Normative Intuitions Research Articles

Aetiological Naturalism in the Philosophy of Medicine: A Shaky Project

Griffiths and Matthewson (2018) employ the selected effects theory to contend that disease involves the impairment of the normal functioning of biological items. Since the selected effects theory focuses on the past effects of those items, I refer to their proposal as “aetiological naturalism”. In this paper, I argue that aetiological naturalism cannot constitute an adequate theory of disease. This is due to the fact that the selected effects theory, which lies at the heart of aetiological naturalism, is flawed. One promise of the selected effects theory is indeed that it is able to account for our normative intuitions about dysfunctional biological items by grounding them on the concept of natural selection incorporated in the selected effects theory itself, where this promise rests upon its claim that appealing to the fitness-enhancing effect of biological items can always explain why they persisted in a population. However, I contend that the naturalisation of normativity cannot be cashed out in terms of biological items’ past effects by discussing two biological phenomena: phenotypic plasticity and negative frequency-dependent selection. I illustrate that in both cases the selected effects theory cannot recognise adaptive items as having a selected effects function, therefore preventing the possibility to assign them any dysfunction. The normative force of the selected effects theory is consequently much diminished, leading in turn to a weakening of aetiological naturalism, given that such project actually relies on the assumed normative force of the selected effects theory itself.

Nietzsche and the Size of Future History as a Normative Criterion

ABSTRACT Many critics of morality seem nonetheless committed to a normative stance of some kind. This paper uses the context of Nietzsche studies as a laboratory to experiment with a solution to this problem. I argue that Nietzsche’s critique of normativity and his promulgation of normative judgments can be made consistent if we understand Nietzsche as pursuing the criterion of the size of future history. First (§1) I present the problem of normativity as it appears in Nietzsche’s work and the literature. Then (§2), I introduce the criterion of the size of future history and show that it addresses the requirements established in §1. I then address some objections to this criterion (§3). Finally, I suggest some applications of this criterion to specific areas of Nietzsche’s discourse and to some of our broader normative intuitions (§4). I conclude that the criterion of the size of future history, if well understood, can provide a solution to the problem of normative inescapability.

DILEMMAS OF RE-NATIVIZATION OF INDIGENOUS LAW

The author in this study tests the applicability of basic categories of Leon Petrażycki’s (1865–1931) socio-psychological theory of law, pointing at ambiguity of the concept of ‘indigenous law’, ‘natives’ law’ and ‘customary law’. First, however, the right to one’s own law is followed through the history of colonization. It is essential for the plight of the indigenous people that already in 1537 Popes recognized that ‘original inhabitants’ had ‘rights’ and thus ‘legitimate claims’. If, on the one hand, there are ‘rights’ and ‘rightful claims’ then, on the other, there are duties that include not only the negative refraining from appropriation but also the positive duty to protect in exchange for the impairing the indigenous sovereignty. But whenever the nexus iuris is recognized, i.e. the link of correlative rights and duties, there is a law (Petrażycki) and ‘inherent – even if impaired, or as some say, abused – sovereignty of the indigenous people’ (Justice Marshall). The pluralist notion of ‘law’, the distinction between the ‘normative positive’ reference and the ‘normative intuition’ and the distinction between the ‘normative’ and the ‘factual’ should allow one to organize systematically the multiple issues that one encounters when approaching the area of ‘indigenous law’. From discussion of the official nonindigenous indigenous law exemplified by the federal Native American law of the United States the paper moves on to discuss the Navajo case of the official tribal law. It comes out that the native procedures and law are full of religious meaning so the ‘cultural’ sovereignty is much more fundamental and value-loaded than the secular philosophy of human rights incommensurable with the right to one’s own law. This is not considered when borrowing from native law into secular Western law (Greenland’s Criminal Code; mediation procedures in North America). The meaning of cultural sovereignty is the right to develop one’s law so that it fits one’s needs and aims. But the full success story is when the antithesis of the ‘indigenous’ and ‘dominant’ law is settled through the feedback from the former to the latter, like when the law – not only of a country but also on the global level – becomes syncretic and embraces deeper universalization of the human rights.

