Neil Levy

Some philosophers have criticized the use of psychopharmaceuticals on the grounds that even if these drugs enhance the person using them, they threaten their authenticity. Others have replied by pointing out that the conception of authenticity upon which this argument rests is contestable; on a rival conception, psychopharmaceuticals might be used to enhance our authenticity. Since, however, it is difficult to decide between these competing conceptions of authenticity, the debate seems to end in a stalemate. I suggest that we need not resolve this debate to end the stalemate. New technologies which alter the self can be understood within the framework of the first conception of authenticity, I suggest, not as threatening the authentic self, but rather as bringing the outward appearance of the self into line with its deepest essence. Since psychopharmaceutical use can plausibly be understood on this model, it can be seen as enhancing our authenticity on either conception

Ravelingien et al1 argue that, given the restrictions that must be imposed on recipients of xenotransplanted organs, we should conduct clinical trials of xenotransplantation only on patients in a persistent vegetative state. I argue that there is no ethical barrier to using terminally ill patients instead. Such patients can choose to waive their rights to the liberties that xenotransplantation would probably restrict; it is surely rational to prefer to waive your rights rather than to die, and permissible to allow patients to make this choice.Perhaps the single most important advance in the history of moral thought occurred when it came to be generally recognised that all people are protected by rights that are inviolable, at least without their consent. The precise nature and content of these rights is controversial, but there is a consensus among reasonable people over their core. We all have a right to life, to liberty, to security of person and to equality before the law. Other rights—so-called positive rights, such as the right to economic security, or cultural rights, for instance—may be controversial, but we all agree at least on these.Ravelingien et al1 therefore seem to be on solid ground when they conclude that it would not be permissible to use living persons as subjects in clinical trials of xenotransplantation, as such trials, potentially or actually, result in the violation of the core human rights of the subjects. Their argument is as follows:" Xenotransplantation carries with it a currently unquantifiable risk of the transmission of viruses, from the animal that is the source of the organ transplanted, to the human recipient. Such viruses could have potentially catastrophic consequences, up to and including triggering a global and devastating pandemic. Therefore, it would be necessary to monitor the health status of recipients of … "

So-called downshifters seek more meaningful lives by decreasing the amount of time they devote to work, leaving more time for the valuable goods of friendship, family and personal development. But though these are indeed meaning-conferring activities, they do not have the right structure to count as superlatively meaningful. Only in work – of a certain kind – can superlative meaning be found. It is by active engagements in projects, which are activities of the right structure, dedicated to the achievement of goods beyond ourselves, that we make our lives superlatively meaningful.

Ethicists and ordinary people are typically more worried by interventions that alter agents’ mind by directly altering their brains than interventions than are focused on the environment, and thereby indirectly change minds. I argue that the causal route to changing minds is not itself important. Moreover, some of the most powerful techniques whereby behavior is altered without the consent or knowledge of agents involve environmental manipulations: manipulations of social space, for the benefit of those in the business of increasing consumption. I argue that insofar as we are fixated on internal interventions, we overlook ways in which our autonomy as agents is impaired. Once we recognize the power of environmental manipulations, however, we should come to see social space as a legitimate target for political control

  Proponents of evolutionary psychology take the existence of humanuniversals to constitute decisive evidence in favor of their view. Ifthe same social norms are found in culture after culture, we have goodreason to believe that they are innate, they argue. In this paper Ipropose an alternative explanation for the existence of humanuniversals, which does not depend on them being the product of inbuiltpsychological adaptations. Following the work of Brian Skyrms, I suggestthat if a particular convention possesses even a very small advantageover competitors, whatever the reason for that advantage, we shouldexpect it to become the norm almost everywhere. Tiny advantages aretranslated into very large basins of attraction, in the language of gametheory. If this is so, universal norms are not evidence for innatepsychological adaptations at all. Having shown that the existence ofuniversals is consistent with the so-called Standard Social ScienceModel, I turn to a consideration of the evidence, to show that thisstyle of explanation is preferable to the evolutionary explanation, atleast with regard to patterns of gender inequality

The puzzle of resultant moral luck arises when we are disposed to think that an agent who caused a harm deserves to be blamed more than an otherwise identical agent who did not. One popular perspective on resultant moral luck explains our dispositions to produce different judgments with regard to the agents who feature in these cases as a product not of what they genuinely deserve but of our epistemic situation. On this account, there is no genuine resultant moral luck; there is only luck in what evidence becomes available to observers. In this paper, I develop an evolutionary account of our inclination to take the results of actions as evidence for the mental states of agents, thereby explaining why the resulting intuitions are recalcitrant to correction. The account explains why the puzzle of resultant moral luck arises: because our disposition to take the harms agents cause as evidence of their mental states can produce intuitions which conflict with those that arise when we examine agents’ mental states without reference to the results of their actions. The account also helps to solve the puzzle of resultant moral luck, by providing a strong reason to ignore the intuitions caused by our disposition to regard actual harms as evidence of mental states. Since these intuitions arise using an unreliable proxy for agents’ mental states, they ought to be trumped by more reliable evidence

