Neil Levy

In a recent paper in this journal, Hrishikesh Joshi (building on Ava Thomas Wright) argues that unless experts are seen to address even poor objections to their views, laypeople and experts lose warrant to believe claims about topics in expert domains. Warrant for such beliefs rests on our capacity to trust the experts, but we lose our grounds for such trust in the face of objections we do not see properly addressed. In response, I argue that if the threat were as great as Joshi thinks, it could not be neutralized, because we’re no more able to assess the adequacy of responses to objections than we are to assess the quality of the objections themselves. Fortunately, I argue, the threat is not one we need a response to: our warrant in expert testimony is underwritten by a conditional closely analogous to Goldberg’s coverage-conditional.

Impostor Syndrome is the belief or feeling that one is passing oneself off as much more capable than one really is. Anecdotally, it is experienced more by members of historically disadvantaged groups, but the empirical data seems inconsistent with this view. I argue that impostor syndrome occurs because (a) it is normal, appropriate and often even necessary to engage in some degree of pretense in order to acquire specialist expertise, but (b) we are much more likely to be aware of our own pretense than that of others. I argue that we are especially likely to notice pretense when we’re made self-conscious, and that failing to match the stereotype of one’s profession or domain of expertise tends to give rise to self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is elicited by certain cues; this fact explains not only the greater vulnerability of the members of some groups to it, but also explains why the empirical data has not yet provided evidence for this greater vulnerability. I end with some suggestions for reducing the prevalence or impact of impostor syndrome.

Until recently, most philosophers seem implicitly to have assumed that consciousness is necessary for moral responsibility; this is, moreover, an assumption that seems built into the law. Under the pressure of scientific evidence and independent philosophical argument, some philosophers now reject that assumption. Against these philosophers, I argue that we need to be conscious of the facts that make our actions morally significant in order to be morally responsible for them. I present two separate defences of this claim. First, I argue that actions caused by unconscious attitudes do not express good or ill will toward others. Second, I argue that such actions do not express our evaluative agency. Finally, I turn to some alleged empirical evidence against the claim that we can be conscious of our volitions, and show how the defence offered is immune to this challenge.

The prospect of cognitive enhancement arouses strong feelings in most of us. We feel simultaneously attracted to the prospect of self-transformation and repelled by an apparent threat to our humanity. The author suggests that these strong but conflicting feelings set the stage for cognitive dissonance, a psychological mechanism known to cause ordinary people to confabulate views that are not well-justified. Because ambivalence risks causing cognitive dissonance, we ought so far as possible avoid triggering it in ourselves and others. The author argues that we need to reduce the extent to which neuroethical discussion gets caught up in hype and science fiction scenarios because so doing may help to avoid ambivalence and lead to better justified views on cognitive enhancements.

This chapter attempts to establish three theses. First, in response to recent work by Frankish, it argues that DDV is false-i.e., that people lack the power to form beliefs at will directly. Second, drawing on recent studies in social psychology, it contends that people have a propensity to form beliefs for non-epistemic reasons. Third, it argues that although DDV is false, once people become aware of their propensities to form beliefs for non-epistemic reasons, they have obligations to avoid triggering them-which are similar in kind to the sorts of obligations people would have if DDV were true.

This chapter examines vegetarianism from the perspective of someone who justifies their dietary preferences on the basis of animal welfare and environmental considerations alone. Even for such people, there is a tendency to think of the prohibition against meat-eating as quasi-sacred. The chapter explains this tendency by reference to the psychological theories of Jonathan Haidt, and argues that this tendency ought to be resisted, because it has a number of costs. However, there are potential benefits as well as costs to accepting strict rules. The chapter suggests that the vegetarian ought to accept a strict dietary regime, while making every effort to avoid sacralizing that regime, by seeing her dietary preference as based ultimately on her choices. So doing may best allow her to achieve her ethical goals without alienating potential allies and without undermining her own efforts.

Existentialists are often accused of painting a bleak picture of human existence. In this chapter, Neil Levy contends that, in the light of contemporary cognitive science, the picture is not bleak enough. And, although there are grounds for thinking the picture bleaker than existentialists suggest, he argues that it is not hopeless. The unified self that serves as the ultimate source of value in an otherwise meaningless universe may not exist, but we can each impose a degree of unity on ourselves. The existentialists were sociologically naïve in supposing a degree of distinction between agents and their cultural milieu that was never realistic. We are thrown into history, culture, and a biological and evolutionary history which we never fully understand and can only inflect, all without foundations and lacking even the security of knowing the extent to which or what we choose. Existentialism must face ontological, epistemological, and axiological insecurity.

