The Priority of Common Sense in Philosophy

The aim of this paper is to explore the issue of priority of common sense in philosophy. It is divided into four parts. The first part discusses examples of common-sense beliefs and indicates their specific nature, especially compared to mere common beliefs. The second part explores in more detail the supposed positive epistemic status of common-sense beliefs and the role they play in delimiting plausible philosophical theories. The third part overviews a few attempts to formulate a legitimate argument, or justification, in favor of the positive epistemic status of common-sense beliefs, none of which, however, appears to be clearly successful. Finally, the fourth part addresses the central issue of priority of common sense. Two different types of priority are introduced, epistemic and methodological, and it is argued that only the latter applies to common-sense beliefs. If so, then common-sense beliefs are not to be conceived as cases of knowledge but as the clearest cases of what we believe is knowledge.

Why NIPT should be publicly funded

Asking pregnant women to (co)pay for non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) out of pocket leads to unequal access across socioeconomic strata. To avoid these social justice issues, first-trimester prenatal screening should be publicly funded in countries such as the Netherlands, with universal coverage healthcare systems that offer all other antenatal care services and screening programmes free of charge. In this reply, we offer three additional reasons for public funding of NIPT. First, NIPT may not primarily have medical utility for women and children, but rather offers relevant information and reproductive options, and thus serves important autonomy interests of women. Second, public funding of NIPT can be justified because it results in a reduction of collectively borne costs associated with care and support for children with chromosomal abnormalities. It is important to note that this is not an argument for individual women to take part in screening or to terminate an affected pregnancy. However, it is a legitimate argument in policy making regarding funding arrangements for screening programmes. Finally, public funding would help to amend current misunderstandings among pregnant women (eg, that they are not at risk), and thus to support informed consent for first-trimester prenatal screening.

Fine-Tuning Fine-Tuning

This chapter argues that the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God is a straightforwardly legitimate argument. The fine-tuning argument takes certain features of fundamental physics to confirm the existence of God because these features of fundamental physics are more likely given the existence of God than they are given the non-existence of God. And any such argument is straightforwardly legitimate, as such arguments follow a canonically legitimate form of empirical argumentation. The chapter explores various objections to the fine-tuning argument: that it requires an ill-defined notion of small changes in the laws of physics, that it over-generalizes, that it requires implausible presuppositions about divine intentions, and that it is debunked by anthropic reasoning. In each case it finds either that the putatively objectionable feature of the fine-tuning argument is inessential to it or that the putatively objectionable feature of the fine-tuning argument is not actually objectionable.

Value Capture Taxation as an Infrastructure Funding Technique

A legitimate argument is that the public sector must restore its contribution to the financing of the new infrastructure. However, for both political and economic reasons, an increase in broad-based taxes or debt seems to be off the table; new funding vehicles are clearly necessary. This essay identifies value capture taxation as a partial solution to this infrastructure funding problem. Value capture is a set of techniques that take advantage of the increase in property values to finance service and infrastructure improvements.