Permissible Way Research Articles

Dreier Is a Great Dad in All Possible Worlds: A Challenge to Moral Contingentism

ABSTRACT In this paper, I raise a challenge to Gideon Rosen’s defence of moral contingentism against Jamie Dreier’s moral luck argument. Dreier argues that if moral contingentism is true, acting in a morally permissible way always depends on a form of moral luck, because we could be in a descriptively identical possible world where the moral laws are different. Rosen’s response is that such a world is too remote from ours for us to count it as lucky that we are not in it. I argue that, given Rosen’s method of assessing the remoteness of possible worlds, worlds like the one Dreier describes are close enough to ours to justify his worry, and consequently that Rosen’s counterargument fails. I take this strongly counterintuitive conclusion as a reason to be optimistic that Rosen’s argument for moral contingentism can be resisted.

Legitimacy and two roles for flourishing in politics

Legitimacy and two roles for flourishing in politics

Does autonomous moral reasoning favor consequentialism?

This paper addresses an important issue that has been commonly debated in moral psychology, namely the normative and metaethical implications of our differing intuitive responses to morally indistinguishable dilemmas. The prominent example of the asymmetry in our responses is that people often intuitively accept pulling a switch and deny pushing as a morally permissible way of sacrificing an innocent person to save more innocent people. Joshua Greene traces our negative responses to actions involving “up close and personal” harm back to our evolutionary past and argues that this undermines the normative power of deontological judgments. I reject Greene’s argument by arguing that our theoretical moral intuitions, as opposed to concrete and mid-level ones, are independent of direct evolutionary influence because they are the product of autonomous (gene-independent) moral reasoning. I then explain how both consequentialist and deontological theoretical intuitions, which enable us to make important moral distinctions and grasp objective moral facts, are produced by the exercise of autonomous moral reasoning and the process of cultural evolution. My conclusion will be that Greene is not justified in his claim that deontology is normatively inferior to consequentialism.

Norms of criminal conviction

AbstractIn this paper, I offer three different arguments against the view that knowledge is the epistemic norm governing criminal convictions in the Anglo‐American system. The first two show that neither the truth of a juror's verdict nor the juror's belief in the defendant's guilt is necessary for voting to convict in an epistemically permissible way. Both arguments challenge the necessity dimension of the knowledge norm. I then show—by drawing on evidence that is admissible through exclusionary rules—that knowledge is also not sufficient for epistemically proper conviction. A central thesis operative in all of these arguments is that the sort of ideal epistemology underwriting the knowledge norm of conviction should be rejected and replaced with a non‐ideal approach. I then defend an alternative, justificationist norm of criminal conviction that not only avoids the problems afflicting the knowledge account, but also takes seriously the important role that narratives play in criminal courts.

Five Modes of Scepticism: Sextus Empiricus and the Agrippan Modes by Stefan Sienkiewicz

