technoscience.This text is an ambitious programme which can be summed up in three idées-forces. Originated from the sources of Aristotle, Kant and Habermas, this paper is first of all an effort of reconstruction-rehabilitation of the practice field with regard to the invasion of the technical rationality. On the basis of this reconstruction, this text attempts a transformation of the philosophy of technology which we may call praktische Philosophie der Technik. In consideration of what precedes, the paper intends to determine the works of praktische Philosophie der Technik that come to three main point: first, to propose a systematic definition of the technology which really takes into account the specificity of the contemporary technology, then to work out an approach method of the technical phenomenon and finally to evaluate the technoscience. (shrink)

A green philosopher's peripeteia.--Physics and metaphysics of music.--The roots of arithmetic.--Critique of new geometrical abstractions.--The philosophical value of science.

This study has a twofold objective: firstly, it aims to examine the main types of argument that have been formulated against human cloning, to identify their presuppositions and to evaluate their strength; secondly, it aims to argue that the most important objections against human cloning are philosophical and religious, in particular the objection that human cloning represents a radical form of disenchantment or an abuse of rationality. The birth of a cloned mammal, a sheep named Dolly, which was announced on (...) 23 February 23 1997, began a wide public debate on the morality of human cloning. I shall try to show that this debate should not be limited only to ethical and legal considerations, since it has more profound ramifications. The science of cloning is rooted in a certain metaphysical background, which, discreetly, but firmly, accompanies its spectacular promises, and which has profound consequences on our metaphysical and religious beliefs. This background needs to be openly discussed and evaluated. Moreover, it warrants the special attention of philosophers and religious thinkers alike. . (shrink)

this paper advances a novel account of part of what justifies killing in war, grounded in the duties we owe to our loved ones to protect them from the severe harms with which war threatens them. It discusses the foundations of associative duties, then identifies the sorts of relationships, and the specific duties that they ground, which can be relevant to the ethics of war. It explains how those associa- tive duties can justify killing in theory—in particular how they can (...) justify overrid- ing the rights to life of some of those who must be killed to win a war. It then shows how these duties can be operationalised in practice: first, showing how soldiers who fight on behalf of their community can act on reasons that apply to the members of that community; second, showing that the argument from associative duties does not prove too much—in particular, that it does not license the intentional killing of noncombatants in war. (shrink)

In 1922, Cartan introduced in differential geometry, besides the Riemannian curvature, the new concept of torsion. He visualized a homogeneous and isotropic distribution of torsion in three dimensions (3d) by the “helical staircase”, which he constructed by starting from a 3d Euclidean space and by defining a new connection via helical motions. We describe this geometric procedure in detail and define the corresponding connection and the torsion. The interdisciplinary nature of this subject is already evident from Cartan’s discussion, since he (...) argued—but never proved—that the helical staircase should correspond to a continuum with constant pressure and constant internal torque. We discuss where in physics the helical staircase is realized: (i) In the continuum mechanics of Cosserat media, (ii) in (fairly speculative) 3d theories of gravity, namely (a) in 3d Einstein-Cartan gravity—this is Cartan’s case of constant pressure and constant intrinsic torque—and (b) in 3d Poincaré gauge theory with the Mielke-Baekler Lagrangian, and, eventually, (iii) in the gauge field theory of dislocations of Lazar et al., as we prove for the first time by arranging a suitable distribution of screw dislocations. Our main emphasis is on the discussion of dislocation field theory. (shrink)

_How constructions of time shape political beliefs about what is possible—and what is inevitable_ To secure power in a crisis, leaders must sell deep change as a means to future good. But how could we know the future? Nomi Claire Lazar draws on stories across a range of cultures and contexts, ancient and modern, to show how leaders use constructions of time to frame events. These frames carry an implicit promise to secure or subvert an expected future, shaping belief in (...) what is possible—and what is inevitable. “Ranging imaginatively across history and geography, this elegant book probes temporal sources of order and transformation. Its analytical wisdom discloses how calendars and representations of time shape political legitimacy, dispositions, and action.”—Ira I. Katznelson, author of _Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time_ “Great political leaders, for good or ill, seek to shape our daily lives by playing with time itself. That is the central insight of this elegant, erudite volume, one that means I will henceforth listen to speeches and manifestos with new ears and new tools to rebut them.”—Anne-Marie Slaughter, President and CEO, New America “Nomi Lazar gives us a fascinating exploration of the political construction of time itself, as structured by calendars, dating systems, and other mechanisms used for legitimation, revolution, and a myriad of other political purposes. A memorable and endlessly interesting book.”—Adrian Vermeule, Harvard Law School. (shrink)

Deontologists have been slow to address decision-making under risk and uncertainty, no doubt because the standard approaches to non-moral decision theory appear superficially similar to consequentialist moral reasoning. I identify some central tenets of simple decision theory and show that they should not put deontologists off, before showing where we should go next to develop a comprehensive deontological decision theory.

