Penn Journal of Philosophy: Volume 13, Issue 1

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  • Publication
    Negotiating Moral Luck
    (2018-04-27) Cody, Jack
    In this essay, I intend to elucidate Thomas Nagel's radical concept of moral luck and the unnerving philosophical paradox that inevitably arises when it is stripped to its essence: in pursuit of a method of fair moral assessment, we approach the possibility that nothing and no one can be aptly judged on moral grounds. I analyze some refutations to this troubling paradox, including Susan Wolf's promising rejection of the subcategory of consequential luck due to the existence of a proposed "nameless virtue." In light of these refutations and Nagel's and Bernard Williams' musings on moral luck, I aim to propose courses of action that can lead to a functional society despite the paradox entailing the idea that humanity has not place for accurate moral judgment. In doing so, I suggest that moral luck must, to an extent, be ignored, and that a practical approach to humanity would continue to make moral judgments despite being threatened with Nagel's sound declaration that this behavior is not logical.
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    Letter from the Editor
    (2018-04-27) Stein, Tamar
  • Publication
    Putin's Chosen People: THeories of Russian Jewish Policy, 2000-2017
    (2018-04-27) Parker, Benjamin
    Despite support from and for right-wing elements and a deep-seated national history of anti-Semitism, the policies of the Russian government under Vladimir Putin have been markedly devoid of anti-Semitism. Appeals to nationalist, imperialist, and Eurasianist ideologies, pragmatic politics, and foreign policy concerns fail to explain these policies adequately. The biography of Putin himself, which includes influential, positive relationships with Jews, provides a better explanation. The personalized influence of the president on Jewish policy suggests a personalized, hyper-centralized regime generally.
  • Publication
    Bitcoin: Bauble or Bullion?
    (2018-04-27) Tomasson, Kristjan
    The purpose of this paper is to examine in what ways capital-B Bitcoin, the system, and lower-b bitcoin, the unit of account, are or are not money. Bitcoin is the largest, by market capitalization, financial asset labeled "cryptocurrency" and the first decentralized digital currency. The paper canvasses the academic, business and technical literature to scrutinize the validity of this neologism's implied equivalency to money as a concept, system and artifact from historical, economic, political, teleological, theoretical and functional perspectives. The author(s) of Bitcoin invented blockchain, that is a shared, decentralized, time stamped, public ledger, to solve the problem of double spending. The risk of fraud, paying several counterparties with the same coin, was an intractable limitation on digital cash replacing paper money. The addition of blockchain to "proof of work" and advanced cryptography was a major advance in electronic cash systems. The combination of other features with this innovation, in particular a programmed steady growth and overall limit on supply, created in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that followed a potential challenger to fiat currencies. This paper tests Bitcoin's progress and prospects in credibly replacing sovereign currencies in theory and in practice. Our conclusion is that the replacement of fiat currencies by cryptocurrencies in the world economy is not imminent. However, the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies holds great promise for improving the security and efficiency of the global financial and monetary systems.
  • Publication
    In Defense of Milgram Experiments
    (2018-04-27) Chernew, Adam
    In the early 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of studies at Yale University in which he measured the willingness of subjects to obey an authority figure (the experimenter) who instructed them to administer electrical shocks to a confederate under the guise that the experiment was testing the effects of punishment on learning. Although the electrical shocks were fake, these famous obedience experiments are, to this day, recognized as some of the most controversial psychology experiments of all time. While Milgram's experiments yielded seemingly profound insight about human obedience to authority, many in his field were quick to criticize his work for violating research ethics. Over the past fifty years, not much has changed. The consensus amongst the philosophical community is still that Milgram's obedience experiments were largely unethical, and that his procedure would never be approved by an IRB today. This paper, however, challenges this popular notion. To do so, it reexamines the criticism of some of Milgram's sharpest detractors, namely Diana Baumrind, Steven Pattern, and Steve Clarke. In addressing these critiques, I incorporate both arguments that Milgram made in his own defense, as well as my own arguments. Ultimately, I show that none of the arguments accusing Milgram of harming his subjects purport definitive evidence that they subjects were actually considerably harmed.