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11895'From Each according to Ability; To Each according to Needs': Origin, Meaning, and Development of Socialist SlogansHistory of Political Economy 51 (2): 237-57. 2019.There are three slogans in the history of Socialism that are very close in wording, viz. the famous Cabet-Blanc-Marx slogan: "From each according to his ability; To each according to his needs"; the earlier Saint-Simon-Pecqueur slogan: "To each according to his ability; To each according to his works"; and the later slogan in Stalin’s Soviet Constitution: "From each according to his ability; To each according to his work." We will consider the following questions regarding these slogans: a) What…Read more
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8224The Ethics of NudgeIn Mats J. Hansson & Till Grüne-Yanoff (eds.), Preference Change: Approaches from Philosophy, Economics and Psychology., Springer, Theory and Decision Library a. pp. 207-20. 2008.In their recently published book Nudge (2008) Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (T&S) defend a position labelled as ‘libertarian paternalism’. Their thinking appeals to both the right and the left of the political spectrum, as evidenced by the bedfellows they keep on either side of the Atlantic. In the US, they have advised Barack Obama, while, in the UK, they were welcomed with open arms by the David Cameron's camp (Chakrabortty 2008). I will consider the following questions. What is Nudge…Read more
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1583Child euthanasia: should we just not talk about it?Journal of Medical Ethics 41 (8): 630-634. 2015.Belgium has recently extended its euthanasia legislation to minors, making it the first legislation in the world that does not specify any age limit. I consider two strands in the opposition to this legislation. First, I identify five arguments in the public debate to the effect that euthanasia for minors is somehow worse than euthanasia for adults—viz. arguments from weightiness, capability of discernment, pressure, sensitivity and sufficient palliative care—and show that these arguments are wa…Read more
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923A Lockean Defense of Grandfathering Emission RightsIn Denis G. Arnold (ed.), The Ethics of Global Climate Change, Cambridge University Press. pp. 124-144. 2011.I investigate whether any plausible moral arguments can be made for ‘grandfathering’ emission rights (that is, for setting emission targets for developed countries in line with their present or past emission levels) on the basis of a Lockean theory of property rights.
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810Nancy Cartwright’s Philosophy of Science (edited book)Routledge. 2008.Nancy Cartwright is one of the most distinguished and influential contemporary philosophers of science. Despite the profound impact of her work, there is neither a systematic exposition of Cartwright’s philosophy of science nor a collection of articles that contains in-depth discussions of the major themes of her philosophy. This book is devoted to a critical assessment of Cartwright’s philosophy of science and contains contributions from Cartwright's champions and critics. Broken into three par…Read more
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710Evaluating risky prospects: the distribution viewAnalysis 75 (2): 243-253. 2015.Risky prospects represent policies that impose different types of risks on multiple people. I present an example from food safety. A utilitarian following Harsanyi's Aggregation Theorem ranks such prospects according to their mean expected utility or the expectation of the social utility. Such a ranking is not sensitive to any of four types of distributional concerns. I develop a model that lets the policy analyst rank prospects relative to the distributional concerns that she considers fitting …Read more
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684The value of hopePhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 59 (3): 667-681. 1999.Hope obeys Aristotle's doctrine of the mean: one should neither hope too much, nor too little. But what determines what constitutes too much and what constitutes too little for a particular person at a particular time? The sceptic presents an argument to the effect that it is never rational to hope. An attempt to answer the sceptic leads us in different directions. Decision-theoretic and preference-theoretic arguments support the instrumental value of hope. An investigation into the nature of ho…Read more
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671The two faces of akratics AnonymousAnalysis 59 (4). 1999.I argue that by constructing an identity of Bohemian whim and spontaneity one can make what was previously an akratic action into a fully rational action, since in performing the action, one asserts one identity.
