In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action by Rhiannon FirthJohn-Erik HanssonRhiannon Firth. Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action. London: Pluto Press, 2022. Paperback, 243 pp. ISBN 9780745340463The COVID-19 pandemic and the unfolding climate crisis, with the multiplication of unprecedented weather events, have shown how urgent it is to reflect on our responses to disaster. Following up on themes she first broached in Coronavirus, Class, and Mutual (...) Aid in the United Kingdom, Rhiannon Firth throws a fresh, anarchist, and utopian light on disaster relief in Disaster Anarchy.1 In this work, Firth seeks to “consider how [anarchist] social movements’ impressive efforts in mutual aid might contribute to a radical and revolutionary reconceptualisation of disasters and the processes of relief and recovery efforts” (19). To do so, she begins by surveying the dominant approaches to disaster relief (chapters 2 and 3) before offering a comprehensive anarchist theoretical critique of these perspectives (chapter 4). Firth then fleshes out her anarchist theory of disaster and community response through two empirical case studies of grassroots relief efforts. In chapter 5 she looks into the Occupy Sandy movement, a New York area community-based response to the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy’s passage in October 2012 in the United States. The final chapter is then dedicated to the COVID-19 Mutual Aid Groups that emerged in the United Kingdom during the pandemic.In building her argument, Firth mobilizes anarchist (and more broadly radical) theory and interviews with participants in both movements. She engages with how activists motivated and understood their participation in mutual aid groups, perceived disaster and relief organizing, sought to solve practical and political problems, and reflected on their experiences. The empirical sections of Disaster Anarchy are thus reminiscent of investigations into the anarchist connections and orientations of contemporary social movements, such as Occupy Wall Street.2 However, Firth’s is a work [End Page 606] of political theory. Her interviews were not conducted simply to describe and analyze the anarchist components of disaster relief social movements. Echoing Uri Gordon, she proposes to take the “worldviews of activists seriously as sources of theoretical knowledge,” leading us to rethink both anarchism and the politics of disaster as a whole (16).3 There lies a key part of the originality of Firth’s contribution to both anarchist theory and to the study of disaster relief. The utopian core of Disaster Anarchy also shines through this movement-based theoretical elaboration of an anarchist challenge to the dominant theories and practices of disaster relief. By examining mutual aid groups in critical dialogue with anarchist theory, Firth raises the possibility of more egalitarian and democratic “utopian alternatives to the status quo,” though, as she reminds us, they always run the risk of being co-opted (20).To set the scene for the desirability of anarchist approaches to disaster relief, Disaster Anarchy opens with Firth’s dissatisfaction with what she identifies as the two main sets of approaches to disaster studies. The first represents “the dominant neoliberal paradigm of disaster politics” and falls under the umbrella of “Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)” (21). Firth contends that, despite some internal variety, all DRR approaches share the three same basic assumptions. First, DRR considers disasters to be “ruptures in the normal functioning of society.” They become a “management problem” that must be dealt with using the tools of political governance to restore order and ensure “systemic stability” (39–40). This can be done both directly through state institutions, and through civil society-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that cooperate with state institutions. DRR then evaluates responses using the categories of “efficiency and cost-effectiveness,” leaving aside “the affects and human impacts of disasters” (40). Second, DRR tends to flatten out differences between disasters, and in the ways in which individuals and groups respond to them. Disaster becomes abstract, and authorities can design sets of responses taken to be effective regardless of local contexts and demands. DRR approaches are therefore particularly congenial to the growth of large governmental “specialised agencies like DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency]” that produce knowledge and practices linked to the vertical “management of disaster” (41). Finally... (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this paper, I approach the political and philosophical similarities and differences between late eighteenth-century thinkers John Thelwall and William Godwin from the point of view of their respective choices for the genre of political communication. I approach their thought and its expression by weaving an interpretation of what they were saying with a reflection on how and to whom they were speaking. This, I contend, helps us clarify further the thought of each thinker and track the changes in (...) their conception of equality in the framework of political communication. As the 1790s unfolded, both thinkers, I argue, tried to diversify their audience, be generally more inclusive, and re-think the hierarchies of relationship between authors/speakers and their audience in their political communication. Nevertheless, they did so asymmetrically and in different ways: Thelwall quickly started tapping into popular culture, especially oral culture, while Godwin chose the modes of fiction and the conversational essay. By making these choices, both authors enacted a different understanding and practice of political education, and political equality. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to discuss the type of attachment and allegiance propounded in the recently proclaimed Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Charters such as Bills of Rights are generally held to be reflective of and evocative of a rights-based constitutional patriotism. The EU is not a state; there are widely different conceptions of what it is and should be, one of which is the vision of a Europe of nation states. Is the spirit of (...) the Charter thus instead that of deep diversity, i.e. reflective of a wide diversity of views, visions and values as to what the EU is and ought to be? The article contrasts constitutional patriotism and deep diversity as alternative underlying philosophies of the Charter and also briefly examines the Charter's presumed ability to produce either type of sentiment of allegiance. (shrink)

