Samuel J. M. Kahn

In recent debates about the nature of luck, many philosophers defend a modal condition, according to which an event E is lucky for S only if E is modally fragile. However, there are two competing accounts of how this condition should be filled out: (1) proportion accounts focus on whether E fails to occur in a suitable proportion of possible worlds, whereas (2) proximity accounts focus on whether E fails to occur in a suitably proximate possible world. In this article I argue against proportion accounts and in favor of proximity accounts.

In Maskivker’s recent “Justice and Contribution,” she argues that, under normal circumstances, the failure to guarantee that life-sustaining workers are above the non-struggle point is not merely disrespectful and a failure of beneficence, but a violation of the norms of fair play and, as such, a “low blow.” In this article, I offer a critical reply to Maskivker. I begin by explaining her reasoning. Then I turn to critique, focusing on two key weaknesses and, in so doing, drawing out two larger lessons. Dans son récent article « Justice and Contribution », Julia Maskivker soutient que, dans des circonstances normales, le fait de ne pas garantir que les travailleurs essentiels à la vie reçoivent une compensation suffisante pour ne pas avoir à lutter pour leur subsistance (« non-struggle point ») constitue non seulement un manque de respect et un manque de bienfaisance, mais aussi une violation des normes du franc jeu et, par conséquent, un « coup bas ». Dans cet article, j’offre une réponse critique à Maskivker. Je commence par expliquer son raisonnement. Puis, je passe à la critique, en me concentrant sur deux faiblesses clés et, ce faisant, en tirant deux leçons plus importantes.

In this paper I argue that constructivism in mathematics faces a dilemma. In particular, I maintain that constructivism is unable to explain (1) the application of mathematics to nature and (2) the intersubjectivity of mathematics unless (3) it is conjoined with two theses that reduce it to a form of mathematical Platonism. The paper is divided into five sections. In the first section of the paper, I explain the difference between mathematical constructivism and mathematical Platonism and I outline my argument. In the second, I argue that the best explanation of how mathematics applies to nature for a constructivist is a thesis I call Copernicanism. In the third, I argue that the best explanation of how mathematics can be intersubjective for a constructivist is a thesis I call Ideality. In the fourth, I argue that once constructivism is conjoined with these two theses, it collapses into a form of mathematical Platonism. In the fifth, I confront some objections.

In Nicholas Smyth’s recent article, “When Does Self-Interest Distort Moral Belief,” he argues that self-interest undermines justification for moral belief if it justifies itself. In so doing, he opposes the standard account, which says that, to the extent that a person’s moral belief is explained by her egoistic or parochial interests, that belief is less justified. However, Smyth’s attack on the standard account, and the principle that he proposes to replace it with, do not withstand critical scrutiny, and that is what this article is intended to show. To that end, the article is divided into three sections. In the first, I explain the standard account and provide some background. In the second, I critically examine Smyth’s three arguments against the standard account. In the third, I explain and attack Smyth’s own principle. I conclude that Smyth’s principle should not be accepted, and the standard account should not be rejected, at least on the basis of Smyth’s arguments: self-interest undermines justification in general, as per the standard account, not only when it justifies itself.

In recent debates about the nature of luck, many philosophers defend a modal condition, according to which an event E is lucky for S only if E is modally fragile. However, there are two competing accounts of how this condition should be filled out: (1) proportion accounts focus on whether E fails to occur in a suitable proportion of possible worlds, whereas (2) proximity accounts focus on whether E fails to occur in a suitably proximate possible world. In this article I argue against proportion accounts and in favor of proximity accounts. Section 1 consists of a brief literature review. Section 2 explains how the two accounts differ: it is a formal feature of proximity accounts, but not of proportion accounts, that they are symmetric. In section 3, I set out my argument for proximity accounts. I begin by noting that, despite the formal difference explicated in section 2, proximity and proportion accounts are similarly situated in regard to many prominent issues in the luck literature: both can overcome Latus’ famous sunrise objection, and both fall prey to Lackey’s famous whim objection. Next, I argue that Hill’s recent and influential reductio of proportion accounts does not withstand critical scrutiny. I maintain, instead, that the reason to reject proportion accounts, and the reason to affirm proximity accounts, is that, because proportion accounts, unlike proximity accounts, are asymmetric, they are scuttled by the Russian roulette problem (surviving Russian roulette is a paradigmatic instance of luck even though the chances of survival are higher than not). In section 4, I turn to objections to proximity accounts. I confront an objection from Coffman, an objection from Hill, and an objection inspired from McKinnon. I maintain that proximity accounts can overcome all of these objections.

