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To address the underrepresentation of women in philosophy effectively, we must understand the causes of the early loss of women. In this paper we challenge one of the few explanations that has focused on why women might leave philosophy at early stages. Wesley Buckwalter and Stephen Stich offer some evidence that women have different intuitions than men about philosophical thought experiments. We present some concerns about their evidence and we discuss our own study, in which we attempted to replicate their (...) results for 23 different responses to 14 scenarios . We also conducted a literature search to see if other philosophers or psychologists have tested for gender differences in philosophical intuitions. Based on our findings, we argue that that it is unlikely that gender differences in intuitions play a significant role in driving women from philosophy. (shrink)

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Many well-known arguments in the philosophy of mind use thought experiments to elicit intuitions about consciousness. Often, these thought experiments include mechanistic explanations of a systems’ behavior. I argue that when we understand a system as a mechanism, we are not likely to understand it as an agent. According to Arico, Fiala, Goldberg, and Nichols’ (2011) AGENCY Model, understanding a system as an agent is necessary for generating the intuition that it is conscious. Thus, if we are presented with a (...) mechanistic description of a system, we will be very unlikely to understand that system as conscious. Many of the thought experiments in the philosophy of mind describe systems mechanistically. I argue that my account of consciousness attributions is preferable to the “Simplicity Intuition” account proposed by David Barnett (2008) because it is more explanatory and more consistent with our intuitions. Still, the same conclusion follows from Barnett’s “Simplicity” account and from my own account: we should reassess the conclusions that have been drawn from many famous thought experiments. (shrink)

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Although recent research suggests that women are underrepresented in philosophy after initial philosophy courses, there have been relatively few empirical investigations into the factors that lead to this early drop-off in women’s representation. In this paper, we present the results of empirical investigations at a large American public university that explore various factors contributing to women’s underrepresentation in philosophy at the undergraduate level. We administered climate surveys to hundreds of students completing their Introduction to Philosophy course and examined differences in (...) women’s and men’s feelings of belonging, comfort, and confidence in the philosophy classroom. We present findings suggesting various factors that contribute to women’s lower willingness to continue in philosophy compared to men’s, including perceptions about intuition-based methods in philosophy, the usefulness of the philosophy major, philosophy as a male discipline, and philosophical abilities as innate talents. We conclude by providing some suggestions for improving undergraduate philosophy courses in ways that would increase women’s willingness to continue in philosophy and may improve the courses for all students. (shrink)

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Respect for Autonomy has been a mainstay of medical ethics since its enshrinement as one of the four principles of biomedical ethics by Beauchamp and Childress’ in the late 1970s. This paper traces the development of this modern concept from Antiquity to the present day, paying attention to its Enlightenment origins in Kant and Rousseau. The rapid C20th developments of bioethics and RFA are then considered in the context of the post-war period and American socio-political thought. The validity and utility (...) of the RFA are discussed in light of this philosophical-historical account. It is concluded that it is not necessary to embrace an ethic of autonomy in order to guard patients from coercion or paternalism, and that, on the contrary, the dominance of autonomy threatens to undermine those very things which have helped doctors come to view and respect their patients as persons. (shrink)

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We give an introductory tutorial to assumption-based argumentation (referred to as ABA) – a form of argumentation where arguments and attacks are notions derived from primitive notions of rules in a deductive system, assumptions and contraries thereof. ABA is equipped with different semantics for determining ‘winning’ sets of assumptions and – interchangeably and equivalently – ‘winning’ sets of arguments. It is also equipped with a catalogue of computational techniques to determine whether given conclusions can be supported by a ‘winning’ set (...) of arguments. These are in the form of disputes between (fictional) proponent and opponent players, provably correct w.r.t. the semantics. Albeit simple, ABA is powerful in that it can be used to represent and reason with a number of problems in AI and beyond: non-monotonic reasoning, preferences, decisions. While doing so, it encompasses the expressive and computational needs of these problems while affording the transparency and explanatory power of argumentation. (shrink)