SUMMARYWhile commentators have noted that the revival of pragmatism in recent decades can be understood in the context of a larger turn towards anti-foundational thought, they have largely ignored the important and complicated role that Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas about foundationalism played in that revival. By tracing Wittgenstein's influence on the philosophers Stanley Cavell and Thomas Kuhn, the author first suggests that the revival of neo-pragmatism is better understood in the context of mid-century analytic philosophy they inherited, as well as Wittgenstein's (...) unique contribution and challenge to that tradition. Next, by showing how the Wittgensteinian ideas of Cavell and Kuhn played an important role in the decades-long debate between Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam, arguably the most important catalyst of neo-pragmatist thought, the author shows that Wittgenstein's reframing of Kantian epistemology places the emergence of neo-pragmatism in a larger context of Enlightenment thought in the United States, rather than making it an easy ally of anti-foundational post-structuralism. (shrink)

The EU is often considered to be a unique entity. This assertion rests on assessments of its institutional character more than on assessments of its social constituency, i.e., the structure of demands and expectations that citizens and groups place on the EU. Establishing the character of the latter is important both to understand the EU as polity and to understand its democratic deficit. It is also of theoretical interest given the increased focus on recognition politics, not only within nation-states but (...) also within the transnational realm. This article develops a conceptual-methodological framework with a set of structured tests so as to permit us to establish the character of the EU’s social constituency. This framework combines a philosophical approach to recognition with a sociological approach to contentious politics. A central element is the notion of ‘recognition order’, and the article briefly examines whether the EU might be said to make up a unique recognition order. (shrink)

Recent years (pre-Obama) of transatlantic rifts should not deceive us into ignoring the great attraction that the United States has exerted, and continues to exert, on Europeans. This article, first, seeks to uncover the normative assumptions that underpin the US as an exemplar or polity model for the EU, as seen from a European perspective. Second, it briefly considers whether the traits that Europeans find attractive about the US as a polity model have much real bearing on the EU, not (...) in terms of how Europeans would want the EU to be but in terms of how the EU presently is. The point is to get a sense of the empirical distance that Europeans would have to travel if they were to transpose what they find attractive about the US to the EU. Are the features Europeans hold up as attractive about the US also available in Europe? These two undertakings set the stage for the third and most original, endeavour, which is to consider whether there are entities that are more compatible with what we currently find in Europe. The case singled out here is another American state, namely Canada. A clarification and critical assessment of what is referred to here as ‘Europe’s American Dream’ are intended to serve as a kind of mirror for Europeans to consider whether the European project is: (a) one of emulating the US; (b) a unique experiment; or (c) an EU that is closer to Canada than the US. If the reality of Canada is more proximate to the reality of the EU, should then Canada instead serve as Europe’s American Dream? (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to discuss the type of attachment and allegiance propounded in the recently proclaimed Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Charters such as Bills of Rights are generally held to be reflective of and evocative of a rights-based constitutional patriotism. The EU is not a state; there are widely different conceptions of what it is and should be, one of which is the vision of a Europe of nation states. Is the spirit of (...) the Charter thus instead that of deep diversity, i.e. reflective of a wide diversity of views, visions and values as to what the EU is and ought to be? The article contrasts constitutional patriotism and deep diversity as alternative underlying philosophies of the Charter and also briefly examines the Charter's presumed ability to produce either type of sentiment of allegiance. (shrink)