In Nora Heinzelmann's recent ‘Rationality is not Coherence,’ she sets out a novel and forceful challenge for coherence accounts of rationality (henceforth: CRs). Heinzelmann argues that, first, there are cases in which the norms in CRs generate conflict and, thus, agents cannot be rational; but, second, it is counterintuitive that agents cannot be rational in these cases; and, third, reasons responsiveness accounts of rationality (henceforth: RRs) do not have this counterintuitive result. From this, Heinzelmann concludes that RRs are superior to CRs. In this article, I argue that Heinzelmann is mistaken. In Section I, I introduce the two CR norms on which Heinzelmann focuses, Enkrasia and Persistence of Intention. In Section II, I discuss Heinzelmann's argument against Enkrasia. In Section III, I discuss Heinzelmann's argument against the conjunction of Enkrasia and Persistence of Intention.

In Cowie’s “Why Moral Paradoxes Support Error Theory,” he argues that recent work in moral theory shows that error theory fares no worse than other metaethical theories when it comes to ordinary moral judgment, and he argues that this suffices to answer the fundamental challenge for error theory. This article shows that Cowie’s argument does not work. More specifically, it is shown that the counterintuitive implications of error theory dominate those of realism, in both a technical, quantitative sense, and in a non-technical, qualitative sense. If Cowie is correct that, in the absence of an answer to the fundamental challenge, error theory should be rejected out of hand, then this constitutes a serious setback to the error theorist’s program.

According to Rescher, luck is chancy, but constitution is not, and so constitutive luck is a contradiction in terms. In this paper, I look at two recent attempts to controvert this argument. According to the first, constitution is not chancy, but neither is moral luck, because moral luck is not a species of luck. According to the second, moral luck is chancy, but constitution is too, because the comparative class is not the agent herself but rather the population at large. I argue that neither of these attempts is successful. I begin by explaining the importance of constitutive luck and the context in which Rescher’s claim arises.

In this article, I confront Jessica Flanigan’s recent attempt to show not merely that women have a right to commit prenatal injury, but also that women who act on this right are praiseworthy and should not be criticized for this injury. I show that Flanigan’s arguments do not work, and I establish presumptive grounds against any such right—namely, prenatal injury, by definition, involves intentional or negligent harm and, as such, may be subsumed under a wider class of actions that are presumptively wrong.

In Nicholas Smyth’s recent article, “When Does Self-Interest Distort Moral Belief,” he argues that self-interest undermines justification for moral belief if it justifies itself. In so doing, he opposes the standard account, which says that, to the extent that a person’s moral belief is explained by her egoistic or parochial interests, that belief is less justified. However, Smyth’s attack on the standard account, and the principle that he proposes to replace it with, do not withstand critical scrutiny, and that is what this article is intended to show. To that end, the article is divided into three sections. In the first, I explain the standard account and provide some background. In the second, I critically examine Smyth’s three arguments against the standard account. In the third, I explain and attack Smyth’s own principle. I conclude that Smyth’s principle should not be accepted, and the standard account should not be rejected, at least on the basis of Smyth’s arguments: self-interest undermines justification in general, as per the standard account, not only when it justifies itself.

In this article, I explore an important difference between circumstantial luck on the one side and resultant and constitutive luck on the other. In section 1, I argue that, in circumstantial luck, the object of luck and the object of moral judgment are different even though, in resultant and constitutive luck, they are the same. In section 2, I explain that this difference (1) has the potential to undermine the regress argument for moral luck; (2) makes viable the “selective moral luck” argument strategy (affirming some species of moral luck but denying others); and (3) has implications for the heritability of luck.

On the standard reading of Kant’s ethics, agents are responsible only for their acts of willing, not the consequences of their willing, much less the acts or consequences of other agents’ willing (vicarious responsibility). It is therefore somewhat puzzling to find Kant discussing vicarious responsibility, and with apparent approbation, in the treatment of a case that has come to typify his ethics, the murderer at the door. Nonetheless, he does so, and in his lesser known works, Kant even sets out a rudimentary framework for handling such cases. My goal in this chapter is to draw attention to this neglected aspect of Kant’s ethics. I want to show that Kant accepted vicarious responsibility openly and explicitly, both in his ethical and in his legal theory. In so doing, I hope to reveal how much the current understanding of Kant’s theory of responsibility, accepted by Kantians and non-Kantians alike, has failed to capture fairly basic parts of his thought.

