Many attempts have been made to capture the essence of manipulation in a definition, but all have arguably failed. Exploring an alternative strategy, this chapter provides an account of “manipulation” as a cluster concept. Roughly, cluster concepts are characterized by sets of criteria none of which is necessary for the applicability of the cluster concept term; the different subsets of criteria that instantiate the concept are characterized by “family resemblance,” and the more criteria an instance possesses, the closer it is to be prototypical of the concept. The chapter provides a set of ten criteria that participate in the constitution of “manipulation.” They are: intention (kind); intention (intensity); getting into the target’s head; exploiting psychological vulnerability; bypassing or subverting rational control; nontransparency; effect on the target; whether the influence is exercised for the sake of the influencer; making the target a pawn in the influencer’s grand plan; and low baseline expectation of influence. Chapter 2 claimed that the concept “manipulation” is diagnosed perceptually; this fits well with understanding “manipulation” as a cluster concept, since perception determines which combinations of criteria qualify as manipulation.

The chapter examines the legal challenges of rationality of automated decision-making through constitutional due process in the US, and via judicial review in the UK and Australia. The existing legal frameworks of these jurisdictions are premised on human decision-making and the concept of human rationality. Automated decisions that fail the test of rationality can be invalidated. Following this, the chapter will consider three main issues in terms of reviewability of the rationality of a decision: what is seen as constituting a “decision”, who is the decision-maker, and what factors and criteria can be used in making a decision.

This chapter examines how the history of science became a resource for the development and defense of important alternatives to logical empiricist views of scientific theory and the growth of scientific knowledge. The chapter also examines the different meanings attached to scientific paradigms in Thomas Kuhn’s account of scientific change and different notions of incommensurability implicated in his account. Like other postpositivist thinkers, Kuhn rejects the logical empiricist idea of separating observational and theoretical language, arguing instead that observation is theory-laden. The history of science plays an important but distinct role in Imre Lakatos’s methodology of scientific research programs, which aims to represent the rationality of scientific thought. The chapter concludes by examining Paul Feyerabend’s epistemological anarchism, which appears to cast doubt on the prospects for providing a systematic account of scientific rationality. Are Feyerabend’s views as extreme as their expression suggests, or is there another way to understand his provocations?

This chapter of the handbook posits utilitarianism as a standard of rational moral judgment. The author does not directly defend utilitarianism as a theory but investigates cases of apparent contradiction between people’s moral decisions (sometimes grounded in nonutilitarian principles) and the consequences of those decisions that they themselves would consider worse for themselves and everybody else. For example, when some people use a moral principle (e.g., bodily autonomy) to assertively make a decision (e.g., to not get vaccinated), it has negative moral consequences for others (e.g., infecting people) and for themselves (risking infection). The author asks whether such contradictions in moral reasoning can provide insights into some of the determinants of such reasoning. These insights, importantly, are valuable even for those who do not adopt utilitarianism as a normative model. From over a dozen candidate moral contradictions, the author concludes that many deviations from utilitarian considerations in moral contexts are reflections of familiar nonmoral cognitive biases, but some arise from adherence to strong moral rules or principles (e.g., protected or sacred values).

The Introduction reviews the widely shared understanding of Schopenhauer as an apolitical thinker. It then articulates the challenge to this view. Schopenhauer, this book argues, defined politics as the rational management of perpetual human strife. The Introduction lays out the two main steps for recovering the full scope of Schopenhauer’s political thought. First, his attitude to politics must be historically contextualized. Against the backdrop of his era and the political ideas of other thinkers, the individual profile and polemical significance of Schopenhauer’s conception of politics come into view more clearly. Second, his textually dispersed political ideas must be assembled into a recognizable whole. Many of Schopenhauer’s reflections on political skills, values, ideologies, and regimes can be found in sections that do not explicitly deal with politics, and his core conception of politics becomes visible through a series of contrasts between politics and religion, politics and morality, and politics and sociability.

A philosophical account of worship will answer at least two questions: the constitutive question of what worship is, and the normative question of what normative standards govern worship. The questions are related because what normative standards govern worship depends on whether worship consists primarily of some attitude or some action. This chapter briefly surveys the theoretical terrain of answers to these questions, with special attention to identifying the minimal conditions under which worship is fitting or supported by reasons.

The conclusion reviews Schopenhauer’s conception of politics as the management of human strife. For Schopenhauer, politics was both indispensable and insufficient: rational political coordination can prevent society from descending into a chaos of mutual aggression, but because rationality itself is limited and metaphysically subordinate, it cannot redeem a fundamentally broken world. Schopenhauer’s attitudes – a sincere sensitivity to human and animal suffering, an uncompromising commitment to frank philosophizing, but also a fearful antidemocratic and anti-emancipatory view of society – place him outside the major ideologies of the modern age, such as liberalism, libertarianism, progressivism, and conservatism.

Production rather than preferences should play the leading role in the theory of markets, as in the book’s analysis of volatility and policymaking. Production is not only the fount of social wealth, it is organized by firms whose decisions are guided by a clear ordering principle, their profitability. There is moreover an institution, the market, that can weed out the firms that fail to pursue profits effectively. But the purging of inefficiency by the market confronts policymakers with the dilemmas of Schumpeterian creative destruction. Policies that compensate firms and their owners for any declines in profitability will also dampen the threat of bankruptcy; the enforcement of productive efficiency can require unfettered competition. An application to international trade illustrates some of the challenges: For foreign competition to lead to productive efficiency, domestic prices must be aligned with world prices, which will push some firms into liquidation.

Individuals can rationally pursue their interests without the preferences and marginal utilities that have long taken center stage in economics. Economics without preferences lays out the microeconomics of individual behavior, markets, and welfare when agents cannot always come to judgment. Although economic theory has claimed that self-interest requires agents to form preferences, individuals can protect themselves from harm by refusing to trade options they cannot rank. Many of the anomalies uncovered by behavioral economics – from status quo bias to loss aversion – thus have a rationality design. The absence of preferences also resolves the puzzle that classical economic agents are almost never indifferent between options whereas real-world agents often are. When individuals cannot judge trade-offs, gaps appear between the marginal valuations of gains and losses. These gaps explain why market prices can be volatile and render orthodox efficiency criteria indecisive. Policymakers will no longer be able to pin down an optimal provision of public goods. Traditional schemes that try to harness preference information to compensate agents harmed by economic change will allow virtually any decision to qualify as efficient. Governments should instead spur productivity growth, the main benefit capitalism can deliver, while shielding agents from the price upheavals that result.