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A scoring rule and global inaccuracy measure for contingent varying importance Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-27 Pavel Janda
Levinstein recently presented a challenge to accuracy-first epistemology. He claims that there is no strictly proper, truth-directed, additive, and differentiable scoring rule that recognises the contingency of varying importance, i.e., the fact that an agent might value the inaccuracy of her credences differently at different possible worlds. In my response, I will argue that accuracy-first epistemology
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Standing up for supervenience Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2023-09-25 Bart Streumer
There is a well-known argument against irreducibly normative properties that appeals to the following claim about supervenience: for all possible worlds W and W*, if the instantiation of descriptive properties in W and W* is exactly the same, then the instantiation of normative properties in W and W* is also exactly the same. This claim used to be uncontroversial, but recently several philosophers
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Perceptual consciousness and intensional transitive verbs Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-26 Justin D’Ambrosio, Daniel Stoljar
There is good reason to think that, in every case of perceptual consciousness, there is something of which we are conscious; but there is also good reason to think that, in some cases of perceptual consciousness—for instance, hallucinations—there is nothing of which we are conscious. This paper resolves this inconsistency—which we call the presentation problem—by (a) arguing that ‘conscious of’ and
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Front Matter Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2023-09-25
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Volume 74, Issue 3, September 2023.
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Higher-order evidence and the duty to double-check Noûs Pub Date : 2023-09-25 Michele Palmira
The paper proposes an account of the rational response to higher-order evidence whose key claim is that whenever we acquire such evidence we ought to engage in the inquiring activity of double-checking. Combined with a principle that establishes a connection between rational inquiry and rational belief retention, the account offers a novel explanation of the alleged impermissibility of retaining one's
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Why Moral Paradoxes Support Error Theory J. Philos. Pub Date : 2023-09-21 Christopher Cowie
Moral error theory has many troubling and counterintuitive consequences. It entails, for example, that actions we ordinarily think of as obviously wrong are not wrong at all. This simple observation is at the heart of much opposition to error theory. I provide a new defense against it. The defense is based on the impossibility of finding satisfying solutions to a wide range of puzzles and paradoxes
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Making sense of things: Moral inquiry as hermeneutical inquiry Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Paulina Sliwa
We are frequently confronted with moral situations that are unsettling, confusing, disorienting. We try to come to grips with them. When we do so, we engage in a distinctive type of moral inquiry: hermeneutical inquiry. Its aim is to make sense of our situation. What is it to make sense of one's situation? Hermeneutical inquiry is part of our everyday moral experience. Understanding its nature and
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Center indifference and skepticism Noûs Pub Date : 2023-09-18 David Builes
Many philosophers have been attracted to a restricted version of the principle of indifference in the case of self-locating belief. Roughly speaking, this principle states that, within any given possible world, one should be indifferent between different hypotheses concerning who one is within that possible world, so long as those hypotheses are compatible with one's evidence. My first goal is to defend
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Précis of Reasons First Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-19 Mark Schroeder
This is an overview of the main themes and theses of Reasons First for a book symposium, and intended to be read alongside the other contributions to that symposium.
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On the origin of conspiracy theories Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-17 Patrick Brooks
Conspiracy theories are rather a popular topic these days, and a lot has been written on things like the meaning of conspiracy theory, whether it’s ever rational to believe conspiracy theories, and on the psychology and demographics of people who believe conspiracy theories. But very little has been said about why people might be led to posit conspiracy theories in the first place. This paper aims
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Boolean-Valued Sets as Arbitrary Objects Mind Pub Date : 2023-09-17 Leon Horsten
This article explores the connection between Boolean-valued class models of set theory and the theory of arbitrary objects in roughly Kit Fine’s sense of the word. In particular, it explores the hypothesis that the set-theoretic universe as a whole can be seen as an arbitrary entity. According to this view, the set-theoretic universe can be in many different states. These states are structurally like
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Notes on Contributors Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 177-177, October 2023.
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Andrew Sepielli, Pragmatist Quietism: A Meta-ethical System Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Wouter Floris Kalf
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 172-176, October 2023.
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Joseph Raz and Heuer Ulrike, eds., The Roots of Normativity Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Kimberley Brownlee
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 168-172, October 2023.
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Suzanne Ost and Hazel Biggs, Exploitation, Ethics and Law: Violating the Ethos of the Doctor-Patient Relationship Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Søren Holm
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 164-167, October 2023.
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Jonathan Mitchell, Emotion as Feeling towards Value: A Theory of Emotional Experience Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Hichem Naar
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 158-164, October 2023.