Reviewed by: Five Modes of Scepticism: Sextus Empiricus and the Agrippan Modes by Stefan Sienkiewicz Justin Vlasits Stefan Sienkiewicz. Five Modes of Scepticism: Sextus Empiricus and the Agrippan Modes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Pp. x + 204. Cloth, $65.00. This book, which originated as the author's 2013 Oxford dissertation, treats five modes of argument described by the Pyrrhonian skeptic Sextus Empiricus. In the first book of the Outlines of Pyrrhonism (PH), Sextus claims that these modes (disagreement, hypothesis, infinite regression, reciprocity, and relativity) bring about suspension of judgment, a mental state in which one finds the considerations for and against some claim to be balanced. We see the modes used both alone and in combination when Sextus investigates dogmatic philosophy. Accordingly, Sienkiewicz assigns a chapter to each mode and concludes with how they might work together. This book has much to commend it: Sextus's text is clearly explained, distinctions are carefully drawn, the prose is clear, and attention is paid to philological and philosophical issues. Sienkiewicz's main claim is that we must attend to how the modes might make not only the dogmatist suspend judgment, but also the skeptic. This latter task is more difficult, since the skeptic is limited in the beliefs that she can appeal to. Approaching the modes from a skeptical and not dogmatic perspective is important and has never been pursued in depth. Sienkiewicz's essential idea is to conceive of these modes as argument schemata about a given proposition, for instance, the mode of disagreement: "(i). There is peer disagreement over P. (ii). If there is peer disagreement over P, then S should suspend judgment over P. Therefore, (iii). S should suspend judgment over P." (29) Sienkiewicz then asks if the skeptic, given her lack of beliefs, is entitled to believe (i), (ii), or (iii) for any P. In this case, he argues that, since (ii) is a controversial claim in contemporary epistemology, held on the basis of argument, a Pyrrhonian skeptic cannot believe it and cannot use it in the argument to establish suspension of judgment, according to any interpretation of skeptical belief. For four modes, Sienkiewicz argues that the skeptical mode involves opposing arguments. The main problem facing this interpretation is that Sextus only mentions oppositions for two modes. Sienkiewicz thinks this is the only permissible way for the skeptic to employ these modes. Were that true, it would give some support for his interpretation. But Sienkiewicz says that, even with the skeptical versions of the modes, the mature skeptic does not believe the conclusion that she ought to suspend judgment on the basis of rational argumentation from the premises. Instead, the skeptic suspends judgment due to a "disposition" to do so that was developed when she was a "proto-skeptic" (45–46) and still felt rationally compelled to draw such conclusions. But once we say this about skeptical modes, we can say the same thing about dogmatic modes. The mature skeptic has a disposition to suspend judgment in accordance with the modes even though she does not believe the premises or conclusion. If that is so, we can retain the "dogmatic" versions of the modes when they fit the text and no longer need to resort to filling in imagined gaps in Sextus's argumentation. Indeed, so long as the premises are true, even if the skeptic does not believe them, suspension of judgment might be warranted. [End Page 813] Something must be said about the relationship between this book and Jonathan Barnes's justly celebrated Toils of Scepticism (Cambridge, 1990), which it structurally mirrors and alludes to even to the point of illustrating an undecided disagreement with a debate about Aristotle's ethical works and ending with a joke about suspending judgment. At many points, Sienkiewicz surely corrects Barnes's readings. Sienkiewicz is also to be commended for incorporating the mode of relativity, which is conspicuously absent in Barnes, even though Sienkiewicz thinks that in the end it is inconsistent with the mode of disagreement. However, both largely put to one side the question of the historical roots of these modes, how they relate to other sets of modes in the Pyrrhonian tradition, and how they are...

GUN VIOLENCE AS INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION

Abstract I offer a new proposal to prevent some of the harms of gun violence in the United States. First, I argue that gun violence is a negative externality of gun production, on an analogy with industrial pollution. Second, I outline a law that the United States might use to internalize the violent costs of gun production. This law would provide a financial incentive for gun manufacturers to reduce gun violence in whatever legally permissible way they can, not necessarily by reducing the prevalence of gun ownership. Thus, strictly speaking, my proposal would be a form of gun violence control, not gun control per se. Third, I show that this approach to controlling gun violence avoids the three main pro-gun-rights arguments: the Consequentialistic Argument, the Moral Rights Argument, and the Legal Rights Argument. I conclude by explaining why even libertarians should have few principled objections to my proposal.

The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat

Abstract The Moral Complexities of Eating Meat is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the moral issues revolving around our eating habits. While much of the volume concerns the so-called causal impotence argument— the idea that since, as individuals, we do little to add to the harm imposed on animals, some opportunistic carnivorism on our parts is not blameworthy—there are thought-provoking essays running the gamut from defending the practice of meat eating more generally to insisting that strict vegetarianism is the only morally permissible way to engage with our food. The essays are, without exception, cogent and accessible and can be usefully incorporated into most classes that deal with animal or applied ethics.