Killing in War presents the Moral Equality of Combatants with serious, and in my view insurmountable problems. Absent some novel defense, this thesis is now very difficult to sustain. But this success is counterbalanced by the strikingly revisionist implications of McMahan’s account of the underlying morality of killing in war, which forces us into one of two unattractive positions, contingent pacifism, or near-total war. In this article, I have argued that his efforts to mitigate these controversial implications fail. The reader (...) is left stranded: to reach plausible conclusions, Walzer deployed an implausible conception of our rights to life; McMahan’s more rigorous account of those rights generates untenable conclusions. Absent new developments, it seems that the prospects for grounding the ethics of war in individual rights are poor: any theory of our rights to life that is sufficiently indiscriminate to work in the chaos of war is not discriminating enough to be a plausible theory of our rights to life. Perhaps by rejecting the ideal of the rights-respecting war altogether we might develop an alternative theory of justified warfare, which marries theoretical soundness with conclusions that we can more confidently support. (shrink)

How does a subject who is competent to detect the irrationality of a belief that p, form her belief against weighty or even conclusive evidence to the contrary? The phenomenon of self-deception threatens a widely shared view of beliefs according to which they do not regularly correspond to emotions and evaluative attitudes. Accordingly, the most popular answer to this question is that the belief formed in self-deception is caused by an intention to form that belief. On this view, the state (...) of self-deception is taken to be a calculated outcome involving a person's intentional manipulation of her own thoughts. I argue that this answer is false and forms an impediment towards making sense of self-deception. I show that, contrary to philosophical prejudice, emotions and desires exert vast and systematic effects on the formation of beliefs. In this, and other, sections of the article, the results of experimental work are brought forward. Self-deception is portrayed here as resembling numerous instances of belief formation which are regularly affected by motivational factors. I argue that self-deceptive beliefs are direct expressions of the subject's wishes, fears and hopes. Qua beliefs which mostly correspond to such factors (rather than to evidence), self-deceptive states are a kind of fantasy. (shrink)

This article analyses the phenomenon of ‘micro-domination’, in which a series of dominated choices are individually inconsequential for a person’s freedom but collectively consequential. Where the choices concerned are objectively inconsequential, micro- domination poses a problem for ‘objective threshold’ accounts of domination which either prioritise particularly bad forms of domination or exclude powers that do not risk causing serious harm to their victims. Where the choices concerned are subjectively inconsequential to the victim, micro-domination poses a problem for the common republican (...) strategy of creating arenas of contestation for victims of domination, which rely on victims objecting strongly enough to a dominating relationship to sound the alarm. This kind of invigilation may systematically fail victims of micro-domination. Throughout the article, I suggest some ways of better accounting for and responding to cases of micro-domination. (shrink)

Vivian Liska, German-Jewish Thought and Its Afterlife: A Tenuous Legacy, Bloomington, University of Indiana Press, 2017 Lazar Atanasković.