According to the positive duties objection, it is not possible to derive positive duties from Kant’s Formula of Universal Law (FUL). However, in his recent “Deriving Positive Duties from Kant’s Formula of Universal Law”, Guus Duindam tries to answer this objection. More specifically, Duindam tries to show how both a duty of benevolence and a duty of self-perfection can be derived from the FUL. I critically examine Duindam’s arguments. I maintain that Duindam’s argument for the positive duty of benevolence is ambiguous and that this ambiguity exposes him to a fatal dilemma: on one horn, Duindam faces the same objection that he concedes to be effective against other attempts to answer the positive duties objection; on the other horn, the procedure he recommends cannot be based on the FUL (because it does not evaluate actions on the basis of their corresponding maxims). In addition, I maintain that Duindam’s benevolence argument rests on a procedure that is, in general, intractable and, in this particular case, foredoomed (because it can be shown that there are no positive duties of the kind he tries to derive). From there, I turn to Duindam’s argument for the positive duty of self-perfection. I explain that Duindam’s derivation of the duty of self-perfection, even if successful, does not answer the positive duties objection. This is because Duindam never appeals to the FUL in his derivation of the duty of self-perfection (the derivation is based, rather, on instrumental reasoning from the second-order end to accomplish our first-order ends). I elaborate on this by comparing and contrasting Duindam’s argument with Oliver Sensen’s interpretation of how to apply the FUL in the latter’s recent “Universal Law and Poverty Relief”.

According to Kantian moral religion, because there is a duty to promote the highest good, we are warranted in believing in God and immortality. However, this article shows that the duty to promote the highest good is incoherent, and that popular conceptualizations of the highest good cannot avoid this incoherence. After arguing, additionally, against attempts to ground Kantian moral religion on the highest good in some role other than the object of duty, it is shown that Kant seems to have been aware of the original problem, suggesting an explanation for why he abandoned the highest good around 1800.

In this article, I explicate Kant’s position on the wide right to abortion. That is, I explore the extent to which, according to Kant’s practical philosophy, abortion is punishable, even if it involves an unjust infringement of the right to life. By focusing on the state’s right to punish, rather than the right to life or the onset of personhood, I use Kant to expose a novel range of issues and questions about the legal status of abortion (and criminal punishment more generally). The article is divided into four sections. In the first, I lay the groundwork for Kant’s theory of rights and briefly canvass some of the literature on Kantian approaches to abortion. In the second, I look at Kant’s discussion of equivocal rights. In the third, I turn to Kant’s discussions of capital punishment and suicide. In the fourth, I examine Kant on honor killings, and I use his position on infanticide in order to extrapolate and explain his ideas about the right to punish in the context of abortion.

Die meisten Philosophen stimmen darin überein, dass Kant sich dem Prinzip „Sollen impliziert Können“, bzw. „ought implies can“ (OIC), verschrieben hat. Allerdings sind sich nur wenige darüber einig, wie die Bedeutung von OIC zu verstehen ist. Außerhalb der Kant-Wissenschaft gibt es Debatten über die Bedeutung von „sollen“, die Bedeutung von „impliziert“ und die Bedeutung von „können“ in diesem Prinzip. Innerhalb der Kant-Forschung besteht kein Konsens darüber, was Kant zu diesen Themen dachte. In diesem Artikel versuche ich, diese Situation zu verbessern. In Abschnitt I überprüfe ich die Sekundärliteratur zu Kants Engagement für OIC und erkläre, wo die Interpretation meiner Meinung nach schief geht. In Abschnitt II untersuche ich einige der direkten Textbeweise dafür, dass Kant eine bestimmte Version von OIC zugeschrieben wird. In Abschnitt III lege ich dar, was meiner Meinung nach die wichtigsten doktrinären Gründe dafür sind, Kant diese Version von OIC zuzuschreiben.

