Common-sense Intuitions Research Articles

Deep disagreement across moral revolutions

Moral revolutions are rightly coming to be recognised as a philosophically interesting and historically important mode of moral change. What is less often acknowledged is that the very characteristics that make a moral change revolutionary pose a fundamental challenge to the possibility of moral progress. This is because moral revolutions are characterised by a diachronic form of deep moral disagreement: moral agents on either side of a moral revolution adopt different standards for assessing the merits of a moral argument, and according to the standards they adopt, agents on neither side of the revolution ought to accept the arguments being put forward by those on the other. This threatens to undermine the progressive status of many of our most celebrated historical examples of moral revolutions: if a moral revolution only looks progressive in light of a change in evaluative standards it itself brought about, then moral progress seems relative to a particular historical perspective; if prior to a moral revolution taking place the moral arguments in its favour fall short of the relevant standards, moral revolutions can never be the outcome of rational argumentation. This apparent relativism and irrationality sits uncomfortably alongside our common-sense intuition that the moral revolutions upon which our contemporary moral worldview rests count as genuine moral progress. In this paper, I deepen currently popular Kuhnian-inspired accounts of moral revolution by incorporating Wittgensteinian ideas from Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty. The result is an original way of thinking about deep moral disagreements, moral revolutions, and moral progress.

If presentism is false, then I don’t exist. On common-sense presentism

For many presentist philosophers, e.g. Zimmerman (Contemp Debates Metaphys 10:211–225, 2008), a central motivation in favour of presentism is that it is supposed to be part of common sense. But the fact that common-sense intuitions are indeed presentist is usually taken for granted (and sometimes also conceded by eternalists). As has been shown in other domains of philosophy (e.g. free will), we should be careful when attributing some supposed intuitions to common sense, and Torrengo (Phenomenology and Mind 12: 50–55, 2017) and Le Bihan (Igitur-Arguments Philos 9(1):1–23, 2018) have legitimately raised doubts about the assumption that common sense is presentist. In this paper, I take up this challenge and try to show that our common-sense intuitions do imply presentism. More precisely, the intuitions that I take to imply presentism are fundamental intuitions about our selves as conscious beings. The upshot is that presentism is so much embedded within our conception of our selves that if presentism is false, then I don’t exist!

Towards a Value-Neutral Definition of Sport

ABSTRACT In this paper I argue that philosophers of sport should avoid value-laden definitions of sport; that is, they should avoid building into the definition of sport that they are inherently worthwhile activities. Sports may very well often be worthwhile as a contingent matter, but this should not be taken to be a core feature included in the definition of sport. I start by outlining what I call the ‘legitimacy-conferring’ element of the category ‘sport’. I then argue that we ought not to include such a dimension in our definition of sport, on the grounds that it confuses issues of description with issues of definition: the issue of what sport does with what sport is. Following this, I consider a Wittgensteinian family resemblance approach to defining sport; Kevin Schieman’s argument that sports are necessarily good games; and the oft-cited wide-following and institutional criteria, as arguments for including an evaluative dimension in the definition of sport. I conclude that none succeed, for similar reasons: they either fail to track our common sense intuitions about what does or does not count as a sport; and/or they make it impossible for us to ever describe something a ‘bad’ sport (or instance of sport). Just as a good definition of, say, art, shouldn’t make it impossible for us to describe something as ‘bad art’, I argue that our definition of sport shouldn’t build in a necessarily positive evaluation. I conclude by discussing some of the practical reasons why supporters of activities about which there is currently debate as to their status as sports might want to see those activities included under the sports umbrella, but suggest that this on its own isn’t a good reason for modifying a philosophical definition of sport to include them.

DO ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS? UNDERSTANDING THE UTILITARIAN RESPONSE

We all pursue happiness. However, in this pursuit we sometimes we get involved so much that we breach the principles of morality. We have often heard people saying “The end justifies the means”. But if we take this sentence to be our guiding principle, we may have to exonerate not just Hitler but all the perpetrators of wrongful acts. For what they were seeking was their own happiness. Philosophically speaking one school of thought that maintains such a stance is known by the name Consequentialism. Consequentialism claims that the morality of an action is determined solely by its consequences. But a philosophical mind would resent such a thought for no justification could presumably be used to condone massacre, murder, robbery, cheating and even lying, if the consequences were felt to be good enough. In this paper I wish to defend this seemingly horrendous doctrine of ends justifying the means. For this purpose, I discuss a popular and very influential thinker John Stuart Mill whose utilitarianism is an offshoot of consequentialism and therefore not too far from the view that moral rightness of an action is evaluated solely by its consequences. However, there is a twist as Mill introduces an overarching principle, a criterion for making such evaluations and it is ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people’ along with making qualitative distinctions in happiness. This qualification makes Mill’s Utilitarianism more in tune with our common-sense intuition.