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661Why There Cannot be a Single Probabilistic Measure of CoherenceErkenntnis 63 (3): 361-374. 2005.Bayesian Coherence Theory of Justification or, for short, Bayesian Coherentism, is characterized by two theses, viz. (i) that our degree of confidence in the content of a set of propositions is positively affected by the coherence of the set, and (ii) that coherence can be characterized in probabilistic terms. There has been a longstanding question of how to construct a measure of coherence. We will show that Bayesian Coherentism cannot rest on a single measure of coherence, but requires a vecto…Read more
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636Monty hall drives a wedge between Judy Benjamin and the sleeping beauty: A reply to BovensAnalysis 70 (3). 2010.In “Judy Benjamin is a Sleeping Beauty” (2010) Bovens recognises a certain similarity between the Sleeping Beauty (SB) and the Judy Benjamin (JB). But he does not recognise the dissimilarity between underlying protocols (as spelled out in Shafer (1985). Protocols are expressed in conditional probability tables that spell out the probability of coming to learn various propositions conditional on the actual state of the world. The principle of total evidence requires that we not update on the cont…Read more
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626The Ethics of Making Risky Decisions for OthersIn Mark D. White (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics, Oxford University Press. pp. 446-473. 2019.Utilitarianism, it has been said, is not sensitive to the distribution of welfare. In making risky decisions for others there are multiple sensitivities at work. I present examples of risky decision-making involving drug allocations, charitable giving, breast-cancer screening and C-sections. In each of these examples there is a different sensitivity at work that pulls away from the utilitarian prescription. Instances of saving fewer people at a greater risk to many is more complex because there …Read more
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481The gender-neutral bathroom: a new frame and some nudgesBehavioural Public Policy. 2020.Gender-neutral bathrooms are usually framed as an accommodation for trans and other gender-nonconforming individuals. In this paper, we show that the benefits of gender-neutral bathrooms are much broader. First, our simulations show that gender-neutral bathrooms reduce average waiting times: while waiting times for women go down invariably, waiting times for men either go down or slightly increase depending on usage intensity, occupancy-time differentials and the presence of urinals. Second, our…Read more
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477Selection under Uncertainty: Affirmative Action at Shortlisting StageMind 125 (498): 421-437. 2016.Choice often proceeds in two stages: We construct a shortlist on the basis of limited and uncertain information about the options and then reduce this uncertainty by examining the shortlist in greater detail. The goal is to do well when making a final choice from the option set. I argue that we cannot realise this goal by constructing a ranking over the options at shortlisting stage which determines of each option whether it is more or less worthy of being included in a shortlist. This is releva…Read more
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476Solving the Riddle of CoherenceMind 112 (448): 601-634. 2003.A coherent story is a story that fits together well. This notion plays a central role in the coherence theory of justification and has been proposed as a criterion for scientific theory choice. Many attempts have been made to give a probabilistic account of this notion. A proper account of coherence must not start from some partial intuitions, but should pay attention to the role that this notion is supposed to play within a particular context. Coherence is a property of an information set that …Read more
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448Concerns for the poorly off in ordering risky prospectsEconomics and Philosophy 31 (3): 397-429. 2015.The Distribution View provides a model that integrates four distributional concerns in the evaluation of risky prospects. Starting from these concerns, we can generate an ordering over a set of risky prospects, or, starting from an ordering, we can extract a characterization of the underlying distributional concerns. Separability of States and/or Persons for multiple-person risky prospects, for single-person risky prospects and for multiple-person certain prospects are discussed within the model…Read more
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438Behavioural public policies and charitable givingBehavioural Public Policy 2 (2): 168-173. 2018.Some of the challenges in Sanders et al. (this issue) can be aptly illustrated by means of charity nudges, that is, nudges designed to increase charitable donations. These nudges raise many ethical questions. First, Oxfam’s triptychs with suggested donations are designed to increase giving. If successful, do our actions match ex ante or ex post preferences? Does this make a difference to the autonomy of the donor? Second, the Behavioural Insights Team conducted experiments using social networks …Read more
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435Bayesian Networks and the Problem of Unreliable InstrumentsPhilosophy of Science 69 (1): 29-72. 2002.We appeal to the theory of Bayesian Networks to model different strategies for obtaining confirmation for a hypothesis from experimental test results provided by less than fully reliable instruments. In particular, we consider (i) repeated measurements of a single test consequence of the hypothesis, (ii) measurements of multiple test consequences of the hypothesis, (iii) theoretical support for the reliability of the instrument, and (iv) calibration procedures. We evaluate these strategies on th…Read more
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406Don’t mess with my smokes: cigarettes and freedomAmerican Journal of Bioethics 16 (7): 15-17. 2016.Considerations of objective-value freedom and status freedom do impose constraints on policies that restrict access to cigarettes. As to the objective-value freedom, something of value is lost when anti-alcohol policies lead to pub closures interfering with valued life styles, and a similar, though weaker, argument can be made for cigarettes. As to status freedom, non-arbitrariness requires consultation with vulnerable populations to learn what might aid them with smoking cessation.
