Andras Szigeti | Linköping University (original) (raw)

Papers by Andras Szigeti

Journal of Applied Philosophy , 2019

The concept of exploitation and potentially exploitative real-world practices are the subject of ... more The concept of exploitation and potentially exploitative real-world practices are the subject of increasing philosophical attention. However, while philosophers have extensively debated what exploitation is and what makes it wrong, they have said surprisingly little about what might be required to remediate it. By asking how the consequences of exploitation should be addressed, this paper seeks to contribute to filling this gap. We raise two questions. First, what are the victims of exploitation owed by way of remediation? Second, who ought to remediate? Our answers to these questions are connected by the idea that exploitation cannot be fully remediated by redistributing the exploiter’s gain in order to repair or compensate the victim’s loss. This is because exploitation causes not only distributive but also relational harm. Therefore, redistributive measures are necessary but not sufficient for adequate remediation. Moreover, this relational focus highlights the fact that exploitative real-world practices commonly involve agents other than the exploiter who stand to benefit from the exploitation. Insofar as these third parties are implicated in the distributive and relational harms caused by exploitation, there is, we argue, good reason to assign part of the burden of remediation to them.

Journal of Social Philosophy, 2019

There is a growing philosophical interest in the concept of exploitation as well as in putatively... more There is a growing philosophical interest in the concept of exploitation as well as in putatively exploitative real-world practices. However, exploitation theory remains underdeveloped in an important way. Philosophers have mainly focused on cases where one party to a transaction or relationship, A, unduly takes advantage of another party, B, in order to secure a gain for him-/herself. At the same time, they have largely ignored cases where A takes advantage of B, but the gains A extracts from B accrue not (only) to A but (also) to a third party, C. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap. We distinguish between three different ways in which third parties can be involved in exploitative arrangements: (i) by non-culpably benefiting from exploitation; (ii) by culpably benefiting, without joint action; and (iii) culpably, through joint action with the exploiter. Drawing on joint action theory, we explore the relevance of this threefold distinction for the attribution of moral responsibility and blame to third parties, and defend it against potential objections. Then we argue that the distinction has important implications for the remedial duties of third-party beneficiaries of exploitation towards those who were exploited. We end by briefly highlighting the usefulness of our approach for ethical analyses of exploitative practices in the real world.

In the current paper, we present and discuss a series of experiments in which we investigated peo... more In the current paper, we present and discuss a series of experiments in which we investigated people's willingness to ascribe intentions, as well as blame and praise, to groups. The experiments draw upon the so-called " Knobe Effect ". Knobe (2003) found that the positiveness or negativeness of side-effects of actions influences people's assessment of whether those side-effects were brought about intentionally, and also that people are more willing to assign blame for negative side-effects of actions than they are to assign praise for positive side-effect of actions. Building upon this research, we found evidence that the positiveness or negativeness of side-effects of group actions influences people's willingness to attribute intentions to groups, (experiment 1a), and that people are more willing to assign blame to groups for negative side-effects of actions than they are to assign praise to groups for positive side-effects of actions (experiment 1b). We also found evidence (experiments 2a, 2b, 3 and 4) that the " Group Knobe Effect " persists even when intentions and blame/praise are attributed to groups non-distributively, indicating that people tend not to think of group intentions and group blame/praise in distributive terms. We conclude that the folk are collectivist about group intentions, and also about the blameworthiness and praiseworthiness of groups. 2

Dialectica, Mar 2015

It is sometimes said that certain hard moral choices constitute tragic moral dilemmas in which no... more It is sometimes said that certain hard moral choices constitute tragic moral dilemmas in which no available course of action is justifiable, and so the agent is blameworthy whatever she chooses. This paper criticizes a certain approach to the debate about moral dilemmas and considers the metaethical implications of the criticisms. The approach in question has been taken by many advocates as well as opponents of moral dilemmas who believe that analyzing the emotional response of the agent is the key to the debate about moral dilemmas. The metaethical position this approach is most naturally associated with is sentimentalism. Sentimentalists claim that evaluation, and in particular moral evaluation, crucially depends on human sentiment. This paper is not concerned with the question whether moral dilemmas exist, but rather with emotion-based arguments used on both sides of the debate. The first aim of the paper is to show that emotion-based arguments by friends or foes of moral dilemmas cannot garner support from sentimentalism. The second aim is to show that this constitutes a serious problem for sentimentalism.

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Mar 2015

If you have ever had to move house, you will know this: the worst part is the sofa. You cannot do... more If you have ever had to move house, you will know this: the worst part is the sofa. You cannot do it alone. Nor will it be enough for me to just lift one end waiting for you to lift the other. We will have to work together to get the job done. If spaces are tight, we will even have to find a practical solution to a tantalizing mathematical puzzle: the moving sofa problem.Joint actions like that are part and parcel of everyday life. But what exactly is special about acting together? After all, the actions of two strangers also depend on one another when one exits and the other enters through a revolving door, when they happen to walk side-by-side along a forest path, or when they exchange blows in a pub brawl.The problem is that two patterns of social behavior might look identical, even though one is a case of joint action and the other is not. There need not be an observable difference between the movements of old friends taking their morning constitutional together, on the one hand, a ...

