Individual questions of the institutional reforms of the representative-democratic parliamentary system, such as issues of electoral law, party law, and parliamentary law, are frequently discussed. But all these reflections - and this is the principal thesis of this article - must eventually remain without success, if they do not address the preceding basic problem concerning the democratically indispensable conditions of the mental constitution of the active citizen, the „civis“. There, a key role, consciously experienced like a paradox, falls upon the (...) renunciation of the claim to absolute truth of one’s own political convictions with regard to equally „relative-absolute“ claims for validity of others. On this base the psychological presuppositions of a modern pluralistic democracy are discussed, which thereupon are to be institutionalized: e. g. the capacity to compromise, the obligation of state neutrality in religious matters, the renunciation of hate speech, the rejection of „denial of reality“, and of allegedly „finalizing“ ideologies of history. (shrink)

The aim of the Consequence Argument is to show that, if determinism is true, no one has, or ever had, any choice about anything. In the stock version of the argument, its two premisses state that no one is, or ever was, able to act so that the past would have been different and no one is, or ever was, able to act so that the laws of nature would have been different. This stock version fails, however, because (...) it requires an invalid inference rule. The standard response is to strengthen both premisses by replacing ‘would’ with ‘might’. While this response ensures validity, it weakens the argument, since it strengthens the premisses. I show that we can do better: We can keep the weak reading of one premiss and just strengthen the other. This provides two versions of the Consequence Argument which are stronger than the standard revision. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that coercion forms part of the nature of law: Law is inherently coercive. But how well founded is this claim, and what would it mean for coercion to be part of the of law? This article suggests that the claim is grounded in our current conception of law. The main focus of the article, however, is upon two major lines of argument that attempt to establish a link between law and coercion: one (...) based upon the laws normativity. It argues that the claim that law is necessarily coercive because it must be efficacious is mistakens normativity is inherently linked to coercion contains an important truths claim to authority encompasses the right to authorize the use of coercion. (shrink)

We address the issue of whether, why and under what conditions, quarantine and isolation are morally justified, with a particular focus on measures implemented in the developing world. We argue that the benefits of quarantine and isolation justify some level of coercion or compulsion by the state, but that the state should be able to provide the strongest justification possible for implementing such measures. While a constrained form of consequentialism might provide a justification for such public health interventions, we (...) argue that a stronger justification is provided by a principle of State Enforced Easy Rescue: a state may permissibly compel individuals to engage in activities that entail a small cost to them but a large benefit to others, because individuals have a moral duty of easy rescue to engage in those activities. The principle of State Enforced Easy Rescue gives rise to an Obligation Enforcement Requirement: the state should create the conditions such that submitting to coercive or compulsive measures becomes a fundamental moral duty of individuals, i.e. a duty of easy rescue. When the state can create such conditions, it has the strongest justification possible for implementing coercive or compulsive measures, because individuals have a moral duty to temporarily relinquish the rights that such measures would infringe. Our argument has significant implications for how public health emergencies in the developing world should be tackled. Where isolation and quarantine measures are necessary, states or the international community have a moral obligation to provide certain benefits to those quarantined or isolated. (shrink)

Resumen: Este trabajo examina uno de los argumentos más relevantes empleado para justificar que los integrantes de una misma comunidad política se deban mutuamente deberes de justicia distributiva más exigentes y fuertes que lo que tienen respecto al resto de seres humanos, hasta el punto de justificar un sistema de fronteras cerradas similar al actual. Se trata del que cabría denominar como “argumento de la singularidad de la coacción estatal”. El mismo asume como premisa empírica que dicha coacción es estructural (...) y funcionalmente diferente a la que podamos encontrar en el ámbito internacional, incluida la que se ejerce a través de la prevención y represión directa de la entrada de personas a una determinada comunidad política por medio de los controles fronterizos. Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to examine one of the most relevant arguments among those used to justify that the members of the same political community owe each other more demanding and strong distribu- tive justice duties than they have with respect to other human beings, to the point of justify a system of closed borders similar to the current one. It is the one that could be denominated like "argument of the singularity of the state coercion". It assumes as an empirical premise that such coercion is structurally and functionally different from what we can find in the international arena, including that which is exercised through the direct prevention and repression of the entry of persons into a given political community by means of border controls. (shrink)

According to what Douglas calls ‘the consent requirement’, neuro-correctives can only permissibly be provided with the valid consent of the offender who will undergo the intervention. Some of those who endorse the consent requirement have claimed that even though the requirement prohibits the imposition of mandatory neurocorrectives on criminal offenders, it may yet be permissible to offer offenders the opportunity to consent to undergoing such an intervention, in return for a reduction to their penal sentence. I call this the neurocorrective (...) offer. In this chapter I consider the coercion-based objection to the neurocorrective offer, which claims that offenders cannot provide valid consent to undergoing a neurocorrective on the basis of this offer because it is inherently coercive. Having outlined early formulations of this argument, I point out that there are in fact two different versions of this objection, which appeal to different understandings of the concepts of coercion, consent and voluntariness. (shrink)

A fundamental issue in the philosophy of psychiatry is that of the reality of mental illness: is there any such thing as mental illness? The dominant means of resolving this issue—either for or against—is the likeness argument. This states that mental illness exists, or does not, depending on the extent to which putative mental illnesses (such as alcoholism or schizophrenia) are like universally accepted illnesses (such as pneumonia). To succeed, this argument has to assume (1) that the features (...) of conditions such as schizophrenia will decide whether they are illnesses or not and (2) that the existence of these features can be determined independently of the question whether they are illnesses or not. Both assumptions can be questioned. A weaker objection to the likeness argument questions the first, but it is possible to overcome it. A stronger objection questions the second assumption, and is successful in undermining it. This also undermines the first assumption. As a result, the likeness argument will fail. Two major objections to the stronger objection are considered and accommodated. (shrink)