Explanation and Agency: exploring the normative-epistemic landscape of the “Right to Explanation”

A large part of the explainable AI literature focuses on what explanations are in general, what algorithmic explainability is more specifically, and how to code these principles of explainability into AI systems. Much less attention has been devoted to the question of why algorithmic decisions and systems should be explainable and whether there ought to be a right to explanation and why. We therefore explore the normative landscape of the need for AI to be explainable and individuals having a right to such explanation. This exploration is particularly relevant to the medical domain where the (im)possibility of explainable AI is high on both the research and practitioners’ agenda. The dominant intuition overall is that explainability has and should play a key role in the health context. Notwithstanding the strong normative intuition for having a right to explanation, intuitions can be wrong. So, we need more than an appeal to intuitions when it comes to explaining the normative significance of having a right to explanation when being subject to AI-based decision-making. The aim of the paper is therefore to provide an account of what might underlie the normative intuition. We defend the ‘symmetry thesis’ according to which there is no special normative reason to have a right to explanation when ‘machines’ in the broad sense, make decisions, recommend treatment, discover tumors, and so on. Instead, we argue that we have a right to explanation in cases that involve automated processing that significantly affect our core deliberative agency and which we do not understand, because we have a general moral right to explanation when choices are made which significantly affect us but which we do not understand.

The Prospect of Pragmatic Confucian Democracy: Reply to Dryzek, Macedo, Ackerly, and Li

The Prospect of Pragmatic Confucian Democracy: Reply to Dryzek, Macedo, Ackerly, and Li

An Economic Approach to Religious Exemptions

Externalities caused by religious exemptions have been getting the spotlight again in light a case the U.S. Supreme Court will hear this term: Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. Some argue that religious individuals should be required to internalize the costs they impose on third parties and thus should be denied the right to practice that harmful behavior. These new progressive theories about harm trade on rhetoric and normative intuitions regarding externalities and costs. But curiously, these theories also largely ignore an influential theoretical movement that has studied externalities and costs for the last fifty years: law and economics. This Article thus poses a thought experiment: how would normative rhetoric and doctrinal assessments change if one viewed religious externalities through the lens of economic theory? Such a perspective offers three novel normative insights. First, the mere existence of a religiously caused externality does not provide a sufficient justification for government restriction of religious rights, as because externalities are always reciprocal. Second, the government should be cautious about coercing involuntary transactions where idiosyncratic valuation or high transaction costs are involved. And third, exploring outcomes that decrease net harm can highlight government policies that are themselves creating harm. In other contexts, this analysis can force decision-makers to confront more candidly problems of incommensurability, particularly when it comes to dueling claims of dignitary harms. An economic lens can also provide a positivist account of multiple aspects of a religious exemption doctrinal framework in the context of strict scrutiny. These include balancing competing harms in recognition of reciprocal externalities, requiring the government to have a justification for coercing involuntary transactions in a similar way that property rules would, and assessing carefully whether alternatives exist to avoid harm altogether. Indeed, this latter inquiry closely resembles the type of analysis courts engage in under the “less restrictive alternatives” element of the strict scrutiny analysis. While economic theory does not provide answers to all of the difficult questions in these religious exemption debates, it can provide a clinical method of analyzing hot-button issues involving seemingly intractable conflicts. And to the extent that harm is a relevant normative consideration, this Article asserts that an under-theorized reliance on harm on just one side of the ledger, advocated under the current third-party harm theories, is a normatively unpersuasive approach.

The dialectics of universality: The heterodox critical social theory of Robert Fine.

Robert Fine was among the most original social theorists in Britain of the past 30years, and the aim of this paper is to offer a first systematic assessment of his intellectual contribution. There are sound intellectual reasons to explore Fine's scholarship. He maintained a problematic relation with mainstream sociology and, against the reduction of sociology to questions of method, culture, or class, he argued that sociologists must continue to ask difficult normative questions as part of the social world they ought to explain. And there are also pressing political concerns that justify a reconsideration of his writings. Global politics is currently marked by a populist wave that decries the very ideas and values that were central to Fine's social theory: the need to uphold the rule of law at home and abroad, the politics of cosmopolitan solidarity, and the significance of antisemitism and its relationships with different forms of authoritarian politics. My main argument is that there is a dialectics of universality that drives forward Fine's intellectual project. By this, I mean that a universalistic idea of humanity-an all-inclusive conception of all human beings-is the most important normative intuition of modern times. This idea of humanity moves forward in history through a dual process of emancipation and domination: successful forms of social, legal, and political inclusion help make visible previous dynamics of exclusion but may also create or recreate discriminatory practices. Building on the work of French historian Michael Löwy on heterodox Jewish thinkers, I explain the three main tenets of Fine's work: (a) his reconstruction of critical social theory; (b) the notion of cosmopolitan solidarity; and (c) the significance and main features of modern antisemitism.