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According to what Jonathan Bennett calls the Kant–Frege view of existence, Frege gave solid logical foundations to Kant’s claim that existence is not a real predicate. In this article I will challenge Bennett’s claim by arguing that although Kant and Frege agree on what existence is not, they agree neither on what it is nor on the importance and justification of existential propositions. I identify three main differences: first, whereas for Frege existence is a property of a concept, for Kant (...) it is a relational property pertaining between the concept and intuition of an object. Second, whereas for Frege truth about individuals presupposes their existence, for Kant truth is in many cases independent of the existence of objects. Third, whereas Frege binds logic to existence and removes modalities from logic, for Kant existence is a modal category that is emphatically removed from the domain of logic and set in the core of metaphysics. Due to these differences in Kant’s and Frege’s theories of existence, Frege cannot be seen as giving logical clarity to Kant’s view. (shrink)

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The distinction between the agent-relative and the agent-neutral plays a prominent role in recent attempts to taxonomize normative theories. Its importance extends to most areas in practical philosophy, though. Despite its popularity, the distinction remains difficult to get a good grip on. In part this has to do with the fact that there is no consensus concerning the sort of objects to which we should apply the distinction. Thomas Nagel distinguishes between agent-neutral and agent-relative values, reasons, and principles; Derek Parfit (...) focuses on normative theories (and the aims they provide to agents), David McNaughton and Piers Rawling focus on rules and reasons, Skorupski on predicates, and there are other suggestions too. Some writers suspect that we fundamentally talk about one and the same distinction. This work is about practical reasons for action rather than theoretical reasons for belief. Moreover, focus is on whether reasons do or do not essentially refer to particular agents. A challenge that undermines the dichotomy in this sense is posed. After having rejected different attempts to defend the distinction, it is argued that there is a possible defence that sets out from Jonathan Dancy’s recent distinction between enablers and favourers. (shrink)

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In the presentation I will analyse Kant’s conception of modalities and consider its relevance to his critical metaphysics. With his Tables of Judgements and of Categories Kant makes an important division between two kinds of modality, of which the former is only logical and the latter transcendental, i.e., objective. Only judgements that are necessary in both ways are properly metaphysical. This distinction is important for Kant’s distinction between Transcendental Analytic and Transcendental Dialectic, i.e., between acceptable and unacceptable metaphysics. I submit (...) that not only is Kant’s theory of modality useful for properly understanding his arguments in the Dialectic, but that only by distinguishing between the two types of modality can one can make sense of his theory that the ideas of reason are simultaneously inevitable and erroneous. This modal analysis thus offers a new and important point of view to Kant’s metaphysics and its critique. (shrink)

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The debate on how to interpret Kant's transcendental idealism has been prominent for several decades now. In his book Kant's Transcendental Proof of Realism (2004) Kenneth R. Westphal introduces and defends his version of the metaphysical dual-aspect reading. But his real aim lies deeper: to provide a sound transcendental proof for (unqualified) realism, based on Kant's work, without resorting to transcendental idealism. In this sense his aim is similar to that of Peter F. Strawson – although Westphal's approach is far (...) more sophisticated. First he attempts to show that noumenal causation – on the reality of which his argument partly rests – is coherent in and necessary for Kant's transcendental idealism. Westphal then aims to undermine transcendental idealism by two major claims: Kant can neither account for transcendental affinity nor satisfactorily counter Hume's causal scepticism. Finally Westphal defends his alternative for transcendental idealism by showing that it solves these problems and thus offers a genuine transcendental proof for realism. In this paper I will show that all the three steps outlined above suffer from decisive shortcomings, and that consequently, regardless of its merits, Westphal's transcendental argument for realism remains undemonstrated. (shrink)

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This is a stimulating and vivid area of philosophical research, but it has tended to monopolize the notion of 'good-for', linking it necessarily to welfare or ...

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While hedonism has been subjected to much criticism over the years, it is still a widely endorsed axiological view. One objection that appears to be generally recognised as especially troublesome to hedonists is that their central claim, that final value accrues only to experiences of pleasure gives us a narrow view of value. Much more than pleasure is valuable for its own sake. A competing theory, preferentialism, is another widespread theory about value. According to one version of preferentialism, only the (...) objects of preferences carry final value, and since not all of our preferences have pleasure as their object, preferentialists accuse hedonists of overlooking a great deal that is of value. For instance, if someone has a so-called external preference to the effect that, say, the Californian redwood forests should go on existing, then the world contains more value if the forests continue to exist.1 Given this, the possible pleasure someone would experience on learning that his preference is satisfied has nothing to do with this kind of value. Preferentialists therefore conclude that the hedonist perspective is not wide enough. In this work, it is argued that hedonists are entitled to reverse the argument. Preferentialists are restrained by not being able to recognize the object of value that is cherished by hedonists. (shrink)