Extraterritorial border controls prevent migrants from arriving at the territory of the state and effectively undermine rights to apply for asylum and protections against non-refoulement. As a result, a wealth of scholarship argues that external border controls are illegitimate exercises of state power. This paper challenges two versions of this argument, first, the claim that carrier-sanctions are illegitimate because they subject migrants to morally impermissible forms of coercion and, second, the claim that carrier-sanctions are illegitimate because they subject (...) migrants to illegitimate claims to authority.Against coercion-based accounts of legitimacy, this paper defends the view that while carrier-sanctions are coercive, the coerciveness of a policy is not relevant to its legitimacy. What is relevant is instead whether the authority claimed by the state is legitimate. Against authority-based accounts, this paper argues that states are unable to claim authority in the relevant sense over migrants that are present in the territories of other states.The paper concludes by suggesting that the charge that carrier-sanctions are illegitimate should shift towards the state that allows carriers to enforce these policies on their territories. No state has the legitimate authority to permit other states to pressure carriers to prevent migrants in need of protection from travelling. The state that introduces carrier-sanction legislation, on the other hand, is not exercising illegitimate authority though they may act contrary to demands of justice. (shrink)

While principle-based ethics is well known and widely accepted in psychiatry, much less is known about how decisions are made in clinical practice, which case scenarios exist, and which challenges exist for decision-making. Protocols of the central ethics committee responsible for four psychiatric hospitals over 7 years (N=17) were analysed. While four cases concerned suicide risk in the case of intended hospital discharge, the vast majority (N=13) concerned questions of whether the responsible physician should or should not initiate the use (...) of coercion in patients lacking mental capacity. The committee’s recommendations were non-uniform. Forced feeding and electroconvulsive therapy were endorsed in each one case. In two cases of intermittent loss of capacity due to heavy drinking or intermittent severe suicidal ideation, a self-binding contract was recommended and the use of coercion was considered as justified for a very limited period. In all other cases, most of which involved involuntary treatment, the use of coercion was not endorsed. Without exception, the recommendations were accepted with relief by the physicians and their treatment teams, who feared liability in the event of harm to the patient. Eventually, a model of a decision algorithm was derived from the ethical arguments in the protocols. (shrink)

Many anticosmopolitan Rawlsians argue that since the primary subject of justice is society's basic structure, and since there is no global basic structure, the scope of justice is domestic. This paper challenges the anticosmopolitan basic structure argument by distinguishing three interpretations of what Rawls meant by the basic structure and its relation to justice, corresponding to the cooperation, pervasive impact, and coercion theories of distributive justice. On the cooperation theory, it is true that there is no global basic (...) structure, but the basic structure turns out to be only an instrumental condition for realizing justice, and not an existence condition that must be met before demands of justice arise. On the pervasive impact and coercion theories, the basic structure is indeed an existence condition, but there exists a global basic structure. The upshot is that on any plausible interpretation of Rawls's account of the basic structure, Rawlsian justice is global in scope. (shrink)

The evolutionary argument is one of the most well-known empirical arguments against epiphenomenalism. In its most persuasive form, it aims to show that because of evolutionary considerations, the smooth correlations between painful qualia and noxious stimuli would be highly unexpected if epiphenomenalism were true, but just what we would expect if an alternative mind--body theory were. Thus, the presence of these correlations is strong evidence against epiphenomenalism. After formulating a canonical version of the argument, I demonstrate that the (...) evolutionary evidence adduced as part of it is superfluous, and could easily be jettisoned without damaging whatever force the argument has. I then proceed to show an even stronger result -- that the evolutionary evidence is actually nothing more than a distraction from the elements of the argument that actually give it its dialectical strength. (shrink)

Singer has argued against the permissibility of killing people on the grounds of the distinction between conscious and self-conscious animals. Unlike conscious animals, which can be replaced without a loss of overall welfare, there can be no substitution for self-conscious animals. In this article, I show that Singer's argument is untenable, in the cases both of the preference-based account of utilitarianism and of objective hedonism, to which he has recently turned. In the first case, Singer cannot theoretically exclude that (...) a self-conscious being's stronger preferences may only be satisfied by killing another self-conscious being. In the second case, he fails to demonstrate that the rules of ordinary morality, demanding that killing be strictly forbidden, could not frequently be overruled by the principles of esoteric morality. In both cases, his theory cannot solve the classical utilitarian problem of prohibiting the killing of people in secret. (shrink)

A convincing argument as to why the West's military superiority scarcely matters, looking at the lack of decisive use of force in critical situations.