Facebook v. Sullivan: Building Constitutional Law for Online Speech

In the United States, there are now two systems to adjudicate disputes about harmful speech. The first is older and more established: the legal system in which judges apply constitutional law to limit tort claims alleging injuries caused by speech. The second is newer and less familiar: the content-moderation system in which platforms like Facebook implement the rules that govern online speech. These platforms are not bound by the First Amendment. But, as it turns out, they rely on many of the tools used by courts to resolve tensions between regulating harmful speech and preserving free expression—particularly the entangled concepts of “public figures” and “newsworthiness.” This Article offers the first empirical analysis of how judges and content moderators have used these two concepts to shape the boundaries of free speech. It first introduces the legal doctrines developed by the “Old Governors,” exploring how courts have shaped the constitutional concepts of public figures and newsworthiness in the face of tort claims for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The Article then turns to the “New Governors” and examines how Facebook’s content-moderation system channeled elements of the courts’ reasoning for imposing First Amendment limits on tort liability. By exposing the similarities and differences between how the two systems have understood these concepts, this Article offers lessons for both courts and platforms as they confront new challenges posed by online speech. It exposes the pitfalls of using algorithms to identify public figures; explores the diminished utility of setting rules based on voluntary involvement in public debate; and analyzes the dangers of ad hoc and unaccountable newsworthiness determinations. Both courts and platforms must adapt to the new speech ecosystem that companies like Facebook have helped create, particularly the way that viral content has shifted normative intuitions about who deserves harsher rules in disputes about harmful speech, be it in law or content moderation. Finally, the Article concludes by exploring what this comparison reveals about the structural role platforms play in today’s speech ecosystem and how it illuminates new solutions. These platforms act as legislature, executive, judiciary, and press—but without any separation of powers to establish checks and balances. A change to this model is already occurring at one platform: Facebook is creating a new Oversight Board that will hopefully provide due process to users on the platform’s speech decisions and transparency about how content-moderation policy is made, including how concepts related to newsworthiness and public figures are applied.

Why Marxism Still Does Not Need Normative Theory

Abstract Marx did not have a normative theory, that is, a theory that purported to justify, discursively and systematically, his normative opinions, to show them to be rationally obligatory or objectively valid. In this regard, Marx was obviously not alone: almost everyone, including those who lead what are widely regarded as exemplary ‘moral’ lives, decide and act on the basis of normative intuitions and inclinations that fall far short of a theory. Yet self-proclaimed Marxists like G. A. Cohen and Jurgen Habermas have reintroduced a kind of normative theory into the Marxian tradition that Marx himself would have ridiculed. This essay defends Marx’s position and tries to explain the collapse of Western Marxism into bourgeois practical philosophy, i.e., philosophizing about what ought to be done that is unthreatening to capitalist relations of production.

Normative Bedrock: Response-Dependence, Rationality, & Reasons

In this book, Joshua Gert puts forward a distinctive and original combination of proposals for how to understand our basic normative concepts, including practical (ir)rationality, practical reasons, and (personal) harm. The broader aim of the book is to ‘demystify’ the normative by explaining how there can be irreducibly normative facts and properties in a world that is also truly described by natural science. Normative Bedrock follows on from Gert's 2004 book Brute Rationality , in which he describes the structural features of basic normative concepts. The bulk of Normative Bedrock has previously appeared in article form since 2007. This may account for the somewhat scattered way in which the different parts of his account are presented in this new book. Conscientious readers will find the index useful. According to Gert, our basic normative concepts are response dependent. Response-dependent concepts are ones the extension of which is in crucial ways dependent on how those who apply them are disposed to respond to their environment in particular circumstances. Basic response-dependent concepts are associated with a distinctive set of primitive responses, such as the visual experiences that (on Gert's view) partly fix the extension of colour concepts. The social function of these concepts, and the need for conformity in response that this entails, implies that their extension is fixed independently of the actual responses of any individual user. All response-dependent concepts are governed by a minimal norm of ‘accuracy’ that serves to isolate a set of responses as favourable for picking out the relevant property. They therefore enjoy a substantial degree of objectivity that distinguishes them, first, from concepts that fail to meet all these criteria (such as idiosyncratic expressions of subjective taste) and, secondly, from concepts that meet these criteria but for which there is some further story to be told (e.g., in terms of natural constitution or essence) about the nature of the relevant property. In Normative Bedrock , Gert develops response-dependent accounts of two normative concepts in particular, namely practical (ir)rationality and (personal) harm. He associates both concepts with a distinct set of primitive responses to the behaviour of oneself or others (a reaction of puzzlement in the case of irrationality, and reactions of aversion in the case of harm). Gert thinks that there is a necessary connection between behaviour we respond to as irrational and behaviour we respond to as harmful. This is a synthetic a priori connection that is knowable by means of armchair reflection on our basic normative dispositions and the features of the world to which they respond. Our knowledge of these connections constitutes our ‘faculty’ of normative intuition.