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402On arguments from self-interest for the Nash solution and the Kalai egalitarian solution to the bargaining problemTheory and Decision 23 (3): 231-260. 1987.I argue in this paper that there are two considerations which govern the dynamics of a two-person bargaining game, viz. relative proportionate utility loss from conceding to one's opponent's proposal and relative non-proportionate utility loss from not conceding to one's opponent's proposal, if she were not to concede as well. The first consideration can adequately be captured by the information contained in vNM utilities. The second requires measures of utility which allow for an interpersonal …Read more
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385Secular hopes in the face of deathIn Rochelle Green (ed.), Theories of Hope: Exploring Alternative Affective Dimensions of Human Experience, Lexington Press. 2018.Many religions offer hope for a life that transcends death and believers find great comfort in this. Non-believers typically do not have such hopes. In the face of death, they may find consolation in feeling contented with the life they have lived. But do they have hopes? I will identify a range of distinctly secular hopes at the end of life. Nothing stops religious people from sharing these secular hopes, in addition to their hope for eternal life. I will distinguish between hopes about one’s l…Read more
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366Bayesian EpistemologyOxford University Press. 2003.Probabilistic models have much to offer to philosophy. We continually receive information from a variety of sources: from our senses, from witnesses, from scientific instruments. When considering whether we should believe this information, we assess whether the sources are independent, how reliable they are, and how plausible and coherent the information is. Bovens and Hartmann provide a systematic Bayesian account of these features of reasoning. Simple Bayesian Networks allow us to model alter…Read more
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351The epistemology of social facts: the evidential value of personal experience versus testimonyIn Georg Meggle (ed.), Social Facts and Collective Intentionality. Philosophische Forschung / Philosophical research, Dr. Haensel-hohenhausen. pp. 43-51. 2002."The Personal is Political": This was an often-heard slogan of feminist groups in the late sixties and early seventies. The slogan is no doubt open to many interpretations. There is one interpretation which touches on the epistemology of social facts, viz. the slogan claims that in assessing the features of a political system, personal experiences have privileged evidentiary value. For instancte, in the face of third person reports about political corruption, I may remain unmoved in my belief th…Read more
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328ApologiesProceedings of the Aristotelian Society 108 (1pt3): 219-239. 2008.There is a cognitive, an affective, a conative, and an attitudinal component to a genuine apology. In discussing these components, I address the following questions. Might apologies be due for non-culpable actions? Might apologies be due for choices in moral dilemmas? What is the link between sympathy, remorse and making amends? Is it meaningful for resilient akratics to apologize? How much moral renewal is required when one apologizes? Why should apologies be offered in a humble manner? And is …Read more
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284What Is this Thing Called Love?In Adrienne M. Martin (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Love in Philosophy, Routledge Handbooks in Philoso. 2018.Socrates’ eros model, St. Paul’s agape model, and Aristophanes’ shared-identity model have different takes on the constancy of love and on the loss of love. I illustrate how these models and themes find expression within literature, music, and film through the ages.
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266Commentary: Why Couldn't I Be Nudged to Dislike a Big MacJournal of Medical Ethics 39 (8): 495-6. 2013.In this commentary on Yashar Saghai's article "Salvaging the Concept of Nudge" (JME 2013) I discuss his distinction between a 'prod' (which is 'substantially controlling') and a 'nudge' (which is ‘substantially non-controlling’).
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265The Tragedy of the Commons as a Voting GameIn Martin Peterson (ed.), The Prisoner’s Dilemma. Classic philosophical arguments., Cambridge University Press. pp. 156-176. 2015.The Tragedy of the Commons is often associated with an n-person Prisoner’s Dilemma. But it can also have the structure of an n-person Game of Chicken, an Assurance Game, or of a Voting Games (or a Three-in-a-Boat Game). I present three historical stories that document tragedies of the commons, as presented in Aristotle, Mahanarayan and Hume and argue that the descriptions of these historical cases align better with Voting Games than with any other games.
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260Democratic Answers to Complex Questions – An Epistemic PerspectiveSynthese 150 (1): 131-153. 2006.This paper addresses a problem for theories of epistemic democracy. In a decision on a complex issue which can be decomposed into several parts, a collective can use different voting procedures: Either its members vote on each sub-question and the answers that gain majority support are used as premises for the conclusion on the main issue, or the vote is conducted on the main issue itself. The two procedures can lead to different results. We investigate which of these procedures is better as a t…Read more
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245“P and I Will Believe that not-P”: Diachronic Constraints on Rational BeliefMind 104 (416): 737-760. 1995.I provide a taxonomy of the various circumstances under which one might reasonably say "P and I will believe that not-P" or violate the Reflection Principle
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245Henry James, Paardenrennen, en Relatieve Deprivatie--Rational Choice Theory aan het WerkIn J. Verhoeven (ed.), Social Theory, Acco. 1987.I illustrate the use of decision-theory and game-theory in the social sciences by means of examples from Gauthier, Tversky and Kahneman, and Bouldon.
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241Bets on Hats: On Dutch Books Against Groups, Degrees of Belief as Betting Rates, and Group-ReflectionEpisteme 8 (3): 281-300. 2011.The Puzzle of the Hats is a puzzle in social epistemology. It describes a situation in which a group of rational agents with common priors and common goals seems vulnerable to a Dutch book if they are exposed to different information and make decisions independently. Situations in which this happens involve violations of what might be called the Group-Reflection Principle. As it turns out, the Dutch book is flawed. It is based on the betting interpretation of the subjective probabilities, but ig…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Economics |
Moral Psychology |
Formal Epistemology |
Epistemic Paradoxes |