Online research in philosophy

The entwined history of humans and elephants is fascinating but often sad. People have used elephants as beasts of burden and war machines, slaughtered them for their ivory, exterminated them as threats to people and ecosystems, turned them into objects of entertainment at circuses, employed them as both curiosities and conservation ambassadors in zoos, and deified and honored them in religious rites. How have such actions affected these pachyderms? What ethical and moral imperatives should humans follow to ensure that elephants (...) are treated with dignity and saved from extinction? In Elephants and Ethics, Christen Wemmer and Catherine A. Christen assemble an international cohort of experts to review the history of human-elephant relations, discuss current issues of vital concern to elephant welfare, and assess the prospects for the ethical coexistence of both species. Part I provides an overview of the vexatious human-elephant relationship, from the history of our interactions to understanding elephant intelligence and sense of self. It concludes with a discussion of the issues of stress, pain, and suffering as experienced by elephants in human care and the problems inherent in assessing these subjectively. The second part explores how humans use elephants as tools and entertainment. It reviews domestic uses in Asia, examines the history and roles of elephants in zoos and circuses, and discusses the methods and ethics of training and caring for captive elephants. In Part III the contributors examine the fragile and conflict-filled world of human-elephant interactions in the wild. Each chapter delves into a different angle of the "elephant problem" -- the all-too-human problem of our growing populations taking over space that was historically the domain of these pachyderms. The chapters explore attempts to tame and "train" elephants in populous areas, the struggle over balancing species preservation while maintaining biodiversity in protected areas, and the conundrums posed by hunting, tourism, and human-elephant competition on rural land. That the future health and survival of elephants is dependent on human actions is irrefutable. In addressing these issues from multiple perspectives, Elephants and Ethics promotes mutual understanding of the cultural, conservation, and economic difficulties at the root of the many troublesome human-elephant interactions and poses new questions about our responsibility toward these largest of land mammals. (shrink)

Research on the neurobiology and psychosocial features of Major Depressive Disorder has the ability to extend our understanding of affiliative behavior. In depression, decreased hedonic capacity and hypoactivity in dopaminergic and prefrontal circuitries may decrease the ability to experience affiliative relationships as rewarding. We suggest that neurobiological research on depression can provide a test case for theoretical models of affiliation.

According to the view I christen sharpism, when Joe says to his daughter in a perfectly ordinary context ‘The Earth is super-duper old’, his claim has an incredibly discriminating truth condition: although it’s true if the Earth is over 347,342,343 years, 2 days, and 17 nanoseconds old, if the Earth is even a nanosecond younger then his claim has some status other than “just plain true”—but we leave open what that new status might be: false, indeterminate, indeterminately indeterminate, meaningless, (...) just under 100% true, or whatnot. The material point is that the claim changes in truth status (“alethic status”) with a nanosecond change in the Earth’s age. The sharp cutoff might not be a cutoff separating the true from the false, but it is a sharp alethic cutoff nonetheless. It has this sensitive truth condition even though Joe has never made any relevant linguistic stipulations and doesn’t even know what a nanosecond is. Another example: when I say to a visiting speaker, ‘The auditorium where you’ll give your lecture is a short walk from here’, my claim is true if the auditorium is no more than 123 meters, 6 centimeters, and 16 nanometers away. Hence, if it turns out that we were 123 meters, 6 centimeters, and 17 nanometers away from the auditorium, my claim had some status other than true. (shrink)

How are we to make sense of this, especially from a moral point of view? Do we simply say, as some have, that if it’s technologically possible, then it’s morally permissible? Or that, since men have been fathering children at ever more advanced ages, women should be permitted to do the same thing? (We might christen this "The Tony Randall Argument," in honor of the seventy-seven year old actor who is a new father.) Or do we say that such (...) births are simply selfish acts that put the desires of the parents ahead of any consideration about the well-being of the children? Or do we see this as yet one more reflection of our society’s unrelenting quest for eternal youth? (shrink)

Zangwill's recent article offers a provocative and compelling account of the alleged deficiencies of the sociology of art. However, his main targets—christened, respectively, `production and skepticism' and `consumption skepticism'—are, in fact, only decontextualised and one-sided caricatures of the leading theories in this area. Zangwill has misrepresented some of the discipline's leading theorists including Bourdieu, Eagleton, Pollock and Wolff. His own `aesthetic' explanation of artistic acts appears, at first glance, attractive, not least for its repudiation of radical sociological reductionism. But it (...) turns out to be altogether too simplistic an alternative. Zangwill is a sociological `primitive' who understands adequately neither how society exists in the mind itself, nor, paradoxically, in artists' embodied sense of the right feel for the game. A less `enchanted' approach toartists' practices is required. This needs to stress both artists' role in the public sphere and also their specific interests in the artistic field. Key Words: sociology • art • aesthetics • canon • pleasure. (shrink)