This short article is a reply to Fine's criticisms of Haidt's social intuitionist model of moral judgement. After situating Haidt in the landscape of meta-ethical views, I examine Fine's argument, against Haidt, that the processes which give rise to moral judgements are amenable to rational control: first-order moral judgements, which are automatic, can nevertheless deliberately be brought to reflect higher-order judgements. However, Haidt's claims about the arationality of moral judgements seem to apply equally well to these higher-order judgements; showing that we can exercise higher-order control over first-order judgements therefore does not show that our judgements are rational. I conclude by sketching an alternative strategy for vindicating the rationality of moral judgements: by viewing moral argument as a community-wide and distributed enterprise, in which knowledge is produced by debate and transferred to individuals via testimony.

A number of writers have tackled the task of characterizing the differences between analytic and Continental philosophy.I suggest that these attempts have indeed captured the most important divergences between the two styles but have left the explanation of the differences mysterious.I argue that analytic philosophy is usefully seen as philosophy conducted within a paradigm, in Kuhn’s sense of the word, whereas Continental philosophy assumes much less in the way of shared presuppositions, problems, methods and approaches.This important opposition accounts for all those features that have rightly been held to constitute the difference between the two traditions.I finish with some reflections on the relative superiority of each tradition and by highlighting the characteristic deficiencies of each

According to one influential view, advanced by Jonathan Adler, David Owens and Susan Hurley, epistemic akrasia is impossible because when we form a full belief, any apparent evidence against that belief loses its power over us. Thus theoretical reasoning is quite unlike practical reasoning, in that in the latter our desires continue to exert a pull, even when they are outweighed by countervailing considerations. I call this argument against the possibility of epistemic akrasia the subsumption view. The subsumption view accurately reflects the nature of reasoning in a range of everyday cases. But, as I show, it is quite false with regard to controversial questions, like philosophical disputes. In these, evidence against our best judgments continues to exert a hold on us. Thus, the claimed disanalogy between practical and theoretical reasoning fails

This introduction traces the philosophical achievements of a thinker sonfluential that his death in 1980 brought 50,000 people on to the streets ofaris. The account of Jean-Paul Sartre - writer, journalist and intellectualornerstone of the 20th century - stretches from his early existential phaseo his later Marxist beliefs. With coverage of such major contemporary issuess human liberty, sociobiology, the ethics of work, and the influence ofenetics on ideas of individual freedom, Neil Levy uses a range of originalaterial not only to introduce Sartre and his work, but also to highlight hisontinuing relevance to today's moral and scientific climate. At the heart ofhis study is a focus on the ethical dimension of Jean-Paul Sartre'shilosophical thought: a focus which challenges us to consider more closelyhe shape of our lives, and the manner in which human beings should treat onenother.

It is well known that the nature of consciousness is elusive, and that attempts to understand it generate problems in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, psychology, and neuroscience. Less appreciated are the important – even if still elusive – connections between consciousness and issues in ethics. In this chapter we consider three such connections. First, we consider the relevance of consciousness for questions surrounding an entity’s moral status. Second, we consider the relevance of consciousness for questions surrounding moral responsibility for action. Third, we consider the relevance of consciousness for the acquisition of moral knowledge.

Ned Block has influentially distinguished two kinds of consciousness, access and phenomenal consciousness. He argues that these two kinds of consciousness can dissociate, and therefore we cannot rely upon subjective report in constructing a science of consciousness. I argue that none of Block's evidence better supports his claim than the rival view, that access and phenomenal consciousness are perfectly correlated. Since Block's view is counterintuitive, and has wildly implausible implications, the fact that there is no evidence that better supports it than the rival view should lead us to reject it.

Most people believe that we have a duty to gather evidence on both sides of central moral and political controversies, in order to fulfil our epistemic responsibilities and come to hold justified cognitive attitudes on these matters. I argue, on the contrary, that to the extent to which these controversies require special expertise, we have no such duty. We are far more likely to worsen than to improve our epistemic situation by becoming better informed on these questions. I suggest we do better to embrace the views of experts who are also morally wise. I argue that this is likely to lead to more accurate beliefs about these political and moral controversies; in any case, it will avoid the incoherence and irrationality which are the likely consequence of open-minded evidence gathering.

In 'What Luck Is Not', Lackey presents counterexamples to the two most prominent accounts of luck: the absence of control account and the modal account. I offer an account of luck that conjoins absence of control to a modal condition. I then show that Lackey's counterexamples mislocate the luck: the agents in her cases are lucky, but the luck precedes the event upon which Lackey focuses, and that event is itself only fortunate, not lucky. Finally I offer an account of fortune. Fortune is luck-involving, and therefore easily confused with luck, but it is not itself lucky.