In the philosophical literature on consciousness and the mind-body problem, the conceivability argument against physicalism is usually taken to support a form of dualism between physicality and phenomenality. Usually, the discussion focuses on the qualitative character of experience, which is what the phenomenal feel of a given experience is like. By contrast, the subjective character of experience, or its individuation to a given first-person subject, tends to be set aside. The aim of this paper is to present a new (...) and more robust version of the conceivability argument for dualism that appeals to the subjective character of experience. Drawing on insights by philosophers in the phenomenological tradition, I conceptualise the first-person subjective character of experience as a transcendental condition of possibility for phenomenality that cannot be reduced to third-person facts about the physical world. Given this, the mind-body problem as it pertains to consciousness does not merely concern the inability of the set of physical facts about a brain state to capture the qualitative character of experience, but concerns the existential issue of why this brain state is accompanied by first-person subjectivity at all. This allows us to reconceive the conceivability argument in a way that presents a stronger case for dualism than the traditional version of the argument. (shrink)

Epiphenomenalism is the view that phenomenal properties – which characterize what it is like, or how it feels, for a subject to be in conscious states – have no physical effects. One of the earliest arguments against epiphenomenalism is the evolutionary argument (James 1890/1981; Eccles and Popper 1977; Popper 1978), which starts from the following problem: why is pain correlated with stimuli detrimental to survival and reproduction – such as suffocation, hunger and burning? And why is pleasure correlated with (...) stimuli beneficial to survival and reproduction – such as eating and breathing? According to the argument, the fact that we have these particular correlations and not other ones must have an evolutionary explanation. But given epiphenomenalism, differences in phenomenal properties could not cause differences in fitness, so natural selection would not be expected to favor these correlations over any other ones. Epiphenomenalism thus renders these correlations an inexplicable coincidence, and should therefore be rejected. The evolutionary argument has been widely criticized and few have deemed it cogent (Broad 1925; Jackson 1982; Robinson 2007; Corabi 2014). In this paper, I will consider previous and potential criticisms and conclude some of them are indeed fatal to the argument if it is understood, as it traditionally has been, as an argument for any standard version of non-epiphenomenalism such as physicalism and interactionism. I will then offer a new and improved version of the argument, as an argument for a particular non-epiphenomenalist view, which I will call the phenomenal powers view. This is the view that phenomenal properties produce and thereby (metaphysically) necessitate their effects in virtue of how they feel, or in virtue of their intrinsic, phenomenal character alone – along the lines of C. B. Martin and John Heil’s powerful qualities view (Martin and Heil 1999; Heil 2003). I will argue that the phenomenal powers view explains the correlations given natural selection far better than any other view. It follows that if (and only if) understood as an argument for the phenomenal powers view, the evolutionary argument is far stronger than it is usually thought to be. (shrink)

Since 1960 the prevailing interpretation of Anselm’s Proslogion has been that it contains not one but at least two ontological arguments for the existence of God. The first argument, appearing in Proslogion II, assumes that existence is a perfection and shows that God, the being more perfect than which no being can be conceived, exists. The crucial difficulty with this proof, as Kant pointed out and many contemporary philosophers agree, is that ‘existence’ is not a predicate, and therefore can (...) not signify any property, and hence can not signify a perfection. However, the prevailing interpretation claims, there is an additional argument in Proslogion III which at least is not subject to the difficulty Kant exposed. There the premiss is not that existence is a perfection but rather that necessary existence is a perfection. To this premiss the objection that ‘existence’ is not a predicate is irrelevant. Claiming that something necessarily exists does contribute to our concept of the entity in question. It tells us that the entity can not be brought into existence, is compatible with all conceivable states of affairs, and hence can not be destroyed. Since necessary existence is a consistently conceivable perfection which God can have, God, the being more perfect than which nothing can be conceived, must have it. Furthermore, some recent interpreters of the Proslogion maintain that the conclusion of the second argument is stronger than the conclusion of the first. Proslogion II, even if valid, yields nothing more than God’s existence, whereas Proslogion III yields God’s necessary existence. From the conclusion of Proslogion III the conclusion of Proslogion II is entailed, but not vice versa. The purpose of my paper is to show that the current interpretation of Anselm on these points is incorrect. (shrink)

In the paper I exploit Frege's notions of sense and synonymity in order to amend the slingshot argument. The main emendation is to replace the assumption about logical equivalence by an assumption about synonymity. While the replaced assumption begs the question about the reference of sentences, the replacing assumption has much more theoretical support from Frege's general conception of sense and reference and the relation between them. In the paper I use a specific notion of synonymity which I believe (...) is faithful to Frege's discussion of the subject. I notice that if a stronger notion of synonymity is used, my version of the argument fails. The failure is explained by showing that this stronger notion of synonymity enables the assignment of facts, and not truth values, as the references of sentences. (shrink)

In a detailed and spirited critique, Professor James M. Humber has found my defence of the ontological argument unconvincing. Humber's case rests upon his claim that my ‘error’ is due to my ‘having accepted an incorrect definition of “physically necessary being” … ’. Now I do indeed claim that God must be conceived as a factuall necessary being, i.e. as eternally independent. I take the notion of God's aseity or eternal independence to be relatively straightforward and uncontroversial; it is (...) accepted as an essential component of the concept God by many philosophers who also insist that there is no acceptable form of demonstrative theism. Thus, it is widely held that ‘God is a factually necessary being’ does not imply ‘God is a logically necessary being’; that God is eternally independent does not imply that he exists in all possible worlds. But it is precisely this view that I have argued is incorrect. While I concur that there is an intelligible concept of God as factually necessary, I deny that the existence of such a being is logically contingent, a mere matter of empirical fact. Indeed, a rigorous inspection of the concept of an eternally independent being reveals that whether that concept is instantiated, i.e. whether there exists a being exemplifying that concept, is knowable a priori . My claim is in fact stronger than this. I argue that the existence of an eternal, independent, omniscient and omnipotent being is demonstrable by conceptual analysis. It is Humber's contention that my alleged demonstration of God's existence crumbles upon the discovery of the unacceptability of my definition of ‘factually necessary being’. Let us see. (shrink)

This paper is a critique of the coercion argument against performance-enhancing drugs . According to this argument, lifting the ban on PEDs would undermine the autonomy of athletes by creating a situation where everyone must either use PEDs or not compete at the highest levels of sport. Four problems are raised for this argument and it is concluded that the argument fails. A variation on the coercion argument is also considered and rejected.

