Claims that pornography cannot be art typically depend on controversial claims about essential value differences (moral, aesthetic) between pornography and art. In this paper, I offer a value-neutral exclusionary claim, showing pornography to be descriptively at odds with art. I then show how my view is an improvement on similar claims made by Jerrold Levinson. Finally I draw parallels between art and pornography and art and advertising as well as show that my view is consistent with (...) our typical usage of the term “pornographic art.”. (shrink)

Philosophers and scientists propose the idea that plants are cognitive, which has been met with criticisms. These criticisms focus on the fact that plants do not possess the properties traditionally associated with cognition. By contrast, several proponents introduce novel ways to conceptualize cognition. How should we make sense of this debate? In this paper, I argue that the plant cognition debate is not about whether plants meet a set of well-delineated and agreed-upon criteria according to which they count as cognitive. (...) Rather, many proponents are hypothesizing about cognition. They construe COGNITION not as an expression of what cognition is, but rather as a conjecture about what cognition might be. These conjectures orient research that can uncover novel similarities amongst the phenomena to which these concepts extend. In defending this view, I argue that investigating plant cognition is valuable, even if the results of these investigations lead us to reject the claim that plants are cognitive. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to describe and defend jurisprudence as an enterprise of theorising about law that is distinct from what is now understood as legal philosophy in the Anglophone world. Jurisprudence must draw on legal philosophy but also from many other resources. It should be an open quest for juristically significant insights about law. Its purpose is to inform and guide the juristic task of making organised social regulation a valuable practice, rooted and effective in the (...) specific contexts and historical conditions in which it exists but also aimed at serving demands for justice and security through regulation, as these perennial values are understood in their time and place, and as they might be further clarified and reconciled as legal ideals. (shrink)

Current debates about the replication crisis in psychology take it for granted that direct replication is valuable and focus their attention on questionable research practices in regard to statistical analyses. This paper takes a broader look at the notion of replication as such. It is argued that all experimentation/replication involves individuation judgments and that research in experimental psychology frequently turns on probing the adequacy of such judgments. In this vein, I highlight the ubiquity of conceptual and material questions in (...) research, and I argue that replication is not as central to psychological research as it is sometimes taken to be. (shrink)

In recent discussions of the so-called “value of truth,” it is assumed that what is valuable in the relevant way is not the things that are true, but only various states and activities associated with those things: knowing them, investigating them, etc. I consider all the arguments I know of for this assumption, and argue that none provide good reason to accept it. By examining these arguments, we gain a better appreciation of what the value of the things that (...) are true would be, and why it would matter. We also encounter three indications that what is true really is valuable, each of which provides a promising starting point for a serious argument with that conclusion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Some Pornography May Be ArtMimi VasilakiIn "Why Pornography Can't Be Art,"1 Christy Mag Uidhir argues, as the title declares, that pornography cannot be art and thus that pornography is not art. According to Uidhir, this is because of the different ways in which pornography and art relate to contents and purposes. His argument for the impossibility of something being both art and (...) class='Hi'>pornography at the same time runs roughly as follows. If something is pornography, then it has the purpose of sexually arousing (some audience) and that purpose is manner-inspecific. If something is art, then if it has a purpose, then that purpose is manner-specific. So when the purpose is sexual arousal, then it is manner-specific. Thus sexual arousal by art is manner-specific and sexual arousal by pornography is manner-inspecific. Therefore, Uidhir concludes, something cannot be both art and pornography.Here I argue that although this conclusion seems plausible, Uidhir fails to make a strong case for it because he does not establish that the purposes of art are necessarily "manner-specific" as opposed to the purpose of pornography, which is necessarily "manner-inspecific." That is, the paper does not make it plausible either that pornography has manner-inspecific purposes or that art has a manner-specific purpose.IUidhir's exclusivity doctrine is intrinsically implausible. Let us take for example a work mentioned in the article, Red Butt from Jeff Koons's [End Page 228] kitsch photo series of "Made in Heaven." Uidhir writes, "part and parcel of understanding Red Butt is recognizing that it depicts a sexual act involving Jeff Koons and Cicciolina.... Failure to do so precludes satisfaction of the purpose of the work" (p. 198). Here he rightly says that the audience cannot interpret the work without the prior knowledge of who is depicted in Red Butt: the audience must recognize the sexual act and the subjects of the photo as the artist and his wife. In other words, the role of knowledge of context in understanding art is connected with the claim that manner-specificity is essential to the purpose of art. In the case of Red Butt, the appeal to extra-visual and contextual information enables fuller understanding of the artwork. However, in fact, the wider audience (rather than the art critics) perceives the trash aesthetics of Red Butt while being ignorant of Koons's biography and this aesthetic irony might precisely be one of the purposes of the work. Even if it is true that the audience's recognition of the artist's intentional self-parody requires knowledge of who is depicted in the photos, we don't know if Koons intends his work to be understood (solely) in reference to or through this knowledge. It is plausible that Koons intended to blur the distinction between art and pornography by attempting to create art that is pornography. If we accept that pornography can never be art then if Koons intends to create art that is also pornography then he attempts the impossible; if we, on the other hand, allow for the possibility for an artwork to be both art and pornography and if we accept that Koons has succeeded in creating art that is pornography, then we can interpret Red Butt in the most natural way and say he has succeeded in creating both art and pornography. It seems therefore that regardless of the context, it is left to the audience to negotiate and finally decide, if they wish to, whether to appreciate Koons as pornography or as art (or both) despite the lines between these being unclear. This very ambiguity is part of the purpose of the work, which is lost on Uidhir's account.His exclusive model cannot account for artists whose explicit intention is to defy dichotomies by doing art and pornography at the same time. For example Annie Sprinkle, in reply to the question of whether she is doing art or pornography, insists against critics and defenders alike that she is "both an artist and a whore."2 Uidhir's position must be that, in effect, contrary to what she intends and believes, Sprinkle by definition cannot do both... (shrink)

