The material conditions of non-domination: Property, independence, and the means of production

While it is a point of agreement in contemporary republican political theory that property ownership is closely connected to freedom as non-domination, surprisingly little work has been done to elucidate the nature of this connection or the constraints on property regimes that might be required as a result. In this paper, I provide a systematic model of the boundaries within which republican property systems must sit and explore some of the wider implications that thinking of property in these terms may have for republicans. The boundaries I focus on relate to the distribution of property and the application of types of property claims over particular kinds of goods. I develop this model from those elements of non-domination most directly related to the operation of a property regime: (a) economic independence, (b) limiting material inequalities, and (c) the promotion of common goods. The limits that emerge from this analysis support intuitive judgments that animate much republican discussion of property distribution. My account diverges from much orthodox republican theory, though, in challenging the primacy of private property rights in the realization of economic independence. The value of property on republican terms can be realized without private ownership of the means of production.

Coherence as Competence

Being incoherent is often viewed as a paradigm kind of irrationality. Numerous authors attempt to explain the distinct-seeming failure of incoherence by positing a set of requirements of structural rationality. I argue that the notion of coherence that structural requirements are meant to capture is very slippery, and that intuitive judgments – in particular, a charge of a distinct, blatant kind of irrationality – are very imperfectly correlated with respecting the canon of structural requirements. I outline an alternative strategy for explaining our patterns of normative disapproval, one appealing to feasible dispositions to conform to substantive, non-structural norms. A wide range of paradigmatic cases of incoherence, I will argue, involve manifesting problematic dispositions, dispositions that manifest across a range of cases as blatant-seeming normative failures.

If it works we didn't need it: Intuitive judgments of 'overreaction'

When laypeople decide if a costly intervention is an overreaction or an appropriate response, they likely base those judgments on mental simulation about what could happen, or what would have happened without an intervention. To narrow down from the infinite set of possibilities they could consider, they may engage in a process of sampling. We examine whether judgments of overreaction can be explained by a utility- weighted sampling account from the JDM literature, or a norm- weighted sampling account from the causal judgment literature, both, or neither. Three experiments test whether these judgments are overly influenced by low-risk bad outcomes (utility-weighted sampling), or by what is likely and prescriptively good (norm-weighted sampling). Overall, participants’ judgments indicate that they disregard low-risk bad outcomes, and even when a high-risk outcome is successfully avoided, the intervention is an overreaction. These results favor a norm-weighted sampling account in the specific case of evaluating overreactions.

How Could We Know When a Robot was a Moral Patient?

There is growing interest in machine ethics in the question of whether and under what circumstances an artificial intelligence would deserve moral consideration. This paper explores a particular type of moral status that the author terms psychological moral patiency, focusing on the epistemological question of what sort of evidence might lead us to reasonably conclude that a given artificial system qualified as having this status. The paper surveys five possible criteria that might be applied: intuitive judgments, assessments of intelligence, the presence of desires and autonomous behavior, evidence of sentience, and behavioral equivalence. The author suggests that despite its limitations, the latter approach offers the best way forward, and defends a variant of that, termed the cognitive equivalence strategy. In short, this holds that an artificial system should be considered a psychological moral patient to the extent that it possesses cognitive mechanisms shared with other beings such as nonhuman animals whom we also consider to be psychological moral patients.

The Place of Expert Intuition in Philosophy

The Standard Picture of philosophical methodology includes the following claims: (A) Intuitive judgments form an epistemically distinctive kind; (B) Intuitive judgments play an epistemically privileged role in philosophical methodology; (C) If intuitive judgments play an epistemically privileged role in philosophical methodology, then their role is to be taken as given inputs into generally accepted forms of reasoning; (D) Philosophical methodology is reasonable. Negative experimental philosophers accept claims (A), (B), and (C), but challenge (D). This chapter develops a variant on the expertise defense of traditional philosophy. The defense hinges on denying (C) in the Standard Picture: philosophers do not treat their intuitions as data; they treat their intuitions as observations that can be improved through reasoning. The chapter explores both historical antecedents in the rationalist tradition, and descriptive accuracy with respect to current practice.

The Standard Picture

The Standard Picture of philosophical methodology includes the following claims: (A) Intuitive judgments form an epistemically distinctive kind; (B) Intuitive judgments play an epistemically privileged role in philosophical methodology; (C) If intuitive judgments play an epistemically privileged role in philosophical methodology, then their role is to be taken as given inputs into generally accepted forms of reasoning; (D) Philosophical methodology is reasonable. Work in negative experimental philosophy has motivated some to question the descriptive accuracy of the Standard Picture. Some philosophers such as Timothy Williamson challenge (A) on the grounds that philosophy cannot be distinguished by its reliance on a distinctive epistemic source. Other philosophers such as Herman Cappelen and Max Deutsch challenge (B) on the grounds that philosophers do not treat intuitions as evidence. This chapter defends (A) and (B) in the Standard Picture against these challenges.

Optical Characteristics of Traditional Portuguese Azulejos: Mixing Colors to Obtain “Cool” Building Façades

The need to reduce energy consumptions in buildings brings modern research to focus on the use of natural sources. In this context, the interest towards traditional architecture has been fueled, since one of the characteristics identifying it is the intuitive and intrinsic link between the building and the surrounding environment. For example, in Mediterranean traditional buildings the attention to the orientation, the limitation of openings, the use of shading systems, the great thermal inertia of the envelope, the exploitation of natural ventilation and the light colored external coatings are all technical answers to the overheating risks typical of hot climates. In this context, the Portuguese traditional habit to cover building façades in azulejos (square ceramic tiles painted in vivid colors) is undoubtfully an interesting topic. The paper describes optical and chromatic characteristics of four types of azulejos by means of spectral measurements. Obtained results have demonstrated that the chromatic composition of the tiles, despite dark colors are mixed with clear ones, is such to determine visual reflectance values higher than expected. This seems to suggest that, even if the chromatic composition in the past was mostly driven by decorative issues and visual intuitive judgments, the energetic needs were not completely neglected or at least that the traditionally preferred colors were such to obtain a positive effect in enhancing reflected component of daylight.

Intuitions about meaning, experience, and reliability

Speakers’ intuitive judgments about meaning are commonly taken to provide important data for many debates in philosophy of language and pragmatics. The chapter presents two strategies that aim to explain and justify the evidential role and methodological utility of such judgments. The first strategy is inspired by the so-called perceptual view on intuitions, a view that emphasizes the experience-like nature of intuitions. The second strategy is a reliabilist one and derives the evidential utility of speakers’ judgments about meaning from the reliability of the psychological mechanisms underlying their production. What are the merits of the two strategies? Is one of them more fundamental than the other? It is argued that we have reasons to prefer the reliabilist view. This claim is supported in the chapter by three parameters on which the reliabilist strategy fares better than the experience-based one.