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Filosofiska Notiser
Årgång 9, Nr 1, 2022
This is a special issue
on formal ethics and formal ethical principles. At least one more
paper will (perhaps) be added to this issue later.
Harry J. Gensler
Formal Ethical Principles
Abstract
In this paper, Harry Gensler discusses formal ethics, which studies
rational patterns in our ethical thinking. He describes four fundamental
principles that he calls [r] (a rationality axiom), [e] (ends-means
consistency), [p] (prescriptivity) and [u] (universalizability).
Gensler also discusses the so-called golden rule (“treat others
as you want to be treated”) and shows how several versions of this
principle can be derived from his axioms. According to Gensler,
there are both good and bad versions of the golden rule. One of
the good versions can be formulated in the following way: Treat
others only as you consent to being treated in the same situation.
Gensler shows how this version of the golden rule can be used in
our moral thinking and how it can be defended against many common
objections. Together the principles discussed in the paper can be
used to help us think more rationally about morality and live more
consistent lives. The paper brings together several ideas that Gensler
has been working on for more than 50 years.
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Jan Narveson
On Formality and Formalism in Ethics
Abstract
Question: is the familiar distinction of ‘formal’ vs. ‘material’
in ethical theory of any real use?
On one hand, ‘formal’ could just refer to the part of our inquiry
known as meta-ethics, and we aren’t querying that here. But ‘formalism’
is also supposed to identify a sub-class of theories about what
we ought to do. The idea is supposed to be that “formalism” and
something else - ‘consequential-ism’ is usually the supposedly opposed
idea - are genuine alternatives as ethical theories. It’s that idea
that I challenge here.
Morality has to do with principles, or rules, “for the group”. Which
group? That ‘group’ might simply be a variable here, which would
give us one or another version of Relativism: everyone to do whatever
his/her group’s rules say to do. But all relativisms fail in the
face of disagreement among the groups in question. The solution
to all such is the same as was the application to religion, where
freedom is the byword: each to practice his own religion, but no
one may enforce his or her religion on others. Other situations
of conflict can replace religion, and the general result is the
same: we are to respect the freedom of each to pursue his or her
own way, so long as that way is compatible with the ways of others.
But that rule is not that of any particular group. It is the rule
for all, because of reflection on our general situations. And it
is only “formal” in the sense that it applies to religions generally,
rather than to some particular one.
Underlying all such is the (correct) idea, that morality is essentially
a universal understanding, an agreement among all, regarding
how our mutual interactions are to be conducted. Are contracts,
then, “formal”? No. They are motivated by our hope of gain, the
particular gain varying from one to another.
I conclude by reminding readers of my earlier proof that a genuine
“formalism” in ethics is nonsense. All acts are wrong because of
their consequences, but not all consequences are relevant. Those
mentioned in the Social Contract are: we are to avoid consequences
that are bad for others (or oneself), insofar as those others are
themselves living up to that very rule; we may pursue whatever consequences
are compatible with others’ pursuits.
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Wlodek Rabinowicz
Personalized Neutral-Range Utilitarianism with Incommensurable
Lives – What Form Does It Take? And Is It Repugnant?
Abstract
This paper considers Neutral-Range Utilitarianism (NRU) – a utilitarian
theory that posits a range of lives that are neutral in impersonal
value, in the sense that adding people with such lives to the world’s
population doesn’t make the world, or its population, either better
or worse. The paper considers a particular version of this utilitarian
axiology, Personalized NRU (PNRU), according to which a life is
in this way impersonally neutral if and only if it is neutral in
its personal value, i.e., iff it is neither better nor worse for
a person to have such a life than not to exist at all. A personally
neutral life might in principle be either ‘strictly neutral’, i.e.,
equally as good for a person as non-existence, or ‘weakly neutral’,
i.e., incommensurable with non-existence: neither better or worse,
nor equally as good. The range of lives that are weakly neutral
may well be relatively extended. It seems plausible that some of
them may be better for a person than others.
PNRU differs from the more familiar versions of NRU, according to
which even good lives (either all or all up to some wellbeing limit)
are impersonally neutral: adding people with such lives doesn’t
make the world better. Unlike PNRU, these versions conflict with
a basic welfarist claim that what is good for a person is pro tanto
impersonally good.
