How do we teach for human dignity in a context where life is, generally speaking, not treated as precious? How do we carve spaces for humanity amidst inhumane contexts? In this paper, five experienced teachers share how they work from the cracks to expand spaces for human dignity in their schools. They write and act as teacher-philosophers, dually considering it means to teach for human dignity and practically speaking how it can be done.

Philosophers like to worry about luck. And well they should. Luck poses potential difficulties for knowledge, moral appraisal, and freedom. The primary target of this paper will be the last of these concerns . Recent arguments from luck have been levied against libertarian accounts of free will, including agent-causal ones. One general goal of this paper will be to demonstrate the truth of an often overlooked claim about responsibility-undermining luck. Part of this task will include illustrating what is genuinely worrisome (...) about luck in the context of free will. It will turn out that the problem is not fundamentally a problem of explanation. Another aim will be to argue that the truth of this claim about luck reveals a problem for event-causal libertarianism but has yet to reveal a problem for the agent-causal view. For the purposes of this paper, it will be assumed that luck does indeed undermine free action and moral responsibility. But it will be argued that agent-caused actions have not been shown to be "lucky.". (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against Peter van Inwagen’s claim (in “Free Will Remains a Mystery”), that agent-causal views of free will could do nothing to solve the problem of free will (specifically, the problem of chanciness). After explaining van Inwagen’s argument, I argue that he does not consider all possible manifestations of the agent-causal position. More importantly, I claim that, in any case, van Inwagen appears to have mischaracterized the problem in some crucial ways. Once we are clear on (...) the true nature of the problem of chanciness, agent-causal views do much to eradicate it. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue, contra Prinz, that empathy is a crucial component of our moral lives. In particular, I argue that empathy is sometimes epistemologically necessary for identifying the right action; that empathy is sometimes psychologically necessary for motivating the agent to perform the right action; and that empathy is sometimes necessary for the agent to be most morally praiseworthy for an action. I begin by explaining what I take empathy to be. I then discuss some alleged problems (...) for empathy and explain why some argue that empathy is unnecessary and sometimes even problematic in the moral domain. Next, I criticize a prominent alternative to an empathy-based morality. Finally, I argue that that empathy is sometimes epistemologically and psychologically necessary for doing the right thing and is sometimes necessary for moral worth. I conclude with a discussion of the important role of empathy in our everyday lives. (shrink)

This article examines the role of historical science in clarifying the causal structure of complex natural processes. I reject the pervasive view that historical science does not uncover natural regularities. To show why, I consider an important methodological distinction in geology between uniformitarianism and actualism; methodological actualism, the preferred method of geologists, often relies on historical reconstructions to test the stability of currently observed processes. I provide several case studies that illustrate this, including one that highlights how historical narratives can (...) improve predictive models. (shrink)

A-theories of time postulate a fundamental distinction between the present and other times. This distinction manifests in what A-theorists take to exist, their accounts of property change, and their views about the appropriate temporal logic. In this dissertation, I argue for a particular formulation of the A-theory that dispenses with change in existence and makes tense operators an optional formal tool for expressing the key theses. I call my view the minimal A-theory. The first chapter introduces the debate. The second (...) chapter offers an extended, logic-based argument against more traditional A-theories. The third and fourth chapters develop my alternative proposal. The final chapter considers a problem for A-theorists who think the contents of our attitudes reflect changes in the world. (shrink)

Should you care less about your distant future? What about events in your life that have already happened? How should the passage of time affect your planning and assessment of your life? Most of us think it is irrational to ignore the future but harmless to dismiss the past. But this book argues that rationality requires temporal neutrality.

Artist Meghan Moe Beitiks considers her first-person perspective of entanglements of light and air during the 2020–21 pandemic from her position in academia and Florida.