I argue against Greco's account of the value of knowledge, according to which knowledge is distinctively valuable vis-à-vis that which falls short of knowledge in virtue of its status as an achievement and achievements being finally valuable. Instead, I make the case that virtuous belief is also an achievement. I argue that the nature of knowledge is such that knowledge is finally valuable in a way that virtuous belief is not, precisely because knowledge is not simply a (...) success from ability. The value of knowledge lies in the positive responsiveness of the world to an agent's epistemic virtuousness. (shrink)

I contend that there are strong moral reasons for most adult family members to avoid having sex with one another; indeed, I argue that even among consenting adults, incestuous sex is usually wrong. The argument is simple. Absent compelling reasons, it's wrong to take a significant risk with something that's extremely valuable. But having sex with a family member takes a significant risk with something extremely valuable—namely, a family relationship. And since compelling reasons for taking such a risk (...) are very hard to come by, it follows that incest is usually wrong. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an analysis of equal opportunity. I argue that equal opportunity occurs where two or more persons with equal natural abilities and willingness to work hard have chances at various jobs that are in the aggregate of equal value. I then argue that equal opportunity is neither valuable nor something that the government ought to pursue. First, it is not clear why we should value opportunities rather than outcomes. Second, the value of equal opportunity rests (...) on the value of interest satisfaction. However, if interest satisfaction is relatively constant across different jobs and different job opportunities, then the concern for interest satisfaction will not ground the value of equal opportunity. Third, equalizing opportunities is not in itself valuable because persons are not equally valuable. Fourth, even if equal opportunity were valuable, the government can pursue it only by trespassing on individual rights. (shrink)

There is general consensus that explainable artificial intelligence is valuable, but there is significant divergence when we try to articulate why, exactly, it is desirable. This question must be distinguished from two other kinds of questions asked in the XAI literature that are sometimes asked and addressed simultaneously. The first and most obvious is the ‘how’ question—some version of: ‘how do we develop technical strategies to achieve XAI?’ Another question is specifying what kind of explanation is worth having in (...) the first place. As difficult and important as the challenges are in answering these questions, they are distinct from a third question: why do we want XAI at all? There is vast literature on this question as well, but I wish to explore a different kind of answer. The most obvious way to answer this question is by describing a desirable outcome that would likely be achieved with the right kind of explanation, which would make the explanation valuable instrumentally. That is, XAI is desirable to attain some other value, such as fairness, trust, accountability, or governance. This family of arguments is obviously important, but I argue that explanations are also intrinsically valuable, because unexplainable systems can be dehumanizing. I argue that there are at least three independently valid versions of this kind of argument: an argument from participation, from knowledge, and from actualization. Each of these arguments that XAI is intrinsically valuable is independently compelling, in addition to the more obvious instrumental benefits of XAI. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In ‘Scorekeeping in a Pornographic Language Game’, Rae Langton and Caroline West borrow ideas from David Lewis to attempt to explain how pornography might subordinate and silence women. Pornography is supposed to express certain misogynistic claims implicitly, through presupposition, and to convey them indirectly, through accommodation. I argue that the appeal to accommodation cannot do the sort of work Langton and West want it to do: Their case rests upon an overly simplified model of that phenomenon. I (...) argue further that, once we are clear about why Langton and West's account fails, a different and more plausible account of pornography's influence emerges. (shrink)