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Eric MacGilvray, Liberal Freedom: Pluralism, Polarization, and Politics Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Matthew Festenstein
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 154-158, October 2023.
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Holly Lawford-Smith, Gender-Critical Feminism Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 E. Díaz-León
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 146-154, October 2023.
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Ben Laurence, Agents of Change: Political Philosophy in Practice Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Jacob Barrett
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 141-146, October 2023.
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Alex Gregory, Desire as Belief: A Study of Desire, Motivation, and Rationality Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Keshav Singh
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 136-140, October 2023.
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Gerald Gaus, The Open Society and Its Complexities Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Toby Handfield
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 131-136, October 2023.
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Julie Dickson, Elucidating Law Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Robert Mullins
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 127-131, October 2023.
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Endre Begby, Prejudice: A Study in Non-ideal Epistemology Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Renée Jorgensen
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 122-126, October 2023.
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Moral Nihilism—So What? Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Lewis Williams
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 108-121, October 2023.
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Intrapersonal Arguments for the Repugnant Conclusion Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Tomi Francis
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 89-107, October 2023.
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Binding the Self: The Ethics of Ulysses Contracts Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Andrew Franklin-Hall
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 57-88, October 2023.
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The Morality of Gossip: A Kantian Account Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Cécile Fabre
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 32-56, October 2023.
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How Does Stalking Wrong the Victim? Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Elizabeth Brake
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 4-31, October 2023.
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From the Editors Ethics (IF 10.8) Pub Date : 2023-09-15 Julia Driver, Connie Rosati
Ethics, Volume 134, Issue 1, Page 1-3, October 2023.
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Power and activity: a dynamic do-over* Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-11 Neil E Williams
Powers theorists frequently assert that their neo-Aristotelian frameworks are dynamic, and that this gives them a theoretical advantage over their neo-Humean rivals. But recently it’s been claimed that activity can also be used to divide powers theories themselves. Dynamism is here understood primarily in terms of activity: a metaphysic counts as dynamic according to the place activity is given within
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Can our reasons determine what it is rational for us to believe? Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-11 Ralph Wedgwood
This is a discussion of Mark Schroeder’s book Reasons First. In this book, Schroeder defends the following thesis: for every believer and every time, it is the reasons that the believer has at that time that determine what it is rational for the believer to believe at that time. It is argued here that this thesis is false, since it conflicts with the plausible principle of “normative invariance”: what
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A symposium on Thinking and Perceiving: On the malleability of the mind Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-12 Dustin Stokes
This is a symposium on Thinking and Perceiving, a single authored monograph that argues that thought not only affects sensory perception, but sometimes improves it, and sometimes to the point of epistemic virtue. The case for these claims is empirically grounded, with special emphasis on studies on perceptual expertise. The symposium includes an introduction by the author, and three critical commentaries
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Fairness and risk attitudes Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-13 Richard Bradley, H. Orri Stefánsson
According to a common judgement, a social planner should often use a lottery to decide which of two people should receive a good. This judgement undermines one of the best-known arguments for utilitarianism, due to John C. Harsanyi, and more generally undermines axiomatic arguments for utilitarianism and similar views. In this paper we ask which combinations of views about (a) the social planner’s
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Agency and aesthetic identity Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-13 Kenneth Walden
Schiller says that “it is only through beauty that man makes his way to freedom.” Here I attempt to defend a claim in the same spirit as Schiller’s but by some different means. My thesis is that a person’s autonomous agency depends on their adopting an aesthetic identity. To act, we need to don contingent features of agency, things that structure our practical thought and explain what we do in very
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Too humble for words Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-11 Neil Levy
It’s widely held that a lack of intellectual humility is part of the reason why flagrantly unjustified beliefs proliferate. In this paper, I argue that an excess of humility also plays a role in allowing for the spread of misinformation. Citing experimental evidence, I show that inducing intellectual humility causes people inappropriately to lower their confidence in beliefs that are actually justified