This chapter first considers whether and to what extent the European Union labors under a democratic deficit. When considering the contending conceptions of democracy in Europe it is needed to keep in mind that there also are analysts who disagree that the European Union suffers from a democratic deficit. The chapter briefly assesses the European Union against the two criteria of autonomy and accountability, in order to get a clearer sense of the Union's democratic deficit, which then appears as a (...) representative‐democratic deficit. The chapter examines the effects of the crisis on the prospects of remedying the European Union's democratic deficit. Most citizens are still exhibiting restraint and there appear to be further crisis handling measures in the pipeline. Many of the proposals for further changes underline the need to strengthen democracy, including measures to reinforce interparliamentary coordination and cooperation. (shrink)

A representation theorem is obtained for contraction operators that are based on Levi's recent proposal that selection functions should be applied to the set of saturatable contractions, rather than to maximal subsets as in the AGM framework. Furthermore, it is shown that Levi's proposal to base the selection on a weakly monotonic measure of informational value guarantees the satisfaction of both of Gärdenfors' supplementary postulates for contraction. These results indicate that Levi has succeeded in constructing a well-behaved operation of contraction (...) that does not satisfy the postulate of recovery. (shrink)

We prove that four theses commonly associated with coherentism are incompatible with the representation of a belief state as a logically closed set of sentences. The result is applied to the conventional coherence interpretation of the AGM theory of belief revision, which appears not to be tenable. Our argument also counts against the coherentistic acceptability of a certain form of propositional holism. We argue that the problems arise as an effect of ignoring the distinction between derived and non-derived beliefs, and (...) we suggest that the kind of coherence relevant to epistemic justification is the coherence of non-derived beliefs. (shrink)

Five types of constructions are introduced for non-prioritized belief revision, i.e., belief revision in which the input sentence is not always accepted. These constructions include generalizations of entrenchment-based and sphere-based revision. Axiomatic characterizations are provided, and close interconnections are shown to hold between the different constructions.

Five types of constructions are introduced for non-prioritized belief revision, i.e., belief revision in which the input sentence is not always accepted. These constructions include generalizations of entrenchment-based and sphere-based revision. Axiomatic characterizations are provided, and close interconnections are shown to hold between the different constructions.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Historical Perspective Progressivism: Five Themes Progressivism Today.

In this article, we review the intrinsic democratic flaws in electoral representation, lay out a set of principles that should guide the construction of a sortition chamber, and argue for the virtue of a bicameral system that combines sortition and elections. We show how sortition could prove inclusive, give citizens greater control of the political agenda, and make their participation more deliberative and influential. We consider various design challenges, such as the sampling method, legislative training, and deliberative procedures. We explain (...) why pairing sortition with an elected chamber could enhance its virtues while dampening its potential vices. In our conclusion, we identify ideal settings for experimenting with sortition. (shrink)

This special issue explores the theoretical and practical prospects for creating legislative bodies via sortition. This preface summarizes the purpose of the issue and each of the articles therein.

The typical function of goals is to regulate action in a way that furthers goal achievement. Goals are typically set on the assumption that they will help bring the agent closer to the desired state of affairs. However, sometimes endorsement of a goal, or the processes by which the goal is set, can obstruct its achievement. When this happens, the goal is self-defeating. Self-defeating goals are common in both private and social decision-making but have not received much attention by decision (...) theorists. In this paper, we investigate different variants of three major types of self-defeating mechanisms: The goal can be an obstacle to its own fulfilment, goal-setting activities can impede goal achievement, and disclosure of the goal can interfere with its attainment. Different strategies against self-defeasance are tentatively explored, and their efficiency against different types of self-defeasance is investigated. (shrink)