Central to Confucian teachings in the Analects is the ideal of self-cultivation—in particular that of the junzi 君子 (“gentleman” “nobleman”) ideal. At the same time that Confucius recommends that individuals follow such an ideal, he also places limits on who actually might attain it. By examining statements involving such terms as the junzi, the “petty man” ( xiao ren 小人), and the “masses” ( min 民, or zhong 眾), or common people, this essay highlights the sociopolitical and gender restrictions informing (...) one of the most basic, yet lofty, ethical goals of the text. A new means is also offered of discussing these socially delimited discrepancies in moral cultivation by referring to leading, or self-determining agency in association with junzi on the one hand, and to conformist agency for women and common people on the other. (shrink)

Rare genetic diseases collectively impact millions of individuals in the United States. These patients and their families share many challenges including delayed diagnosis, lack of knowledgeable providers, and limited economic incentives to develop new therapies for small patient groups. As such, rare disease patients and families often must rely on advocacy, including both self-advocacy to access clinical care and public advocacy to advance research. However, these demands raise serious concerns for equity, as both care and research for a given disease (...) can depend on the education, financial resources, and social capital available to the patients in a given community. In this article, we utilize three case examples to illustrate ethical challenges at the intersection of rare diseases, advocacy and justice, including how reliance on advocacy in rare disease may drive unintended consequences for equity. We conclude with a discussion of opportunities for diverse stakeholders to begin to address these challenges. (shrink)

Many scholars of early China agree that the fourth century bce witnessed a surge in intellectual interest in concepts that have been dubbed the self, “subjectivity,” the private realm, and the body. As such a sphere came into greater focus in intellectual circles, so did a new discourse that evaluated what it meant to benefit or deprive the self and its related parts. The famous statement purportedly by Yang Zhu 楊朱 (or Yangzi 楊子) that claims he was not willing to (...) pluck out a single hair in order to benefit the world reminds us of such a discourse.2 Around the same time, there also emerged discussions that polarized various ideas of self and the private sphere (si 私), on the one hand, ver- sus the state and the public sphere (gong 公), on the other, especially in circles that concerned themselves with public policy and statecraft, but also more generally. These discussions formed a forceful counterpoint to the discourses involving human subjectivity and the body. Indeed, their open dislike of the influence of private, individual, and personal realms in politics strongly suggests that the statecraft writers were re- acting to and in dialog with those intellectuals who engaged discussion of subjectivity, the self, and its agencies. (shrink)

Although a great deal of research addresses the neural basis of deliberate and intentional emotion-regulation strategies, less attention has been paid to the neural mechanisms involved in implicit forms of emotion regulation. Behavioural research suggests that romantically involved participants implicitly derogate the attractiveness of alternative partners, and the present study sought to examine the neural basis of this effect. Romantically committed participants in the present study were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while indicating whether they would consider each (...) of a series of attractive (or unattractive) opposite-sex others as a hypothetical dating partner both while under cognitive load and no cognitive load. Successful derogation of attractive others during the no cognitive load compared to the cognitive load trials corresponded with increased activation in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and posterior dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (pDMPFC), and decreased activation in the ventral striatum, a pattern similar to those reported in deliberate emotion-regulation studies. Activation in the VLPFC and pDMPFC was not significant in the cognitive load condition, indicating that while the derogation effect may be implicit, it nonetheless requires cognitive resources. Additionally, activation in the right VLPFC correlated with participants' level of relationship investment. These findings suggest that the RVLPFC may play a particularly important role in implicitly regulating the emotions that threaten the stability of a romantic relationship. (shrink)