The standard argument for the uniqueness of the Einstein field equation is based on Lovelock's Theorem, the relevant statement of which is restricted to four dimensions. I prove a theorem similar to Lovelock's, with a physically modified assumption: that the geometric object representing curvature in the Einstein field equation ought to have the physical dimension of stress-energy. The theorem is stronger than Lovelock's in two ways: it holds in all dimensions, and so supports a generalized argument for (...) uniqueness; it does not assume that the desired tensor depends on the metric only up second-order partial-derivatives, that condition being a consequence of the proof. This has consequences for understanding the nature of the cosmological constant and theories of higher-dimensional gravity. Another consequence of the theorem is that it makes precise the sense in which there can be no gravitational stress-energy tensor in general relativity. Along the way, I prove a result of some interest about the second jet-bundle of the bundle of metrics over a manifold. (shrink)

John Dewey wished to place development of the ability to think at the core of school education. The kind of thinking that Dewey had in mind was based on his conception of scientific inquiry. Matthew Lipman was likewise committed to an education centred on thinking, but he claimed that we should turn to philosophy rather than to science in order to secure this end. In his view, philosophy has a stronger claim to this mantle than does science, or any (...) other subject, when it is appropriately reconstructed and taught. He developed various arguments to that effect, but the one considered here is that philosophical thinking has a generic character that especially suits it for the role. I examine this argument to see how compelling a case it makes for the inclusion of philosophy in the school curriculum. (shrink)

While verbs and argument structure constructions are essential for deriving sentence meaning, their roles in sentence processing remains less known. To address this issue, the present study explored how a verb’s lexical properties and the strength of verb–construction associations influence second language (L2) sentence processing. In two self-paced reading experiments, Korean-speaking learners of English and native English speakers read English argument structure constructions containing verbs with varying lexical properties and association strength. In both Experiment 1 (involving the prepositional (...) dative construction) and Experiment 2 (involving the caused-motion construction), only the L2-English learners, and not the native speakers, spent more time integrating the target constructions with verbs of weaker associations than those with stronger associations. Furthermore, the learners exhibited greater difficulty with verb–construction integration when the verbs were less frequent and less concrete; L2 proficiency did not modulate these effects. Our findings support the constructionist approach, suggesting that both verbs and verb–construction associations play an instrumental role in sentence comprehension. (shrink)

Arguments for mandatory or compulsory vaccination must justify the coercive infringement of bodily integrity via the injection of chemicals that permanently affect a body’s inner constitution. Four arguments are considered. The allegedly libertarian argument declares unvaccinated persons a threat; accordingly, vaccination could take the form of justifiable defence of self and others. This argument conflates material and statistical threats. The harsh coercive measures permissible in defence against the former are not permissible in prevention of the latter. The (...) class='Hi'>argument from tax evasion claims that people can be permissibly coerced into bearing their fair financial burdens of community life and likens this to sharing burdens in the face of a viral threat. The argument fails to demonstrate that vaccination would be fair, permissible in spite of potential lethal side-effects, and sufficiently similar to taxation despite the categorical difference between temporary deprivation of money and permanent deprivation of one’s original inner bodily constitution. The argument from ‘social liberty’ claims that the loss of freedom due to mandatory vaccination is only apparent, namely outweighed by corresponding gains in freedom. This argument conflates freedom as the absence of coercion with freedom as the presence of options for action. It fails to give the former its due weight and to demonstrate that persons may be coerced into increasing the options of others. The argument from the priority of life elevates the protection of life to an absolute value. This is unwarranted and leads to counterintuitive implications. Without better arguments, mandatory vaccination must be rejected. (shrink)

In death penalty debates, advocates on both sides have advanced a staggering number of arguments to defend their positions. Many of those arguments fail to support retaining or abolishing the death penalty, and often this is due to advocates pursuing a line of reasoning where the conclusion, even if correctly established, will not ultimately prove decisive. Many of these issues are also interconnected and shouldn’t be treated separately. The goal of this paper is to provide some clarity about which specific (...) issues really determine whether the institution of capital punishment is morally permissible. The issues can be broadly grouped into three categories: substantive; procedural (comparative); and procedural (noncomparative). Substantive debates regard the inherent moral status of the death penalty, while procedural debates regard how the death penalty is applied in practice, with two types of injustice that can result. Substantive issues have the potential to be the most decisive, for if the death penalty is inherently immoral there’s no need to even raise procedural questions. However, it appears difficult for either side to make a clearly compelling argument on substantive grounds. In regards to the procedural arguments, the concerns of noncomparative justice lead to stronger arguments than the comparative concerns, for the irrevocable nature of the death penalty can play a role in the former but not the later. Overall, abolitionists have a clear advantage in this debate, as they only have to make their case on one of these fronts, while supporters must defend themselves on all three fronts. (shrink)

