Attila Tanyi

Marko Jurjako’s recent monograph, Normative Reasons from a Naturalistic Point of View (University of Rijeka, 2024), is an engaging defence of a naturalistic meta-ethics. The book’s specific focus is on normative reasons, which it understands along subjectivist lines. In my contribution to this symposium my primary aim is to clarify some of the positions taken by Jurjako and to point out possible problems with them with an eye on further developing these positions. This does not mean I agree with his naturalistic meta-ethics; nonetheless, I do see it as a major contender in today’s meta-ethical landscape. I interpret Jurjako as being a naturalist in meta-ethics, not only methodologically, but also substantively. However, as I try to show, this does not come clearly forward from the book even though the book explicitly endorses naturalism. Along the way I also make some critical remarks about Jurjako’s treatment of Enoch’s idealization challenge and his use of Street’s evolutionary debunking argument.

In this introduction, I first present the general problematic of the special section. Our world faces several existential challenges (climate change, threat of (nuclear) war, and global injustice) and some would argue (with even more disagreeing) that the only adequate answer to these challenges is setting up a world government. I then introduce the contributions that comprise the scholarly body of the special section: Andrić on global democracy; Hahn on global political reconciliation; Pinheiro Walla on Kant and world government; Miklós & Tanyi on institutional consequentialism and world governance. Lastly, I briefly describe the practical context in which the idea of the special section has arisen and in which the present contributions have taken shape.

(Under contract with Oxford University Press, Oxford Legal Philosophy series.) This book is a legal and ethical study of state entrapment: that is, entrapment by law-enforcement agents or their deputies. It approaches entrapment via three questions: definition (What makes an act one of entrapment?), permissibility (Under what conditions, if any, is entrapment permissible?), and implications (When someone has been entrapped, what remedy, if any, is appropriate? More broadly, how should the law respond?). It explains these questions, looks at how the law and scholars have answered them, gives our answers to them, and is structured according to them. It treats these questions as distinct, and that of definition as prior (in a sense that it clarifies) to the others. The methodology deployed combines applied analytical philosophy with approaches to comparative legal studies that are predominantly analytical and historical. The main focus, in terms of scope, is upon common-law jurisdictions in the Anglophone world.

Consequentialism is often criticized as being overly demanding, and this overdemandingness is seen as sufficient to reject it as a moral theory. This paper takes the plausibility and coherence of this objection—the Demandingness Objection—as a given. Our question, therefore, is how to respond to the Objection. We put forward a response relying on the framework of institutional consequentialism we introduced in previous work. On this view, institutions take over the consequentialist burden, whereas individuals, special occasions aside, are required to set up and maintain institutions. We first describe the Objection, then clarify the theory of institutional consequentialism and show how it responds to the Objection. In the remainder of the paper, we defend the view against potential challenges.

There is a growing focus on public health initiatives that prioritise well-being. The main question of our study is whether this, in its current form, can really represent a new response to the challenges of previous strategies, or whether there is a greater chance that it will essentially reproduce the problems associated with the paradoxical situation of public health. Based on a review, analysis and evaluation of the literature on well-being in public health, we outlined the foundations of a new meta-theory of well-being and a possibility for its social application. In our view, well-being is seen as a social representation of a combination of positive and negative freedom of choice concerning the quality of everyday life, used in a positioning process involving both individual and collective aspects. Health is a particular aspect of the social representation and positioning of well-being, which encompasses aspects of the physical, psychological, social and spiritual functioning of individuals. The well-being meta-theory also opens up the possibility for more effective solutions to the social challenges related to well-being and salutogenetic health. It underscores the importance of the need for a dedicated social subsystem where the goals and organizational culture of the organizations involved are focused on well-being and health promotion. In our study, we consider this to be the Public Well-being System (PWS).

(Under contract with Routledge, Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory.) This book will be an edited volume on problems of choice with four sections dedicated to: normativity and choice, rationality and choice, value and choice, morality and choice. Chapters by: Chrisoula Andreau, Paul Bloomfield, Krister Bykvist, Sophie Grace Chappell, David Copp, Guy Fletcher, Joshua Gert, Olasv Gjelsvik, Natalie Gold, Marina Moreno, Fredrik Nyseth, Wlodek Rabinowicz, Andrew Reisner, Caj Strandberg, Sarah Stroud, Johanna Thoma.

