Radim Belohrad

The paper focuses on the question of whether it is morally permissible to use reproductive technologies to select children with congenital deafness. I review the arguments that have been presented to support the claims that the lack of hearing is not overall bad, that disability is caused by social discrimination rather than impairment, that the community of deaf people gives its members plenty of opportunities to lead a happy life, and that procreative decisions need not improve the world. I argue that although the claims are, to a certain extent, reasonable, they fail to establish the conclusion that selecting for deafness is morally permissible. I further argue that the decision to select a deaf child is morally wrong because it results in imposed and needless dependency, that the happiness of a deaf child is conditioned by their confinement to a relatively small community, and that the deaf parents who reject their child’s potential biculturalism are motivated by questionably self-regarding reasons.

This paper focuses on three theories of personal identity that incorporate the idea that personal identity is the result of a person’s adopting certain attitudes towards certain mental states and actions. I call these theories subjective theories of personal identity. I argue that it is not clear what the proponents of these theories mean by “personal identity”. On standard theories, such as animalism or psychological theories, the term “personal identity” refers to the numerical identity of persons and its analysis provides the persistence conditions for persons. I argue that if the subjective theories purport to provide a criterion of numerical personal identity, they fail. A different interpretation may suggest that they purport to provide a non-numerical type of identity for the purpose of providing plausible analyses of certain identity-related practical concerns. I argue that the criteria the subjective theories provide fail to capture several of the identity-related concerns. As a result, this interpretation must be rejected as well.

The article focuses on one of the identity-related practical concerns discussed in contemporary debate on personal identity, namely self-concern. The dominant view seems to be that people’s concern for their future selves is preconditioned by their ability to anticipate the experiences of their future selves and that, as a result, a psychological theory of personal identity is required to justify self-concern. I argue that self-concern in its most general form is not preconditioned by the possibility of anticipation. I provide examples showing that people may legitimately be concerned for their future selves even if those selves are unconscious or dead, that is, in states that the people cannot anticipate. I contend that self-concern is not rooted in our desire to have positive experiences, but in our desire to live meaningful lives. Since the value of our lives can be influenced by events that only take place after we cease to exist, I further argue that certain posthumous states of affairs relevant to our lives can also be the legitimate target of an indirect sort of self-concern. Inspired by Marya Schechtman’s theories, I develop a form of the narrative theory of personal identity in the sense of characterization and show that narrative continuity can be both a source of meaning in a person’s life and a ground for the person’s self-concern. It turns out that the sort of identity that justifies non-anticipatory self-concern cannot be numerical identity, because it does not provide the persistence conditions of people.

In this paper, I defend the idea that we need a metaphysical theory to justify identity-related practical concerns, such as self-concern. I outline D. Parfit’s theory, in which the concerns receive a metaphysical justification. Then, I focus on two objections: C. Korsgaard’s claim that the concerns are justified by the unity of agency, and M. Johnston’s contention that the concerns are prima facie justified independently of a metaphysical theory. I argue that even if these theories have a point, they do not cover a range of situations in which justification may be sought. It is in these situations that a metaphysical theory may find its place.

In this paper, I assess the analysis of vagueness of objects in terms of the theory of constitution with respect to the notion of vague identity. Some proponents of the constitution theory see it as an advantage of their account that analysing the spatial and temporal vagueness of objects in terms of the relation of vague constitution avoids commitment to vague identity, which is seen as a controversial notion. I argue that even though the constitution theory may plausibly be applied to the phenomenon of vague boundaries, it fails to account fully for other cases of spatial and temporal vagueness. There are what I call ‘mid-extension’ vagueness cases, in which the tools of the constitution theory applied in the analysis of boundary vagueness are insufficient to avoid commitment to vague identity.

Lockean theories of personal identity maintain that we persist by virtue of psychological continuity, and most Lockeans say that we are material things coinciding with animals. Some animalists argue that if persons and animals coincide, they must have the same intrinsic properties, including thinking, and, as a result, there are ‘too many thinkers’ associated with each human being. Further, Lockeans have trouble explaining how animals and persons can be numerically different and have different persistence conditions. For these reasons, the idea of a person being numerically distinct but coincident with an animal is rejected and animalists conclude that we simply are animals. However, animalists face a similar problem when confronted with the vagueness of composition. Animals are entities with vague boundaries. According to the linguistic account of vagueness, the vagueness of a term consists in there being a number of candidates for the denotatum of the vague term. It seems to imply that where we see an animal, there are, in fact, a lot of distinct but overlapping entities with basically the same intrinsic properties, including thinking. As a result, the animalist must also posit ‘too many thinkers’ where we thought there was only one. This seems to imply that the animalist cannot accept the linguistic account of vagueness. In this paper the author argues that the animalist can accept the linguistic account of vagueness and retain her argument against Lockeanism.