Beyond the Billboard: The Facebook-Based Application, Donor, and Its Guided Approach to Facilitating Living Organ Donation.

Living donor solicitation can raise ethical concerns, regardless of the medium used: newspaper, television, pulpit, billboard or Internet. Moving the search for a living donor into the social media realm introduces the risk of unguided and coercive patient narratives as well as decoupling or even total absence of information that could aid the consent process. The Facebook application (app) for living donors, called Donor (restricted to patient use), aims to address these concerns in several ways: (i) by directing the patient's initial appeal to friends and family; (ii) by guiding the patient's narrative; and (iii) by providing a library of clinical, ethical and regulatory information that informs the consent process. In this paper, we explored these features and contrasted them with billboard solicitation activities and current independent social media efforts. We concluded that the proactive ethical design of the Donor app is a permissible way to help satisfy the shortfall of deceased donor livers and kidneys.

The ethics of people smuggling

ABSTRACTPeople smugglers help transport migrants across international borders without authorization and in return for compensation. Many people object to people smuggling and believe that the smuggling of migrants is an evil trade. In this paper, I offer a qualified defense of people smuggling. In particular, I argue that people smuggling that assists refugees in escaping threats to their rights can be morally justified. I then rebut the objections that people smugglers exploit migrants, have defective motivations, and wrongly violate the law. My conclusion is that people smuggling is sometimes a permissible way of helping refugees to evade unjust immigration restrictions and compelling states to bear their fair share of the global refugee population.

Harold Nicolson,Ulysses, Reithianism: Censorship on BBC Radio, 1931

In late 1931, Harold Nicolson’s plan to discuss James Joyce’s Ulysses on BBC radio was quashed at the last minute. Some weeks later, this edict was lifted and Nicolson was permitted to speak, subject to certain restrictions. This very public controversy has received scant critical attention, and is usually understood simply as an example of censorship: a conflict between progressive broadcaster and conservative bureaucracy. This article contends that the reality was far more nuanced. Tracing the development of these talks through the diaries of Nicolson and John Reith, I suggest that Nicolson and the management of the BBC sought to negotiate a permissible way to discuss modernism on state radio. When the talks aired in late 1931, Nicolson insisted on the importance of modernist literature in broadcasts that remained fundamentally in line with the corporation’s educational, Reithian programme. Recent work in modernist studies has paid much attention to public media technologies such as radio, and to the public censorship of modernism; in this case, the two are intertwined. Drawing on these developments, I argue that broadcaster and censor should not simply be placed in opposition, but that it was possible both to discuss modernism and accommodate the censorial demands of the BBC. Nicolson’s critical independence may have been compromised, but the same is true of the Reithian BBC, an organization that on 8 December 1931 played host to a subtly radical discussion of James Joyce.