The harm principle entails the subprinciple that harm to others provides a pro tanto moral reason for legal or social coercion. We address a ‘scope problem’ for that subprinciple: how can what counts as harm be restricted sufficiently, without sacrificing extensional adequacy, to protect the harm principle’s liberal credentials? While recognizing the centrality of such basic liberties as freedom of speech, freedom of association, and freedom of movement to any liberalism worthy of the name, a satisfactory solution to the scope problem must secure a distinction between conduct that harms others and conduct that, while it might negatively affect others (casually or relationally), does not harm them. We ground such a distinction in a further distinction between needs and attitudes.

Henry Sidgwick has famously stated that the conflict between self-interest (prudence) and morality cannot be resolved: a dualism of practical reason is thus established. As is well-known, Sidgwick was distraught with this conclusion thinking that only the existence of God can resolve the dualism. Contemporary thinkers prefer to avoid this way out and argue either that. egoism is not rationally justifiable, or that self-interest and morality always point in the same direction, or that properly understanding the conflict also shows that the dualism can be avoided. We take a different route. We agree with Sidgwick that some part of practical reason might indeed be discordant but we provide examples when what appears to be discord is in fact harmony on a higher level. We call these sets of. conflict cases pockets of harmony. We first show how these pockets form and what shape they take before moving on to considering their scope. At this point we confront a possible objection using an adapted version of Arrow’s impossibility theorem. Once this objection is out of the way, we conclude with a discussion of exactly what we have shown: what is the nature of our solution, and how it relates to recent skeptical positions taking their inspiration from Sidgwick’s dualism.

Despite being a common phenomenon with significant consequences on our everyday life, strikes (and direct actions in general) are still relatively undertheorized in the philosophical literature. Our paper has a specific focus that is best encapsulated in a question: What is the relationship between liberalism and the right to strike? Liberalism’s cornerstone is the idea that rights and liberties of individuals are of supreme political importance. Rights and liberties, however, are not created equal. The basic liberties are those that are so politically important that legal restrictions upon them are unjustified unless to protect other basic liberties within an overall scheme of liberties, such as under a bill of rights. So, our question becomes: Is the right to strike a basic liberty? Two ongoing disputes are relevant here. The ‘older’ debate concerns the status of economic liberties and their relation to the right to strike. We will focus on a ‘newer’ discussion because it poses a challenge to liberalism itself. Namely, some ‘radical’ critics of liberalism (Gourevitch, Raekstad and Rossi) have argued that there are rights that involve coercing others, exercised during strikes or engagement in other direct action, that do not qualify as liberal basic liberties and that can sometimes take normative precedence over the liberal basic liberties. This criticism, if correct, defeats liberalism. Notice, though: since the weighing of different particular basic liberties against each other in an overall scheme of liberty is integral to high liberalism, the genuine threat that the radical critique poses stems not from the second conjunct (which its proponents have defended) but from its first (which they have merely assumed). For, if (contrary to what the radical work assumes) the right to engage in coercive strike action is a liberal basic liberty then it can, at least in principle, win out over other basic liberties, within an overall scheme of liberties, in situations of prima facie moral conflict. Raekstad and Rossi extend the radical critique, beyond the case of coercive strikes, to other forms of direct action (outside of industrial disputes) that have avowedly moral or political goals. These could include workplace occupations, street blockades, hacktivism, counter-economics, tax resistance and more. In the paper we argue that the ‘radicals’ are not entitled to the assumption that the right to strike is not a liberal basic liberty. Moreover, we suggest, high liberalism has the resources to accommodate not only a general right to engage in non-coercive strike action, but also the right to engage in some forms of coercive direct action, whether as part of an industrial dispute or not. More precisely, we show that liberalism has the resources to accommodate not only (i) a general right to engage in non-coercive strike action, but also (ii) the right to engage in some forms of coercive direct action, whether (iii) as part of an industrial dispute or (iv) not.