Assume for the sake of argument that doing philosophy is intrinsically valuable, where "doing philosophy" refers to the practice of forging arguments for and against the truth of theses in the domains of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and so on. The practice of the history of philosophy is devoted instead to discovering arguments for and against the truth of "authorial" propositions, that is, propositions that state the belief of some historical figure about a philosophical proposition. I explore arguments for thinking (...) that doing history of philosophy is valuable—specifically, valuable in such a way that its value does not reduce to the value of doing philosophy. Most such arguments proffered by historians of philosophy fail, as I show. I then offer a proposal about what makes doing history of philosophy uniquely valuable, but it is one that many historians will not find agreeable. (shrink)

Is consciousness intrinsically valuable? Some theorists favor the positive view, according to which consciousness itself accrues intrinsic value, independent of the particular kind of experience instantiated. In contrast, I favor the neutral view, according to which consciousness is neither intrinsically valuable nor disvaluable. The primary purpose of this paper is to clarify what is at stake when we ask whether consciousness is intrinsically valuable, to carve out the theoretical space, and to evaluate the question rigorously. Along the (...) way, I also show why the neutral view is attractive and why certain arguments for the positive view do not work. (shrink)

We investigate the question of whether (and if so why) creating or distributing deepfake pornography of someone without their consent is inherently objectionable. We argue that nonconsensually distributing deepfake pornography of a living person on the internet is inherently pro tanto wrong in virtue of the fact that nonconsensually distributing intentionally non-veridical representations about someone violates their right that their social identity not be tampered with, a right which is grounded in their interest in being able to exercise (...) autonomy over their social relations with others. We go on to suggest that nonconsensual deepfakes are especially worrisome in connection with this right because they have a high degree of phenomenal immediacy, a property which corresponds inversely to the ease with which a representation can be doubted. We then suggest that nonconsensually creating and privately consuming deepfake pornography is worrisome but may not be inherently pro tanto wrong. Finally, we discuss the special issue of whether nonconsensually distributing deepfake pornography of a deceased person is inherently objectionable. We argue that the answer depends on how long it has been since the person died. (shrink)

It is hardly necessary to rent I Spit on Your Grave or Tool Box Murders for your VCR in order to find images of sexuality contaminated by depersonalization or violence. As far back as Rabelais’ Gargantua, for example, Panurge proposes to build a wall around Paris out of the pleasure-twats of women [which] are much cheaper than stones”: “the largest … in front” would be followed by “the medium-sized, and last of all, the least and smallest,” all interlaced with “many (...) horney joy-dinguses” so that fortification would be impregnable, except for the “ordure and excretions” of the flies it would doubtlessly attract.1 Two centuries later, one of Rabelais’ compatriots, the Marquis de Lade, described the rage of a sexually initiated daughter against a woman who refuses to consider her “pleasure-twat” “cheaper than stones.” The Sadeian heroine first sodomizes her puritanical mother with an artificial penis, then has her infected with syphilis, and finally performs infibulations to prevent the infected semen from leaking out: “Quickly, quickly, fetch me needle and threat! … Spread your thighs, Mama, so I can stitch you together.”2One century later in England, the author of My Secret Life explained that, when in a state of sexual excitement, “he is ready to fuck anything,” from his sister to his grandmother, from a ten-year-old, to a woman of sixty, for a standing prick has no conscience.” To this credo, he adds the admonition, “Woe be to the female whom he gets a chance at, if she does not want him, for he will have her if he can.”3 The sexually aroused man in the contemporary American film Looking for Mr. Goodbar curses the woman who does not want him as much as she wants a room of her own and the freedom to choose a succession of male lovers. After he resentfully determines to have her when he gets the chance , he rapes her and finally knifes her to death, exclaiming “That’s what you want, bitch, right? That’s what you want.”However these individual works are labeled, such passages remind us of the long history of pornography, a gender-specific genre produced primarily by and for men but focused obsessively on the female figure. In their depictions of female sexuality, narratives from Gargantua to La Philosophie dans le boudoir, My Secret Life, and Looking for Mr. Goodbar explain why definitions of the pornographic have recently moved away from “obscenity,” a term that generally refers to the sexually stimulating effects of a picture, a novel, or a film on the male reader/observer, and toward “dehumanization,” a word that is used to evoke the objectification of women. As Irene Diamond has demonstrated, during the past decade the generally held assumption that pornography is about male sexuality has been qualified by those who argue that “the ‘what’ of pornography is not sex but power and violence, and the ‘who’ of concern are no longer male consumers and artists but women.”4 1. François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, trans. Jacques Le Clercq , bk. 2, chap. 15. I have used this translation because it is employed in Helene Iswolsky’s translation of Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World . With no analysis of gender, Bakhtin’s exclusive focus on the grotesque wipes out the significance of Rabelais’ sexual imagery.2. Marquis de Sade, quoted in a brilliant reading of this text by Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography , p. 127; all further references to this work , abbreviated SW, will be included in the text.3. My Secret Life , p. 361.4. Irene Diamond, “Pornography and Repression: A Reconsideration,” in Women: Sex and Sexuality, ed. Catharine Stimpson and Ethel Spector Person , p. 132. Susan Gubar is professor of English and women’s studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Together with Sandra M. Gilbert, she has coauthored The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination and co-edited both Shakespeare’s Sisters: Feminist Essays on Women Poets and the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Tradition in English. This fall they will publish the first volume of a three-volume work, No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century. Her previous contribution to Critical Inquiry is “ ‘The Blank Page’ and the Issues of Female Creativity”. (shrink)

