Neil Levy

We are surrounded by sources of information of dubious reliability, and very many people consume information from these sources. This paper examines the impacts on our beliefs of these reports. I will argue that fake news is more pernicious than most of us realise, leaving long lasting traces on our beliefs and our behavior even when we consume it know it is fake or when the information it contains is corrected. These effects are difficult to correct. We therefore ought to avoid fake or dubious news and work to eliminate it.

Spoilers consist in the revelation of major plot points of fictions prior to the time at which we’re intended to discover them. The small literature on spoilers argues that we dislike them because they have a negative effect on story enjoyment. I argue that our dislike of spoilers is wildly disproportionate to their actual effects on story enjoyment. The real puzzle of spoilers is why we dislike them, given their small and inconsistent effects on story enjoyment. I argue that the dislike of spoilers arises from a desire not to be subject to other agents in how we come to acquire certain kinds of knowledge about fictions.

Some philosophers have worried that AI threatens meaning in life by making humans redundant in the workplace or by relegating them to menial tasks. While these worries may be justified, there's no reason to think AI threatens meaning in human life generally. In this paper, however, I argue that AI can threaten what has been called superlative meaning, at least in some domains. I argue that philosophy is a source of superlative meaning for those who engage in it as a vocation, and that if AI comes to be better than us at answering philosophical questions, philosophy can no longer be a source of such meaning for us. I consider attempts to rescue superlative meaning for philosophy, by finding a role for us, or by arguing that philosophy isn't the sort of thing that can be done for someone else, and find them wanting. I finish by asking how bad the death of superlative meaning would be.

The current revival of interest in classic psychedelics and other psychoactives such as ketamine and MDMA, coupled with changes to their regulatory status in many jurisdictions, necessitates rigorous ethical guidelines both within and beyond clinical and scientific contexts. This paper examines crucial ethical, philosophical, and policy considerations needed to ensure psychedelic use across various settings remains equitable, beneficial, consensual, and safe, with appropriate accountability mechanisms for addressing potential harms. We seek to broaden the lens beyond the medical model of psychedelics to include potentially valuable non-medical applications that could benefit individuals, communities, and society. With popular interest in psychedelics growing outside of therapeutic and research settings, there is a need to determine which aspects of any proffered guidelines, or underlying principles, should be applied similarly across contexts and in what ways there should be flexibility and/or context-sensitivity in their interpretation or application. In developing such guidelines, we suggest the “treatment versus enhancement” distinction – and associated debates familiar from bioethics and philosophy of medicine – requires renewed attention. We argue that neglecting non-medical and broad scientific use cases for psychedelics may have important implications for a range of ethical issues surrounding psychedelic use and research, including concerns about psychedelic hype and exceptionalism (both positive and negative), therapeutic touch, informed consent, data-gathering, and balancing access and safety. We conclude with suggestions for future directions in research and policy in the burgeoning area of psychedelic bioethics, stressing the importance of incorporating the perspectives of a diversity of stakeholders and fostering cross-sector collaboration.

The principle of (respect for) patient autonomy has traditionally emphasized independence in medical decision‐making, reflecting a broader commitment to epistemic individualism. However, recent philosophical work has challenged this view, suggesting that autonomous decisions are inherently dependent on epistemic and social supports. Wilkinson and Levy's “scaffolded model” of autonomy demonstrates how our everyday decisions rely on distributed cognition and various forms of epistemic scaffolding—from consulting others to using technological aids like maps or calculators. This paper explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) could operationalize scaffolded autonomy in medical informed consent. We argue that rather than undermining patient autonomy, appropriately designed LLM systems could enhance it by providing flexible, personalized support for information processing and value clarification. Drawing on examples from clinical practice, we examine how LLMs might serve as cognitive scaffolds in three key areas: enhancing information accessibility and comprehension, supporting value clarification, and facilitating culturally appropriate decision‐making processes. However, implementing LLMs in consent procedures raises important challenges regarding epistemic responsibility, authenticity of choice, and the maintenance of appropriate human oversight. We analyze these challenges through the lens of scaffolded autonomy, arguing that successful implementation requires moving beyond simple questions of information provision to consider how technological systems can support genuinely autonomous decision‐making. The paper concludes by proposing practical guidelines for LLM implementation while highlighting broader philosophical questions about the nature of autonomous choice in technologically mediated environments.

Scams of all sorts are responsible for huge financial and psychological harms. Up to now, however, there’s been no philosophical investigation of how they work. I argue that while the success of some scams is easily explained, others are puzzling. Especially in light of the growing evidence that we have well-designed epistemic vigilance systems that generally protect us against implausible information, how we do explain why cognitively competent individuals hand over thousands of dollars in implausible scams? I suggest that the implausibilities of these scams makes it unlikely that they induce belief in their victims. Rather, they work by inducing a fantasy that is just plausible enough, and attractive enough, to bring their victims to bet on the scams.