Stem cell tourism is a growing industry in which patients pursue unproven stem cell therapies for a wide variety of illnesses and conditions. It is a challenging market to regulate due to a number of factors including its international, online, direct-to-consumer approach. Calls to provide education and information to patients, their families, physicians, and the general public about the risks associated with stem cell tourism are mounting. Initial studies examining the perceptions of patients who have pursued stem cell tourism indicate (...) many are highly critical of the research and regulatory systems in their home countries and believe them to be stagnant and unresponsive to patient needs. We suggest that educational material should include an explanation of the translational research process, in addition to other aspects of stem cell tourism, as one means to help promote greater understanding and, ideally, curb patient demand for unproven stem cell interventions. The material provided must stress that strong scientific research is required in order for therapies to be safe and have a greater chance at being effective. Through an analysis of educational material on stem cell tourism and translational stem cell research from patient groups and scientific societies, we describe essential elements that should be conveyed in educational material provided to patients. Although we support the broad dissemination of educational material on stem cell translational research, we also acknowledge that education may simply not be enough to engender patient and public trust in domestic research and regulatory systems. However, promoting patient autonomy by providing good quality information to patients so they can make better informed decisions is valuable in itself, irrespective of whether it serves as an effective deterrent of stem cell tourism. (shrink)

Section I of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is meant to lead us from our everyday conception of morality to the supreme principle of all moral action, officially christened the ‘categorical imperative’ some twenty Academy pages further into the treatise. It is quite striking that in this first section Kant dispenses with the notorious technical language that pervades not just other parts of the Groundwork but also most of the remaining philosophical writings of the critical period. The mere (...) fact that Groundwork I is comparatively accessible does not, of course, make it straightforward or uncontroversial. Kant's readers are faced with, amongst other things, four unconvincing paragraphs on the natural purpose of practical reason (G IV 394–6), a crucial change of topic from good volition to acting from duty (G IV 397), an unstated ‘first proposition’ about moral value that has baffled generations of interpreters (presumably G IV 397–9), and a contentious shift from an allegedly unproblematic principle of practical universalizability to a substantive moral command (G IV 402). (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is one of Alain Badiou’s principle philosophical enemies. Kant’s critical philosophy is anathema to Badiou not only because of the latter’s openly aired hatred of the motif of finitude so omnipresent in post-Kantian European intellectual traditions—Badiou blames Kant for inventing this motif—but also because of its idealism. For Badiou-the-materialist, as for any serious philosophical materialist writing in Kant’s wake, transcendental idealism must be dismantled and overcome. In his most recent works (especially 2006’s Logiques des mondes), Badiou attempts to (...) invent a non-Kantian notion of the transcendental, a notion compatible with the basic tenets of materialism. However, from 1988’s Being and Event up through the present, Badiou’s oeuvre contains indications that he hasn’t managed fully to purge the traces of Kantian transcendental idealism that arguably continue to haunt his system—with these traces clustering around a concept Badiou christens “counting-for-one” (compter-pour-un). The result is that, in the end, Kant’s shadow still falls over Badiouian philosophy—this is despite Badiou’s admirable, sophisticated, and instructive attempts to step out from under it—thus calling into question this philosophy’s self-proclaimed status as materialist through and through. (shrink)

The Direct Argument for the incompatibility of determinism and moral responsibility is so christened because this argument allegedly circumvents any appeal to the principle of alternate possibilities – a person is morally responsible for doing something only if he could have avoided doing it – to secure incompatibilism. In this paper, I first summarize Peter van Inwagen’s version of the Direct Argument. I then comment on David Widerker’s recent responses to the argument. Finally, I cast doubt on the argument by (...) constructing counterexamples to a rule of inference it invokes. (shrink)

Derrida's Specters of Marx asks whether and how we could inherit Marx today: whether we might find, in a certain spirit of Marx, the critical resources to challenge resurgent liberal ideals, without this challenge assuming a dogmatic or totalitarian form. Derrida's own response to this question involves a curious move: a material transformation of Marx's text, in which Derrida first foreshadows, and then carries out, the excision of a single sentence from the pivotal passage in which Marx christens the commodity (...) fetish. The excision subtly transforms the meaning of Marx's text and, in the process, acts out a vision of inheritance as an active, transformative performance, rather than as a passive transmission of inherited content to its heirs. In this paper, I explore the way in which Derrida foreshadows and then effects this curious elision. I highlight the distinctive understanding of transformative inheritance at the heart of Derrida's text, and also pose the question of why Derrida should effect this particular transformation in the search for a certain deconstructive spirit in Marx's work. (shrink)