Wars are large-scale conflicts between organized groups of belligerents, which involve suffering, devastation, and brutality unlike almost anything else in human experience. Whatever one’s other beliefs about morality, all should agree that the horrors of war are all but unconscionable, and that warfare can be justified only if we have some compel- ling account of what is worth fighting for, which can justify contributing, as individu- als and as groups, to this calamitous endeavour. Although this question should obviously be central (...) to both philosophical and politi- cal discussion about war, it is at the forefront of neither. In recent years, philosophical discussion of warfare has bloomed, but the debate has focused on whom we may kill, on the assumption that our aims are justified.1 Political debate, meanwhile, is more concerned with matters of prudence, international law, and public justification, than with reassessing what is worth fighting for. For wars of intervention to halt or prevent massive humanitarian crises, this gap is not so troubling. When warfare is the only means to prevent the mass killing or enslavement of the innocent, the purposes of military force are clear enough (though undoubtedly many other problems remain). The problem is more pressing, how- ever, for the justification of national defence.3 Although common-sense morality and international law view national defence as the paradigm case of justified warfare, grounding this consensus is surprisingly difficult.4 We typically believe that any state is justified in using lethal force to protect its territory against any form of uninvited military incursion by any other state. And yet we lack a good argument to explain why this should be so. In this chapter, I explain why one familiar and otherwise plausible approach to the justification of killing in war cannot adequately ground common-sense views of permissible national defence.5 Reductionists believe that justified warfare reduces to an aggregation of acts that are justified under ordinary principles of interpersonal morality.6 The standard form of reductionism focuses on the principles governing killing in ordinary life, specifically those that justify intentional killing in self- and other-defence, and unintended but foreseen (for short, collateral) killing as a lesser evil. Justified warfare, on this view, is no more than the coextension of multiple acts justified under these two principles. Reductionism is the default philosophical approach to thinking through the ethics of killing in war. It makes perfect sense to ask what principles govern permissible kill- ing in general, before applying them to the particular context of war. If it cannot deliver a plausible set of conclusions about when national defence is permitted, then we must either revise our beliefs about which conclusions count as plausible, or else face the significant challenge of developing a different theoretical model for justifying war- fare—an exceptionalist model, which views war as an exception to the regular moral landscape, to which principles apply which apply to nothing else but war.7 We must show, in other words, that there is something worth fighting for in wars of national defence, which is not engaged when we use force in any other context. The chapter proceeds as follows. Section 2.2 sets out the argument against reduc- tionism.8 Section 2.3 considers and rebuts one common response to the argument, which has often been thought sufficient grounds to disregard its conclusion. Section 2.4 then asks whether a modified reductionism would survive unscathed by the argu- ment. Finally, section 2.5 sets out some desiderata on a plausible exceptionalist alterna- tive. Section 2.6 concludes. (shrink)

Many of us believe (1) Saving a life is more important than averting any number of headaches. But what about risky cases? Surely: (2) In a single choice, if the risk of death is low enough, and the number of headaches at stake high enough, one should avert the headaches rather than avert the risk of death. And yet, if we will face enough iterations of cases like that in (2), in the long run some of those small risks of (...) serious harms will surely eventuate. And yet: (3) Isn't it still permissible for us to run these repeated risks, despite that knowledge? After all, if it were not, then many of the risky activities that we standardly think permissible would in fact be impermissible. Nobody has yet offered a principle that can accommodate all of 1-3. In this paper, I show that we can accommodate all of these judgements, by taking into account both ex ante and ex post perspectives. In doing so, I clear aside an important obstacle to a viable deontological decision theory. (shrink)

Resumen: El templo es un acontecimiento crucial en la vida religiosa de las diferentes culturas. En el artículo se abordan unos aspectos de la vivencia del templo como espacio sagrado. Se analizan dimensiones cualitativas del espacio sacro en el Cristianismo y en el Islam como su direccionalidad, jerarquía y dinamismo. En tal perspectiva se intenta arrojar luz sobre la génesis y el diferente significado del campanario y del minarete como configuraciones de la arquitectura sacra del Cristianismo y del Islam.Palabras clave: (...) arquitectura sacra, espacio del templo, campanario, minarete. (shrink)

The article brings together a Charles Bronson false western and Jacques Lacan’s theory of the four discourses in order to illustrate the excessive symbolization of the hysteric jouissance, in its manifestation as a quest against satisfaction, a quest for the perfect Other. Employing Freud’s concepts of death drive and repetition compulsion, the hysteric position is further distinguished from both the obsessional subject and non-hysteric woman, which has access to a non-phallic, supplementary jouissance. A thief that stole a widow’s heart is (...) believed dead, and she uses his death to raise their short relation to a perfect, ideal level. When the thief returns, he is rejected, so that she can maintain the absolute, symbolic love for his dead-perfect alter ego. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss the potential of wearable structures to provide effective social commentaries and address the political representation of refugees, migrants, and nomads. We take Lucy Orta’s Refuge Wear as an occasion to address a series of socio-political considerations around wearables, textiles, communication, and technology, as well as the role of urban and social environments in determining architectures of mobility. Finally, we provide a critique of framing concepts such as relational aesthetics, heterotopias, nomadology, or deterritorialization—to propose a rethinking (...) of wearables based on the idea of critical habitats and responsible resource-based philosophies. (shrink)