Most accounts of recent French intellectual history are organized around a fundamental rupture, which divides thought and thinkers into two eras: ‘modern’ and ‘postmodern’. But the attempts to identify the features which characterise these eras seem, at best, inconclusive. In this paper, I examine this rupture, by way of a comparison of two thinkers representative of the divide. Sartre seems as uncontroversially modern (and therefore out of date) as any twentieth-century can be, while Foucault’s work is often taken to be definitive of postmodern thought. In addition, the two engaged in a brief polemic which concerned, precisely, each other’s relevance to our times. Each attacks the other’s work as untimely, as out of step with today. In the end, however, it is precisely this very aspect of their work - the fact thatit is untimely - which constitutes its strongest claim to being postmodern. If this is the case, however, then the attempt to locate a point of rupture in intellectual history, before which thinkers are irrelevant and after which they speak to us, must fail.L’histoire du mouvement intellectuel français des dernières années est organisée autour d’une rupture qui sépare la pensée et les penseurs en deux categories: ‘moderne’ et ‘postmoderne’. Or les tentatives d’identification des traits qui caractérisent ces catégories demeurent peu concluantes. Dans cet article, j’examine cette rupture en comparant deux penseurs représentatifs de cette ligne de partage. Sartre semble aussi moderne (et donc obsolète) quefaire se peut, alors qu’on rapproehe communément I’oeuvre de Foucault à la pensée postmoderne. Par ailleurs, les deux se sont engagés dans un débat qui portait précisément sur leur pertinence respective pour notre temps. Chacun accuse I’autre d’être intempestif, c’est-à-dire de ne pas être actue!. Cependant, il ressortira à la fin que c’est précisément cet aspect de leur pensée qui justifie de la façon la plus décisive leur prétention à la postmodernité. Si tel est le cas, par contre, la tentative de localiser un point de rupture dans I’histoire intellectuelle à partir duquel un penseur devient pertinent doit échouer.

Conspiracy beliefs have been linked to perceptions of collective victimhood. We adopt an individual perspective on victimhood by investigating the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and the individual disposition to perceive and react to injustice as a victim, i.e., victim justice sensitivity (VJS). Data from two German samples (Ns = 370, 373) indicated a positive association between VJS and conspiracy mentality beyond conceptually related covariates (e.g., mistrust). In a multinational sample from 15 countries (N = 14,978), VJS was positively associated with both general and specific conspiracy beliefs (about vaccines and climate change) within countries, though these associations varied across countries. However, economic, sociopolitical and cultural country-level factors that might explain the cross-country variability (e.g., GDP, Human Freedom Index, individualism–collectivism), including indices of collective exposure to direct violence, did not moderate the studied associations. Future research should investigate the relationship between victimhood and conspiracy beliefs, considering both intraindividual and intergroup perspectives.

Burkean conservatism, roughly, is the view that we ought to make political decisions by deferring to the wisdom of the past. This wisdom is reliable because it embodies a history under selection pressure for truth. I argue that the methodology of analytic philosophy has clear parallels with Burkeanism; it is truth-conducive if our intuitions are the product of selection for truth. Analytic philosophy is therefore committed to something like Burkeanism. For those of us on the political left, that seems like bad news. I soften the bad news by arguing that whatever the attractions of Burkeanism, and they are many, it is no longer a viable political movement. But the good news is accompanied by bad: for exactly the same reasons that Burkeanism is no longer viable, we cannot be confident that analytic philosophy is truth conductive.

I argue that the intellectualist account of knowledge-how, according to which agents have the knowledge-how to $$\upvarphi $$ φ in virtue of standing in an appropriate relation to a proposition, is only half right. On the composition view defended here, knowledge-how at least typically requires both propositional knowledge and motor representations. Motor representations are not mere dispositions to behavior (so the older dispositionalist view isn’t even half right) because they have representational content, and they play a central role in realizing the intelligence in knowledge-how. But since motor representations are not propositional, propositional knowledge is not sufficient for knowledge-how.