The concept of luck has played an important role in debates concerning free will and moral responsibility, yet participants in these debates have relied upon an intuitive notion of what luck is. This book develops an account of luck, which is then applied to the free will debate. It argues that the standard luck objection succeeds against common accounts of libertarian free will, event-causal and agent-causal, but that it is possible to amend libertarian accounts so that they are no more vulnerable to luck than is compatibilism. But the book also argues that compatibilist accounts of luck are themselves vulnerable to a powerful luck objection. Historical compatibilisms cannot satisfactorily explain how agents can take responsibility for their constitutive luck. Non-historical compatibilisms run into insurmountable difficulties with the epistemic condition on control over action. Because a failure to satisfy the epistemic condition on control is excusing, the book argues, if there are any actions for which agents are responsible, they are akratic actions; for non-akratic actions, agents either fail to satisfy the epistemic condition on moral responsibility or lack control in some other way. But akratic actions are themselves unacceptably subject to luck. The book ends with a discussion of recent non-historical compatibilisms. Some of these new compatibilisms hold that agents are morally responsible for actions just in case these actions express the agent's attitudes. The book argues that accounts of this type do not offer a viable alternative to control-based compatibilisms. Finally, the book argues that other kinds of non-historical compatibilism have no resources to deploy against the hard luck view because the latter does not entail that instant agents have a different degree of moral responsibility than agents who have a history.

In a new book, Jonathan Ichikawa argues that contemporary epistemology promotes a sceptical attitude towards belief, and by doing so it lends inadvertent support to political conservatism. This very brief discussion note argues that the default scepticism Ichikawa identifies has no such political implications. First, Ichikawa is incorrect in identifying the political right with Burkean conservatism. In fact, the right is innovative, and scepticism might as easily oppose as support its innovations. Second, even if Burkean conservatism were dominant, it relies on a selective scepticism, and the scepticism that Ichikawa finds to be characteristic of epistemology is unselective. I argue that this pervasive scepticism might in fact be a useful corrective to folk scepticism, which is more selective.

Robert Simpson and Toby Handfield recently argued in this journal that my epistemic environmentalism is too radical. It implausibly collapses the distinction between rational response to evidence and group epistemic success and – on the mistaken assumption that this best conduces to epistemic success – requires uncritical deference to apparent experts. In this response, I argue that Simpson and Handfield badly mischaracterize my view. I neither collapse the distinction between ecological and epistemic rationality, nor do I countenance uncritical deference. I argue that environmentalism has the resources to give the right answers in the cases that Simpson and Handfield urge against my view.

We take up the challenge of developing an international network with capacity to survey the world’s scientists on an ongoing basis, providing rich datasets regarding the opinions of scientists and scientific sub-communities, both at a time and also over time. The novel methodology employed sees local coordinators, at each institution in the network, sending survey invitation emails internally to scientists at their home institution. The emails link to a ‘10 second survey’, where the participant is presented with a single statement to consider, and a standard five-point Likert scale. In June 2023, a group of 30 philosophers and social scientists invited 20,085 scientists across 30 institutions in 12 countries to participate, gathering 6,807 responses to the statement Science has put it beyond reasonable doubt that COVID-19 is caused by a virus. The study demonstrates that it is possible to establish a global network to quickly ascertain scientific opinion on a large international scale, with high response rate, low opt-out rate, and in a way that allows for significant (perhaps indefinite) repeatability. Measuring scientific opinion in this new way would be a valuable complement to currently available approaches, potentially informing policy decisions and public understanding across diverse fields.

Impostor Syndrome is the belief or feeling that one is passing oneself off as much more capable than one really is. Anecdotally, it is experienced more by members of historically disadvantaged groups, but the empirical data seems inconsistent with this view. I argue that impostor syndrome occurs because (a) it is normal, appropriate and often even necessary to engage in some degree of pretense in order to acquire specialist expertise, but (b) we are much more likely to be aware of our own pretense than that of others. I argue that we are especially likely to notice pretense when we’re made self-conscious, and that failing to match the stereotype of one’s profession or domain of expertise tends to give rise to self-consciousness. Self-consciousness is elicited by certain cues; this fact explains not only the greater vulnerability of the members of some groups to it, but also explains why the empirical data has not yet provided evidence for this greater vulnerability. I end with some suggestions for reducing the prevalence or impact of impostor syndrome.