The paper considers PNRU in a framework that differs from the standard
one for utilitarian axiologies in that it allows for incommensurable
lives. Lives can be incommensurable in personal value with non-existence,
but also with each other. Is utilitarian aggregation possible if
all these incommensur-abilities are allowed? The paper addresses
the question how PNRU should be formulated in such a non-standard
model.
The second question addressed in the paper concerns the Repugnant
Conclusion. Given additional assumptions, PNRU implies that for
any population there is a better one in which everyone’s life is
barely good – barely worth living. However, as it turns out, the
apparent repugnance of this conclusion is considerably mitigated
by the introduction of the neutral range. It is shown that barely
good lives cannot be only marginally better than bad lives: the
distance between the former and the latter must be significant.
This claim crucially depends on the argument that a framework in
which weakly neutral lives are allowed has no room for strictly
neutral lives.
Unfortunately, though, PNRU leads to another repugnant conclusion
that is less easy to come to terms with: For any population, however
wonderful, there is another possible population that isn’t worse
even though everyone in that other population has a life that not
only isn’t good (not even barely good) but also is very close to
being positively bad. That PNRU has this worrying implication is
a problem that needs to be recognized and confronted.
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Jeffrey Wattles
The Place of the Golden Rule and Formal Ethics in a Philosophy
of Living
Abstract
Formal ethics sharpens one’s capacity for (insightful) moral intuition
and sheds light on the golden rule, which I discuss in relation
to the philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Harry Gensler. I consider
the rule in the context of a philosophy of living which is designed
to promote the sharpening and integration of our capacities for
intuition in the realms of science, morality, and spiritual experience.
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Rob Shaver
Are Formal Principles Privileged?
Abstract
In “Revisionary Intuitionism,” Michael Huemer argues for privileging
“formal” intuitions over intuitions about particular cases and intuitions
about prima facie duties. Formal intuitions, he argues, are not
prey to the many sceptical worries that afflict intuitions about
particular cases and intuitions about prima facie duties. I shall
argue that he does not show the superiority of formal intuitions
to intuitions about prima facie duties. I then consider Sarah McGrath’s
recent, very different, response to Huemer. I argue that Huemer
can avoid her objections, but in a way that makes his case for formal
intuitions just like a standard case for intuitions about prima
facie duties. I close by doubting whether stressing the generality
of an intuition, as Huemer and Peter Singer do, has much payoff.
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Filosofiska Notiser
Årgång 8, Nr 2, 2021
Erik Persson
Astrobiologins filosofi - Några frågor rörande teoretisk filosofi
Abstrakt
Denna artikel är den första i en serie om två artiklar som introducerar
astrobiologins filosofi. Detta är ett förhållandevis nytt och i
Sverige nästan okänt forskningsfält som dock befinner sig i snabb
tillväxt internationellt. Ämnet presenteras här i form av exempel
på några centrala frågeställningar inom området. I den här artikeln
presenteras några frågeställningar hemmahörande i teoretisk filosofi.
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Erik Persson
Astrobiologins filosofi - Några frågor rörande praktisk filosofi
Abstrakt
Denna artikel är den andra i en serie om två artiklar som introducerar
astrobiologins filosofi. Detta är ett förhållandevis nytt och i
Sverige nästan okänt forskningsfält som dock befinner sig i snabb
tillväxt internationellt. Ämnet presenteras här i form av exempel
på några centrala frågeställningar inom området. I den här artikeln
presenteras några frågeställningar hemmahörande i praktisk filosof.
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William Simkulet
Spontaneous Abortion and Inaction
Abstract
Pro-life theorists argue that human fetuses have moral worth from
conception, or soon afterwards, and because of this induced abortion
– both killing and disconnecting the fetus – is prima facie morally
wrong. Evidence suggests that many more fetuses die of spontaneous
abortion than induced abortion; yet many pro-life theorists act
as though these fetal lives lack moral worth. Here, I evaluate the
claim that inaction in the face of spontaneous abortion is morally
monstrous.
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Filosofiska Notiser
Årgång 8, Nr 1, 2021
This is a special issue
on modal logic.
Max Cresswell
Prior and Łukasiewicz on Modal Logic
Abstract
A. N. Prior was strongly influenced by the work of Polish logicians,
especially Jan Łukasiewicz. One important consequence is his adoption
of Łukasiewicz's bracket-free notation for logical formulae, but
he also took issue with Łukasiewicz's criticism of Aristotle's views
on possibility. The present paper looks at the role of I. M. Bochenski
in making Prior aware of the Polish logical tradition.