A number of philosophers of science have argued that there are important differences between robustness in modeling and experimental contexts, and—in particular—many of them have claimed that the former is non-confirmatory. In this paper, I argue for the opposite conclusion: robust hypotheses are confirmed under conditions that do not depend on the differences between and models and experiments—that is, the degree to which the robust hypothesis is confirmed depends on precisely the same factors in both situations. The positive argument turns (...) on the fact that confirmation theory doesn’t recognize a difference between different sources of evidence. Most of the paper is devoted to rebutting various objections designed to show that it should. I end by explaining why philosophers of science have (often) gone wrong on this point. (shrink)

A one-page summary of the reasons why pornography is good.

Collective self-determination is considered to be an important political value. Many liberal political philosophers appeal to it to defend the right of states to exclude would-be newcomers. In this paper, I challenge the value of collective self-determination in the case of countries like the US, former colonial powers with a history of white supremacist immigration and citizenship policies. I argue for my claim by way of an analogy: There is no value to white neighborhoods in the US, which are the (...) result of racist attitudes and state policies, determining autonomously who should become a neighbor. In light of this commitment, defenders of the US's right to exclude would need to explain why it should be of moral value that a community whose character and composition has been shaped by white supremacy be able to determine its membership on its own terms. (shrink)

Assume for the sake of argument that doing philosophy is intrinsically valuable, where “doing philosophy” refers to the practice of forging arguments for and against the truth of theses in the domains of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and so on. The practice of the history of philosophy is devoted instead to discovering arguments for and against the truth of “authorial” propositions, that is, propositions that state the belief of some historical figure about a philosophical proposition. I explore arguments for thinking (...) that doing history of philosophy is valuable—specifically, valuable in such a way that its value does not reduce to the value of doing philosophy. Most such arguments proffered by historians of philosophy fail, as I show. I then offer a proposal about what makes doing history of philosophy uniquely valuable, but it is one that many historians will not find agreeable. (shrink)

The question ‘Why care about being an agent?’ asks for reasons to be something that appears to be non-optional. But perhaps it is closer to the question ‘Why be moral?’; or so I shall argue. Here the constitutivist answer—that we cannot help but have this aim—seems to be the best answer available. I suggest that, regardless of whether constitutivism is true, it is an incomplete answer. I argue that we should instead answer the question by looking at our evaluative commitments (...) to the exercise of our other capacities for which being a full-blown agent is a necessary condition. Thus, the only kind of reason available is hypothetical rather than categorical. The status of this reason may seem to undermine the importance of this answer. I show, however, that it both achieves much of what we want when we cite categorical reasons and highlights why agency is valuable. (shrink)

Anti-Porn activists have argued for decades that pom is discrimination, it hamis women as a class. The Pro-porn response has been to dismiss these concems, laud the First Amendment, or argue that pornography is a valuable contribution to society. The debate has progressed little beyond this stage. In this article, I argue that it is time to frame the pomography debate as a discussion on sexualized media in general. Recent research indicates that the negative results often attributed to (...) hard-core pornography, such as sexist attitudes, lack of empathy for women, objectification, etc., are attributable to sexualized media as a whole. Pornography is, therefore, an infelicitous target. The solution to this problem is not the prohibition or litigation of one narrow aspect of this phenomenon, hard-core pornography, but the regulation of the producers of sexualized media in conjunction with efforts to educate consumers. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall argue that personal autonomy requires the availability of an adequate range of valuable options from which to choose, but that the availability of a larger rather than a smaller set of valuable options can be inimical to, rather than supportive, of autonomy.