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Plato’s Sun-Like Good: Dialectic in the Republic Australasian Journal of Philosophy Pub Date : 2023-09-12 Rick Benitez
Published in Australasian Journal of Philosophy (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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Perception and Disjunctive Belief: A New Problem for Ambitious Predictive Processing Australasian Journal of Philosophy Pub Date : 2023-09-07 Assaf Weksler
ABSTRACT Perception can’t have disjunctive content. Whereas you can think that a box is blue or red, you can’t see a box as being blue or red. Based on this fact, I develop a new problem for the ambitious predictive processing theory, on which the brain is a machine for minimizing prediction error, which approximately implements Bayesian inference. I describe a simple case of updating a disjunctive
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Getting machines to do your dirty work Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-09 Tomi Francis, Todd Karhu
Autonomous systems are machines that can alter their behavior without direct human oversight or control. How ought we to program them to behave? A plausible starting point is given by the Reduction to Acts Thesis, according to which we ought to program autonomous systems to do whatever a human agent ought to do in the same circumstances. Although the Reduction to Acts Thesis is initially appealing
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Agentially controlled action: causal, not counterfactual Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-09 Malte Hendrickx
Mere capacity views hold that agents who can intervene in an unfolding movement are performing an agentially controlled action, regardless of whether they do intervene. I introduce a simple argument to show that the noncausal explanation offered by mere capacity views fails to explain both control and action. In cases where bodily subsystems, rather than the agent, generate control over a movement
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Is truth inconsistent? Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2023-09-05 Patrick Greenough
A popular and enduring approach to the liar paradox takes the concept of truth to be inconsistent. Very roughly, truth is an inconsistent concept if the central principles of this concept (taken together) entail a contradiction, where one of these central principles is Tarski's T-schema for truth: a sentence S is true if and only if p, (where S says that p). This article targets a version of Inconsistentism
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Will intelligent machines become moral patients? Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2023-09-09 Parisa Moosavi
This paper addresses a question about the moral status of Artificial Intelligence (AI): will AIs ever become moral patients? I argue that, while it is in principle possible for an intelligent machine to be a moral patient, there is no good reason to believe this will in fact happen. I start from the plausible assumption that traditional artifacts do not meet a minimal necessary condition of moral patiency:
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Testimonial knowledge and content preservation Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-07 Joey Pollock
Most work in the epistemology of testimony is built upon a simple model of communication according to which, when the speaker asserts that p, the hearer must recover this very content, p. In this paper, I argue that this ‘Content Preservation Model’ of communication cannot bear the weight placed on it by contemporary work on testimony. It is popularly thought that testimonial exchanges are often successful
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Fictional force Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-07 Andreas Stokke
This paper argues for an account of fictional force, the central characteristic of the kind of non-assertoric speech act that authors of fictions are engaged in. A distinction is drawn between what is true in a fiction and the fictional record comprising what the audience has been told. The papers argues that to utter a sentence with fictional force is to intend that its content be added to a fictional
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A solution, and a problem, for veritism Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-09-04 Jeffrey Dunn
Veritists maintain that true belief and only true belief is of fundamental epistemic value. They very often go on to derive epistemic norms based on considerations about what promotes this value. A standard objection is that many truths are pointless: there is no value in believing them. In response, veritists often distinguish between significant and insignificant truths, holding that the former are
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Hume’s Separability Principle, his Dictum, and their Implications Mind Pub Date : 2023-09-06 Graham Clay
Hsueh M. Qu has recently argued that Hume’s famed ‘Separability Principle’ from the Treatise entangles him in a contradiction. Qu offers a modified principle as a solution but also argues that the mature Hume would not have needed to avail himself of it, given that Hume’s arguments in the first Enquiry do not depend on this principle in any form. To the contrary, I show that arguments in the first
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Why Must Incompatibility Be Symmetric? Philos. Q. Pub Date : 2023-09-05 Ryan Simonelli
Why must incompatibility be symmetric? An odd question, but recent work in the semantics of non-classical logic, which appeals to the notion of incompatibility as a primitive and defines negation in terms of it, has brought this question to the fore. Francesco Berto proposes such a semantics for negation argues that, since incompatibility must be symmetric, double negation introduction must be a law
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Two Conceptions of Instrumental Thought Philos. Q. Pub Date : 2023-09-05 Rory O’Connell
According to a dominant assumption the truth of instrumental thoughts—thoughts in which one action is identified as a means to another—are not affected by agents’ normative conceptions of their ends. Agents could in principle grasp these thoughts, and thereby the correct means to their ends, without consulting any conception they may have as to the pursuit-worthiness of those ends. I argue this assumption