Timothy Williamson thinks that every object is a necessary, eternal existent. In defense of his view, Williamson appeals primarily to considerations from modal and tense logic. While I am uncertain about his modal claims, I think there are good metaphysical reasons to believe permanentism: the principle that everything always exists. B-theorists of time and change have long denied that objects change with respect to unqualified existence. But aside from Williamson, nearly all A-theorists defend temporaryism: the principle that there are temporary (...) existents. I think A-theorists are better off without this added commitment, but I will not argue for that in any great detail here. Instead, I will contend that a very tempting A-theoretic argument for temporaryism is unsound. In the first half of the paper, I will develop the Moorean “common sense” argument for temporaryism and dispute its central premise, namely that temporaryism is a valid generalization from highly plausible beliefs about change. I will argue that given the pervasive vagueness in our ordinary beliefs about change and the background commitments of all A-theories, no party can claim to be the common sense view because no party can accommodate most of our common sense beliefs about change in existence. In the second half of the paper, I will propose a permanentist A-theory that explains all change over time as a species of property change. I call it the minimal A-theory, since it dispenses with the change in existence assumption. As we'll see, the permanentist alternative performs well enough in explaining our ordinary beliefs about change, and it has better prospects for answering some objections commonly levied against A-theories. (shrink)

The Taiyi shengshui 太一生水 is one of only a few texts in the early Chinese corpus to present a detailed cosmogony, one that traces the beginnings of the cosmos back to a variety of spiritual and natural forces, such as the divinity Taiyi and water. My primary question in this chapter is not to ask what that cosmogony was, but why such a cosmogonic text might have been written in the first place. Why in particular did authors in Warring States (...) China deem it necessary to go all the way back to the very beginning of everything to try to situate their thought and recommendations for human action? By comparing the Taiyi shengshui to various other cosmogonies in the textual tradition, we arrive at interesting insights into both the overarching moral agenda of the text as well as its specific contributions to cosmological thinking in early China. (shrink)

Various authors have attempted to understand knowledge-wh—or knowledge ascriptions that include an interrogative complement. I present and explain some of the analyses offered so far and argue that each view faces some problems. I then present and explain a newanalysis of knowledge-wh that avoids these problems and that offers several other advantages. Finally I raise some problems for invariantism about knowledge-wh and I argue thatcontextualism about knowledge-wh fits nicely with a very natural understanding of the nature of questions.

In this issue, Lynch and colleagues discuss lessons learned from the “Operation Warp Speed” response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States—both about what to do and what not to do fo...

Pulling from theories of social exchange, deonance, and fairness heuristics, this study focuses on the relationship between overall justice climate and both the prosocial and deviant behaviors of groups. Specifically, it considers two contextual boundary conditions on this effect—corporate social responsibility and group moral identity. Results from a laboratory experiment are presented, which show a significant effect for overall justice climate and a two-way interaction between overall justice climate and CSR on group-level prosocial and deviant behaviors, and a marginally significant (...) interaction of group moral identity with overall justice climate on group deviance. The implications of contextual influences on workplace ethics and justice are discussed. (shrink)

The question of whether humans are free to make their own decisions has long been debated and it continues to be a controversial topic today. In _Free Will: The Basics_ readers are provided with a clear and accessible introduction to this central but challenging philosophical problem. The questions which are discussed include: Does free will exist? Or is it illusory? Can we be free even if everything is determined by a chain of causes? If our actions are not determined, does (...) this mean they are just random or a matter of luck? In order to have the kind of freedom required for moral responsibility, must we have alternatives? What can recent developments in science tell us about the existence of free will? Because these questions are discussed without prejudicing one view over others and all technical terminology is clearly explained, this book is an ideal introduction to free will for the uninitiated._ _. (shrink)

Notre Dame Philosophy professors Meghan Sullivan and Paul Blaschko have gone deep with that work in their wildly popular and influential undergraduate course GOD AND THE GOOD LIFE, in which they wrestle with the big questions about how to live and what makes life meaningful. Now they invite us into the classroom to tackle such issues as what justifies your beliefs, whether you should practice a religion, and what sacrifices you should make for others--as well as to investigate what (...) Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Kant, and Murdoch have to say about how to live well. Sullivan and Blaschko teach us how to reason through real-world case studies by doing the timeless work of philosophy like escaping our own caves, learning to doubt everything, asking strong questions, grasping our own purpose, and wrestling with the problem of evil and the existence of God. For at least the past 2500 years philosophers have taught that goal-seeking is an essential part of what it is to be human--and crucially that we could find our own good life by asking better questions. Their virtue ethics approach resonates profoundly in our own moment. Philosophers know that our "good life plan" is one that we as individuals need to be constantly and actively writing. In that work, we can achieve some meaningful control even if the world keeps throwing surprises our way. THE GOOD LIFE is a winning guide to tackling the big questions of being human with the wisdom of the ages. (shrink)