Genetic parenthood and hard cases.

In a recent article Thomas Douglas and Katrien Devolder propose a theory of genetic parenthood according to which a human child can have only two genetic human parents. I argue this theory is arbitrarily narrow and fails to account for cases such as hybrids, cloning, chimerism, twinning, parthenogenesis, mitochondrial replacement techniques, and more. I propose an alternate theory of genetic parenthood, one that is prima facie consistent with our commonsense intuitions about genetic parenthood and relevant to a right to procreative autonomy.

Agglomeration and State Personal Income Taxes: Time to Apportion (With Critical Commentary on New Hampshire’s Complaint Against Massachusetts)

The Supreme Court is currently considering granting certiorari in New Hampshire v. Massachusetts. At issue is the State of New Hampshire’s (and its amici’s) claim that Massachusetts’s insistence on applying its income tax to residents of New Hampshire, who once commuted to work in Massachusetts but now work for the same businesses remotely in New Hampshire because of the COVID-19 pandemic, violates the Due Process Clause and dormant Commerce Clause. The claim is simple and seductive: if these New Hampshire residents barely leave their own homes, much less their state, how can it accord with due process for Massachusetts to tax them? In this short colloquium essay, I make the following points about the merits of this case. (I think the case should be dismissed on procedural grounds, but believe the merits are important and will eventually be reached on a similar fact pattern.)1. The plaintiffs are essentially arguing for physical presence as a predicate for individual income taxation. To the extent that the argument is that physical presence is currently required by the Due Process Clause or the dormant Commerce Clause, I argue that contention is wrong.2. I also argue that a physical presence rule should not be created. This is a case where common sense intuitions about work and the creation of value can lead one astray. Here, what intuition misses is the importance of agglomeration economics. The residents of New Hampshire massed on the border with Massachusetts (and paying higher housing prices to do so) are not preparing for an invasion. Rather, they are rationally choosing to live in the Greater Boston area because of the professional and cultural amenities that the area offers and for which the state of Massachusetts can reasonably ask them to contribute. 3. The plaintiffs make a similar argument about apportionment, namely that the Massachusetts’s regulations fail fair apportionment. Again, as based on current law, this argument is incorrect (and should remain so). Apportionment is judged by a reasonableness standard and here what Massachusetts is doing satisfies that standard. It has long been acceptable for states that are the source of an employee’s income because that is where the employee works to consider itself the source of all of that income. All Massachusetts has done is argue that the usual source rule should apply during this temporary disruption. Similarly, all New York’s convenience of the employer rule argues is that the usual source rule of thumb should not be disturbed unless the employer is the driving force behind the employee working elsewhere.4. There is a difference between what the Constitution permits and what would be best as a matter of policy. If, as seems likely, there will be more remote work in the future, then the traditional all-or-nothing rule of thumb as to the source of individual income should be reconsidered. In particular, I argue, it is appropriate for states to shift to apportioning the income of individuals just like they currently do for the income of businesses.

Autonomous Vehicle Regulation and Trust

The autonomous vehicle (AV) industry works very hard to create public trust in both AV technology and its developers. Building trust is part of a strategy to permit the industry itself to manage the testing and deployment of self-driving vehicle technology without regulatory interference. The AV industry supplements its appeal for trust by extolling a plethora of public benefits that AV technology supposedly will bring to society. In this article, we examine the behavior of certain AV industry participants in various concrete situations, considering whether actions by these AV industry participants promote trust or, conversely, create concerns. To evaluate whether a particular action promotes trust, we consider both common sense intuitions as well as recommendations contained in three publications with intended global applicability: (i) the recently published IEEE Standard Model Process for Addressing Ethical Concerns during System Design (IEEE 7000); (ii) Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI; and (iii) Policy and Investment Recommendations for Trustworthy AI. These publications inform our analysis of practices that merit trust (and helps us identify those that do not). Our analysis identifies certain trust destroying practices, suggesting that the public should not accept either AV industry appeals for trust or take at face value the proffered narrative of benefits. We perceive a need for more regulation by federal, state and local governments. Despite our concerns, we discuss how the AV industry might earn trust by changing its adversarial approach to law, regulation and disclosure, starting by compliance with standards promulgated by the engineering community. AV industry participants should shift to cooperation with lawmakers and regulators by embracing engineering standards relating to safety, such as SAE J3018, and ethical principles which promote trust, such as identified in IEEE 7000. SAE J3016 should be replaced as a regulatory standard by a simpler rubric which promotes safety with less complexity. Cooperation might take place by use of negotiated rulemaking.