Privacy, Private Property, and Collective Property

Privacy, Private Property, and Collective Property

The long sentence: A disservice to science in the Internet age

Chaucer 49; Dickens 20; JK Rowling 12*–mean sentence lengths (MSL) in words. And it's no coincidence that the more recent the author, the shorter the MSL. Admittedly, the works of JK Rowling are not strictly comparable with those of Chaucer and Dickens. Still, both Rowling and Dickens appeal(ed) to a broad public, and literary analysts agree on the general trend in MSL–a trend that is accelerated by computers and the Internet. My own analysis has a simple message: full-length science papers need substantially shorter sentences if they are to be thoroughly read by most of their potential readership. We're all in the same quandary–BioEssays too–so I'll make no pretence: it's not easy for any of us to write really short sentences, editors included. But we can no longer regard the scientific literature as a communication form with completely separate rules, or exceptions, from the rest. The gaps–“communication niches”–between lay and professional communication have rapidly closed. The Internet places diverse genres of written works side-by-side. Ever more researchers use Google et al. to find relevant literature; and if a reader finds one particular paper too taxing to read, an alternative source of the information–in more digestible form–is increasingly frequently just a click away. Ever more, bloggers and other science writers write for audiences that include researchers. And a growing number of scientists–some of them almost professional bloggers themselves–write brief communications for their own community. I believe that scientific articles are, increasingly, in competition with such writings. Whether scientists or not, few of us will disagree that the short-winded sentences of science writers are usually more pleasing to read than the average peer-reviewed scientific article. So what are we up against in concrete terms? Here is my preliminary analysis** of the peer reviewed literature: MSLs of between 25 and 30 likely make up the majority. A paper with an MSL of 17 did crop up, but such works are rare. And the “competition”? Some prominent lay science writers regularly come in at around 15 words, I found. Even some scientists writing blogs for members of their own community manage a respectable 20; sometimes fewer. Clearly this “competition” is not active rivalry. However, at the point of reading online, articles vie for attention. Good Internet writers do a great service to science. Some even contextualize and add critique. However, such digests of articles are inevitably interpretations by more generalist writers: they are not intended to be as thorough as the source article. For lay readers, that might not matter: for scientists it should. Commentators on modern culture such as Andrew Ferrier, Seth Godin or Frank Schirrmacher regularly remark that computer/Internet use reduces users' attention spans. More interesting–as they also observe–is the neural mechanism: a defined craving for short-term gratification. And in the case of articles it seems to me that the gratification is uniquely about understanding. A short sentence is easier to understand than a long one. Even if a short sentence gives only a fraction of the final information, it is enough to keep us going: we have learnt something new. MSL aside, articles frequently contain a few sentences with over 60 words: one in my analysis “captured” the experimental motivation and design in 69 words. Crucial information should be written in short chunks. A few massive sentences can seriously diminish reader understanding, and hence gratification! Here are some practical suggestions: Don't start a sentence with a qualifier such as “although”, “because” or “since”. Whatever we were taught at school, starting a sentence with “And” or “But” is a permissible way of making a break. Splitting sentences with a colon “:” or similar is also a good idea. We can't do much as individuals about the march of Internet- and computer-driven behaviour. If we want the fullness of science in necessarily long papers to be appreciated, it must increasingly be written in short sentences.

Zasady wykorzystywania cudzych utworów: prawo autorskie i dobre obyczaje (etyka cytatu)

In academic work citation is a useful and often necessary tool to present literally the views of other authors. Its importance has also been recognized by Polish law, which in the act about copyrights and related rights introduced appropriate regulations regarding citations. Citations are a permissible way of using the work of others, making it possible to balance the rights of authors on the one hand and those of users on the other, thus assuring the development of science and its dissemination, the advancement of civilization, and the freedom of expression. The ability to use the results of other authors allows for scientific activity, which of its nature requires reference to and use of the work of others. Due to the frequent and varied use of the work of others in scientific activity, in addition to legal regulations, ethical norms and good academic practices play an important role in establishing the limits of permissible citations. As a result of numerous recent improprieties, the issue of citations, or more precisely of the proper acknowledgment of a cited work, has taken on ever greater significance in the context of the phenomenon of plagiarism. The present article considers such issues and others such as second hand citation, autocitation, autoplagiarism, and the citation of fictional authors and of “fictional” works.

Semantic and Syntactic Proof Productions

In this paper, we distinguish between two ways that an individual can construct a formal proof. We define a syntactic proof production to occur when the prover draws inferences by manipulating symbolic formulae in a logically permissible way. We define a semantic proof production to occur when the prover uses instantiations of mathematical concepts to guide the formal inferences that he or she draws. We present two independent exploratory case studies from group theory and real analysis that illustrate both types of proofs. We conclude by discussing what types of concept understanding are required for each type of proof production and by illustrating the weaknesses of syntactic proof productions.

Communicating with metaphor: a dance with many veils.