There are a number of well-established concepts explaining decision-making. The sociology of wise practice suggests that thinking preferences like the use of intuition form a cornerstone of administrators’ virtuous practice and phronesis is a likely candidate to explain this behaviour. This contribution uses conceptual and theoretical resources from the behavioural sciences, management science as well as philosophy to account for individual level differences of employees regarding thinking preferences in administrative professions. The analysis empirically investigates the behavioural dimension of the preference for intuition vs the preference for deliberation to cast light on three different intuitive markers present among individuals who also prefer to use deliberation. We explore possible explanations for the differences and similarities of our global sample of 2227 workplace respondents who conceptually represent phronetic practitioners. The results show that many phronetic practitioners prefer the intuitive marker of unconscious thought, besides using deliberation.

The paper takes as its starting point John Rawls’s claim that the social bases of self-respect is perhaps the most important primary good the distribution of which is governed by his principles of justice. There has been some debate about this claim in the literature and this debate has included important clarifications regarding the concept(s) involved. However, I think this discussion hasn’t gone deep enough and this – relative – lack of depth has or at least might have important implications for our theory of distributive justice. To show this, I begin with Rawls’s admittedly sketchy remarks about the significance of self-respect in his theory. After this I briefly describe the debate that followed: what emerges here is a distinction between two kinds of self-respect. While I think this distinction is in good order, I also think and subsequently argue, building on the work of Robin Dillon and Anna Bortolan, that it only scratches the surface of the complex phenomenon of self-respect. In particular, as these authors show, the self-respect complex is, in fact, a multi-layered phenomenon and the distinction as used misses its fundamental level: basal self-respect (Dillon) or self-esteem (Bortolan). In the finishing part of the paper I discuss these two proposals to show that Bortolan’s version is the better one. All this then has clear relevance for the adjoining debate in political philosophy: all those who want to give an important role to self-respect in their theory of justice have potentially focused on the wrong target so far. This, I conclude, might well give rise to a new feminist critique of liberal egalitarian justice.

We discuss how the law and scholars have approached three questions. First, what acts count as acts of entrapment? Secondly, is entrapment a permissible method of law-enforcement and, if so, in what circumstances? Thirdly, what must criminal courts do, in response to the finding that an offence was brought about by an act of entrapment, in order to deliver justice? While noting the contrary tendency, we suggest that the first question should be addressed in a manner that is neutral about the answers to the other two. On the second question, we summarize various arguments about the permissibility of entrapment, while remaining largely neutral about their merits. With regard to the third question, we summarize the approaches to entrapment in various jurisdictions, and we note some patterns, across the jurisdictions here surveyed, concerning shifts from one sort of entrapment remedy to another.

In response to the Covid pandemic the Norwegian government put in place the strictest border closures in Norwegian modern history, restricting entry to most foreign nationals. The Prime Minister, Erna Solberg, justified these restrictions with reference to the rise of new Covid variants, and the need to limit visitors to Norway as much as possible. In this paper we critically examine both the justification given for the border closure, and explore the possible adverse effects this closure might bring about. We argue that the recent closures are not morally justified, that they place an unjust burden on transnational citizens and Norwegians with close relations abroad, and that such border closures can have severe impacts for many individuals, on Norway’s international standing and on social cohesion.

I begin the chapter with research, reported recently in The Atlantic, on the surprising phenomenon that many successful women, all accomplished and highly competent, exhibit high degrees of self-doubt. Unlike the original research, the chapter aims to bring into view the role self-respect plays in higher education as another crucial explanatory factor. First, I clarify the main concepts that are relevant for getting a clear view of the notion of self-respect: different kinds of self-respect and the connection to the notion of self-esteem are discussed. After this, in section III, I move on to the main theoretical positions that historically have put self-respect in the centre of their theorizing. The story starts with Immanuel Kant, continues with John Rawls, and ends with the influential accounts of Axel Honneth, Avishai Margalit and several feminist thinkers. Having covered the theoretical and conceptual landscape, I finally connect self-respect to higher education both on the systematic as well as on the more applied level of thinking. I then wrap up the chapter by connecting back to The Atlantic story we have started out with as well as make suggestions of further reading for those with deeper interest in the topic. I also provide a a brief list of the main takeaways as well propose some questions for discussion.