A number of philosophers have argued in recent years that we are each, typically, responsible for our characters; for what we are, as well as what we do. This paper demonstrates that this is true only of the basically virtuous person; the basically vicious are not responsible for their characters. I establish this claim through a detailed examination of the conditions upon the attribution of moral responsibility. Most accounts of moral responsibility claim that it is only appropriately attributed to an agent if she exercises control over the action, omission or consequence for which she is held responsible; it is therefore natural to think that we are responsible for our characters only if we exercise a sufficient degree of the right kind of control over their contents. Accordingly, I devote the first half of the paper to establishing that only the basically virtuous person exercises the requisite control. It is a condition upon responsibility for bringing about a consequenc! e that we are capable of understanding the value of that consequence obtaining or failing to obtain; I show that the vicious are unable to understand this value. I then turn to an examination of various non-control conceptions of responsibility for character; I show that all fail. Responsibility for character requires control, but only those who are already basically virtuous exercise the requisite degree of control.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) maintains that AIs (artificial intelligences) cannot be authors of academic papers, because they are unable to take responsibility for them. COPE appears to have the _answerability_ sense of responsibility in mind. It is true that AIs cannot be answerable for papers, but responsibility in this sense is not required for authorship in the sciences. I suggest that ethics will be forced to follow suit in dropping responsibility as a criterion for authorship or rethinking its role. I put forward three options for authorship: dropping responsibility as a criterion for authorship, retaining it and excluding AIs, but at the cost of substantial revision of our practices, or requiring only local responsibility for an intellectual contribution.

The principle of respecting patient autonomy underpins the concept and practice of informed consent. Yet current approaches to consent often ignore the ways in which the exercise of autonomy is deeply epistemically dependent.In this paper, we draw on philosophical descriptions of autonomy ‘scaffolding’ and apply them to informed consent in medicine. We examine how this relates to other models of the doctor–patient relationship and other theories (eg, the notion of relational autonomy). A focus on scaffolding autonomy reframes the justification for existing ways of supporting decisions. In other cases, it suggests a need to rethink how, when and where professionals obtain consent. It may highlight the benefit of technology for supporting decisions.Finally, we consider the implications for some high-stakes decisions where autonomy is thought to be critical, for example, termination of pregnancy. We argue that such decisions should not be free from all sources of influence—rather they should be protected from undesired influence.

An epistemic trespasser is someone who lacks expertise in a domain yet expresses an opinion about its subject matter based on their own assessment of the evidence. Epistemic trespassing is prima facie problematic, but philosophers have argued that it is appropriate when the trespasser possesses relevant skills and evidence. We argue that this defence is available to epistemic trespassers more often than most philosophers have recognized, but it does not vindicate trespassing. The justified trespasser must also possess an appropriately refined sense of how and to whom they ought to defer, with ‘deference’ understood as taking opinions and the shape of debates very seriously in deliberation, and as appropriate caution in dissent. This sense of what we call the guardrails is constituted largely by a kind of know-how, which arises from long experience in a domain: the epistemic trespasser almost always lacks this know-how.

People report believing weird things: that the Earth is flat, that senior Democrats are subjecting kidnapped children to abuse, and so on. How can people possibly believe things like this? Some philosophers have recently argued for a surprising answer: people don’t believe these things at all. Rather, they mistake their imaginings for beliefs. They are shmelievers, not believers. In this paper, I consider the prospects for this kind of explanation. I argue that some belief reports are simply insincere, and that much of the evidence for shmeliefs can be explained by the content of the beliefs reported, rather than by the attitude people take to them. But some reported beliefs are good candidates for being shmeliefs. I consider how shmeliefs are acquired and sustained, and why they might be harmful despite not being seriously believed.

Most philosophers think that phenomenal consciousness underlies, or at any rate makes a large contribution, to moral considerability. This paper argues that many such accounts invoke question-begging arguments. Moreover, they’re unable to explain apparent differences in moral status across and within different species. In the light of these problems, I argue that we ought to take very seriously a view according to which moral considerability is grounded in functional properties. Phenomenal consciousness may be sufficient for having a moral value, but it may not be necessary, and it may contribute relatively little to our overall considerability.

McKenna’s critique (rather than criticisms) of idealized approaches to epistemology is an important contribution to the literature. In this brief discussion, I set out his main concerns about more idealized approaches, within and beyond social epistemology, before turning to some issues I think he neglects. I suggest that it’s important to pay attention to the prestige hierarchy in philosophy, and to how that hierarchy can serve ideological purposes. The greater prestige of more abstract approaches plays a role in determining what issues and what voices we attend to.

This introductory chapter offers an overview of the various ways that responsibility may be relevant to health care, in order to situate the chapters in this volume in their broader context. The chapter begins by outlining relevant concepts, and explaining why it is worth considering the role of responsibility in health care. The chapter then turns to various ways in which patients might be held responsible in a health care system, before considering objections to these practices. Finally, the chapter considers the role of responsibility in health care beyond holding patients responsible, by considering the responsibility of medical professionals, and of institutions.