Shared Responsibility in International Law: A Normative-Philosophical Analysis

This paper analyses normative issues concerning shared responsibility among multiple actors, i.e. states and/or international organizations, that have contributed to harmful outcomes that international law seeks to prevent. More precisely, term responsibility is used to refer to ex post responsibility for contributions to injury. Current international law has a hard time keeping up with current reality of increased collaboration between states since international law is the historical fruit of a primitive and horizontal conception of international legal order that holds on to fiction of exclusive attribution of responsibility to one single state. This paper steps outside legal (tool)box and starts from a philosophical analysis of 'responsibility' – normative concept that has central stage in these discussions. Under which conditions can an actor reasonably be held responsible for a specific harmful outcome? And which consequences should this responsibility have in terms of reparations of repercussions? As such, paper taps into more deontological literature in legal and political philosophy on relation between agency and responsibility. Such a philosophical treatise could be helpful to get our normative intuitions in line and our priorities right and, as such, might provide some essential normative nuts and bolds for a more legal analysis of joint responsibility in international law.

Norms, vision and violence: Judith Butler on the politics of legibility

Judith Butler’s meditations on precarity have received considerable attention in recent years. This article proposes that an undertheorized strain of her argument offers productive resources for theorizing violence. The question extends beyond material acts, to ask how certain groups are rendered eligible for heightened, regularized violence – and, by extension, how liberal subjects are rendered complicit with policies at odds with their universalist commitments. At stake is a politics of sensibility that complicates and enriches juridico-institutionalist models. That said, when Butler’s account is brought to bear on a wider range of cases, it encounters a set of questions it is not prepared to answer on its own terms. Accordingly, I propose some directions the argument would need to be expanded to do justice to its own normative intuitions.

Some Realism for Hard Cases

This paper presents the main features of a model of legal dogmatics that aims to give solutions for hard cases. It does not present a history of legal thought. Rather it attempts to provide a conceptual reconstruction of normative intuitions based on the realist tradition–including realists, and precursors of and heirs to those realists–in the light of ethical consequentialism. To that end I propose four different types of arguments. First, I present a set of criticisms that advocates of the technological model of dogmatics direct against argumentativist and formalistic dogmatics, that seem to assume consequentialist theses. Second, I lay out a series of quotes in which the defenders of the technological model refer to the best consequences as an argument about the rightness of solutions for hard cases. Third, I point out that ethical consequentialism offers the best way to understand some of the meta-ethical claims of sceptical type put forth by these authors. Fourth, I claim that, although there is no conceptual connection between reductionist empiricism and consequentialist ethics, if the former is adopted it would be more consistent to adopt the latter as well. Finally, some tasks that the technological dogmatics should develop are presented.

Razão e democracia: uso público da razão e política deliberativa em Habermas[ign] [title language="en"]Reason and democracy[ign]: [subtitle]Public use of reason and deliberative politics in Habermas

O objetivo do artigo é examinar como Habermas, orientado pela intuição normativa do uso público da razão, reconstrói uma concepção procedimental de democracia deliberativa, que, sem desconsiderar da dimensão estratégica e instrumental da esfera pública e da política, reformula a dimensão epistêmica da democracia: a aceitabilidade racional dos acordos políticos. Inicialmente, apresento brevemente a análise sociológica e histórica do conceito de esfera pública crítica, realizada em Mudança Estrutural da Esfera Pública (1962), para, em seguida, expor duas linhas de argumentação sobre o conceito de esfera pública e de política deliberativa, em Direito e Democracia (1992): a que se refere ao princípio de legitimação baseado na razão pública como uma reconstrução intersubjetiva e política do conceito kantiano de autonomia; e a que concerne aos aspectos essenciais da teoria crítica da sociedade fundada na distinção entre mundo da vida e sistema e a "tradução" sociológica e institucional do uso público da razão, nos conceitos de sociedade civil e esfera pública.