This paper has three goals. The first is to defend Tristan Taromino and Erika Lust (or some of their films) from criticisms that Rebecca Whisnant and Hans Maes make of them. Toward that end, I will be arguing against the narrow conceptions that Whisnant and Maes have of what `feminist' pornography must be like. More generally, I hope to show by example why it is important to take pornographic films seriously as films if we're to understand their potential to (...) shape, or mis-shape, socio-sexual norms. (shrink)

Contrastivism about interrogative understanding is the view that ‘S understands why p’ posits a three-place epistemic relation between a subject S, a fact p, and an alternative to p, q. This thesis stands in stark opposition to the natural idea that a subject S can be said to understand why psimpliciter. I argue that contrastivism offers the best explanation for the fact that evaluations of the form ‘S understands why p’ vary depending on the alternatives to p under consideration. I (...) also show that contrastivism offers valuable resources with which to explain the gradability of interrogative understanding attributions, as well as the sensitivity of these attributions to the perceived degree of epistemic demandingness of different contexts. (shrink)

This paper has two major goals: First, I argue that Catharine MacKinnon’s and Andrea Dworkin’s anti-pornography activism was an act of public reason and their arguments public reasons arguments. Thus, MacKinnon’s argument that pornography is best understood as a practice of sex discrimination is a public reason argument—and so can be defended as grounded in liberal political principles. Political liberalism, as I defend it, can support MacKinnon’s approach to pornography as embodied in a civil rights ordinance. By (...) way of contrast, I will take up another feminist position on pornography, Drucilla Cornell’s, that differs from, and in fact is quite critical of, the MacKinnon/Dworkin anti-pornography position. My primary aim here is to show that Cornell’s arguments fail—as they stand—as public reason arguments, and thus further highlight the crucial aspects of MacKinnon’s feminist approach that are compatible with public reason, and so with liberal political principles. This is not to say that one could not provide a public reason argument for a position like Cornell’s. However, as she offers it, her position is not compatible with the norms of public reason. Second, I show why the obscenity route to the regulation of pornographic material—the traditional liberal approach—is actually antithetical to the version of political liberalism I am interested in defending. The conclusion of these arguments is that contrary to the mainstream view, liberalism is hospitable to the arguments of MacKinnon and Dworkin, and so as liberals we have not only good reason to take their arguments very seriously, but even stronger their arguments flow from fundamental liberal political values. (shrink)

I argue that understanding why p involves a kind of intellectual know how and differsfrom both knowledge that p and knowledge why p (as they are standardly understood).I argue that understanding, in this sense, is valuable.

ABSTRACT I present and assess arguments both for and against censorship of pornography, explaining why the case on each side is inconclusive. In an effort to move beyond issues of censorship and to address the growing problem of violence in pornography, I propose a distinction between erotica and violent pornography. I then utilise this distinction to evaluate the moral status of, and certain social responses to, violent pornography. I show why most arguments that violent pornography (...) is morally wrong rest on assumptions that either may not be true or do not apply to all instances of violent pornography. I also indicate why the only unconditional moral argument against violent pornography—an argument I find reasonable—will not be universally acceptable. Finally, I discuss two alternatives to censoring violent pornography. I argue that the first, which adapts Joel Feinberg's right of reasonable avoidability, is too weak, while the second, which advocates refusing all subsidy and support for violent pornography, is ultimately too strong as a social response in a society committed to freedom. (shrink)

Art and Pornography presents a series of essays which investigate the artistic status and aesthetic dimension of pornographic pictures, films, and literature, and explores the distinction, if there is any, between pornography and erotic art. Is there any overlap between art and pornography, or are the two mutually exclusive? If they are, why is that? If they are not, how might we characterize pornographic art or artistic pornography, and how might pornographic art be distinguished, if at (...) all, from erotic art? Can there be aesthetic experience of pornography? What are some of the psychological, social, and political consequences of the creation and appreciation of erotic art or artistic pornography? This book will contribute to a more accurate and subtle understanding of the many representations that incorporate explicit sexual imagery and themes. It is sure to stir debate, and healthy controversy. (shrink)

Herbaria are collections of preserved plant specimens, primarily composed of paper sheets with pressed plants or plant parts attached to them. The most valuable kind of sheet is the holotype specimen. This is the specific plant that was used in describing the species by the person who first identified it. Botanists must reference the holotype when reclassifying or renaming a species. In the past, this meant either borrowing the sheet or visiting the herbarium in which it was housed. With (...) digitization of these sheets, there is much greater and easier access to this information. However, digital images are not substitutes for the sheets themselves. This article will discuss why this is the case, why scanning herbarium sheets is still worthwhile effort, and why the sheets themselves are still necessary to plant research. (shrink)