Jc Beall offers a novel resolution to worries about Christ’s contradictory nature by introducing an account of logical consequence that allows for true contradictions. However, to prevent his view from exploding into heresy, Beall must deny that conditionals detach. But without detachment, the language fails to capture other true entailments which must be included in a complete account of Christ. Beall faces a dilemma, then, between heresy and inadequacy.

Literary Forms of Argument in Early China examines the functions of rhetorical markers and devices as well as the patterns and larger modes structuring various styles of early Chinese argumentation. The nine contributors to the volume each present tight analyses of specific compositional or literary aspects of persuasion, hoping to demonstrate how an unabashed focus on the formal elements of philosophical writing might come to the aid of, or even more drastically alter and transform, philosophical interpretation. The volume includes essays (...) by the following nine scholars, who are at once a mixture of philologists, textual and literary specialists, and intellectual historians: Rudolph Wagner, Andrew Plaks, David... (shrink)

The Guodian texts that appear to follow a Ruist line of thought are noteworthy in their special emphasis on the relationship between the spiritual world of Heaven and the world of humans. The Wuxing 五行 text is one of the main texts that clearly prioritizes such a divine–human connection. This chapter examines the way in which the author of the Wuxing establishes “Sagacity” as a key psychological marker of moral realization—associated with the divine Way of Heaven. I show how Sagacity (...) epitomizes the ideal of harmony among the Five Conducts by merging human, mundane realms of moral thought and feeling with divine apprehension of moral perfection. Through an analysis of musical metaphors that reveal the nature of the human–Heaven relationship in the human body, I demonstrate how some early Chinese Ruist thinkers grounded their ethics in a highly spiritual attitude towards the human psyche. (shrink)

In this dissertation I attempt to develop a better understanding of knowledge and belief. In Chapter 1 I offer an analysis of knowledge-wh . I argue that knowledge-wh ascriptions express that a subject stands in the knowledge relation to a question--where to stand in this knowledge relation to a question is to know an answer to the question. Additionally I adopt a contextualist picture of knowledge- wh . I raise some problems for invariantism about knowledge- wh and I argue that (...) contextualism about knowledge-wh fits nicely with a very natural understanding of the semantics of interrogatives, and the nature of questions. In Chapter 2 consider whether knowledge-how is importantly different from knowledge-wh . I argue that 'knows how' is ambiguous, but on one sense knowledge-how ascriptions should be treated just like the other knowledge ascriptions with interrogative complements. Hence this type of knowledge-how is not fundamentally distinct from knowledge-wh . In Chapter 3 I reconsider various theories about knowledge and knowledge- that ascriptions in light of our conclusions about knowledge- wh ascriptions. It seems that doing so can help adjudicate between contextualism and invariantism about knowledge-that and may help determine which form of contextualism about knowledge-that is the most plausible. In Chapter 4 I consider whether there is some fact about the nature of the attitudes that determines the verb's complement selection. Some have suggested that the embedding behavior of attitude verbs is correlated with the factivity of the attitude verb. I evaluate this suggestion and the possible explanations for the embedding behavior of the various attitude verbs. I attempt to determine the extent to which the factivity of verbs is correlated with their embedding behavior and I attempt to explain why factivity plays such an important role. I argue that these facts can provide important insights into the nature of the attitudes. In Chapter 5 I explore the way in which knowledge and action are related in an important way. I consider the claim that it is appropriate to treat the proposition that p as a reason for action if and only if you know that p . I first present and explain the principle. Next I consider some objections to the proposal, and I argue that none of these objections is successful. I claim that the contrastivist, in particular, has several moves available in the face of the alleged problems with this Reason-Knowledge principle. (shrink)

