Rational Moral Ignorance

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView

Pyroprocess Experiments at ENEA Laboratories

A new facility, known as Pyrel III, has been installed at ENEA laboratories for pyrochemical process studies under inactive conditions. It is a pilot plant which allows electrorening and electroreduction experiments to be conducted on simulated fuel. The main component of the plant is a zirconia crucible. The crucible is heated by a furnace which is supported in an externally water-cooled well under the oor of a steel glove-box, where an argon atmosphere is maintained by a continual purge of about 10 L·min-1. The vessel is loaded with LiCl-KCl eutectic salt (59-41 mol%) and is currently operated at 460 °C. Several improvements on Pyrel II (the previous operating plant) have been introduced into Pyrel III. They are described in detail, together with the results from the rst experimental campaign which used lanthanum metal.Moreover, studies about the treatment of chloride salt wastes from pyroprocesses have been conducted in parallel. They follow two main routes: on one hand, a matrix termed sodalite, a naturally occurring mineral containing chlorine, has been synthesized from a mix of nepheline, simulated exhausted salts and glass frit; on the other hand, a novel method proposed by Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) is under assessment. The nal waste forms have been fully characterized with the support of the Politechnique of Milan, by means of density measurements, thermal analysis, and stereomicroscopy observations, FTIR, XRD, and RAMAN spectra, as well as leach tests under static condition

Knowledge of Objective 'Oughts': Monotonicity and the New Miners Puzzle

In the classic Miners case, an agent subjectively ought to do what they know is objectively wrong. This case shows that the subjective and objective ‘oughts’ are somewhat independent. But there remains a powerful intuition that the guidance of objective ‘oughts’ is more authoritative—so long as we know what they tell us. We argue that this intuition must be given up in light of a monotonicity principle, which undercuts the rationale for saying that objective ‘oughts’ are an authoritative guide for agents and advisors

The Problem of Ethical Vagueness for Expressivism

Ethical vagueness has garnered little attention. This is rather surprising since many philosophers have remarked that the science of ethics lacks the precision that other fields of inquiry have. Of the few philosophers who have discussed ethical vagueness the majority have focused on the implications of vagueness for moral realism. Because the relevance of ethical vagueness for other metaethical positions has been underexplored, my aim in this paper is to investigate the ramifications of ethical vagueness for expressivism. Ultimately, I shall argue that expressivism does not have the resources to adequately account for ethical vagueness, while cognitivism does. This demonstrates an advantage that cognitivism holds over expressivis

Hard Cases of Comparison

In hard cases of comparison, people are faced with two options neither of which is conceived of as better, worse, or equally good compared to the other. Most philosophers claim that hard cases (1) can indeed be distinguished from cases in which two options are equally good, and (2) can be characterized by a failure of transitive reasoning. It is a much more controversial matter and at the heart of an ongoing debate, whether the options in hard cases of comparison should be interpreted as incomparable, on par, or roughly equal. So far, however, none of these claims and interpretations have been tested. This paper presents the first empirical investigation on hard cases, intransitive reasoning, and incomparability. Our results reveal that hard cases present real-world dilemmas in which a significant majority of people violate transitivity. After suggesting a way of operationalizing the notion of incomparability, we provide empirical evidence that the options in some hard cases are not considered to be incomparable. Theories of rough equality or parity seem to provide better interpretations of our results