The paper argues that group attitudes can be assessed in terms of standards of rationality and th... more The paper argues that group attitudes can be assessed in terms of standards of rationality and that group-level rationality need not be due to individual-level rationality. But it also argues that groups cannot be collective epistemic agents and are not collectively responsible for collective irrationality. I show that we do not need the concept of collective epistemic agency to explain how group-level irrationality can arise. Group-level irrationality arises because even rational individuals can fail to reason about how their attitudes will combine with those of others. In some cases they are morally responsible for this failure, in others they are not. Moreover, the argument for collective epistemic agency is incoherent because reasons-for-groups are ipso facto reasons-for-individual(s). Instead of talking about reasons-for-groups, we should therefore distinguish between self-regarding reasons and group-regarding reasons. Both kinds of reasons are reasons-for-individuals. These conceptual considerations in favour of moderate individualism are strengthened by an analysis of our moral practice of responding to collective shortfalls of rationality and by the unpalatable moral implications of collectivism about epistemic agency. There is no need to change the subject. Groups can be rational or irrational, but they do not reason.

Julie Zahle & Finn Collin (eds.): Rethinking the Individualism-Holism Debate, 2014

Collectives are more or less structured groups of human beings. Responsibility-collectivism is th... more Collectives are more or less structured groups of human beings. Responsibility-collectivism is the view that the moral responsibility of at least some such collectives is something over and above the combined moral responsibility of individual group members. This paper focuses on one of the key conditions of responsibility: the requirement of control. It is plausible that this requirement also applies to collective agents and so collective responsibility presupposes group-control. Responsibility-collectivists have often tried to unpack the idea of group-control as non-causal control. I argue that non-causal control is not an admissible basis for attributing responsibility. Only causal group-control is. This is because non-causal group control does not provide the right kind of information regarding the ancestry of a certain outcome. In the second half of the paper, I discuss the difficulties which arise for responsibility-collectivism if one understands group-control as causal group-control. One of these difficulties is whether causal group-control is consistent with ontological individualism. The second concerns the relationship of group-control and individual control. I argue that the first difficulty is manageable, but only at the price of having to accept a solution to the second difficulty which runs counter to the original aim of the responsibility-collectivist of characterizing irreducible collective responsibility as compatible with individual responsibility. Worse still, responsibility-collectivists may have to choose sides in other areas of social ontology as well. This further raises the price of this position.

The Journal of Value Inquiry, Mar 2014

Forgiveness is closely related to emotions. Bishop Butler’s “forswearing of resentment” is still ... more Forgiveness is closely related to emotions. Bishop Butler’s “forswearing of resentment” is still the definition most take as their point of departure. The negativity of this approach is striking. Can we say more about the positive features of forgiveness? This paper aims to contribute to such a “non-privative” characterization of forgiveness. I argue that we should take seriously the thought that forgiveness is a sui generis emotion type. Forgiveness may be classified as an emotion because it displays a sufficient number of the generic features by which we distinguish emotions from other mental attitudes and episodes. But forgiveness is also clearly distinguishable from other emotions in terms of its core evaluative concern, phenomenology and empirical characteristics. I also make a case for the claim that forgiveness is the positively valenced counterpart of resentment. The suggestion is that the relationship of resentment and forgiveness is similar to that between other emotions of opposite valence such as envy/admiration, thrill/fear, or lust/disgust. The overcoming of resentment, which is generally assumed to be distinctive about forgiveness, consists on this proposal in the reversal of resentment’s emotional valence.

A. Konzelmann Ziv and H.B. Schmid (eds.), Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents, Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality 2, 2013

Individualists hold that moral responsibility can be ascribed to single human beings only. An imp... more Individualists hold that moral responsibility can be ascribed to single human beings only. An important collectivist objection is that individualism is morally deficient because it leaves a normative residue. Without attributing responsibility to collectives there remains a “deficit in the accounting books” (Pettit). This collectivist strategy often uses judgment aggregation paradoxes to show that the collective can be responsible when no individual is. I argue that we do not need collectivism to handle such cases because the individualist analysis leaves no responsibility-deficit. Harm suffered in such situations can have only two sources. Harm is either due to culpable wrongdoing by individuals. Harm is then redressed by holding these individuals responsible. Or harm does not result from culpable wrongdoing. Such harm may have to be redressed too, but not because anyone is responsible for it. Therefore, the charge of moral insensitivity against individualist accounts can be rejected. Furthermore, in the last section of the chapter I will show that collectivist talk about moral responsibility can be used for ethically questionable purposes as well. Collectivists cannot claim the moral high ground.