Many philosophers take the view that, while coercion is a prominent and enduring feature of legal practice, its existence does not reflect a deep, constitutive property of law and therefore coercion plays at best a very limited role in the explanation of law's nature. This view has become more or less the orthodoxy in modern jurisprudence. I argue that an interesting and plausible possible role for coercion in the explanation of law is untouched by the arguments in (...) support of the orthodox view. Since my main purpose is to clear the ground for the alternative, I spell out the orthodox view in some detail. I then briefly sketch the alternative. Finally, I turn to Jules Coleman's discussion of the alternative. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether the interest liberal societies have in producing liberal citizens gives liberal societies the right to regulate the affairs of illiberal groups. It claims that attempts by Rawls and Galston to make liberalism more “pluralism friendly” by reducing the demands for liberal citizenship fail, and it explores arguments by Amy Gutmann, Susan Moller Okin, Eamonn Callan and Will Kymlicka that support a stronger interest in regulating the socialization practices of illiberal groups. The main (...) conclusion of the article is that we must seek for a context-sensitive balance between the need to produce liberal citizens and other liberal values such as freedom of conscience. (shrink)

Discussions of political issues may influence people's opinions. Is there any systematic difference in opinions between those who discuss frequently and those who do not? We measured the association between self-reported discussion frequency and the probability of holding the more liberal opinion on moral issues, using data from the General Social Survey and the American National Election Studies. This association looked different among liberals and among conservatives. Having more frequent discussions is associated with a higher probability of holding more liberal (...) opinions among liberals, while there is little association between discussion frequency and opinions among conservatives. These findings can be explained by the moral argument theory, which is an account of the long-term liberalization of public opinion on moral issues as an outcome of repeated discussions. The key assumption of this theory is that opinions that are justified by the kinds of arguments that only conservatives accept have a disadvantage compared to opinions that are justified by the kinds of arguments that everyone accepts. Consistent with this theory, we find that the effect of discussion frequency is stronger for moral opinions that have a bigger argument advantage. (shrink)

This study aims to develop and defend an account of practical rationality and intention that explains how weakness of the will is conceptually possible. I first present two sceptical arguments against the possibility of weakness and then distinguish two different responses to scepticism that defends its possibility. Both sceptical arguments are motivated by what many have believed is an analogy between theoretical and practical reasoning. This analogy holds that the conclusion of practical reasoning is an intention just as the conclusion (...) of theoretical reasoning is a belief. The particular version held by what I call the Socratic theorists claims, in addition, that the value of desirability is transferred from premisses to conclusion in practical reasoning, just as probability is transferred from premisses to conclusion in theoretical reasoning. One example of an author who takes the analogy as a basic premise and seek to explain how weakness of the will still may be possible, is Donald Davidson. Critics of Davidson object that the the kinds of difficulties that his account runs into shows that the Socratic version of the analogy must be false; not only is this account phenomenologically implausible, it also exaggerates the degree of irrationality of the weak agent. In this study I suggest the possibility of a weaker version of the Davidsonian account. The main source of difficulty for the Davidsonian account, I argue, may not be its reliance on the Socratic version of the analogy between practical and theoretical reasoning, but rather its particular understanding of this analogy in terms of an analogy between practical and inductive-statistical reasoning. This understanding may lead one to accept too “rationalistic” a picture of the reasoning processes behind weakness of the will which, in effect, may make the account vulnerable to objections that it is phenomenologically implausible and exaggerates the irrationality of the weak agent. The weaker version of the Davidsonian account that I propose, ties in the account of weakness with the notions of “satisficing” and “default reasoning”. Although it preserves the central idea of the stronger version that intentions are unconditional evaluative judgements, it proposes a different view of the contents of these judgements, as well as of the reasoning process that lie behind them. It is not difficult to motivate this weaker view: given our human finitary predicament, both satisficing and default reasoning seem to be likely results of an optimal trade-off between the speed and reliability of our computational processes. The question is how these notions may shape the concepts we use to understand weakness of the will. I argue that if we modify the account usually ascribed to Davidson in the light of these notions, the result is a less rationalistic picture of weakness of the will. The gains are more phenomenological credibility as well as a less extreme view of the degree of irrationality involved. (shrink)

Independence is the condition that, if X is preferred to Y, then a lottery between X and Z is preferred to a lottery between Y and Z given the same probability of Z. Is it rationally required that one’s preferences conform to Independence? The main objection to this requirement is that it would rule out the alleged rationality of Allais and Ellsberg Preferences. In this paper, I put forward a sequential dominance argument with fairly weak assumptions for a variant (...) of Independence (called Independence for Constant Prospects), which shows that Allais and Ellsberg Preferences are irrational. Hence this influential objection (that is, the alleged rationality of Allais and Ellsberg Preferences) can be rebutted. I also put forward a number of sequential dominance arguments that various versions of Independence are requirements of rationality. One of these arguments is based on very minimal assumptions, but the arguments for the versions of Independence which are strong enough to serve in the standard axiomatization of Expected Utility Theory need notably stronger assumptions. (shrink)

Since Donald Davidson issued his challenge to anticausalism in 1963, most philosophers have espoused the view that our actions are causally explained by the reasons why we do them. This Davidsonian consensus, however, rests on a faulty argument. Davidson’s challenge has been met, in more than one way, by anticausalists such as C. Ginet, G. Wilson, and S. Sehon. Hence I endeavor to support causalism with a stronger argument. Our actions are correlated with our motivating reasons; to (...) wit, we often do what we have reason to do. In yet other words, we are often rational. Our frequent rationality is easily explained if causalism is correct, but looks like a staggering coincidence otherwise. Anticausalism thus appears to be ill-equipped to account for the very existence of rational behavior, and so far no attempts in this direction have succeeded. (shrink)