Power is widely acknowledged as central to Thomas Hobbes’ political philosophy. There is ongoing debate over whether singular human beings or, instead, plural relationships, are the true source of power. After tracing the debate between the individualist and relationist interpretations, I offer an alternative option which, I argue, can accommodate both the individual and the relation together. Hobbesian power, I contend, is an appearance of a human being as having a means to satisfy his desires and, hence, while power belongs (...) to an individual, it only appears in relation to another who recognizes him as such. In closing, I reflect on the political implications of this notion of power in connection with desire. (shrink)

Following the 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report, which detailed the sexual abuse of clergy members, many have questioned the value of personal institutional commitment to the Catholic Church, preferring instead more individualistic expressions of faith. Alongside the sex abuse crisis, the age of free information makes the Church’s epistemology appear antiquated. This article explores the individualistic versus community-based practice of Catholicism, drawing a distinction between private conversion versus public conversion. The article offers a defense of public conversion, arguing it explains (...) the rationality of conversion and offers a solution to the problem of divine hiddenness. Using details from her own faith journey, Sullivan explores why God graces us with less perspicuous knowledge, causing subluminous conversions, as opposed to the more glaring, which leads to luminous conversions. Sullivan suggests that we obtain knowledge of God by loving one another, which takes place in the framework of the institutional Church. She subsequently uses this Church-making theodicy to offer five ideas about how we might engage the Church institutionally as Catholic philosophers. (shrink)

Systems of Pain/Networks of Resilience is a transcript of a video, a chapter in an interdisciplinary research project. Artist Meghan Moe Beitiks interviewed people with personal or pro...

A-theorists think there is a fundamental difference between the present and other times. This concern shows up in what kinds of properties they take to be instantiated, what objects they think exist and how they formalize their views. Nearly every contemporary A-theorist assumes that her metaphysics requires a tense logic – a logic with operators like and. In this paper, I show that there is at least one viable A-theory that does not require a logic with tense operators. And I (...) will argue that three common indispensability arguments for tense operators are unsound. (shrink)

A‐theorists of time postulate a deep distinction between the present, past and future. Settling on an appropriate logic for such a view is no easy matter. This Philosophy Compass article describes one of the most vexing formal problems facing A‐theorists. It is commonly thought that A‐theories can only be formally expressed in a tense logic: a logic with operators like P and F . And it seems natural to think that we live in a world where objects come to exist (...) and cease to exist as time passes. Indeed, this is typically a key component of the most prominent kind of A‐theory, presentism. But the temporary existence assumption cannot be upheld in any tense logic with a standard quantification theory. I will explain the problem and outline the philosophical and logical considerations that generate it. I will then consider two possible solutions to the problem – one that targets our logic of quantification and one that targets our assumptions about change. I survey the costs of each solution. (shrink)

The work of Sankary et al. (2022) provides valuable insights into the experiences of participants exiting brain device research. Empirical bioethics research such as this is critical to understandi...

The rapid advances in genomics over the last decade have come to fruition amid intense public discussions of justice in medicine and health care. While much emphasis has been placed on increasing diversity in genomics research participation, an overly narrow focus on recruitment eschews recognition of the disparities in health care that will ultimately shape access to the benefits of genomic medicine. In this essay, we suggest that achieving a just genomics, both now and in the future, requires an explicit (...) ELSI of translation—normative and pragmatic scholarship that embraces the interconnectedness of research and clinical care and centers the obligations of researchers, institutions, and funders to mitigate inequities throughout the translational pipeline. We propose core principles to guide an ELSI of translation and to ensure that this work balances the value of the generalizable knowledge that genomics research generates and the value of the individuals and communities who make this research possible. (shrink)