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Adaptive abilities Philosophical Issues Pub Date : 2023-09-02 Erasmus Mayr, Barbara Vetter
Abilities, in contrast to mere dispositions, propensities, or tendencies, abilities seem to be features of agents that put the agent herself in control. But what is the distinguishing feature of abilities vis-à-vis other kinds of powers? Our aim in this paper is to point, in answer to this question, to a crucial feature of abilities that existing accounts have tended to neglect: their adaptivity. Adaptivity
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Freedom, foreknowledge, and betting Philosophical Issues Pub Date : 2023-08-30 Amy Seymour
Certain kinds of prediction, foreknowledge, and future-oriented action appear to require settled future truths. But open futurists think that the future is metaphysically unsettled: if it is open whether p is true, then it cannot currently be settled that p is true. So, open futurists—and libertarians who adopt the position—face the objection that their view makes rational action and deliberation impossible
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Animals in the order of public reason Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-08-30 Pablo Magaña
On a prominent family of views about the justification of legitimate policy-making (public justification views), considerations about the rights and well-being of nonhuman animals can only play a derivative role at best. On these views, these considerations matter only if they can figure in the content of the public reasons that citizens can offer each other. This thesis I call the Indirect View. Some
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Numbers without aggregation Noûs Pub Date : 2023-08-28 Tim Henning
Suppose we can save either a larger group of persons or a distinct, smaller group from some harm. Many people think that, all else equal, we ought to save the greater number. This article defends this view (with qualifications). But unlike earlier theories, it does not rely on the idea that several people's interests or claims receive greater aggregate weight. The argument starts from the idea that
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Perceptual malleability: attention, imagination, and objectivity Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-08-29 Dustin Stokes
This article offers a reply to commentaries from Amy Kind, Casey O’Callaghan, and Wayne Wu. It features a defense and further analysis of perceptual malleability, as defended in Thinking and Perceiving. In turn, it considers the consequences of malleability for attention and the cognitive penetrability of perception, imagination and perceptual skills, and perceptual content and objectivity.
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Neural Oscillations as Representations Br. J. Philos. Sci. (IF 3.4) Pub Date : 2023-08-29 Manolo Martínez, Marc Artiga
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Ahead of Print.
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The epistemic insignificance of phenomenal force Philos. Phenomenol. Res. Pub Date : 2023-08-29 Lu Teng
Does phenomenal force, the distinctive phenomenology attributed to perceptual experience, really form an integral part of the latter? If not, what implications does it have for perceptual justification? In this paper, I first argue for a metacognitive account, according to which phenomenal force constitutes a separate, metacognitive state. This account opens up a previously unexplored path for challenging
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Solidarity and the Work of Moral Understanding Philos. Q. Pub Date : 2023-08-29 Samuel Dishaw
Because moral understanding involves a distinctly first-personal grasp of moral matters, there is a temptation to think of its value primarily in terms of achievements that reflect well on its possessor: the moral worth of one's action or the virtue of one's character. These explanations, I argue, do not do full justice to the importance of moral understanding in our moral lives. Of equal importance
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On the Site of Predictive Justice Noûs Pub Date : 2023-08-27 Seth Lazar, Jake Stone
Optimism about our ability to enhance societal decision-making by leaning on Machine Learning (ML) for cheap, accurate predictions has palled in recent years, as these ‘cheap’ predictions have come at significant social cost, contributing to systematic harms suffered by already disadvantaged populations. But what precisely goes wrong when ML goes wrong? We argue that, as well as more obvious concerns
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Practical understanding Philosophical Issues Pub Date : 2023-08-27 Lilian O'Brien
Well-functioning agents ordinarily have an excellent epistemic relationship to their intentional actions. This phenomenon is often characterized as knowledge of what one is doing and labeled “practical knowledge”. But when we examine it carefully, it seems to require a particular kind of understanding - understanding of the normative structure of one's action. Three lines of argument are offered to
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Freedom, moral responsibility, and the failure of universal defeat Philosophical Issues Pub Date : 2023-08-27 Andrew J. Latham, Hannah Tierney, Somogy Varga
Proponents of manipulation arguments against compatibilism hold that manipulation scope (how many agents are manipulated) and manipulation type (whether the manipulator intends that an agent perform a particular action) do not impact judgments about free will and moral responsibility. Many opponents of manipulation arguments agree that manipulation scope has no impact but hold that manipulation type
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Algorithmic fairness and resentment Philosophical Studies Pub Date : 2023-08-28 Boris Babic, Zoë Johnson King
In this paper we develop a general theory of algorithmic fairness. Drawing on Johnson King and Babic’s work on moral encroachment, on Gary Becker’s work on labor market discrimination, and on Strawson’s idea of resentment and indignation as responses to violations of the demand for goodwill toward oneself and others, we locate attitudes to fairness in an agent’s utility function. In particular, we