Walter Veit
The London School of Economics, Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, Visiting Student
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, Visiting PhD Student
I am an interdisciplinary scientist/philosopher with a strong interest in collaborating with scientists, medical doctors, and animal researchers in science itself.
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2022 by Walter Veit
• End-of-life experiences should be of a greater ethical concern than others of similar intensity and duration, due to their position in the animal’s life.
• End-of-life welfare can have both internal importance to the animals and external ethical importance to human decision-makers.
• We should pay extra care to ensure that the conditions during transport and slaughter are as positive as possible.
of the oldest questions in philosophy and also form the heart of
Hideaki Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion
• End-of-life experiences should be of a greater ethical concern than others of similar intensity and duration, due to their position in the animal’s life.
• End-of-life welfare can have both internal importance to the animals and external ethical importance to human decision-makers.
• We should pay extra care to ensure that the conditions during transport and slaughter are as positive as possible.
of the oldest questions in philosophy and also form the heart of
Hideaki Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion
paradigm in “other minds” research by considering the representation of other people’s knowledge more basic than the attribution of belief. Unfortunately, they only discuss primates. In
this commentary, I argue that the representation of others’
knowledge is an evolutionary ancient trait, first appearing during
the Cambrian explosion.
The philosophical literature on modelling, rather than recognizing the diversity inherent to model-based science, has attempted to fit all of these diverse modelling purposes into a single narrow account of modelling, often only focusing on the analysis of a particular model.
Rather than providing an account of what scientific modelling practice is or should be, covering all the different ways scientists use the word ‘model’, I settle for something far less ambitious: a philosophical analysis of how models can explain real-world phenomena that is narrow in that it focuses on Evolutionary Game Theory (EGT) and broad in its analysis of the pluralistic ways highly abstract and mathematical EGT models can contribute to explanations.
Overly ambitious accounts have attempted to provide a philosophical account of scientific modelling that tended to be too narrow in their analysis of singular models or small set of models and too broad in their goal to generalize their conclusions over the whole set of scientific models and modelling practices – a feat that may, in fact, be impossible to achieve and resemble Icarus who flew too close to the sun.
1. If x morally ought to Φ, then x ought to Φ regardless of whether he cares to, regardless of whether Φing sastisfies any of his desires or furthers his interests.
2. If x morally ought to Φ, then x has a reason for Φing.
3. Therefore, if x morally ought to Φ, then x has a reason for Φing regardless of whether Φing serves his desires or furthers his interests.
4. But there is no sense to be made of such reasons.
5. Therefore, x is never under a moral obligation. (2001, p.42)
I argue that the Humean move to moral subjectivism by denying (1), is just moral nihilism in disguise, as categorical imperatives are a necessary part of morality. If Williams’ conception of morality allows that some agents simply do not have a reason not to torture children for fun, or worse ought to torture children, this is a prima-facie ground to reject calling such a conception morality at all. The relativistic conception of normative reasons is incompatible with the non-relative conception of moral reasons that is required for categorical imperatives. Employing both commits the Humean to a moral error theory. As Joyce (2016) points out, “[…] one’s reason to move a chess piece in a certain manner exists only in virtue of some human-decreed system of rules. But moral rules, according to Mackie (1977), have their reason-giving quality objectively; we do not treat them as norms of our invention, for to do so would rob them of their practical authority, which is, arguably, their whole point”, something Kant was right to fear as a result of Hume’s work.
This research program is often criticized as a sort of Panglossian adaptationism, i.e. assuming the adaptiveness of a trait without further evidence. Hence, I am concerned with the question of how evolutionary game theory models, which are often employed in such adaptationist theorizing serve as explanatory devices.
This paper is targeted at philosophers of science, researchers in biology and the social sciences and of course modellers themselves, arguing that research in all of these fields can be improved by increasing interdisciplinary relations.