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 … "

We should react to deaf parents who choose to have a deaf child with compassion not condemnationThere has been a great deal of discussion during the past few years of the potential biotechnology offers to us to choose to have only perfect babies, and of the implications that might have, for instance for the disabled. What few people foresaw is that these same technologies could be deliberately used to ensure that children would be born with disabilities. That this is a real possibility, and not merely the thought experiment of a philosopher, is brought home to us by the decision of an American lesbian couple to select a deaf sperm donor in order to maximise the chances that their children, Jehanne and Gauvin, would be deaf like them.1 Their choice has sparked controversy, not only among medical ethicists, but in the opinion pages of newspapers across the world. Ought parents be permitted to make such choices?If the parents of Jehanne and Gauvin have done anything wrong, it must consist in violating their child’s right to an open future—limiting its future potential for choice.2 But what does it mean to respect this right?From the moment a child is born, her parents are making choices for her, which will powerfully shape her future. They will decide what kind of education she will have, what religious experiences, from among what group she can select friends. Thereby, they profoundly mould the person she will be and the life she will have.When this activity is carried out within certain, ill-defined, limits, it is in no way objectionable. It is not merely a ….

The novice/expert problem is the problem of knowing which apparent expert to trust. Following Alvin Goldman’s lead, a number of philosophers have developed criteria that novices can use to distinguish more from less trustworthy experts. While the criteria the philosophers have identified are indeed useful in guiding expert choice, I argue, they can’t do the work that Goldman and his successors want from them: avoid a kind of testimonial scepticism. We can’t deploy them in the way needed to avoid such scepticism, because it would take genuine expertise to do so. I argue that attempts to deploy them in this sort of deep way involve a kind of transgression akin to, and at least as unreliable as, epistemic trespassing. We should give up trying to solve the novice/expert problem and instead promote better epistemic trust.

There's heated debate around whether people who did terrible things in the past, at a time when there was widespread acceptance of such actions, are appropriately blamed by us, on the grounds they weren't really morally ignorant, or their ignorance was itself culpable. I point to puzzles that arise if we blame them. We need to explain how they could act so badly if they weren't fully ignorant. I argue that plausible answers to that question entail that they're not blameworthy, or that we lack standing to blame them.

Why do people endorse conspiracy theories? There is no single explanation: different people have different attitudes to the theories they say they believe. In this paper, I argue that for many, conspiracy theories are serious play. They’re attracted to conspiracy theories because these theories are engaging: it’s fun to entertain them (witness the enormous number of conspiracy narratives in film and TV). Just as the person who watches a conspiratorial film suspends disbelief for its duration, so many conspiracy theorists do not believe the theories they endorse; rather, they suspend disbelief in them. I argue that the serious play hypothesis explains some characteristic features of conspiracy theories, such as their gamification and the kind of relationship they have to evidence.

A volume with 14 chapters on various aspects of the relationship between responsibility and healthcare, plus a substantial introduction that offers a comprehensive overview of the relevant debates and how they relate to one another. Questions of responsibility arise at all levels of health care. Most prominent has been the issue of patient responsibility. Some health conditions that risk death or serious harm are partly the result of lifestyle behaviours such as smoking, lack of exercise, or extreme sports. Are patients with such conditions responsible for them? If so, might healthcare providers, be they state-run systems or private entities, be justified in treating such patients differently? And if they are, which forms of differential treatment are justified? Responsibility isn’t just relevant for patients. Even when individuals affect their health through voluntary behaviour, other influences are also at work before, during, and after the patient’s interaction with the health care system. What are the responsibilities of individual clinicians and other medical professionals, when thinking about individual and public health? What about institutions such as governments or national health care services, or society as a whole? This collection brings together work by world-renowned experts in population ethics, distributive justice, philosophy of action, cognitive science, and medical ethics in order to push the debate forward by elucidating our understanding of these questions, their possible answers, and how they are related.