Saul Kripke ’s book Naming and Necessity (which first appeared in 1972 as a paper within a volume on natural language semantics1) is felt, by many linguists and philosophers, as a milestone of the semantic analysis of natural language. Prior to it, many semanticists took for granted that the meaning of any expression must be a two-level matter, consisting of something of the kind of what Frege called Sinn and Bedeutung or what Carnap christened as intension and extension. The first (...) of the components is what the speaker knows when she understands the expression (and the knowledge of which is independent of any knowledge of facts external to the language in question), while the second amounts to some kind of chunk of the real world which gets denoted or referred to by the expression. Thus, the intension of the king of France is what you get to know as soon as you come to understand the phrase, and the extension is what (if anything) happens to be picked out by the intension in the actual world in the actual moment. This is to say that an expression gets to into the contact with its extension only via the intension (which we can imagine also as a kind of a criterion for picking up the thing). Intension, then, is what amounts to the meaning of the expression in the intuitive sense of the word2. Now Kripke’s considerations challenged this very two-level structure of meaning: he argued that especially proper names get their semantics via a direct, inmediated contact with the world – that their meaning does not mediate their contact with a thing, but directly is the thing. This may be not so surprising in case of proper names (after all, it is even disputable whether they can be counted to the language – for you cannot find them in dictionaries), but Kripke went on to argue that the same holds also for some other expressions, especially natural kind terms such as “cow” or “water”. Kripke’s argumentation is concise and flattening; and it has been provoking a lot of discussions.. (shrink)

In 1866 J.C. Maxwell thought he had discovered a Maxwellian demon—though not under that description, of course [1]. He thought that the temperature of a gas under gravity would vary inversely with the height of the column. From this he saw that it would then be possible to obtain energy for work from a cooling gas, a clear violation of Thompson’s statement of the second law of thermodynamics. This upsetting conclusion made him worry that “there remains as far as I (...) can see a collision between Dynamics and thermodynamics.” Later, he derived the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution law that made the temperature the same throughout the column. However, he continued to think about the relationship between dynamics and thermodynamics, and in 1867, he sent Tait a note with a puzzle for him to ponder. The puzzle was his famous “neat-fingered being” who could make a hot system hotter and a cold system colder without any work being done. Thompson in 1874 christened this being a “demon”; Maxwell unsuccessfully tried to rename it “valve.” However named, the demon’s point was to “show that the second law of thermodynamics has only a statistical validity.” Since that time a large physics literature has arisen that asks a question similar to that asked in theology, namely, does the devil exist? Beginning with Popper, philosophers examining the literature on Maxwell’s demon are typically surprised—even horrified [2,3,4,5,6,7]. As a philosopher speaking at a physics conference exactly 100 yrs after Popper’s birth, I want to explain why this is so. The organizers of this conference instructed me to offend everyone, believers and non-believers in demons. Thus my talk, apart from an agnostic middle section, contains a section offending those who believe they have exorcized the demon and a section offending those who summon demons. Throughout the central idea will be to clearly distinguish the various second laws and the various demons.. (shrink)

This article is devoted not only to Losev''sphilosophical works, but also to his fiction,which he created during 1930s and 1940s.Losev''s eight books of the 1920s (his``octateuch'''') combine into a single whole thatamounts to his philosophy of life and historydepicted in expressive images. At the same timeLosev''s ``octateuch'''' strikes one as having beenwritten at a single sitting and in a singlestyle, in a genre that can be identified as the``philosophical novel'''' having as much right asSpengler''s opus to be called an ``intellectualnovel.'''' (...) In his prose of the 1930s and 1940sLosev tries with artistic methods to resolvethe philosophical problems which he raised inhis works of the 1920s. Losev''s ``octateuch'''' andhis fiction are directed against thosecontemporary materialists who seek to embodyPlato''s Republic, whom he christens``soil-less nihilist idealist utopians.'''' All ofthis leads to the conclusion that Losev''sintellectual novel belongs to a definite andmore specific subgenre. It is undoubtedly ananti-utopia, full of the grotesque. In additionto its scientific and social orientation,Losev''s anti-utopia is also religious innature. Thus Losev not only depicts the realconsequences of utopian dreams, but also turnsto the ``life of the artist,'''' which is far fromany technological or social utopias but isfilled with another, no less terrifying ornihilistic utopia: that of the non-religiousexistence of the human person. Losev preservedhis anti-utopian and anti-nihilist viewsthrough his late period (1950s–1980s), despitethe care he took not to cross Sovietcensorship. Losev''s anti-utopia is the kind ofChristian realism to which he appealedthroughout his life. (shrink)

The first Lithuanians to be introduced to philosophy were young members of the gentry who studied in European universities at the end of the 14th century. The recently christened Lithuania strove to adopt Western culture and to present itself as a Western state. At the end of the 14th century, the Vilnius Cathedral School was founded. The elements of logic were probably taught there. The growth of the political and economic power of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania brought about the (...) need for higher education. The need was significantly increased by the growing activity of various religious orders. In 1507, the Dominicans started teaching philosophy and theology to their novices in Vilnius. They taught late medieval philosophy in its Thomistic interpretation. We can regard 1507 as the year Lithuania began to benefit from a new phenomenon, professional philosophy, with the Dominicans as its initiators. The Dominicans and later the Jesuits, Franciscans, Benedictines, Carmelites, Trinitarians, and other monastic orders enriched intellectual life in Lithuania by teaching philosophy in their schools. The most important event in the development of philosophy in Lithuania was the foundation of Vilnius University in 1579. The disciplines belonging to scholasticism of the second level were taught in its philosophy department. (shrink)