In Eva Buddeberg & Achim Vesper (ed.): Moral und Sanktion, Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 291-315., Apr 2013

The paper offers a critique of sanctionism. According to this view, moral obligations are generat... more The paper offers a critique of sanctionism. According to this view, moral obligations are generated by the fear of sanctions. I argue that this view cannot capture the nature of important moral concepts and practices. I discuss in detail the practice of attributing moral responsibility to show this.

Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Oct 2012

Many believe that values are crucially dependent on emotions. This paper focuses on epistemic asp... more Many believe that values are crucially dependent on emotions. This paper focuses on epistemic aspects of the putative link between emotions and value by asking two related questions. First, how exactly are emotions supposed to latch onto or track values? And second, how well suited are emotions to detecting or learning about values? To answer the first question, the paper develops the heuristics-model of emotions. This approach models emotions as sui generis heuristics of value. The empirical plausibility of the heuristics-model is demonstrated using evidence from experimental psychology, evolutionary anthropology and neuroscience. The model is used then to answer the second question. If emotions are indeed heuristics of value, then it follows that emotions can be an important and useful source of information about value. However, emotions will not be epistemically superior in the sense of being the highest court of appeal for the justification of axiological beliefs (the latter view is referred to as the Epistemic Dependence Thesis, or EDT for short). The paper applies the heuristics-model to celebrated cases from the philosophy of emotions literature arguing that while the heuristics-model offers a good explanation of typical patterns of emotional reactions in such cases, advocates of EDT will have a hard time accounting for these patterns. The paper also shows that the conclusions drawn from special cases generalize. The paper ends by arguing that skepticism about the metaethical significance of emotions is compatible with a commitment to the importance of emotions in first-order normative ethics.

Philosophica, 2012

Peter Strawson defends the thesis that determinism is irrelevant to the justifiability of respons... more Peter Strawson defends the thesis that determinism is irrelevant to the justifiability of responsibility-attributions. In this paper, I want to examine various arguments advanced by Strawson in support of this thesis. These arguments all draw on the thought that the practice of responsibility is inescapable. My main focus is not so much the metaphysical details of Strawsonian compatibilism, but rather the more fundamental idea that x being inescapable may be reason for us to regard x as justified. I divide Strawsonian inescapability arguments into two basic types. According to arguments of the first type we cannot give up the practice. According to arguments of the second type we should not give up the practice. My reasons for revisiting these Strawsonian inescapability arguments are, first, to establish that these are different and to some extent conflicting arguments. Second, I hope to show that none of Strawson’s inescapability arguments are convincing. Third, I discuss the possibility that the practice of responsibility is inescapable in a different, more pessimistic sense than envisaged by Strawson. What may be inescapable under conceivable scenarios is the conflict of theoretical and practical considerations in the justification of the practice.

Economics and …, Jan 1, 2006

A. SAJÓ & R. UITZ (EDS.), Constitutional Topography: Values and Constitutions, ELEVEN INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING, 21-44., 2010

The theory and practice of constitutionalism is tightly interwoven with references and appeals to... more The theory and practice of constitutionalism is tightly interwoven with references and appeals to values. However, these references and appeals frequently remain undertheorized and are seldom connected directly to philosophical theories of value. This chapter will outline some ways in which such connections might be established.

A Responsible Europe?, edited by Hartmut Mayer and Henri Vogt. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2006):17-35., 2006

In order to provide an analytical foundation for this volume on the EU’s global role, my aim in t... more In order to provide an analytical foundation for this volume on the EU’s global role, my aim in this chapter is to outline a conceptual framework that enables us to assess institutional action in moral terms. It is hoped that this can help to understand what is normatively entailed by the more specific claims made in subsequent chapters about the EU as a responsible actor in international affairs.

Croatian journal of philosophy, 2005

A critical discussion of Philip Pettit's book "A Theory of Freedom": From the Psychology to the P... more A critical discussion of Philip Pettit's book "A Theory of Freedom": From the Psychology to the Politics of Agency, Oxford University Press 2001.

Books by Andras Szigeti

Thesis Chapters by Andras Szigeti

Drafts by Andras Szigeti

The well-known ‘Knobe effect’ reveals a surprising connection between the attribution of intentio... more The well-known ‘Knobe effect’ reveals a surprising connection between the attribution of intentions and moral cognition: the positiveness or negativeness of side effects of actions influences people’s assessment of whether those side effects were brought about intentionally. In this paper, we report the results extending the Knobe effect to group agents. The results reveal an asymmetry: participants are more willing to ascribe intentions – and blame – to group agents in the case of actions with negative side effects than they are to ascribe intentions – and praise – in the case of actions with positive side effects. We discuss implications for theoretical debates concerning group agency and responsibility.

Special Issues by Andras Szigeti

Preface In the last three or four decades philosophers have started to pay more attention to the ... more Preface In the last three or four decades philosophers have started to pay more attention to the ontology of groups and the circumstances under which it might be legitimate and fruitful to ascribe to groups such properties as agency, consciousness, responsibility and personhood.