Glossary

Negative responsibility is the idea, most forcefully articulated by Bernard Williams, that we are responsible not only for what we do but also for what we fail to prevent. In the context of the Survival Lottery, negative responsibility implies that if we refuse to kill one person to save t

The emotional straightjacket is a metaphor used by bell hooks to describe the cultural conditioning that forces men to suppress their emotions and conform to rigid patriarchal norms of masculinity, leading to isolation and disconnection.

Expected Utility Theory is a prescriptive model of decision-making under uncertainty, stating that a rational agent should choose the option that maximizes the 'expected value'—the weighted average of all possible outcomes' utilities, where the weights are the probabilities of those outcom

The Swampman thought experiment, proposed by philosopher Donald Davidson, is a philosophical puzzle about personal identity and meaning. It asks us to imagine a man (Davidson) who is vaporized by a lightning strike in a swamp. Simultaneously, an identical bolt creates a perfect, atom-for-a

Scapegoat Ethics refers to any moral or political framework that justifies the sacrifice, marginalization, or suffering of a minority group (or individual) to preserve the stability, happiness, or 'purity' of the majority. It is characterized by the belief that certain harms are 'necessary

The Omelas Dilemma is a thought experiment that asks whether the perfect happiness of a society is morally justified if it depends on the deliberate, extreme suffering of one innocent individual. It serves as a limit-case critique of utilitarianism, forcing a confrontation between collecti

In the context of the Omelas dilemma, the scapegoat mechanism is the structural requirement of a community to isolate all its potential suffering, guilt, and misfortune onto a single individual to ensure the flourishing of the collective. Unlike ritualistic scapegoating where guilt is proj

Daoist skepticism, as primarily articulated by figures like Zhuangzi, represents a radical philosophical stance that challenges the human tendency to impose rigid categories, definitive truths, and fixed distinctions upon a fluid and ever-changing reality. Unlike Western skepticism, which

Jean-Paul Sartre's famous declaration, "Hell is other people" (L'enfer, c'est les autres), from his play No Exit, signifies that the primary source of human suffering and alienation is the inescapable objectification we experience through the gaze of others. It refers to the constant threa

For Jean-Paul Sartre, shame is a fundamental existential emotion that arises not from a personal moral failing, but from the realization of one's object-hood in the eyes of another. It is the visceral experience of being fixed, defined, and judged by an external consciousness, stripping aw