The South African National Health Research Ethics Council (NHREC) states in its 2024 Ethics Guidelines that human biological material (HBM) and data cannot be privately owned under South African law. This position conflicts with established legal principles, guidelines by the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA), and South African university policies, all of which support private ownership of HBM and data. Private ownership is not only legally sound but also ethically necessary, providing a framework for accountability, ensuring fair recognition (...) of institutional contributions, and enabling responsible custodianship over these valuable resources. The NHREC's denial of private ownership of HBM and data undermines South African research institutions’ ability to control their research assets and leaves them vulnerable to exploitation by foreign entities. The NHREC should issue a corrigendum to delete its incorrect position on private ownership of HBM and data. (shrink)

Based on a modern reading of Aristotle’s theory of friendship, we argue that virtual friendship does not qualify as genuine friendship. By ‘virtual friendship’ we mean the type of friendship that exists on the internet, and seldom or never is combined with real life interaction. A ‘traditional friendship’ is, in contrast, the type of friendship that involves substantial real life interaction, and we claim that only this type can merit the label ‘genuine friendship’ and thus qualify as morally valuable. (...) The upshot of our discussion is that virtual friendship is what Aristotle might have described as a lower and less valuable form of social exchange. (shrink)

The capability approach, originated by Amartya Sen is among the most comprehensive and influential accounts of justice that applies to issues of health and health care. However, although health is always presumed as an important capability in Sen’s works, he never manages to fully explain why health is distinctively valuable. This paper provides an explanation. It does this by firstly laying out the general capability-based argument for health justice. It then discusses two recent attempts to justify why health is (...) distinctively valuable from within a capability framework – these are Sridhar Venkatapuram’s conception of health as the central human meta-capability and, respectively, Norman Daniels’ embrace of the capability metric in his use of Rawls’ principle of fair equality of opportunity. The paper argues that none of these accounts succeed in providing a plausible justification of the value of health. Finally, the paper suggests an alternative more complex justification, closely tied to different but central element of the capability view, that captures the core intuitions of both Venkatapuram and Daniels’ accounts but without being vulnerable to the objections raised against each of them. This, the paper concludes, provides a promising ground on which the capability view on health justice should be founded. (shrink)

The famous quip "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like" sums up many people's ideas about how to judge a work of art; but there are inherent limitations if we rely on immediate impressions in judging what should be enduring products of our culture. While some might criticize this as a return to "elitism," Joshua Fineberg argues that without some way of determining intrinsic value, there can be no movement forward for creators or their audience. (...) He draws on contemporary thought about "Design space" and "Universal Grammar" to show how intrinsic values can be rediscovered. He then looks at the importance of multimedia in allowing multiple points of entry for the discovering of new works, finally showing how the composer can "Design music for human beings"--creating a kind of art that can preserve the research agenda of conceptual work without renouncing the understanding of human listeners and performers embodied by craft. Classical Music: Why Bother? will intrigue all listeners of contemporary music, students of musical thought, and composers-but it will also interest students of contemporary aesthetics. It answers the age-old question "How can we bring a new audience to contemporary art?" - and challenges both the creators and their audience to broaden their ideas about what is valuable and lasting in today's culture. (shrink)

Life is a group project. It takes a village. The same is true of our intellectual lives. Since we are finite cognitive creatures with limited time and resources, any healthy intellectual life requires that we rely quite heavily on others. For nearly any question you want to investigate, there is someone who is in a better epistemic position than you are to determine the answer. For most people, their expertise does not extend far beyond their own personal lives, and even (...) here we can sometimes find others who are more reliable. Without relying on them we would know very little about the world. Since others are typically better positioned to determine the answers to the questions we have, it should make us wonder why we should bother to try and figure out much of anything at all for ourselves. After all, when trying to find an answer to a question, we should take the best route to the answer, and the most reliable route to the answer to most questions is to rely on the minds of others. At the same time, there is something defective about an intellectual life that outsources nearly all of its intellectual projects. That is, it seems that individuals ought to think for themselves, at least about some issues and at least some of the time. The puzzle is in determining why it is epistemically valuable to think for yourself, since doing so will almost always not be the best available route to the answer of your question. In this paper, I will first clarify our central question and sharpen this puzzle regarding epistemic autonomy. Having done so, I will argue that autonomous deliberation can be epistemically valuable to inquirers both when it is successful, as well as when it is unsuccessful. I conclude by gesturing at how these considerations point us toward an account of epistemic autonomy as an intellectual virtue. (shrink)