Many scientists and doctors hope that affordable genome sequencing will lead to more personalized medical care and improve public health in ways that will benefit children, families, and society more broadly. One hope in particular is that all newborns could be sequenced at birth, thereby setting the stage for a lifetime of medical care and self‐directed preventive actions tailored to each child's genome. Indeed, commentators often suggest that universal genome sequencing is inevitable. Such optimism can come with the presumption that (...) discussing the potential limits, cost, and downsides of widespread application of genomic technologies is pointless, excessively pessimistic, or overly cautious. We disagree. Given the pragmatic challenges associated with determining what sequencing data mean for the health of individuals, the economic costs associated with interpreting and acting on such data, and the psychosocial costs of predicting one's own or one's child's future life plans based on uncertain testing results, we think this hope and optimism deserve to be tempered.In the analysis that follows, we distinguish between two reasons for using sequencing: to diagnose individual infants who have been identified as sick and to screen populations of infants who appear to be healthy. We also distinguish among three contexts in which sequencing for either diagnosis or screening could be deployed: in clinical medicine, in public health programs, and as a direct‐to‐consumer service. Each of these contexts comes with different professional norms, policy considerations, and public expectations. Finally, we distinguish between two main types of genome sequencing: targeted sequencing, where only specific genes are sequenced or analyzed, and whole‐exome or whole‐genome sequencing, where all the DNA or all the coding segments of all genes are sequenced and analyzed.In a symptomatic newborn, targeted or genome‐wide sequencing can help guide other tests for diagnosis or for specific treatment that is urgently needed. Clinicians use the infant's symptoms (or phenotype) to interrogate the sequencing data. These same complexities and uncertainties, however, limit the usefulness of genome‐wide sequencing as a population screening tool. While we recognize considerable benefit in using targeted sequencing to screen for or detect specific conditions that meet the criteria for inclusion in newborn screening panels, use of genome‐wide sequencing as a sole screening tool for newborns is at best premature. We conclude that sequencing technology can be beneficially used in newborns when that use is nuanced and attentive to context. (shrink)

Social integration is a basic ingredient of any description of a good society. We feel that all people should get the opportunity to realise their full human potential, i.e. to realise their own goals and aspirations. In this paper we claim that this is also part of the responsibility of private sector firms and, therefore, an integral aspect of business ethics. We first argue against the (popular) conviction that the situation of the unemployed is their own responsibility, either because they (...) choose to be unemployed (section 2), or because they choose to be low skilled (section 3). As a consequence, we do not believe that the dismantling of the social security system or the restructuring of the educational system can fully solve the problem of the least skilled in our societies. Nor do we think that the integration of the least skilled is a matter for government policy alone. In section 4 we argue that job creation remains indispensable for a real attack on the problem of social exclusion. In section 5, we highlight the important role of the private sector in this regard. Such job creation will require a lot of effort and imagination at the micro-level of the firm and a lot of creative thinking about how to structure the macrosocial market environment within which private firms operate. (shrink)

We present a model-theoretic approach for reasoning about security protocols, applying recent insights from dynamic epistemic logics. This enables us to describe exactly the subsequent epistemic states of the agents participating in the protocol, using Kripke models and transitions between these based on updates of the agent's beliefs associated with steps in the protocol. As a case study we will consider the SRA Three Pass protocol and discuss the Wide-Mouthed Frog protocol.

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multi-national data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from (...) social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution—individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar was found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-negligible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic. (shrink)

Why do some people withdraw from biobank studies? To our knowledge, very few studies have been done on the reflections of biobank ex-participants. In this article, we report from such a study. 16 years ago, we did focus group interviews with biobank participants and ex-participants. We found that the two groups interestingly shared worries concerning the risks involved in possible novel uses of their biobank material, even though they drew opposite conclusions from their worries. Revisiting these interviews today reveals a (...) remarkable relevance to present concerns, since the possible developments that worried ex-participants and participants 16 years ago now are becoming realities. Drawing on conceptual distinctions by sociologist and philosopher Niklas Luhmann, we argue that while ex-participants express a loss of trust in the biobank institution to manage the use of their biobank material in a legitimate way, remaining participants expressed confidence in the management of the biobank institution to secure their interests. This analysis brings out important aspects of emerging trends in biobank research participation. (shrink)

John Broome has argued that incomparability and vagueness cannot coexist in a given betterness order. His argument essentially hinges on an assumption he calls the ‘collapsing principle’. In an earlier article I criticized this principle, but Broome has recently expressed doubts about the cogency of my criticism. Moreover, Cristian Constantinescu has defended Broome’s view from my objection. In this paper, I present further arguments against the collapsing principle, and try to show that Constantinescu’s defence of Broome’s position fails.

John Broome has argued that alleged cases of value incomparability are really examples of vagueness in the betterness relation. The main premiss of his argument is ‘the collapsing principle’. I argue that this principle is dubious, and that Broome's argument is therefore unconvincing. Correspondence:c1 Erik[email protected].

