What is the Ockham Society?

Would a Universal Basic Income (UBI) promote gender justice? This paper addresses this question by assessing UBI against its capacity for gender-justice enhancement and gender-justice achievement. There are at least two feminist criteria for the former: firstly, whether a UBI lessens the sexual division of labour (SDL); and secondly, whether a UBI alleviates the gendered exploitation of women. It is possible that, at least in the short run, these two criteria come into conflict; in such cases, I argue that the latter criterion should be prioritised. With respect to gender-justice achievement, I argue that UBI’s ability to realise this goal largely depends upon the overall package of policy measures on offer as well as the discursive context in which the demand for UBI is articulated. The paper concludes that, on balance, feminist considerations support the implementation of a UBI; however, a further question remains as to whether feminists should endorse a UBI all-things-considered.

Humans are capable of acts of astonishing goodness. We sacrifice our lives so that others might live. We care for others who are suffering, even when we have no familial obligations towards them. Sometimes (and not often enough), we even extend our moral concern to those of other species. These acts are moral acts, and they show that we humans are moral agents. Non-human animals also do these things; nature documentaries and social media are replete with examples of non-human animals giving their lives in service to some greater purpose, saving the lives of conspecifics, and caring about the fates of other species. And yet, philosophers and non-philosophers alike have, with very few exceptions, been inclined to deny that non-human animals are moral agents.

In this paper/presentation, I consider a number of conceptual arguments that non-human animals cannot be moral agents, and show why these arguments fail. These arguments, from Moral Responsibility, Moral Cognition, Control, and Moral Understanding, connect Moral Agency with some other property that non-human animals are alleged to obviously lack. Here, I grant for the sake of argument that the other animals do lack these properties. In each case, I argue that this will not mean that these animals aren’t moral agents.

The near ubiquity in the literature of the denial of moral agency to the other animals is such that it is often hard to discern when it is argued for, and when it is simply assumed. Therefore, the arguments I consider, while inspired by and as far as possible faithful to the literature, have necessarily required some refinement by myself. Nevertheless, I think they fail. Notwithstanding any controversial empirical evidence of non-human animal moral behaviour, we in fact have no good conceptual arguments for discontinuity between humans and the other animals with respect to moral agency. In other words, there may well be good dogs.

This essay raises a puzzle for Kearns & Star's account of normative reasons – the Reasons as Evidence (short: RaE) view. Their basic idea is that reasons can be analysed in terms of evidence for ought propositions. This view, I argue, faces an "asymmetry charge". That is, evidence and reasons behave differently in our deliberations about what we ought to "do" (in a broad sense including action and belief). On the one hand, strong reasons (if assessed correctly) lead to determinate ought statements. On the other hand, evidence for ought statements (even if strong and assessed correctly) only indicates the truth of an ought statement and, hence, can be misleading.

I spell out this asymmetry charge by looking at different readings of "ought". In particular, I consider perspectivism and objectivism about the deliberative ought. Roughly, perspectivism holds that what an agent A ought to do depends only on those facts that are (in some sense) epistemically available to A. Objectivism denies this.

First, I argue that the ought propositions, featuring in an agent A's evidence, cannot be read in a perspectivist way. Combining this result with perspectivism about the ought connected to (decisive) reasons, we get the beforementioned asymmetry. Therefore, we can get non-equivalent ought statements if we spell out A's deliberations in terms of reasons and evidence for ought propositions respectively. This violates, as I will show, a minimal commitment of the RaE view.

Second, I consider whether (pure) objectivism about "ought" might avoid this asymmetry charge. I argue, however, that objectivism, for a different reason, is inconsistent with the RaE view. To the extent that my argument holds, the RaE view has not the tools to either (i) accept the alleged asymmetry of reasons and evidence for ought propositions or (ii) to explain it away.