Decision-making is a prominent theme in this edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics. Our feature article examines the relationship between trust and informed consent. Informed consent is, of course, central to the decision-making process in medicine. In addition, several articles consider decision-making in medicine from a variety of angles.Informed consent and trust: Eyal's argumentIn our feature article, Nir Eyal attacks attempts by bioethicists including Onora O'Neill, Torbjörn Tännsjö, and Jennifer Jackson to ground the importance of informed consent in its (...) role in safeguarding trust in medical practice . The trust-promotion argument for informed consent, as Eyal terms it, states that trust in medical practice is necessary to ensure that people seek and comply with medical advice and participate in medical research, that as a result it is ‘usually wrong to jeopardise that trust’, that violations of informed consent jeopardise that trust, and that standard informed consent requirements are therefore justified.Eyal makes explicit that this argument is consequentialist: it takes the value of informed consent to lie in its role in ensuring trust in medical practice; in turn, trust is instrumentally valuable because it promotes health through use of the medical system, compliance with treatment, and participation in research . The consequentialist trust-promotion argument, Eyal observes, differs from deontological trust-based arguments, which defend respecting informed consent requirements with reference to factors such as its being an appropriate way of honouring the trust that patients place in doctors.Eyal attacks the trust-promotion argument on the ground that it does not account for some commonsense intuitions about informed consent. He argues, to cite one of the many problems he raises, that secret breaches of informed consent—for example, treating patients while they sleep—would …. (shrink)

Why disdain replicated art? If art is valuable because it evokes experiences of beauty, they should be comparable. In chapter 11 of the Elephant in the Brain, Simler and Hanson argue we actually care about the extrinsic properties of art—e.g. who made it—to signal our intelligence and taste. Here I defend a different explanation for the evidence cited by S&H: the extrinsic properties of art are central to what constitutes art, play a bigger role fixing the value of art (...) than S&H allow, and the potential for diminishing marginal utility on the value of the intrinsic properties of art—seeing the original Mona Lisa is rare; seeing a copy isn’t—explains why we assign such value to the extrinsic properties of art. And thus we have a non-signaling explanation of art consumption, which may or may not complement signaling theory. (shrink)

A policy indirectly discriminates against a group, G, if, and only if: it does not reflect an objectionable mental state regarding the members of G; it disadvantages members of G; the disadvantages are disproportionate; and G is a socially salient group. I argue that indirect discrimination is not non-instrumentally morally wrong. Clearly, if it were, that would be because it harms members of G disproportionately, i.e., in virtue of features and. Harming members of a group disproportionately does appear non-instrumentally wrong. (...) But it is not easy to provide a plausible explanation for the kind of harm and disproportionality involved here that vindicates this initial appearance. This does not mean the concept of indirect discrimination should be jettisoned. It was originally a legal concept, and in closing I briefly suggest that in law it plays a valuable role, even if it is not a genuine moral category. Legal prohibition is an unreliable guide to what is morally wrong, but it is not supposed to be that anyway. (shrink)

According to a multivariate approach on creativity, self-experimentation may well provide many of the conditions that allow for new ideas to occur. This research method is valuable in particular because the researcher's high level of participation in the search for a solution fosters the involvement of the necessary cognitive skills and conative traits.

When it was at its height, the feminist pornography debate tended to generate more heat than light. Only now that there has been a cease fire in the sex war does it seem possible to reflect on the debate in a more productive way and to address some of the questions that were left unresolved by it. In this paper, I shall argue that one of the major unresolved questions is that of how feminists should conceptualize power. The antipornography (...) feminists and the feminist sex radicals presuppose radically different conceptions of power, and this fact helps to explain why they come to such different conclusions about what, if anything, should be done about pornography. The feminist pornography debate remains unresolved precisely because it is unresolvable in the terms in which it has been posed. I shall contend that the conceptions of power presupposed on both sides of the debate are incomplete, and, therefore, inadequate.4 My hope is that once we recognize this, we might be able to improve not only the way that feminists analyze pornography but also the way we conceptualize power. (shrink)

This review article presents an important, newly published study of Popper's critical method by Zbigniew Liana. The review emphasizes the very high level of the study, points to its originality, and explains why the book is recommended mainly to specialists of Popper's thought. It is also explained how the book manages to contain so many original and valuable analyses in a small volume.