Aksjomat Fregego

This paper discusses the semantic assumption that Roman Suszko called “the Fregean Axiom.” According to the Fregean Axiom, a logical sentence is a name of its logical value, which means that all true sentences are names of one and the same object called “Truth,” and — by analogy — all false sentences are names of one and the same object called “False.” The Fregean Axiom is at odds with the common-sense intuition. Usually, we think that a sentence is not a name but anexpression that states that a certain state of affairs occurs. The article analyzes the presuppositions underlying the axiom. The second part of the text discusses the consequences of either adoption or rejection of the axiom.

Repair Avoidance: When Faithful Informational Exchanges Don't Matter That Much.

Common-sense intuition suggests that, when people are engaged in informational exchanges, they communicate so as to be reasonably sure that they perform the exchanges faithfully. Over the years, we have found evidence suggesting that this intuition, which is woven into several influential theories of human communication, may be misleading. We first summarize this evidence and discuss its potential limitations. Then, we present a new study that addresses the potential limitations. A confederate instructed participants to "pick up the skask" from a tray containing six objects and move it to a specific location. Since skask is a non-word invented by us, participants had to ask for clarification to perform the instruction faithfully. In contradiction with the intuition that people pursue faithfulness when engaged in informational exchanges, 29 of the 48 participants we tested performed the instruction without asking for clarification. We identified a possible cause for this behavior, which occurred more frequently when avoiding the clarification was unlikely to result in an overt consequence (an error in the execution of the instruction that could be noticed by the confederate or the experimenter). Other factors such as individual differences and the specific interpersonal dynamics of the experimental settings, if they played a role at all, did it to an extent that is unlikely to be comparable to that of the role played by overt consequences. Considered together, our various assessments of the extent to which people engage in faithful informational exchanges converge on a simple conclusion: Communicating faithfully is a substantially demanding task, and people often fail at it. We discuss the implications of this conclusion and speculate on its relevance for understanding the evolutionary past of human communication.

A pluralist account of the basis of moral status

Standard liberal theories of justice rest on the assumption that only those beings that hold the capacity for moral personality (CMP) have moral status and therefore are right-holders. As many pointed out, this has the disturbing implication of excluding a wide range of entities from the scope of justice. Call this the under-inclusiveness objection. This paper provides a response to the under-inclusiveness objection and illustrates its implications for liberal theories of justice. In particular, the paper defends two claims: first, it argues that both the CMP and the potential capacity for moral personality (PCMP) are bases of moral status. This pluralist account of the basis of moral status can broaden the scope of justice and provide a solid philosophical justification for the common-sense intuition that almost all human beings have a moral status that is different and superior to that of nonhuman animals. Second, contra what is commonly suggested, it contends that potential and actual moral persons have different and unequal rights, other things being equal.

From Intuitions to Anarchism?

Abstract When libertarian political philosophy attracted wide public notice in the 1970s, a common view was that the distinctive individual rights advocated in libertarian theory required grounding in a theory of ethics. Recently, this view has come under challenge. It has been argued that resort to such grounding in ethical theory is unneeded. An appeal to common sense intuitions suffices to justify libertarianism. First, a brief account of libertarianism will be presented. Then, some examples of the older, pro-grounding position will be discussed. Then, the principal defense of the newer view, Michael Huemer’s The Problem of Political Authority, will be examined. This discussion constitutes the substance of the present paper. The principal contention of the present article will be that the argument to libertarianism from intuitions does not succeed. In conclusion, it will be suggested that a return to the earlier, grounding view is indicated for philosophers who wish to defend libertarianism.

