Attila Tanyi

In an overlooked section of his influential book What We Owe to Each Other Thomas Scanlon advances an argument against the desire-model of practical reasoning. In Scanlon’s view the model gives a distorted picture of the structure of our practical thinking. His idea is that there is an alternative to the “weighing behavior” of reasons, a particular way in which reasons can relate to each other. This phenomenon, which the paper calls “silencing”, is not something that the desire-model can accommodate, or so Scanlon argues. The paper first presents and interprets Scanlon’s challenge. After this, the paper argues, through the examination of three responses, that Scanlon is right in claiming that the model cannot accommodate the phenomenon as he describes it. However, the paper further argues that there is no need to accept Scanlon’s depiction of silencing: advocates of the model can give an alternative account of what happens in cases of silencing that is just as plausible as Scanlon’s own. Scanlon’s challenge is thus, the paper concludes, illegitimate.

In his new book, The Dimensions of Consequentialism, Martin Peterson proposes a version of multi-dimensional consequentialism according to which risk is one among several dimensions. We argue that Peterson’s treatment of risk is unsatisfactory. More precisely, we want to show that all problems of one-dimensional (objective or subjective) consequentialism are also problems for Peterson’s proposal, although it may fall prey to them less often. In ending our paper, we address the objection that our discussion overlooks the fact that Peterson’s proposal is not the best version of multi-dimensional consequentialism. Our reply is that the possibilities of improving multi-dimensional consequentialism are very limited as far as risk is concerned.

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.

In their article “Is There a Prima Facie Duty to Preserve Genetic Integrity in Conservation Biology?” Yasha Rower and Emma Harris argue that there is no underived prima facie obligation to preserve genetic integrity. In particular, it is argued that there is no such obligation because genetic integrity has no intrinsic value. In this commentary I raise doubts about this part of the authors’ argument. I argue that there might well be at least prima facie value in genetic integrity, that the Moorean isolation test the authors use might not work in their favour, and that connecting genetic integrity to the idea of identity might work against the authors’ argument.

The paper deals with a charge that is often made against consequentialist moral theories: that they are unacceptably demanding. This is called the Overdemandingness Objection. The paper first distinguishes three interpretations of the Objection as based on the three dimensions of moral demands: scope, content, and authority. It is then argued that neither the scope, nor the content-based understanding of the Objection is viable. Constraining the scope of consequentialism is neither helpful, nor justified, hence the pervasiveness of consequentialism cannot be the ground for the Objection. Although recent approaches interpret the Objection as a claim about the excessively demanding content of consequentialism, it is argued that the stringency of consequentialism is also unproblematic insofar as demandingness is concerned. These results show that the only way to put the Objection is by focusing on the inescapability of consequentialism. The Objection thus takes the following form: consequentialism is overdemanding because it requires us, with decisive force, to do things that we do not have decisive reason to perform. However, in the last part of the paper it is shown that defending this interpretation of the Objection is at best an open-ended and perilous enterprise. The paper concludes that the case for authority is weak: although this is the only defensible way to advocate the Objection, its successful defence depends on the truth of further substantial philosophical positions.

This book provides a survey of the ethical aspects of health care resources distribution. It first distinguishes health from health care in an effort to clear up the ethical landscape. After this, still with the same purpose, it makes a distinction between problems of macro-allocation and micro-allocation. In the rest of the book two questions of macro-allocation are treated in some detail. First, several approaches – in particular: utilitarian, egalitarian, communitarian, and libertarian – to the question whether we have a right to health care are assessed. Second, it is discussed how best, if we have such a right, health care resources are allocated given obvious budget constraints. Here again the major theories discussed are utilitarian, communitarian, and egalitarian. Although it is not the aim of the book to propose a new theory of the ethics of health care resource distribution, the critical approach throughout is broadly egalitarian in spirit.

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.

The paper examines Derek Parfit’s claim that naturalism trivializes the agent’s practical argument and therefore abolishes the normativity of its conclusion. In the first section, I present Parfit’s charge in detail. After this I discuss three possible responses to the objection. I show that the first two responses either fail or are inconclusive. Trying to avoid Parfit’s charge by endorsing irreductionist naturalism is not a solution because this form of naturalism is metaphysically untenable. Non- descriptive naturalism, on the other hand, does not answer the pressing concern behind Parfit’s charge. I conclude that we had better turn to the third response: Peter Railton’s vindicatory reductionism. However, I also argue that naturalism can only avoid triviality in this way if it is able to respond to further challenges concerning the vindication of the reduction it proposes. Hence, though not a knockdown argument as it is intended to be, Parfit’s charge can still pose a threat to naturalist accounts of normativity.

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 uses what I call a practical conception of God (that borrows some of its aspects from Kant’s philosophy of religion).

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.

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.

In this introduction, I first present the general problematic of the special section. Our world faces several existential challenges war, and global injustice) and some would argue 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.

This paper deals with the third and most disputed principle of John Rawls’s theory of justice: the so-called difference principle. My reasoning has three parts. I first present and examine the principle. My investigation is driven by three questions: what considerations lead Rawls to the acceptance of the principle; what the principle’s relation to effectiveness is; and what and how much the principle demands. A proper understanding of the principle permits me to spend the second half of the paper with exploring the difficulties the principle encounters. I first discuss four well-known objections and argue that all of them, partly or entirely, hold against the principle. I then discuss the applicability of the principle with special attention to the relations among the three Rawlsian principles and the notion of the social minimum. Investigation of the first issue shows that the two other principles leave enough room for the difference principle, whereas in the second case I conclude that parties to the Rawlsian original position would prefer a social minimum principle to the difference principle. Finally, at the end of the paper, I briefly summarize my reasoning repeating its most important findings.

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.

My aim in this paper is to critically assess the idea that reasons for action are provided by desires (the Desire-based Reasons Model or the Model). I start from the claim that the most often employed meta-ethical background for the Model is ethical naturalism; I then consider attempts to argue against the Model through its naturalism. I make use of two objections that are both intended to refute naturalism per se. One is the indirect version of G. E. Moore’s Open Question Argument (OQA), the other is Derek Parfit’s more recent Triviality Objection (TO). I show that naturalists might be able to avoid both objections in case the reduction they propose is tolerable. This, however, means that in order to see if the objections work, we must analyze the particular reductions proposed. Hence, though not knock down arguments as they were intended to be, the indirect OQA and TO may pose threat to the Model.

The paper focuses on John Rawls’ theory of political obligation. Rawls bases political obligation on our natural duties of justice, which are mediated to us by our sense of justice. Therefore the justification of political obligation also requires moral justification: the justification of the principles of justice. In the paper I first investigate that part of Rawls’ argument that has the role of justification: the method of reflective equilibrium. This method raises several problems, the most severe of which is that it neglects the fact of pluralism. The second part of the paper deals with this problem. I analyse how Rawls’ theory and his method of justification has changed as a result of taking into account the fact of pluralism. Finally, building on the demands of pluralism and the shortcomings of the Rawlsian answer, I present a possible theory of political obligation. This theory is grounded in the interpretation of the community’s political culture while fitting it into a discourse-based theoretical framework.

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, administration 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 preference for intuition/preference for deliberation to cast empirical evidence 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.