In Wilmot-Smith’s recent “Law, ‘Ought’, and ‘Can’,” he argues that legal obligation does not imply ability. In this short reply, I show that Wilmot-Smith’s arguments do not withstand critical scrutiny. In section 1, I attack Wilmot-Smith’s argument for the claim that allowing for impossible obligations makes for a better legal system, and I introduce positive grounds for thinking otherwise. In section 2, I show that, even if Wilmot-Smith had established that impossible obligations make for a better legal system, his subsequent attack on OIC fails.

I argue that Kant’s Categorical Imperative should be applied to individual maxim tokens rather than abstract maxim types. The article is divided into five sections. In the first, I explain my thesis. In the second, I show that my thesis disagrees with Rawls. In the third, I argue for my thesis on the basis of the wording of the Categorical Imperative and on the basis of considerations about autonomy. In the fourth, I argue for my thesis on the basis of considerations about the ‘ought implies can’ principle. In the fifth, I provide a summary of the main argumentative moves and also explain some of the philosophical advantages of my thesis.

Šis straipsnis padalintas į tris dalis. Pirmojoje ir antrojoje dalyse pristatau žinomą Ištroškusio keliautojo mintinį eksperimentą ir analizuoju, kaip Carolina Sartorio aiškina jo kauzalinę struktūrą. Teigiu, kad kruopštesnis nagrinėjimas atveria šio aiškinimo spragas. Trečiojoje dalyje nagrinėju Sartorio siūlomą naują moralinės sėkmės rūšį, kurią, jos manymu, Ištroškusio keliautojo atvejis atskleidžia. Toliau išplečiu argumentacijos lauką apžvelgdamas kitas šiuolaikines moralinės sėkmės kategorijas ir darau išvadą, kad visos jos nepakankamai apgalvotos.

In this paper, I argue that Kant gives a philosophically plausible derivation of the general duty of benevolence and that this derivation can be used to show how to derive other general duties of commission with the universalizability tests.The paper is divided into four sections. In the first, I explain Kant’s notion of a general duty. In the second, I introduce the universalizability tests. In the third, I examine and argue against an account in the secondary literature of how to derive general duties from these tests. In the fourth, I look at Kant’s derivation of the duty of benevolence in the Metaphysics of Morals, and I suggest how this reasoning can be extended to other duties.

In Harry Frankfurt’s seminal “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” he advances an argument against the Principle of Alternate Possibilities: if an agent is responsible for performing some action, then she is able to do otherwise. However, almost all of the Frankfurt cases in this literature involve impermissible actions. In this article, I argue that the failure to consider other deontic categories exposes a deep problem, one that threatens either to upend much current moral theorizing or to upend the relevance of Frankfurt cases.

The purpose of this paper is to show that, if Kant’s universalization formulations of the Categorical Imperative are our only standards for judging right from wrong and permissible from impermissible, then we have no obligations. I shall do this by examining five different views of how obligations can be derived from the universalization formulations and arguing that each one fails. I shall argue that the first view rests on a misunderstanding of the universalization formulations; the second on a misunderstanding of the concept of an obligation; the third on a misunderstanding of the concept of a maxim; the fourth on a misunderstanding of the limits of action description; and the fifth on a misunderstanding of the universalization formulations again.

In this article, I make a novel argument for scientific antirealism. My argument is as follows: (1) the best human chess players would lose to the best computer chess programs; (2) if the best human chess players would lose to the best computer chess programs, then there is good reason to think that the best human chess players do not understand how to make winning moves; (3) if there is good reason to think that the best human chess players do not understand how to make winning moves, then there is good reason to think that the best human theories about unobservables are wrong; therefore, (4) there is good reason to think that the best human theories about unobservables are wrong. The article is divided into three sections. In the first, I outline the backdrop for my argument. In the second, I explain my argument. In the third, I consider some objections.

In a recent paper, Chunghyoung Lee argues that, because zygotes are developmentally plastic, they cannot be numerically identical to the singletons into which they develop, thereby undermining conceptionism. In this short paper, I respond to Lee. I argue, first, that, on the most popular theories of personal identity, zygotic plasticity does not undermine conceptionism, and, second, that, even overlooking this first issue, Lee’s plasticity argument is problematic. My goal in all of this is not to take a stand in the abortion debate, which I remain silent on here, but, rather, to push for the conclusion that transitivity fails when we are talking about numerical identity of non-abstract objects.