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Bas C. van Fraassen
Logic of a Self-Transparent Believer
Abstract
Moore's Paradox engendered various proposals for aspects of the
logic of belief, both for believers to avoid falling into its form
of incoherence and for special principles to serve as axioms or
rules for doxastic logic. The proposal here developed is to study
the logic pertaining to believers who are self-transparent in the
sense that, although they may have many false beliefs, they are
right about what their beliefs are. The logic of the language of
factual description of their situation is a normal modal logic KDC4C4,
but is to be distinguished from the internal logic that governs
what follows from their beliefs, on pain of incoherence. The adequacy
and completeness proofs for that logic show it to be, in some respects,
severely non-classical.
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Lloyd Humberstone
Propositional Variables Occurring Exactly Once in Candidate Modal
Axioms
Abstract
One does not often encounter a proposed axiom for extending one
modal logic to another with the following feature: in the axiom
in question some propositional variable (sentence letter) appears
only once. Indeed, for a large range of modal logics L, which includes
all normal modal logics, the sole occurrence of such a sentence
letter can be replaced by a propositional truth or falsity constant,
to give an arguably simpler axiom yielding the same extension of
L, explaining the rarity of such ‘variable-isolating’ axioms in
the literature. But the proof of this simple (and in one form or
another, well-known) result – appearing here as Lemma 2.1 – is sensitive
to the choice of modal primitives. It breaks down, for example,
when, instead of necessity (or possibility), the sole non-Boolean
primitive is taken to be noncontingency (or contingency), the main
topic of Sections 0 and 4, the latter closing with a selection of
the main problems left open. Between these, which we shall have
occasion, inter alia, to observe that the (routine) proof
of the lemma referred to (which is postponed to a final Appendix,
Section 5) is also sensitive to the choice of Boolean primitives
(Section 3).
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Jan Woleński
Propositional Self-Reference and Modalities
Abstract
This paper considers modal self-referential sentences and argues
that they generate semantic paradoxes similar to the Liar. The sources
of related antinomies are similar as in the case of the Liar-sentence,
namely self-referentiality and the T-scheme, additionally
supplemented by some principles connecting modalities and truth.
In the Appendix at the end of the paper, the dual logic is employed
for constructing the Truth-Teller Paradox and its modal counterparts.
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Giovanna Corsi and Eugenio
Orlandelli
FOIL with constant domains revisited
Abstract
FOIL is a family of two-sorted first-order modal logics containing
both object and intensional variables. Intensional variables are
represented by partial functions from worlds to objects and the
abstraction operator λ is used to talk about the object (if any)
denoted by an intension in a given world. This paper answers a problem
left open in Fitting’s [4] by showing that Fitting’s axiomatization
of FOIL augmented with infinitely many inductively defined rules,
CD(k), k ≥ 0, allows for the construction of a canonical model that
is essentially a constant domains model. Moreover, it is shown that
the rules CD(k) are derivable in logics where the symmetry axiom
B holds. Hence, Fitting’s axiomatisation of FOIL is already complete
when the underlying logic imposes symmetric models.
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Andreas Herzig and Elise
Perrotin
True Belief and Mere Belief About a Proposition and the Classification
of Epistemic-Doxastic Situations
Abstract
Starting from standard logics of knowledge and belief with principles
such as introspection of beliefs and ‘knowledge implies belief’,
we study two non-normal modalities of belief: true belief about
a proposition and what we call mere belief about a proposition.
We show that these modalities suffice to define all possible epistemic-doxastic
situations in a combinatorial manner. Furthermore, we show that
two consecutive modalities that are indexed by the same agent can
be reduced for two of the three logics of knowledge and belief that
we consider.
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Valentin Goranko
On relative ignorance
Abstract
I discuss relative ignorance of an agent with respect to
the knowledge or ignorance of other agents. It turns out, not surprisingly,
that even the two-agent case is quite complex and generates a rich
variety of naturally arising non-equivalent operators of relative
ignorance. In this paper I explore these in a more systematic way
and put together several simple, though technically laborious, observations
about their inter-relations. For the technical proofs of these I
employ the software tool MOLTAP, which implements, inter alia, tableaux
for the underlying multi-agent epistemic logic.
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