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Up until the end of the twentieth century, the dystopia was a practically nonexistent genre in Finnish literature. However, since the turn of the century, there has been a marked dystopian turn. In addition to the anxieties associated with the passing of the millennium, emerging global issues such as digital development, environmental problems, and terrorism have contributed to the ongoing popularity of dystopian fiction.1 At the same time, Finnish literature has been strongly influenced by the trends of international book markets. (...) For example, the unprecedented popularity of dystopian young adult literature has inspired Finnish authors. In the past ten years, a number of writers have published... (shrink)

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In The Value Gap,Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen addresses the distinction between what is finally good and what is finally good-for, two value notions that are central to ethics and practical deliberation. The first part of the book argues against views that claim that one of these notions is either faulty, or at best conceptually dependent on the other notion. Whereas these two views disagree on whether it is good or good-for that is the flawed or dependent concept, it is argued, (...) as against both approaches, that goodness and goodness-for are independent value notions that cannot be fully understood in terms of one another. The second part provides an analysis of good and good-for in terms of a fitting-attitude analysis. By elaborating a more nuanced understanding of the key elements of this analysis—reasons and pro-attitudes—Rønnow-Rasmussen challenges the widespread idea that there are no genuine practical and moral dilemmas. The result is that the gap between favouring for a reason what is good and favouring for a reason what is good for someone appears insurmountable. (shrink)

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Recent Work on Intrinsic Value brings together for the first time many of the most important and influential writings on the topic of intrinsic value to have appeared in the last half-century. During this period, inquiry into the nature of intrinsic value has intensified to such an extent that at the moment it is one of the hottest topics in the field of theoretical ethics. The contributions to this volume have been selected in such a way that all of the (...) fundamental questions concerning the nature of intrinsic value are treated in depth and from a variety of viewpoints. These questions include how to understand the concept of intrinsic value, what sorts of things can have intrinsic value, and how to compute intrinsic value. The editors have added an introduction that ties these questions together and places the contributions in context, and they have also provided an extensive bibliography. The result is a comprehensive, balanced, and detailed picture of current thinking about intrinsic value, one that provides an indispensable backdrop against which future writings on the topic may be assessed. (shrink)

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Environmental issues are among the most critical scientific and social problems of today. The human environment is an environment of inequality and crisis, and a platform for debate on the fairness of social order. The crisis is the result of human behaviour, which reflects the failure of development and unjust distribution of consequences. The gap between rich and poor on a global scale is evident in the disproportionate climate change impacts on countries and their ability to cope. In this respect, (...) the economic and political inequalities between First and Third World countries are fortified by ecological ones. The development of international environmental mechanisms such as the Kyoto Agreement is instrumental in this kind of change. The pursuit of tackling and controlling climate change has its unforeseen consequences, whereas in specific communities the existent inequalities are emphasised in new forms. If mechanisms developed for the environment, such as the market of carbon emissions and the carbon balance, lead to environmental injustice and disproportionately affects vulnerable groups, it raises the question of their purpose. On the path of Rawl’s idea on the fairness of social institutions, such system demonstrates itself as contradictory and unjust. (shrink)

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In a rapidly changing global fashion system, new centres such as Shanghai are joining other cities such as Dubai, Moscow, and Mumbai as global fashion capitals. Street Style is a series that explores and reveals the relationship between culture, the city, and the street fashion. Books in the series use a predominantly visual approach paired with critical analysis, and are inspired by street fashion blogs, magazines, and other fashion incubators such as internet sites. Australian fashion is an up and coming (...) area, moving away from the beach look that is usually associated with Australia into more high fashion pieces. This book takes an academic look at some of the styles seen on the streets of Sydney, a city that may not officially be Australia s capital but is certainly number one in terms of style, culture and fashion. The book is beautifully put together with full colour photos of the stylish and eclectic residents of Sydney. This book would make a beautiful coffee table book or a gift for anyone fashion conscience or interested in travel. Style is predominantly an individual matter the way people put themselves together creates a sense of individual identity, but collectively there is a sense of common culture in a community, a city, or a country.". (shrink)

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What does it mean that an object has instrumental value? While some writers seem to think it means that the object bears a value, and that instrumental value accordingly is a kind of value, other writers seem to think that the object is not a value bearer but is only what is conducive to something of value. Contrary to what is the general view among philosophers of value, I argue that if instrumental value is a kind of value, then it (...) is a kind of extrinsic final value. (shrink)

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Invited talk at the so-called Thursday Lecture, Oct 25, at the Hoger Instituut voor Wijsbegeerte the International Programme at the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Focus was on the distinction between good and good-for.