Scientists’ views on (moral) luck

ABSTRACT Scientific discoveries are often to some degree influenced by luck. Whether luck’s influence is at odds with common-sense intuitions about responsibility, is the central concern of the philosophical debate about moral luck. Do scientists acknowledge that luck plays a role in their work and – if so – do they consider it morally problematic? The present article discusses the results of four focus groups with scientists, who were asked about their views on luck in their fields and its moral implications. The participants underscored circumstantial luck as a key dimension of luck in science. Nevertheless, most participants insisted that there are ways of executing ‘control’ in science: They believe that virtues and skills can increase one’s chances for success. The cultivation of these skills and virtues was considered a reasonable ground for pride. Prizes and rewards were rarely tied to personal desert, but instead to their societal function.

Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection Isn’t Fundamental After All

Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection (FTNS) was called “biology’s central theorem” (Fisher, 1930, pgs. 36–37; Brockman, 2011; Royal Society, 2020). FTNS might possibly have been accorded this status for decades because Fisher himself declared his own theorem to be fundamental to biology (Fisher, 1930, pgs. 36–37). However, the idea that Fisher’s theorem is biology’s central theorem is by-and-large a myth promoted by popu- lar science writers like Richard Dawkins (Brockman, 2011). Joseph Felsenstein, when delivering the 2018 Fisher Memorial Lecture declared that FTNS was “alas, not so fundamental” (Felsenstein, 2018; Felsenstein, 2017, pg. 94. One may be hard-pressed to find a biology textbook or biology student who can explain how FTNS helps them understand biology. Even the meaning and proof of the FTNS have re- mained contentious even to this day (Price, 1972; Basener and Sanford, 2018).
 Not only does FTNS do little to nothing to explain biological evolution, but like most population genetic and evolutionary literature, FTNS relies on a definition of fit- ness in terms of population growth rates rather than the biophysical notions of fitness which are more in line with the common-sense intuitions of the medical and engineering communities.
 From the perspective of the biophysical (rather than the population growth) notion of fitness, natural selection might be more accurately described as an agent against the increase of complexity rather than an agent for it. Thus, metaphorically speaking, some sort of anti-Weasel model of natural selection might better describe how selection actu- ally works in nature rather than Dawkins’ Weasel or other man-made genetic algorithms.
 However, the main focus of this communication is to pro- vide some pedagogical insights through simple numerical illustrations of Fisher’s Theorem. The hope is that this will show the general irrelevance of FTNS to the question of the evolution of complexity by means of natural selection, and thus show that Fisher’s Theorem is not so fundamental after all.

Smoke Evacuation Filters After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Smoke Evacuation Filters After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Discourse topics and digressive markers

The article aims to clarify some of the theoretical orientations underlying the linguistic studies on topics of discourse and digressive markers. The notion of discourse topic (DT) introduced by van Dijk in the 1970s has no place in the models developed since the 1980s by Hobbs, Mann and Thompson, Asher and Lascarides and others. These models do without DT, for the reason that the rhetorical relations they advocate were sufficient to explain common sense intuitions on (dis)continuity and (in)coherence of discourse, although, at the same time, van Kuppevelt advocates model based solely on DT relations. With the development of systematic annotations of corpora, studies on discourse markers have increased, including markers of topic shifts. The last part of the paper deals with d'ailleurs and par ailleurs French adverbials, which are commonly used as a marker of digression. The analysis of these two DMs show that they are polyfunctional and involve both rhetorical relationships (addition, justification) that make the link with the previous utterances, and framing relationships indexing the incoming discourse (announcing of a topic shift, or a return to a previous DT).

Switching Tracks? Towards a Multidimensional Model of Utilitarian Psychology.

Sacrificial moral dilemmas are widely used to investigate when, how, and why people make judgments that are consistent with utilitarianism. However, to what extent can responses to sacrificial dilemmas shed light on utilitarian decision making? We consider two key questions. First, how meaningful is the relationship between responses to sacrificial dilemmas, and what is distinctive about a utilitarian approach to morality? Second, to what extent do findings about sacrificial dilemmas generalize to other moral contexts where there is tension between utilitarianism and common-sense intuitions? We argue that sacrificial dilemmas only capture one point of conflict between utilitarianism and common-sense morality, and new paradigms will be necessary to investigate other key aspects of utilitarianism, such as its radical impartiality.