When not acting in ways that are recognised as physical self-defence, women are often – in psychology and in other dominant discourses – generalised as inherently passive during subjection to sexualised coercion (rape and attempted rape). Likewise, in the aftermaths, their (in)actions are frequently pathologised as ‘maladaptive coping strategies’. We present theoretically and empirically based arguments for an agency-oriented approach to women’s perspectives on sexualised coercion. Agency is understood as intentional, situated and strategic. Sexualised coercion is not (...) generalised as a single “traumatic” event, but conceptualised as life events. Meanings of coercion are embedded in social activities connected to discourses on ‘rape’ and ‘trauma’. Thus personal meanings of subjection are understood as developed in and through participation in trajectories across diverse contexts. Adopted in our study, this approach points to the great diversity of personal meanings of sexualised coercion. Moreover, it reveals intimate connections between situated, personal and dominant discursive meanings of coercion, and women’s strategies of (in)actions during and in the aftermaths of the events. Our analysis of participants’ perspectives also indicates an imperative need for reinterpreting concepts such as ‘victim’ and ‘passivity’. In a reinterpretation women, although subjected to sexualised coercion, emerge as subjects both during subjection and in the aftermaths. Furthermore their seemingly pathological behaviour may be re-conceptualised as person ally sense-making strategies of action in reflected attempts at (re)formulating and (re)organising their life strategies. (shrink)

Aristotle’s argument in Nicomachean Ethics 6 for the mutual implication of the virtues by one another is developed, and others added to it, in a repertory of arguments for this thesis in section 18 of the De anima libri mantissa attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias. The last part of this is echoed in no.22 of the Ethical Problems attributed to Alexander; nos. 8 and 28 of the same collection are also relevant. A distinction can be drawn between the mutual (...) implication of the virtues and the unity of virtue in some stronger sense; the arguments in the texts attributed to Alexander are examined to see whether they imply the latter more clearly than Aristotle’s own argument does, and the conclusion is drawn that some do so because of the use they make of the conception of the noble as the goal of virtuous action, or of virtue as a whole of parts. The treatment of Aristotle’s argument in the Byzantine commentaries is characterised by a preoccupation with the special status of practical wisdom. (shrink)

Arash Abizadeh claims that ‘[a]nyone accepting the democratic theory of political legitimation domestically is thereby committed to rejecting the unilateral domestic right to control state boundaries’. He bases this conclusion on the premise that ‘to be democratically legitimate, a state’s regime of border control must result from political processes in which those subject to it—including foreigners—have a right of democratic participation’. I shall argue that this premise, even if it were correct, does not support the conclusion since ‘democratic legitimacy’ is (...) morally irrelevant: that something is ‘democratically illegitimate’ in no way suggests, let alone implies, that it is also morally impermissible or contravenes a moral right. I shall consider counter-arguments advanced against this objection by Maxime Lepoutre and Abizadeh himself and argue that they fail. Thus there is no valid democratic argument against border coercion. (shrink)

Pauline Kleingeld argues that according to Kant it would be wrong to coerce a state into an international federation, due to the wrongness of paternalism. Although I agree that Kant opposes the waging of war as a means to peace, I disagree with Kleingeld's account of the reasons why he would oppose coercing a state into a federation. Since she does not address the broader question of the permissibility of interstate coercion, she does not properly address the narrower question (...) of whether coercion to compel a state to join a federation can be permissible. I revise and supplement her arguments. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that the violation of Bell inequalities excludes local theories of the quantum realm. This paper presents a stronger Bell argument which even forbids certain non-local theories. The conclusion of the stronger Bell argument presented here provably is the strongest possible consequence from the violation of Bell inequalities on a qualitative probabilistic level. Since among the excluded non-local theories are those whose only non-local probabilistic connection is a dependence between the space-like separated measurement (...) outcomes of EPR/B experiments, outcome dependence cannot be the crucial dependence for explaining a violation of Bell inequalities. Rather, the remaining non-local theories, which can violate Bell inequalities, are characterized by the fact that at least one of the measurement outcomes in some sense probabilistically depends both on its local as well as on its distant measurement setting. While this is not to say that what is usually called parameter dependence has to hold, some kind of dependence on the distant parameter cannot be avoided. Against the received view, established by Jarrett and Shimony, that on a probabilistic level quantum non-locality amounts to outcome dependence, this result confirms and makes precise Maudlin's claim that some kind of parameter dependence is required. (shrink)

Over the last several years, C. B. Macpherson has attempted to present a far-reaching critique of the theories underlying and justifying capitalist social systems. Beginning with a critique of the classical theories of capitalism, he has extended it to the later formulations offered by j. S. Mill and T. H. Green, along with the most recent formulation offered by john Rawls. The guiding thread throughout his writing has been the critique of the model of persons which underpin the various formulations (...) of capitalist theory. What I would like to do in this paper is to present what I think to be a stronger defense of Macpherson's argument than Macpherson has himself given, since I think it can be shown that at certain crucial points his argument is necessarily flawed for the point which he is trying to make. (shrink)