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Recent works in Explainable AI mostly address the transparency issue of black-box models or create explanations for any kind of models (i.e., they are model-agnostic), while leaving explanations of interpretable models largely underexplored. In this paper, we fill this gap by focusing on explanations for a specific interpretable model, namely pattern-based logistic regression (PLR) for binary text classification. We do so because, albeit interpretable, PLR is challenging when it comes to explanations. In particular, we found that a standard way to (...) extract explanations from this model does not consider relations among the features, making the explanations hardly plausible to humans. Hence, we propose AXPLR, a novel explanation method using (forms of) computational argumentation to generate explanations (for outputs computed by PLR) which unearth model agreements and disagreements among the features. Specifically, we use computational argumentation as follows: we see features (patterns) in PLR as arguments in a form of quantified bipolar argumentation frameworks (QBAFs) and extract attacks and supports between arguments based on specificity of the arguments; we understand logistic regression as a gradual semantics for these QBAFs, used to determine the arguments’ dialectic strength; and we study standard properties of gradual semantics for QBAFs in the context of our argumentative re-interpretation of PLR, sanctioning its suitability for explanatory purposes. We then show how to extract intuitive explanations (for outputs computed by PLR) from the constructed QBAFs. Finally, we conduct an empirical evaluation and two experiments in the context of human-AI collaboration to demonstrate the advantages of our resulting AXPLR method. (shrink)

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Mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 is a highly controversial issue, and many members of the public oppose it on the grounds that they should be free to determine what happens to their own body. Opinion has generally favored parental authority with respect to vaccination of children, but less attention has been paid to the ethical complexities of how to respond when mature minors refuse vaccination that is requested by their parents. We present a case in which a mature minor, who was (...) psychiatrically hospitalized, refused vaccination that had been requested by her parents, which led to significant moral distress for her caregivers. (shrink)

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The idiom ‘for someone’s sake’ plays a central role in recent attempts to understand the distinction between impersonal values and personal values—e.g. between what is valuable or good, period, and what is valuable for or good for someone. In the first section three historical approaches to this distinction are outlined. Section 2 presents a modified fitting-attitude analysis of final ‘value-for’ interpreting value-for in terms of there being a reason to favour something ‘for someone’s sake’. Section 3 outlines two arguments against (...) this sort of modified analysis, and then indicates what the rejection of these arguments would involve. This section also identifies an ambiguity in the analysis deriving from the fact that ‘sake’ may be used either evaluatively or non-evaluatively. In Section 4, the modified FA analysis is further clarified. Section 5 focuses on Kevin Mulligan’s recent suggestion that we are struck by personal value; finally, in Section 6, it is shown that an FA analysis admitting of two varieties of goodness may help us understand a certain kind of case that appears paradoxical as long as we assume that there is good, period, and no good-for. (shrink)

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In this paper we explore the thesis that the role of argumentation in practical reasoning in general and legal reasoning in particular is to justify the use of defeasible rules to derive a conclusion in preference to the use of other defeasible rules to derive a conflicting conclusion. The defeasibility of rules is expressed by means of non-provability claims as additional conditions of the rules.We outline an abstract approach to defeasible reasoning and argumentation which includes many existing formalisms, including default (...) logic, extended logic programming, non-monotonic modal logic and auto-epistemic logic, as special cases. We show, in particular, that the admissibility semantics for all these formalisms has a natural argumentation-theoretic interpretation and proof procedure, which seem to correspond well with informal argumentation. (shrink)