This study aimed to investigate the possible moderating role of sexual sanctification in the context of sexual dysfunctions and sexual and psychological well-being, particularly examining potential gender differences. Data were collected from 1207 Israeli adult women and men in cohabiting relationships for at least 6 months using an online survey. Participants provided information on sexual functioning, and measures included non-theistic sexual sanctification, sexual and psychological distress, and sexual and relationship satisfaction. Measures of religious behavior and belief were also included as (...) control variables. Statistical analyses included moderation models to assess the moderating function of sexual sanctification on the associations between sexual dysfunctions and the outcome measures. Separate analyses were performed for men and women. Findings confirmed significant associations between sexual dysfunctions and all aspects of sexual and psychological well-being included in the study for women and men. Sexual sanctification was found to moderate the association between sexual dysfunctions and sexual and psychological distress, particularly for men, where at higher levels of sanctification, the association between dysfunction and distress was more pronounced. However, sexual sanctification did not significantly moderate the relationships between sexual dysfunctions and sexual or relationship satisfaction for either gender. The results suggest that, although sexual sanctification is often associated with positive outcomes, it may also exacerbate the emotional impact of sexual dysfunctions, particularly in those who perceive their sexual experiences as sacred. Gender-specific patterns further emphasize the importance of tailored interventions that consider the different ways men and women experience and interpret sexual dysfunctions within the context of their sexual perceptions. (shrink)

I argue that riskier killings of innocent people are, other things equal, objectively worse than less risky killings. I ground these views in considerations of disrespect and security. Killing someone more riskily shows greater disrespect for him by more grievously undervaluing his standing and interests, and more seriously undermines his security by exposing a disposition to harm him across all counterfactual scenarios in which the probability of killing an innocent person is that high or less. I argue that the salient (...) probabilities are the agent’s sincere, sane, subjective probabilities, and that this thesis is relevant whether your risk-taking pertains to the probability of killing a person or to the probability that the person you kill is not liable to be killed. I then defend the view’s relevance to intentional killing; show how it differs from an account of blameworthiness; and explain its significance for all-things-considered justification and justification under uncertainty. (shrink)

Deontologists have long been upbraided for lacking an account of justified decision- making under risk and uncertainty. One response is to develop a deontological decision theory—a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for an act’s being permissible given an agent’s imperfect information. In this article, I show that deontologists can make more use of regular decision theory than some might have thought, but that we must adapt decision theory to accommodate agent- centered options—permissions to favor or sacrifice our own interests, (...) when doing so is overall morally worse. Accommodating options requires more than just amend- ing the decision-theoretic ‘value function’. We must change the decision rule as well. (shrink)

How should deontologists concerned with the ethics of killing apply their moral theory when we don’t know all the facts relevant to the permissibility of our action? Though the stakes couldn’t be higher, and uncertainty is endemic where killing is concerned, few deontologists have an answer to this question. In this paper I canvass two possibilities: that we should apply a threshold standard, equivalent to the ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ standard applied for criminal punishment; and that we should fit our (...) deontological ethical theory into the apparatus of decision theory. I show that the first approach faces insurmountable obstacles, while the second holds much more promise for deontologists than they might first have assumed. (shrink)

Moderating effects of religiousness and spirituality on the relations between sexual and non-sexual dyadic communication with sexual and marital satisfaction were examined. Three hundred forty-two married Jewish women responded to self-report measures. Religiousness moderated the relations between both sexual and non-sexual communication with marital satisfaction—for the less religious these relations were stronger in comparison with the more religious—but not with sexual satisfaction. Sexual communication had a unique contribution to the prediction of sexual satisfaction while both types of communication demonstrated unique (...) contributions to the prediction of marital satisfaction. The implications of these findings on the role of dyadic communication in relational satisfaction and the meaning of sexual and marital satisfaction for the more and less religious are discussed. (shrink)

Universal basic income is increasingly proposed as a simple answer to the problem of domination at work—one policy whose knock-on effects will transform the balance of power between workers and employers. I argue against such ‘UBI-first’ approaches. Compared to UBI proposals for other purposes, a UBI sufficient or near-sufficient for minimising domination at work would be especially demanding in two ways. First, the level of the grant would be more demanding compared to UBIs suitable for other purposes, in order for (...) workers to be able to credibly threaten to leave their jobs. Secondly, the maintenance of the grant must also meet strict criteria. The demanding level of the grant must be effectively secured against reduction, allowing workers to plan on its long-term acceptability; and in order to avoid increased state domination it must assume the status of an entitlement rather than a gift that may be withdrawn, through stabilisation against political change or some other means. These difficulties render UBI-first approaches doubtful at best, and an unhelpful distraction from other, more fruitful strategies at worst. (shrink)