Under a ‘dirty hands’ model of undercover policing, it inevitably involves situations where whatever the state agent does is morally problematic. Christopher Nathan argues against this model. Nathan’s criticism of the model is predicated on the contention that it entails the view, which he considers objectionable, that morally wrongful acts are central to undercover policing. We address this criticism, and some other aspects of Nathan’s discussion of the ‘dirty hands’ model, specifically in relation to state entrapment to commit a crime. Using János Kis’s work on political morality, we explain three dilemmatic versions of the ‘dirty hands’ model. We show that, while two of these are inapplicable to state entrapment, the third has better prospects. We then pursue our main aim, which is to argue that, since the third model precludes Nathan’s criticism, a viable ‘dirty hands’ model of state entrapment remains an open possibility. Finally, we generalize this result, showing that the case of state entrapment is not special: the result holds good for policing practices more generally, including such routine practices as arrest, detention, and restraint.

We address the ethics of scenarios in which one party entraps, intentionally tempts or intentionally tests the virtue of another. We classify, in a new manner, three distinct types of acts that are of concern, namely acts of entrapment, of intentional temptation and of virtue testing. Our classification is, for each kind of scenario, of itself neutral concerning the question whether the agent acts permissibly. We explain why acts of entrapment are more ethically objectionable than like acts of intentional temptation and why these, in turn, are more ethically objectionable than like acts of virtue testing. Along the way, we scrutinize, and eventually reject, the view that acts of entrapment are ethically unacceptable because intentional temptation is involved in entrapment.

Bringing together literary scholars, computer scientists, ethicists, philosophers of mind, and scholars from affiliated disciplines, this collection of essays offers important and timely insights into the pasts, presents, and, above all, possible futures of Artificial Intelligence. This book covers topics such as ethics and morality, identity and selfhood, and broader issues about AI, addressing questions about the individual, social, and existential impacts of such technologies. Through the works of science fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov, Stanislaw Lem, Ann Leckie, Iain M. Banks, and Martha Wells, alongside key visual productions such as Ex Machina, Westworld, and Her, contributions illustrate how science fiction might inform potential futures as well as acting as a springboard to bring disciplinary knowledge to bear on significant developments of Artificial Intelligence. Addressing a broad, interdisciplinary audience, both expert and non-expert readers gain an in-depth understanding of the wide range of pressing issues to which Artificial Intelligence gives rise, and the ways in which science fiction narratives have been used to represent them. Using science fiction in this manner enables readers to see how even fictional worlds and imagined futures have very real impacts on how we understand these technologies. As such, readers are introduced to theoretical positions on Artificial Intelligence through fictional works as well as encouraged to reflect on the diverse aspects of Artificial Intelligence through its many philosophical, social, legal, scientific, and cultural ramifications.

Some legal theorists say that legal entrapment to commit a crime is incoherent. So far, there is no satisfactorily precise statement of this objection in the literature: it is obscure even as to the type of incoherence that is purportedly involved. (Perhaps consequently, substantial assessment of the objection is also absent.) We aim to provide a new statement of the objection that is more precise and more rigorous than its predecessors. We argue that the best form of the objection asserts that, in attempting to entrap, law-enforcement agents lapse into a form of practical incoherence that involves the attempt simultaneously to pursue contrary ends. We then argue that the objection, in this form, encompasses all cases of legal entrapment only if it is supplemented by appeal to the premise that law-enforcement agents have an absolute duty never to create crimes.

The paper offers a philosophically infused analysis of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. The main idea is that McCarthy’s novel is primarily a statement on the meaning of life. Once this idea is argued for and endorsed, by using a parallel between The Road and a 19th century Hungarian dramatic poem, The Tragedy of Man, the paper goes on to argue that the most plausible – although admittedly not the only possible – interpretation of The Road is that it advocates a religious account of the meaning of life that is able to accommodate all other possible interpretations of how the question of meaning figures in the novel.

The present paper identifies a challenge for a certain view of practical reasons, according to which practical reasons (both normative and motivating) are states of affairs. The problem is that those who endorse such a view seem forced to maintain both a) that the contents of beliefs are states of affairs and b) that the conception according to which the contents of beliefs are states of affairs is outlandish. The suggestion is put forward that, by distinguishing the content of a belief (as a proposition) from its object (as a state of affairs), the conflict between a) and b) can be neutralised. The resulting proposal is of interest for all those sharing the view that practical reasons must be states of affairs, i.e., things capable of being the case.