Is it better to die than to act unjustly? In this paper, I argue that the spectre of this question continues to haunt contemporary ethical naturalism, and that, on naturalistic assumptions, it cannot be answered. Even sophisticated forms of ethical naturalism that attempt to talk about “second-natures” and “a meaningful life” must either end in vague, non-committal ontologies or admit that some non-naturalistic source is available to ground the necessary features of reality that allow for a plausible answer to be given to the question above. The virtues are meant to benefit their possessor and are logically connected to happiness or flourishing in some way. I argue that the only logical connection between virtue and happiness that could possibly work in a naturalistic framework is one of identity. In this case, because the virtuous life is identical to happiness, virtue constitutes happiness and is an end in itself. But this logical relationship is doomed to failure. First, it cannot make sense of what we normally understand a benefit to be because benefits are things that require further explanation within a particular context. That is, they always aim at something beyond themselves. Second, the identity relationship cannot make sense of the problem of death, or what I call absolute loss. If faced with the choice to die or act according to virtue, it is far from clear what real benefit the virtuous person receives when they die for the sake of virtue. And, a fortiori, if death is an exception to virtuous action, I argue that relative losses ought to be as well because virtue cannot be said to pay intrinsically. If virtue ethics is to have any prospects, it will require a more robust ontology than we have at present.

Womxn who would like to present in Womxn's Week should contact Val Borba (valquirya.borba@philosophy.ox.ac.uk) or Steven Diggin (steven.diggin@philosophy.ox.ac.uk).

Catharine Mackinnon argues that pornography silences women, subordinates women, and legitimizes violence: it doesn’t just cause these things. Rae Langton, drawing on J.L. Austin, fleshes this out by suggesting that pornography effects various illocutionary acts. Such speech acts usually require speakers to have authority. One objection to Langton’s account is that pornographers don’t in fact have any authority at all. Another is that pornographers don’t have authority over the right people.

It’s hard to see what the source of pornographers’ authority might be, especially if our models for authority are judges, legislators and umpires. Further, it seems almost all women and many men reject what pornographers say about women. If authority requires some degree of acceptance, then pornographers do not have authority over women. At most, many of us are under the power of pornographers.

Drawing on Nancy Bauer’s work on pornography, I suggest that we can solve both problems at once by getting clear on how pornography relates to wider societal norms and the mechanisms by which it acts. Much of what pornography says is also said by the wider culture. These cultural norms are rarely explicitly believed or rejected as they operate below the level of belief. Even when rejected at the cognitive level, they often still have force. It’s these norms that license the kind of beliefs, desires and other states that people form in response to pornography. Pornography makes sense against this backdrop.

Even many women voluntarily comply with and/or do not cognitively reject these broader norms and so accept much of what pornography says. Pornographers, though, can also go beyond what’s already there in the culture. They don’t just interpret norms; they also expand and shape them. This is what makes pornography unique. Pornography reflects and interprets and makes social reality. Its authority in controversial cases is parasitic on its authority in the cases where it agrees with social norms. The best parallel is with rules of etiquette and experts on etiquette, or with popular teenagers enforcing social codes in a school.

I present an image of the old idea of worldmaking (in its form recently sketched by Amia Srinivasan) which is constructed from a reading of the later thought of Wittgenstein. My work falls into two parts. In the first, I illustrate how the possibility and then the plausibility of worldmaking might be thought to arise from Wittgenstein’s central ideas of forms of life, grammar, criteria, and representational diagnosis. But this raises an interesting question to which the second part responds: might this image of worldmaking qualify as philosophy within the Wittgensteinian paradigm? — Prima facie, obviously not. For worldmaking qua philosophy seems wholly anti-Wittgensteinian: it is deliberately anti-descriptive, its purpose to interfere with the use of language. But through the dissolution of what I take to be a deep and difficult exegetical puzzle in Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophical remarks, I hazard that worldmaking might in fact be regarded as philosophical yet, in some ways, remain Wittgensteinian.

Halpern and Hitchcock have recently proffered an account of graded and comparative actual causation based on typicality and normality considerations (BJPS 66-2:413-457). In my talk, I critically evaluate HH’s proposal and present four (families of) cases where it fails to provide plausible analysis. I close by suggesting some options for HH.