Health practitioners face many challenges when caring for and communicating with dying persons. As truth-tellers, we search for ways to communicate with honesty, sensitivity, and compassion. Creative use of language is one aspect of caring. Metaphorical communication can be a healing modality, one consistent with communication as an art. This article suggests that metaphor is a powerful and sensitive form of language that offers a range of characteristics particularly suitable for the art and the challenge of communicating with dying people. Metaphor, as figurative language, provides a permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. It allows us to share a truth without the glare of reality. This author contends that metaphor is mysterious, creative, invitational, safe, open to interpretation, respectful and playful. The creative and judicious use of metaphor provides health care practitioners with many veils--veils that shield the dying from the glare of their prognosis, veils particularly valuable and suited in communicating with our palliative patient population.

Agnosticism meets Bayesianism

As a result, your credal state cannot really be modeled by a single probability function at all. A better model is provided by a set of such probability functions - what van Fraassen (1990) has called a representor. Each function in your representor agrees with your opinion as far as it goes, but then goes further, precisifying that opinion in some permissible way. (This can be thought of as analogous to the supervaluational approach to vagueness.) According to van Fraassen, your explicit judgments determine which precisifications get admitted into your representor. For example, if you judge that the Democrats are at least as likely to win as not, then for each probability function p that gives 0.5 < p(Democrats win) < 1, and that is consistent with all your other such judgments, p is in your representor. In his highly influential Laws and Symmetry, van Fraassen advocates (a version of) Bayesianism, and also constructive empiricism, an anti-realist position regarding scientific theories according to which 'acceptance of a theory [that postulates unobservables] involves a certain amount of agnosticism, or suspension of belief' (1989: 193). He is thus naturally led to ask whether Bayesianism has the resources to represent agnosticism, and he argues that it does. More than that, he gives an analysis:1 agnosticism is 1 He does not explicitly say that he is giving an analysis of agnosticism, nor explicitly state the analysis, but it is apparent from context that this is exactly what he has in mind. Furthermore, van Fraassen agrees that this is indeed the case (personal

David Hume, David Lewis, and decision theory

David Lewis claims that a simple sort of anti-Humeanism-that the rational agent desires something to the extent he believes it to be good-can be given a decision-theoretic formulation, which Lewis calls 'Desire as Belief' (DAB). Given the (widely held) assumption that Jeffrey conditionalising is a rationally permissible way to change one's mind in the face of new evidence, Lewis proves that DAB leads to absurdity. Thus, according to Lewis, the simple form of anti-Humeanism stands refuted. In this paper we investigate whether Lewis's case against DAB can be strengthened by examining how it fares under rival versions of decision theory, including other conceptions of rational ways to change one's mind. We argue that the anti-Humean may escape Lewis's argument either by adopting a version of causal decision theory, or by claiming that the refutation only applies to hyper-idealised rational agents, or by denying that the decision-theoretic framework has the expressive capacity to formulate anti-Humeanism.