Whether agents are morally responsible for their need for scarce resources is a difficult and fraught issue. In this chapter, I aim to explore some unappreciated difficulties for the attribution of moral responsibility for needs that arise from the fact that in typical cases, ill-health arises from lifestyle: not, that is, from one bad decision, but from a long-term pattern of actions. First, I hope to build on Brown and Savulescu’s (2019) programmatic exploration of what they call the diachronic condition on moral responsibility for ill-health. I will show that the diachronic condition fractionates in multiple ways, depending on how ill-health is caused as well as on the theory of moral responsibility at issue. Second, I aim to show that it is much harder to satisfy the diachronic condition on moral responsibility for ill-health than is widely assumed. I will argue that we usually cannot be confident that a particular agent (or a class of agents: say alcoholics) is responsible for their ill-health, and that—I will suggest—should make us hesitant to ascribe responsibility to them. Finally, I turn to an assessment of responsibility as a tie-breaker between patients. We might think that we need something far short of a reasonable doubt standard for responsibility to serve in this role. Perhaps a balance of probabilities standard can justify our using it. I will argue that even if we have the right to confidence on this standard, this may not be enough for responsibility to serve as a tie-breaker between agents in the context of the allocation of scarce resources.

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 for them. In these cases, they manifest epistemic humility in ways that make them epistemically worse off. I argue that epistemic humility may fail to promote better beliefs because it functions for us against the background of our individualistic theory of responsible epistemic agency: until we reject such theories, intellectual humility is as much a problem as a solution to epistemic ills. Virtue epistemology is inadequate as a response to unjustified beliefs if it does not look beyond the virtues to our background beliefs.

Some people argue that the distribution of medical resources should be sensitive to agents’ responsibility for their ill-health. In contrast, others point to the social determinants of health to argue that the collective agents that control the conditions in which agents act should bear responsibility. To a large degree, this is a debate in which those who hold individuals responsible currently have the upper hand: warranted appeals to individual responsibility effectively block allocation of any significant degree of responsibility to collective agents. We suggest that a different understanding of individual responsibility might lead to a fairer allocation of blame. Scaffolded agency is individual agency exercised in a context in which opportunities and affordances are structured by others. Appeals to scaffolded agency at once recognize the role of the individual and of the collective agents who have put the scaffolds in place.

In the wake of the spectacular success of Miranda Fricker's Epistemic Injustice, philosophers have paid a great deal of attention to testimonial injustice. Testimonial injustice occurs when recipients of testimony discount it in virtue of its source: usually, their social identity. The remedy for epistemic injustice is almost always listening better and giving greater weight to the testimony we hear, on most philosophers' implicit or explicit view. But Fricker identifies another kind of epistemic injustice: hermeneutical injustice. This kind of injustice occurs when someone can't articulate their own experience or understand their situation for lack of the hermeneutical tools. There is a possible tension between these kinds of injustice, we suggest: sincere testimony may be misleading (may fail to identify significant harms the testfier is subject, or may fail to register its magnitude, or to categorize it as the kind of harm it is) in virtue of a lack of hermeneutical resources. This tension raises the possibility that there are situations in which experts - those who possess hermeneutical tools - may be able to correct the testimony of those who experience harms in virtue of their identity. In this paper, we identify possible cases in which epistemic injustice might be reduced through such correction: in which an increase in testimonial injustice might serve to decrease it in the longer run, for example. We also suggest how the obvious dangers of a too great readiness to see testimony as in need of expert correction might be mitigated, and how the expert might suggest corrections without ceasing to listen.

Discussions of virtue signaling to date have focused exclusively on the signaling of the moral virtues. This article focuses on intellectual virtue signaling: the status-seeking advertising of supposed intellectual virtues. Intellectual virtue signaling takes distinctive forms. It is also far more likely to be harmful than moral virtue signaling, because it distracts attention from genuine expertise and gives contrarian opinions an undue prominence in public debate. The article provides a heuristic by which to identify possible instances of intellectual virtue signaling. When people with no relevant expertise rapidly move to offer their opinions on a wide range of topics as soon as these topics become fashionable or newsworthy, and especially when these opinions are contrarian, we should suspect them of intellectual virtue signaling.

It is very widely held that Frankfurt‐style cases—in which a counterfactual intervener stands by to bring it about that an agent performs an action but never actually acts because the agent performs that action on her own—show that free will does not require alternative possibilities. This essay argues that that conclusion is unjustified, because merely counterfactual interven‐ers may make a difference to normative properties. It presents a modified version of a fake barn case to show how a counterfactual intervener can make the difference between an agent knowing a fact or merely truly believing that fact, by eliminating veretic epistemic luck. If counterfactual interveners can make this kind of difference to the epistemic status of agents, the essay argues, there is no reason why they can't make an analogous difference to agents' moral responsibility. It concludes that reflection on these cases reveals that despite the mountains of words spilled on the topic, we still don't fully understand what role access to alternative possibilities plays in whether or not agents are morally responsible for their actions.