Calculating Compensation Sums for Private Law Wrongs: Underlying Imprecisions, Necessary Questions, and Toward a Plausible Account of Damages for Lost Years of Life

The ubiquitous corrective-justice goals of “making a party whole” or “returning a party to the position she was in” are typically understood in monetary terms, and in this context, it is fairly clear what these terms mean. If, as this Article argues, these corrective-justice goals should instead be understood in terms of something that has intrinsic value, such as happiness, various imprecisions come to the fore. This Article identifies and explores these imprecisions and, in so doing, articulates a novel framework that can be used for understanding and systematizing our approach to private law remedies. This is the Article’s first task. Next, the Article focuses on the imprecision that the law must grapple with whose implications are most salient: how to aggregate happiness across years of a life. This imprecision becomes significant in the context of torts that shorten a person’s life. The Article explores the appropriate measure of damages (under a corrective-justice theory) in cases in which a victim has her expected future shortened by a tort (e.g., medical malpractice or exposure to carcinogens), but in which she has not yet died. The fact that the victim is still alive makes it possible to compensate the victim herself directly for the value of life-years. Should she be compensated? The question, already critical in a number of cases, will substantially increase in prevalence with developments in science and technology in the coming years. This Article argues, contra current law in most states, that the law should take these types of cases seriously and that victims should be compensated if their loss of life-years constitutes a loss of happiness. The contrary position is in great tension with the commonsense intuition that losing life-years is one of the most (if not the most) serious harms that one can incur. But is our commonsense intuition correct? The Article proposes a three-step framework that can be used for addressing these questions of loss and getting to the appropriate measure of monetary compensation: (1) Determine which “happiness aggregation function” to espouse, (2) determine how much happiness (if any), according to one’s happiness aggregation function of choice, a plaintiff lost as a result of the harm; and (3) determine how much monetary compensation will bring about a transfer of happiness to the plaintiff that will equal the amount that she lost (according to one’s happiness aggregation function of choice).

A Conciliatory Answer to the Paradox of the Ravens

In the Paradox of the Ravens, a set of otherwise intuitive claims about evidence seems to be inconsistent. Most attempts at answering the paradox involve rejecting a member of the set, which seems to require a conflict either with commonsense intuitions or with some of our best confirmation theories. In contrast, I argue that the appearance of an inconsistency is misleading: ‘confirms’ and cognate terms feature a significant ambiguity when applied to universal generalisations. In particular, the claim that some evidence confirms a universal generalisation ordinarily suggests, in part, that the evidence confirms the reliability of predicting that something which satisfies the antecedent will also satisfy the consequent. I distinguish between the familiar relation of confirmation simpliciter and what I shall call ‘predictive confirmation’. I use them to formulate my answer, illustrate it in a very simple probabilistic model, and defend it against objections. I conclude that, once our evidential concepts are sufficiently clarified, there is no sense in which the initial claims are both plausible and inconsistent.

The Explicit and Implicit Foundations of the Natural, Social, and Humanitarian Sciences

A comparative analysis of the explicit and implicit foundations of the natural, social, and humanitarian sciences explores the genesis of the foundations of science and their relationship to common sense, everyday consciousness, real-life experience, and human intuition. The analysis takes into account the conventional division of the sciences into theoretical (fundamental) and practical (applied). The main examples selected are physics from the natural sciences and psychology from the social and humanitarian sciences. The article considers the connection between the conformity of the foundations of theory to scientific standards and its survival. It shows that the natural sciences developed by means of the supplantation of initial postulates and paradigms, while the principal external criterion vis-à-vis social-science theories is their survivability. This assertion is juxtaposed with the fact that in the natural sciences applied technologies that change the world are a direct result of fundamental-research results, whereas in the social and humanitarian sciences, this connection is much weaker.

The Magic of Mechanism: Explanation-Based Instruction on Counterintuitive Concepts in Early Childhood

Common-sense intuitions can be useful guides in everyday life and problem solving. However, they can also impede formal science learning and provide the basis for robust scientific misconceptions. Addressing such misconceptions has generally been viewed as the province of secondary schooling. However, in this article, I argue that for a set of foundational but highly counterintuitive ideas (e.g., evolution by natural selection), coherent causal-explanatory instruction—instruction that emphasizes the multifaceted mechanisms underpinning natural phenomena—should be initiated much sooner, in early elementary school. This proposal is motivated by various findings from research in the cognitive, developmental, and learning sciences. For example, it has been shown that explanatory biases that render students susceptible to intuitively based scientific misconceptions emerge early in development. Furthermore, findings also reveal that once developed, such misconceptions are not revised and replaced by subsequently learned scientific theories but competitively coexist alongside them. Taken together, this research, along with studies revealing the viability of early coherent explanation-based instruction on counterintuitive theories, have significant implications for the timing, structure, and scope of early science education.