Poetry and Synthesis: The Art of Samuel Menashe

Since publication of his first book, The Many Named Beloved (London: Golancz, 1961), little has been said about work of Samuel Menashe. The MLA Bibliography doesn't even know he exists. With exception of short essays by Donald Davie and Derek Mahon, critical record concerning Menashe consists of reviews, in which he has been briefly praised by such figures as Austin Clarke, P. N. Furbank, Stephen Spender, and Hugh Kenner.(1) The poet himself has been obliged to provide most comprehensive account of his intentions and accomplishments.(2) Menashe's neglect becomes all more striking when we consider how thoroughly his body of work exemplifies synthesizing tendency prevalent in poetry since Wordsworth remarked in his preface to Lyrical Ballads that the primary laws of our nature could best be illuminated by attention to the manner in which we associate ideas in state of (Wordsworth 39-40). More than century later, Robert Frost called excitement enthusiasm, and carried notion of association further. In Education by he observes that: Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, grace metaphors, and goes on to profoundest that we have. Poetry provides one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. (Frost 719) He goes on to make an extraordinary claim. have wanted in late years to go further and further in making metaphor whole of thinking (Frost 720). Frost implies that mind habitually generates metaphors, and by so doing makes what sense it can of world. In other words, mind's action is ineluctably process of comparison and synthesis, of creating, as Frost remarks, a gathering metaphor. (Even Charles Bernstein, while fulminating against readership or a common standard of aesthetic judgment, finds himself speaking of poetic form as matter of putting things together, or stripping them apart [1]; in other words, as acts of association or disassociation.) Menashe's work exemplifies associational and synthesizing power that Wordsworth and Frost deem central to poetry. He habitually juxtaposes and marries otherwise conflicting or diverse discursive categories. But if this is an old story with poets, why single out Menashe for notice? At least part of his claim to our attention consists in number of different kinds of categories he coordinates. We find him aligning animate and inanimate, visible and invisible, Hebrew and Christian tradition, literary and colloquial. Another, stronger claim on our attention is exceptionally spare, rigorously economical means by which he accomplishes his synthetic legerdemain. Of course, only series of close readings of his poems will demonstrate what I mean. Let me begin with an untitled poem from 1961 collection: A of little boats Tethered to shore Drifts in water . . . Prows dip, nibbling (Collected Poems 50) This poem's components are managed impeccably. The poem divides into two; lines 1 and 2 posit stasis, lines 3 and 4 dynamic. This effect arises from disposition of nouns and verbs. Nouns in first two lines (flock, boats, outnumber those in last two (water, prows). In contrast, verbs (drifts, dip) are pushed to last two lines, along with participle Furthermore, stresses fall on monosyllabic nouns ending lines 1 and 2, but more fluid lines 3 and 4 end with trochees. This establishes distinction between firm stress on stable materials (boats, shore) and wavering stress on liquid (water) and process (nibbling). In terms of imagery, poem successfully masquerades as pastoral scene - but on water. With flock we are invited to see little boats as so many aquatic sheep. Vocabulary aids effect; animation is granted to boats by virtue of poem's observation that they drift in still water. …

The Exodus and Biblical Theology

Recent debates about the Exodus have centered on the shape of the story. One such debate concerned von Rad's attempt to separate the Exodus from the giving of the Law. Another concerns the use of the Exodus in Liberation Theology. Scholars who take a canonical approach (Childs, Levenson) argue that the "canonical shape" of the story in the final form of the Torah is decisive. Examination of the way the Exodus motif was used within the biblical tradition itself, however, suggests that the "canonical approach" is not the only permissible way to construe the tradition. The reformulation of the traditio-historical approach by such scholars as J. A. Sanders and M. Fishbane does more justice to the way in which the Exodus was understood by later biblical writers, and in much of Jewish and Christian tradition. The Liberation theologians can claim an authentic biblical basis just as well as the "canonical" interpreters, but neither can claim a monopoly on biblical authority.

The influence of patient smoking status on therapeutic decisions.

To assess the effect of patient smoking status on internists' inclinations to recommend certain types of therapy for conditions that are and conditions that are not related to smoking. Five hundred ninety-eight internists identified systematically from the Directory of Medical Specialists (first entry on each page of text) were asked to complete a questionnaire about how their treatment decisions for five therapies differed as a function of patient smoking status. The responses of the 320 internists who completed and returned the questionnaire showed that smoking status had little effect on physicians' inclinations to recommend herniorrhaphy, hemodialysis, or bronchodilator therapy. However, physicians were considerably less inclined to recommend coronary artery bypass grafting or peripheral arterial surgery to patients who smoked. Reduced efficacy and greater risk of therapy were the most frequent reasons given for the observed decrease. Reduced entitlement by smokers to complex therapies for smoking-related diseases and the withholding of therapy as a bargaining tool to induce smokers to quit were also cited as reasons. Some internists believe they are less likely to recommend complex therapies for smoking-related diseases to patients who continue to smoke. Some of this decrease may be attributable to the notion that smokers are less entitled to complex therapies or that withholding therapies is a permissible way to influence patients to adopt more healthful lifestyles. Whether these physician attitudes reflect actual practice is yet to be shown.