Scoring rules measure the deviation between a credence assignment and reality. Probabilism holds that only those credence assignments that satisfy the axioms of probability are rationally admissible. Accuracy-based arguments for probabilism observe that given certain conditions on a scoring rule, the score of any non-probability is dominated by the score of a probability. The conditions in the arguments we will consider include propriety: the claim that the expected accuracy of _p_ is not beaten by the expected accuracy of any other (...) credence _c_ by the lights of _p_ if _p_ is a probability. I argue that if we think through how a non-probabilist can respond to pragmatic arguments for probabilism, we will expect the non-probabilist to accept a condition _stronger_ than propriety for the same reasons that the probabilist gives for propriety, but this stronger condition is incompatible with the other conditions that the probabilist needs to run the accuracy argument. This makes it unlikely for the probabilist’s argument to be compelling. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the first iteration of Thrasymachus’ claim as reported in Book I of Plato’s Republic that ‘justice is the interest of the stronger’, namely, a ‘political’ interpretation, according to which ‘justice is the interest of the stronger party in each polis as established in the law’. The author contends that this argument is logically and rhetorically distinct from Thrasymachus’ subsequent restatements of his position in Republic I. The ‘political’ version of the Thrasymachean position enjoyed (...) currency after the composition of the Republic — and in a way that was not entirely negative. The current paper examines two cases of this reception: the first, in Plato’s own late work, the Laws, where he reengages with the Thrasymachean doctrine; the second, in the De republica Anglorum of Sir Thomas Smith, an early modern theorist who self-consciously defended Thrasymachus’ theory of justice. The paper’s immediate purpose is to suggest that Thrasymachus’ conception of ‘political’ justice, in particular, has far more coherence and power than the supposed ‘refutation’ of it in the Republic might leads us to believe. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the idea of the rule of law as found in neo-liberal political and legal theory. The central argument is that it is not possible to produce an account of the rule of law and its basic building blocks in such theories—namely freedom, rights and justice—without reference to a set of shared substantive values. The crucial argument is that if freedom is understood negatively, as the absence of coercion, it is not in fact possible (...) to produce an account of coercion which detaches it from conceptions of the good. The impact of this argument is then analysed in relation to a range of themes, one of the central ones of which is that on the neo-liberal view the welfare state cannot be made compatible with the rule of law. The case for this important view is rejected in the paper. (shrink)

The view that persons are entitled to respect because of their moral agency is commonplace in contemporary moral theory. What exactly this respect entails, however, is far less uncontroversial. In this book, Van der Rijt argues powerfully that this respect for persons’ moral agency must also encompass respect for their subjective moral judgments – even when these judgments can be shown to be fundamentally flawed. Van der Rijt scrutinises the role persons’ subjective moral judgments play within the context of (...) class='Hi'>coercion and domination. His fresh, original analysis of Kant’s third formulation of the Categorical Imperative reveals how these judgments are intimately connected to a person’s dignity. The result is an insightful new account of coercion, a novel Kantian reformulation of the republican notion of non-domination and a compelling, innovative argument in favour of retributive justice. "In this admirably clear and insightful work, Van der Rijt develops an original account of coercion and dignity. On the basis of his analysis of the relation between these two concepts, he also provides an intriguing new angle on the nature of republicanism. I recommend this book to anyone interested in freedom and power and their roles in normative political theory." Ian Carter - University of Pavia "In this carefully argued and original study Jan-Willem van der Rijt offers an analysis of coercion, a broadly Kantian argument that coercion is an affront to dignity, and an illuminating contrast with Philip Pettit's republicanism. A most welcome contribution." Thomas E. Hill, Jr. - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "Jan-Willem van der Rijt has written a well argued, original book that will prove to be extremely helpful for the philosophical inquiry of the relationship between coercion and human dignity as well as for the assessment of republicanism and its consequences." Ralf Stoecker - University of Potsdam. (shrink)

Although the individual mandate was upheld and the Commerce Clause may have been cabined, the decision to strike down a significant element of the “Medicaid expansion” may prove to be the most significant aspect of the Supreme Court’s decision in NFIB v. Sebelius. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), States were required to extend Medicaid coverage to all individuals under the age of 65 with incomes below 133 percent of the poverty line, a new “essential health benefits” package was required (...) for all new Medicaid recipients, and the increased costs due to the expansion would be entirely covered by the Federal government through 2016, with the Federal payment gradually decreasing to a minimum of 90 percent of the total cost from the expanded coverage. The element found to be unconstitutional was §1396c of the ACA, which permitted the withdrawal of all Federal Medicaid funds from those States that did not comply with the ACA’s requirements for Medicaid expansion. The effect on access to health care may be significant: roughly half of those expected to gain coverage under the ACA were going to gain it through the Medicaid expansion; it is unclear how many States will choose to opt into that expansion in the absence of §1396c.1 Additionally, the argument offered by the Court to strike down that provision might be used to attack other federal programs—concerning transportation, social services, environmental protection, and others—that have a similar structure. This paper will demonstrate that the argument rests on a theoretical mistake concerning the relationships between coercion, compulsion, and political accountability and that, further, this mistake is not one legally forced upon the Court. (shrink)

The liberal principle of tolerance limits the use of coercion by a commitment to the broadest possible toleration of rival religious and moral conceptions of the worthy way of life. While accepting the communitarian insight that moral thought is necessarily rooted in a social self with conceptions of the good, I argue that this does not undermine liberal tolerance. There is no thickly detailed way of life so embedded in our self-conceptions that liberal neutrality is blocked at the level (...) of reflection. This holds true for us in virtue of the socially acquired reflective self found in the pluralist modern world. I reject Michael J. Sandel’s argument that to resolve issues of privacy rights we must reach a shared view of the moral worth of, for instance, homosexual conduct. The view of community most consistent with our situation is a simple causal conception: we are all members of the same community to the extent that we inhabit the same world of causes, physical and social. Any attempt to call us to some thicker, stronger conception of community fails to speak to us in our modernity. (shrink)