The present paper revisits the issue of rational decision making in John Rawls' original position. Drawing on Isaac Levi's theory of decision, I discuss how we can defend Rawls against John C. Harsanyi's charge that maximin reasoning in the original position is irrational. The discussion suggests that systematic application of Levi's theory is likely to have important consequences for ethics and political theory as well as for public policy.

Even though the philosophy of common sense is not justifi able as such, the assump- tion upon which it rests, namely that there are things which we are not in position to doubt is correct. The reason why Thomas Reid was unable to bring this assumption out in a justifi able manner is that his views, both on knowledge and nature, are to be considered dogmatic. American pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey on the other hand, (...) may be seen as offering us a ‘critical’ and post-Darwinian philosophy of common sense. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, John Martin Fischer defends the view that death harms its victim after she dies. More specifically, he develops a “truthmaking” account in order to solve what he calls the Problem of Predication for this view. In this reply, we argue that Fischer’s proposed solution to this problem is unsuccessful.

The “new natural lawyers” (NNLs) are a prolific group of philosophers, theologians, and political theorists that includes John Finnis, Robert George, Patrick Lee, Gerard Bradley, and Germain Grisez, among others. These thinkers have devoted themselves to developing and defending a traditional sexual ethic according to which homosexual sexual acts are immoral per se and marriage ought to remain an exclusively heterosexual institution. The sterility objection holds that the NNLs are guilty of making an arbitrary and irrational distinction between same-sex (...) couples and sterile heterosexual couples. The NNLs believe that it is a necessary condition for two people’s being morally and legally entitled to get married that they be able to perform sexual acts that are “suited to procreating.” But sterile heterosexual couples are incapable of performing such acts. Therefore, it should follow from the NNLs’ own premises that sterile heterosexual couples are not entitled to marry. But the NNLs do not draw this conclusion. Instead, they maintain that sterile heterosexuals can marry while denying that the same is true of same-sex couples. The sterility objection claims the NNLs are being inconsistent in treating the two kinds of couples differently. Although the sterility objection has been endorsed by recent critics, I don’t think it has yet been adequately defended. The NNLs have responded by arguing that there is a sense in which the sex acts of sterile heterosexual couples are as suited to reproduction as those of fertile heterosexuals. Thus they maintain that the distinction they draw between the two kinds of couple has a rational basis. A successful defense of the sterility objection must show that this response on the part of the NNLs fails. Such is the task I undertake in this paper. I argue that the NNLs’ response fails because acts of penile-vaginal intercourse between sterile heterosexuals lack the actual causal power to produce conception that sexual acts need to be considered truly reproductive, and because their assumption that penile-vaginal intercourse always functions reproductively is bad biology. (shrink)

For the purpose of contributing to a clarification of the term process, different kinds of musical processes are investigated: A rule-determined phase shifting process in Steve Reich's Piano Phase (1966), a model for an indeterminate composition process in John Cage's Variations II (1961), a number of evolution processes in György Ligeti's In zart fliessender Bewegung (1976), and a generative process of fractal nature in Per Nørgård's Second Symphony (1970). In conclusion I propose that six process categories should be included (...) in a typology of processes: Rule-determined, goal-directed and indeterminate transformation processes, and rule-determined, goal-directed and indeterminate generative processes. (shrink)

The issue of how to justify right and wrong is a recurring methodological problem in ethics. We can, somewhat simplified, distinguish between people who argue that right and wrong must be confirmed by our moral convictions and people who maintain that morality must be justified by principles independent from these convictions. The issue hinges on arriving at a standard or criterion for when something is right or wrong. The author discusses this issue in light of the distinction between perfect procedural (...) justice and pure procedural justice, drawing on the works of John Rawls and Peter Singer. One shortcoming affecting both these approaches is how they are unable to account for our basic beliefs. Using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s On Certainty as a point of departure, the author attempts to demonstrate that some of our basic beliefs cannot be formulated in propositions, but rather are expressed by our actions. The author concludes that we, in light of this, must distinguish between our ethical propositions and our basic beliefs. The former may be subject to doubt and may, consequently, be expressed in the form of propositions, whereas the latter is only expressed by what we say and what we do. (shrink)