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Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen | : This paper explores a novel metaethical theory according to which value judgments express conditional beliefs held by those who make them. Each value judgment expresses the belief that something is the case on condition that something else is the case. The paper aims to reach a better understanding of this view and to highlight some of the challenges that lie ahead. The most pressing of these revolves around the correct understanding of the nature of the (...) relevant cognitive attitudes. It is suggested that the distinction between “dormant attitudes” and “occurrent attitudes” helps us to understand these conditional beliefs. | : Cet article explore une nouvelle théorie méta-éthique selon laquelle les jugements de valeur expriment les croyances conditionnelles des sujets qui les font. Chaque jugement de valeur exprimerait la croyance selon laquelle quelque chose est le cas à la condition que quelque chose d’autre le soit. L’objectif de cet article est de parvenir à une meilleure compréhension de ce point de vue et de souligner certaines de ses difficultés. La plus urgente d’entre elles concerne la compréhension adéquate de la nature des attitudes cognitives pertinentes. Nous suggérons que la distinction entre « attitudes dormantes » et « attitudes occurrentes » permettrait de mieux comprendre les croyances conditionnelles. (shrink)

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This article examines parallels between the increasing mental burnout and environmental overshoot in the organisational context. The article argues that there is a particular philosophy of management that connects these two phenomena of overshoot and burnout, namely productivism. As there are boundaries in all ecological processes and systems, the productivist aim of having ever more output and growth is deemed absurd. It is proposed that productivity as a management philosophy not only leads to mental ill-health in organisations but also to (...) overshoot in the environment. The article concludes that productivism, which denies the limits in utilisation of humans and other natural resources, fits poorly with circular economy and sustainability. Hence, ecological management should be complemented with a more holistic and processual view of organizations, as well as have an aim of peaceful coexistence between all earthbound objects. This signifies acknowledging and caring for human and non-human needs both now and in future by applying the idea of moderation to production of goods and services. (shrink)

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Section 2.1 identifies three notions of intrinsic value: the finality sense understands it as value for its own sake, the supervenience sense identifies it with value that depends exclusively on the bearer’s internal properties, and the nonderivative sense describes intrinsic value as value that provides justification for other values and is not justified by any other value. A distinction between final intrinsic and final extrinsic value in terms of supervenience is subsequently introduced. Section 2.2 contains a discussion of the debate (...) about instrumental value and other varieties of nonfinal extrinsic value. Finally, section 2.3 focuses on recent attacks on the very coherence of the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction and its role as a demarcation line between fundamental and nonfundamental value. (shrink)

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The endeavour to locate value in moral progress faces various substantive as well as more formal challenges. This paper focuses on challenges of the latter kind. After some preliminaries, Section 3 introduces two general kinds of “evaluative moral progress-claims”, and outlines a possible novel analysis of a descriptive notion of moral progress. While Section 4 discusses certain logical features of betterness in light of recent work in value theory which are pertinent to the notion of moral progress, Sections 5 and (...) 6 outline the ambiguous character of “making moral progress”. (shrink)

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People are prone to ascribe value to persons they love. However, the relation between love and value is far from straightforward. This is particularly evident given certain views on the nature of love. Setting out from the idea that what causes us to have an attitude towards an object need not be found in the intentional content of the attitude, this paper depicts love as an attitude that takes non‐fungible persons as intentional objects. Taking this view as a starting point, (...) the paper shows why it is difficult to combine with certain views on value. The main challenge comes from the idea that value judgments are universalizable. This view squares badly with the thought that the people whom we love are irreplaceable. Introducing the idea that properties may have different functions in the intentional content of the attitude, this paper determines what precisely it is about love that makes it hard to combine with universalizability. Moreover, it suggests two ways of meeting this challenge. (shrink)

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It is argued that the so-called fitting attitude- or buck-passing pattern of analysis may be applied to personal values too if the analysans is fine-tuned in the following way: An object has personal value for a person a, if and only if there is reason to favour it for a’s sake. One benefit with it is its wide range: different kinds of values are analysable by the same general formula. Moreover, by situating the distinguishing quality in the attitude rather than (...) the reason part, the analysis admits that personal value is recognizable as a value not only by the person for whom it has personal value, but for everyone else too. We thereby avoid facing two completely different notions of value, viz., one pertaining to impersonal value, and another to personal value. The analysis also elucidates why we are justified in our concern for objects that are valuable for us; if value just is, as it is suggested, the existence of reasons for such a concern, the justification is immediately forthcoming. (shrink)

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