The proximity condition

We investigate the social choice implications of what we call “the proximity condition”. Loosely speaking, this condition says that whenever a profile moves “closer” to some individual’s point of view, then the social choice cannot move “further away” from this individual’s point of view. We apply this idea in two settings: merging functions and preference aggregation. The precise formulation of the proximity condition depends on the setting. First, restricting attention to merging functions that are interval scale invariant, we prove that the only functions that satisfy proximity are dictatorships. Second, we prove that the only social welfare functions that satisfy proximity and a version of the Pareto criterion are dictatorships. We conclude that either proximity is not an attractive normative requirement after all, or we must give up some other social choice condition. Another possibility is that our normative intuition about proximity needs to be codified using different axioms.

Clarifying the advantage of small samples: As it relates to statistical Wisdom and Cahan's (2010) normative intuitions.

On the basis of earlier findings, we (Fiedler & Kareev, 2006) presented a statistical decision model that explains the conditions under which small samples of information about choice alternatives inform more correct choices than large samples. Such a small-sample advantage (SSA) is predicted for choices, not estimations. It is contingent on high constant decision thresholds. The model was harshly criticized by Cahan (2010), who argued that the SSA disappears when the threshold decreases with increasing sample size and when the costs of incorrect decisions are higher than the benefits of correct decisions. We refute Cahan's critique, which confuses normative and descriptive arguments. He neither questioned our theoretical reasoning nor presented empirical counterevidence. Instead, he discarded our model as statistically invalid because the threshold does not decrease with increasing sample size. Contrary to this normative intuition, which presupposes a significance-testing rationale, we point out that decisions are often insensitive to sample size. We also refute Cahan's intuition that ignoring the potential asymmetry of gains and losses creates a serious bias in favor of the SSA. We regret any misunderstandings resulting from our linking the SSA to Bernoulli's law of large numbers.

Behavioral Experiments for Assessing the Abstract Argumentation Semantics of Reinstatement

Argumentation is a very fertile area of research in Artificial Intelligence, and various semantics have been developed to predict when an argument can be accepted, depending on the abstract structure of its defeaters and defenders. When these semantics make conflicting predictions, theoretical arbitration typically relies on ad hoc examples and normative intuition about what prediction ought to be the correct one. We advocate a complementary, descriptive-experimental method, based on the collection of behavioral data about the way human reasoners handle these critical cases. We report two studies applying this method to the case of reinstatement (both in its simple and floating forms). Results speak for the cognitive plausibility of reinstatement and yet show that it does not yield the full expected recovery of the attacked argument. Furthermore, results show that floating reinstatement yields comparable effects to that of simple reinstatement, thus arguing in favor of preferred argumentation semantics, rather than grounded argumentation semantics. Besides their theoretical value for validating and inspiring argumentation semantics, these results have applied value for developing artificial agents meant to argue with human users.

The Political Identity of the Green Movement in Germany: Social-Philosophical Reflections

This paper attempts to articulate the common ground that could unite the different normative intuitions operative in the Green movement in Germany. The paper argues that only an extended conception of justice, one that would encompass references to nature, culture and the future, will be able to build a bridge between these different intuitions. However, caution must be exercised in the application of this extended conception of justice so that the worst-off are in each case the first targeted by it.

Why Left Reciprocity Theories Are Inconsistent

The reciprocity objection is one of the most widespread criticisms against Basic Income (BI). In this article I challenge the consistency between the reciprocity principle and the preferred policy options of left reciprocity theorists. I argue that any consistent policy design for a reciprocity theory should satisfy two conditions: 1. Everyone who benefits from social resources contributes relevantly (reciprocally) to societys efforts; and 2. Everyone who contributes relevantly to society benefits from social resources. BI is accused by reciprocity theorists of failing to satisfy Condition 1. But, surprisingly, their preferred policy pack also fails to satisfy Condition 1, and seems badly prepared to satisfy Condition 2. Significantly, left reciprocity theorists reject those options that would satisfy both conditions. I suggest that other normative values and intuitions may explain that inconsistency and indicate that the reciprocity objection to BI is wrong for principled reasons.

III-HOW WE KNOW WHAT OUGHT TO BE

This paper outlines a new approach to the epistemology of normative beliefs, based on a version of the claim that ‘the intentional is normative.’ This approach incorporates an account of where our ‘normative intuitions’ come from, and of why it is essential to these intuitions that they have a certain weak connection to the truth. This account allows that these intuitions may be fallible, but it also seeks to explain why it is rational for us to rely on these intuitions in forming normative beliefs—although it is also rational for us to try to correct for these intuitions’ fallibility by revising our normative beliefs in such a way as to approach what Rawls called ‘reflective equilibrium’.