Among the most pressing philosophical questions occupying those interested in the ethics of the family is why should parents, as opposed to charity workers or state officials, raise children. In their recent Family Values, Brighouse and Swift have further articulated and strengthen their own justification of the parent-child relationship by appealing to its crucial role in enabling the child’s proper development and in allowing parents to play a valuable fiduciary role in the lives of children. In this paper, I (...) argue that the set of interests Brighouse and Swift identify as necessary for the justification of the family fails to account for the different stages and the different cultural settings that mark the parent-child relationship. In particular, I ague that their justification of the family fails to satisfy the following two desiderata: (i) that the justification for the parent-child relationship should ideally track the good-making feature(s) of the relationship that extend across its entire history, and (ii) such justification should ideally explain what is valuable about the parent-child relationship in both liberal and non-liberal family contexts. In light of my critique, I sketch an alternative account of family values, one that appeals directly to the special mode of caring we see in the parent-child relationship, a form of caring that is certainly present in non-liberal societies and that typically extends across a lifetime. (shrink)

This article aims at a new interpretation of paragraph §1 of Fichte’s main work of 1794/95, the Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre. This well-known text of the early Jena period explicitly introduces a number of thought motifs that will prove to be valuable for the later versions of the Wissenschaftslehre – including the second version of 1804 – and these motifs will furthermore illuminate the significance of the first principle for Fichte’s entire Wissenschaftslehre.

Now that pornography is on the Internet, its political and social functions have changed. So contends Margret Grebowicz in this imperative philosophical analysis of Internet porn. The production and consumption of Internet porn, in her account, are a symptom of the obsession with self-exposure in today's social networking media, which is, in turn, a symptom of the modern democratic construction of the governable subject as both transparent and communicative. In this first feminist critique to privilege the effects of (...) class='Hi'>pornography's Internet distribution rather than what it depicts, Grebowicz examines porn-sharing communities and the politics of putting women's sexual pleasure on display as part of the larger democratic project. Arguing against this project, she shows that sexual pleasure is not a human right. Unlikely convergences between thinkers like Catherine MacKinnon, Jean Baudrillard, Judith Butler, and Jean-François Lyotard allow her to formulate a theory of the relationships between sex, speech, and power that stands as an alternative to such cyber-libertarian mottos as "freedom of speech" and "sexual freedom.". (shrink)

In this paper, I provide a descriptive definition of art that is able to accommodate the existence of bad art, while illuminating the value of good art. This, I argue, is something that existing definitions of art fail to do. I approach this task by providing an account according to which what makes something an artwork is the institutional process by which it is made. I argue that Searle’s account of institutions and institutional facts shows that the existence of all (...) institutions is due to their being perceived by their participants to perform some humanly valuable function. I then identify the functions to which the existence of art institutions is due. I then use these functions to provide a reductive institutional definition of art. Finally, in section seven, I examine the account’s consequences for the value of good art. (shrink)

Do people who cause themselves to be ill (e.g. by smoking) forfeit some of their rights to healthcare? This paper examines one argument for the view that they do, the restoration argument. It goes as follows. Smokers need more health‐resources than non‐smokers. Given limited budgets, we must choose between treating everyone equally (according to need) or reducing smokers' entitlements. If we choose the former, non‐smokers will be harmed by others' smoking, because there will be less resources available for them than (...) if no‐one smoked. This is unfair: why should non‐smokers suffer because of others' unhealthy lifestyle choices? We should therefore choose the latter and reduce smokers' entitlements. This paper criticises the restoration argument on the following grounds. In order to avoid generating unpalatable conclusions elsewhere, it must be combined with a principle according to which activities which are sufficiently ‘socially valuable’ (e.g. parenting) are immune from restoration claims. This however means that what was supposed to be one of the argument's most attractive features, its compatibility with ‘liberal neutrality’ with respect to the value of different lifestyles, doesn't really exist. Hence, the restoration argument is nowhere near as attractive as it at first appears to be. (shrink)

Most of us experience the world through competing perspectives. A job or a religion seems important and fulfilling when looked at in one way; but from a different angle they seem tedious or ridiculous. A friend is obtuse from one point of view, wise from another. Continuing to hold both views at once can be unsettling, highlighting conflicts between our own judgments and values, and undermining our ability to live purposefully and effectively. Yet, as Jennifer Church argues in this book, (...) inner conflict can be a good thing, and not just as a temporary road bump on the road to resolution. This book describes several desirable types of "double consciousness"--or being of two minds--and explains why and how they should be maintained. Church looks critically at some common ideas about identity, including a popular belief about narratives that suggests our lives should "make sense" as a story. She also examines how empathy can helpfully cause us to be of two minds, and how various forms of irony and laughter enable us to benefit from holding onto opposing views. Finally, Church shows the merit of acknowledging reality while sometimes being guided by fantasy. Why It's OK to Be of Two Minds is for anyone who's held two opposing views simultaneously, which is to say it's for everyone. Key Features: Argues against a longstanding philosophical idea: that it is important to resolve inner conflicts that result from competing systems of beliefs Examines the role of empathy and friendship in maintaining a valuable form of double consciousness Considers how irony and laughter allow us to dedicate ourselves to our particular projects while acknowledging their ultimate insignificance Shows how fantasies that conflict with our beliefs can make a positive contribution to the way we live our lives. (shrink)