V minulém čísle časopisu Pro-Fil uveřejnil Tomáš Sobek zajímavou stať (Sobek 2015) mapující různé odpovědi na otázku, co konstituuje lidský blahobyt neboli co je pro člověka dobré. Zatímco většina kapitol má spíše deskriptivní povahu – autor představuje jednotlivé konkurenční teorie blahobytu a zdržuje se jejich hodnocení – v poslední části předkládá tezi, podle níž existuje úzký vztah mezi lidským blahobytem a autenticitou. Mým cílem v tomto krátkém příspěvku je tuto domněnku podrobněji interpretovat a poněkud zproblematizovat. Nechci tím naznačovat, že spojení blahobytu a autenticity není plodné. Spíš mne zajímá, jaký je přesně vztah mezi těmito pojmy. Sobek totiž na obecné rovině říká jen tolik, že se jednotlivé teorie blahobytu musí potýkat se stejnou otázkou, totiž s otázkou autenticity, že teorie blahobytu ztělesňují různé koncepce autenticity a že diskuze mezi teoriemi blahobytu jsou zároveň spory o to, co je to autentický život.

Morální intuice hrají důležitou roli v normativních teoriích. Velmi často bývají posledním arbitrem při rozhodování o přijetí či odmítnutí teorie, obecného mravního principu nebo konkrétního přesvědčení. Co jsou morální intuice? Jak vznikají? Jakou mají povahu? A mohou skutečně hrát tu úlohu, kterou jim normativní koncepce přisuzují? Cílem přednášky je vyjádřit skepticismus v této otázce a obavy, že to, co se dozvídáme od současných empirických věd o povaze intuic a možných zkreslujících vlivech, které na ně působí, ukazuje, že není možné jejich zdůvodňující úlohu akceptovat. Moral intuitions play an important role in normative theories. They frequently serve as the ultimate arbiter in deciding whether to accept or reject a theory, a general moral principle or a particular belief. What are moral intuitions? How do they arise? What is their nature? And are they capable of playing the role that normative theories ascribe to them? The objective of the lecture is to express skepticism in that question and concern that what we learn about the nature of intuition and possible influences that distort them from current empirical science shows that it is not possible to accept the justificatory role of intuitions.klíčová slova: intuice, efekt popisu, emoce, experimentální filozofie, kognitivní a afektivní systém, morální psychologie, zdůvodnění.keywords: intuition, framing effect, emotion, experimental philosophy, cognitive and affective systems, moral psychology, justification.

This paper focuses on Jessica Wilson’s determinable-based account of metaphysical indeterminacy and its relationship to the concept of vague identity. The determinable-based account comprises a distinction between meta-level and object-level accounts of metaphysical indeterminacy. I first argue that the distinction cannot be clearly applied to some theories. In particular, I argue that even though Wilson categorizes the constitution account of metaphysical indeterminacy as a meta-level account, from one perspective it can be defensibly regarded as an object-level account, because it is bound to posit genuinely indeterminate states of affairs and provides an explanation of boundary indeterminacy that is structurally analogous to the explanation provided by Wilson’s object-level account. This interim conclusion is important, because it has been argued that the constitution account, when applied to some more complex types of boundary indeterminacy, cannot avoid commitment to vague identity, in spite of the declarations of some of its proponents. The ultimate goal of this paper is to argue that, contrary to Wilson’s claims, the determinable-based account must embrace vague identity too.

The paper focuses on the nature and moral status of manipulation. I analyse a popular account of manipulation by Robert Noggle and assess a challenge that has been posed by Moti Gorin. I argue that Noggle’s theory can fend off the challenge. The analysis is instructive in that it enables one to look more closely at the nature of manipulation. I argue, contrary to some proposed accounts, that manipulation essentially involves deception about the manipulator’s intentions. Secondly, since manipulation contains an element of deception, it is, I maintain, prima facie immoral. Finally, I analyse and explain away several examples of allegedly morally non-problematic manipulation.

The goal of this paper is to assess three arguments that have been proposed to rebut the idea that the notion of indeterminate identity is incoherent. In the first part, the author presents Gareth Evans’ argument purporting to show the incoherence of indeterminate identity. Next, the author assesses a rebuttal proposed by E. J. Lowe. Although the rebuttal seems sound, Harold Noonan has shown that its scope is limited. After that, a rebuttal by Peter van Inwagen is analysed. The author compares it with Lowe’s and shows that consistent application of the principles van Inwagen uses leads to objects having inconsistent properties. In the final part, it is shown that although the answer proposed by Terence Parsons seems superior to both van Inwagen’s and Lowe’s, its scope is also limited. As a result, Evans’ argument seems to stand unrefuted by these three counterarguments.

This essay presents a comparison of modal theories with flexible and constant domain of individuals. Whatś called the simplest quantified modal logic represents the latter type. However, it has some controversial consequences: the fact that all objects of discourse exist necessarily, and the fact that to every merely possible object there corresponds an actual one. These drawbacks are eliminated by the Kripke models, which postulate possible worlds with a flexible domain of objects. Proponents of TIL return to the theory with the constant domain and attempt to elucidate what mistakes lead Kripkeś followers to endorsement of models with the flexible domain, and explain-away the alleged problems of the constant domain. This work aims at clarifying the character of the attitude of TIL proponents and showing that the arguments for accepting the constant domain they provide are not completely satisfactory due to the role proper names play in their theory