We characterize, more precisely than before, what Rawls calls the “analytical” method of drawing up a list of basic liberties. This method employs one or more general conditions that, under any just social order whatever, putative entitlements must meet for them to be among the basic liberties encompassed, within some just social order, by Rawls’s first principle of justice (i.e., the liberty principle). We argue that the general conditions that feature in Rawls’s own account of the analytical method, which employ the notion of necessity, are too stringent. They ultimately fail to deliver as basic certain particular liberties that should be encompassed within any fully adequate scheme of liberties. To address this under-generation problem, we provide an amended general condition. This replaces Rawls’s necessity condition with a probabilistic condition and it appeals to the standard liberal prohibition on arbitrary coercion by the state. We defend our new approach both as apt to feature in applications of the analytical method and as adequately grounded in justice as fairness as Rawls articulates the theory’s fundamental ideas.

Can morality be so demanding that we have reason not to follow its dictates? According to many, it can, if that morality is a consequentialist one. We take the plausibility and coherence of this objection – the Demandingness Objection – as a given and are also not concerned with finding the best response to the Objection. Instead, our main aim is to explicate the intuitive background of the Objection and to see how this background could be investigated. This double aim leads to different albeit connected threads of inquiry. We first outline the Objection, its different forms and how intuition figures in them. After this, we move on to consider the ongoing debate about the use of intuitions in (moral) philosophy with a focus on two challenges: what intuitions are and how we can detect them. To answer these challenges, we propose an account according to which moral intuitions are seemings that are characterized by being non-inferential, spontaneous, non-doxastic, phenomenologically distinctive, non-sensory, intrinsically motivating, and stable. Armed with these seven “markers” of moral intuition, we put a forward a complex experimental methodology and raise and respond to possible problems with it.

Elsewhere we have responded to the so-called demandingness objection to consequentialism – that consequentialism is excessively demanding and is therefore unacceptable as a moral theory – by introducing the theoretical position we call institutional consequentialism. This is a consequentialist view that, however, requires institutional systems, and not individuals, to follow the consequentialist principle. In this paper, we first introduce and explain the theory of institutional consequentialism and the main reasons that support it. In the remainder of the paper, we turn to the global dimension where the first and foremost challenge is to explain how institutional consequentialism can deal with unsolved global problems such as poverty, war and climate change. In response, following the general idea of institutional consequentialism, we draw up three alternative routes: relying on existing national, transnational and supranational institutions; promoting gradual institutional reform; and advocating radical changes to the status quo. We evaluate these routes by describing normatively relevant properties of the existing global institutional system, as well as by showing what institutional consequentialism can say about alternatives to it: a world government; and multi-layered sovereignty/neo-medieval system.

Transoral laser microsurgery applies to the piecemeal removal of malignant tumours of the upper aerodigestive tract using the CO2 laser under the operating microscope. This method of surgery is being increasingly popularised as a single modality treatment of choice in early laryngeal cancers (T1 and T2) and occasionally in the more advanced forms of the disease (T3 and T4), predomi- nantly within the supraglottis. Thomas Kuhn, the American physicist turned philosopher and historian of science, coined the phrase ‘paradigm shift’ in his groundbreaking book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He argued that the arrival of the new and often incompatible idea forms the core of a new paradigm, the birth of an entirely new way of thinking. This article discusses whether Steiner and col- leagues truly brought about a paradigm shift in oncological surgery. By rejecting the principle of en block resection and by replacing it with the belief that not only is it oncologically safe to cut through the substance of the tumour but in doing so one can actually achieve better results, Steiner was able to truly revolutionise the man- agement of laryngeal cancer. Even though within this article the repercussions of his insight are limited to the upper aerodigestive tract oncological surgery, his willingness to question other peoples’ dogma makes his contribution truly a genuine paradigm shift.

The topic of this article is the ontology of practical reasons. We draw a critical comparison between two views. According to the first, practical reasons are states of affairs; according to the second, they are propositions. We first isolate and spell out in detail certain objections to the second view that can be found only in embryonic form in the literature – in particular, in the work of Jonathan Dancy. Next, we sketch possible ways in which one might respond to each one of these objections. A careful evaluation of these complaints and responses, we argue, shows that the first view is not as obviously compelling as it is thought by Dancy. Indeed, it turns out that the view that practical reasons are propositions is by no means unworkable and in fact, at least under certain assumptions, explicit considerations can be made in favour of a propositional construal of reasons.