The consequence argument of van Inwagen is widely regarded as the best argument for incompatibilism. Lewis’s response is praised by van Inwagen as the best compatibilist’s strategy but Lewis himself acknowledges that his strategy resembles that of Lehrer. A comparison will show that one can speak about Lehrer-Lewis strategy, although I think that Lewis’s variation is dialectically slightly stronger. The paper provides a response to some standard objections of incompatibilists to the Lehrer-Lewis reply.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Out of the Order of Number”: Benjamin and Irigaray Toward a Politics of Pure MeansPeter Fenves* (bio)At the heart of the legal orders that arose in conjunction with the Enlightenment idea of law as rules of conduct universally applicable to all those who belong to a properly instituted political body lies a formula for the justification of the violence on which the law depends in order for it to (...) be an actual, effective, and therefore “living” law—and not merely an idea: violence is justified insofar as it is a means for the control of those violent acts that are not themselves means for the control of immediate threats of violence. As Walter Benjamin indicates in the opening paragraphs of his most explicit exposition of legal and political theory, “Toward the Critique of Violence” (1921), the justification of violence as a means is the point of contention around which arguments over the origin, nature, and purpose of the modern state endlessly circle. Justified violence is supposed to be of a different order than unjustified violence, and so in the context of legal reasoning it is no longer called “violence” but “coercion” or “punishment.” Yet as the formula for the justification of violence indicates, the violence of the legal order is not in general sanctioned for the purpose of subduing immediate threats to one’s own life—this is the justification for the extralegal violence of “private persons”—but for the purpose of preserving the law itself: the law is inviolable. As long as the legal order makes the law effective and thus gives it life, it, too, is inviolable, and all violence other than its own can henceforth be interpreted as an immediate threat not to life itself—however this may be understood—but to the legal order. The end of legally sanctioned violence, its purpose and function, is not to put an end to violence as such but, instead, to thwart all threats to the law in the name of which violence can be sanctioned. Everything that enters into the space over which the legal order imposes its sentence is therefore implicated in the disquieting—or, as Benjamin says, “rotten” [GS 2: 188; SW 242]—ambiguity of legal violence understood as a means whose justification lies in the application of the law: the legal order can justify its own violence only insofar as this violence is a means to an end, but the end it serves can never be separated from itself as means, for the law, by virtue of its universality, is at bottom unconcerned with the life of those upon whom the violence it justifies is exercised or with the life of those whom this violence is supposed to protect. The violence of the legal order is concerned solely with itself, with its own majesty—without, however, ceasing to present itself as a means and reverting to what all legal violence once was: immediate manifestation.Nothing that enters into the space of the legal order can escape the ambiguity of the violence through which the law comes to life. Or at least nothing can escape this ambiguity as long as the space on which the legal order founds itself runs counter to the sole space that accords with the strict universality of the law: a universally accessible, indivisible, and undivided space that is nevertheless capable of the greatest degree of discreteness, differentiation, and individuation. In place of this space the legal orders that arose in Europe over the course of the last five centuries set out something like its parody: [End Page 43] homogeneous and yet fully divided domains whose divisions from one another are momenta of the extralegal violence to which each legal order owes its origin. At least one species of being has always been seen to move outside the space of the legal order—a species whose specificity, speciesness, and spatiality have thus given rise to interminable analysis: the angels. The space that angels traverse—and, in particular, the ones who enter into Luce Irigaray’s writings—does not suffer division into homogeneous domains but does not therefore amount to an undifferentiated expanse, a yawning abyss, or a formless chaos; it is... (shrink)

In this article, I present a new interpretation of the pro-life view on the status of early human embryos. In my understanding, this position is based not on presumptions about the ontological status of embryos and their developmental capabilities but on the specific criteria of rational decisions under uncertainty and on a cautious response to the ambiguous status of embryos. This view, which uses the decision theory model of moral reasoning, promises to reconcile the uncertainty about the ontological status of (...) embryos with the certainty about normative obligations. I will demonstrate that my interpretation of the pro-life view, although seeming to be stronger than the standard one, has limited scope and cannot be used to limit destructive research on human embryos. (shrink)

Gaylin and Jennings tell us that we must change the everyday behavior shaping the landscape of modern American society. Our current culture of autonomy is predicated on rationality as the basis of human conduct. But, we are reminded here, man is not inherently rational; appeals to emotion are far more effective than logical argument in changing our conduct.

I examine the main anticosmopolitan Rawslian argument, the ‘basic structure argument.’ It holds that distributive justice only applies to existing basic structures, there are only state basic structures, so distributive justice only applies among compatriots. Proponents of the argument face three challenges: 1) they must explain what type of basic structure relation makes distributive justice relevant only among compatriots, 2) they must explain why distributive justice (as opposed to allocative or retributive) is the relevant regulative concept for (...) basic structures, and 3) they must put forth a plausible concept of distributive justice. I show that Rawlsians support what I will call the ‘division of labor thesis’ to answer the first two challenges. Briefly, the division of labor thesis holds that distributive justice only becomes relevant where members of a division of labor jointly produce some socioeconomic product. To meet the third challenge, Rawlsians seem to accept what Elizabeth Anderson calls the ‘modern systemic concept of distributive justice’ – the idea that distributive justice organizes entire economic systems with respect to their distributive consequences or the relationships they maintain. I argue that if Rawlsians accept the systemic concept, they should reject the anticosmopolitan basic structure argument. (shrink)