This text has been written for those who might wish to make social scientific inquiry into any form of knowledge. The central focus is on the major epistemological and methodolgical problems in the study of knowledge.

Approaches to programming ethical behavior for computer systems face challenges that are both technical and philosophical in nature. In response, an incrementalist account of machine ethics is developed: a successive adaptation of programmed constraints to new, morally relevant abilities in computers. This approach allows progress under conditions of limited knowledge in both ethics and computer systems engineering and suggests reasons that we can circumvent broader philosophical questions about computer intelligence and autonomy.

This paper takes as its starting point the problem of characterizing, in a precise way, situations in which two people collaborate to achieve a common goal. It is suggested that collaboration is normally based on an apparently paradoxical state of mind which I call “mutual intention”. Mutual intention is a concept belonging to the same family as Lewis's and Schiffer's “mutual knowledge”. These concepts have the paradoxical feature that they require, for their definition, an infinite series of propositions of (...) the form X knows p, where X is a single agent and p is a proposition. The source of these infinite series is traced, and it is shown that they can be represented in a plausible and enlightening way by means of a recursive notation. Finally, three applications of the concept of “mutual intention” are given: in the semantic analysis of certain sentences with plural subjects; in the analysis of agreement and related speech acts; and in the clarification of the phenomenon of “implicit agreement”. (shrink)

Habermas's transcendentalism in Knowledge and Human Interests ( KHI) deserves to be reappraised for a number of reasons. Prevailing conceptions of strong transcendental arguments, which inform many of his critics, cannot be sustained. The analytic reception of Kant suggests a more modest role for them that is remarkably similar to Habermas's claims for the paradigm of rational reconstruction. Hence a reinterpretation of transcendentalism provides a new basis for establishing a continuity between his early and later work. Habermas's underlying argument (...) structure owes much, albeit unconsciously, to Kant's concept of a regulative idea. Only the "as if" status of regulative ideas allows one to make sense of the metacritical structure of KHI and Habermas's transcendental arguments emerge as deeply hermeneutic in character rather than logical in any formal sense. (shrink)

The first step in education's long road to respectability lay in the ability of its proponents to demonstrate that it was worthy of collaborating with traditional disciplines in the syllabus of higher learning. The universities where the infant discipline of education was promoted benefited from scholars who engaged in teaching and research with enthusiasm and preached the gospel of scientific education. These schools-Teachers College/Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and Stanford University-gained a reputation as oases of pedagogical knowledge. Soon, (...) public and private colleges alike introduced professional academic programs for the preparation of teachers. Foremost among the subjects for these programs was education philosophy, with its long history and the impeccable credentials of its ancient and modern expositors. Although the principal focus of this study is the history of educational philosophy in colleges and universities, it also recognizes educational philosophy's antecedents. Chapters cover ancient roots, Christian educational theory, educational theory and the modern world, philosophy and education in early America, development of philosophies of education, disciplinary maturity for educational philosophy, and prospects. There is a bibliography and an index. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to explore how a social justice framework can help illuminate the role that consent should play in health and science policy. In the first section, we set the stage for our inquiry with the important case of Henrietta Lacks. Without her knowledge or consent, or that of her family, Mrs. Lacks’s cells gave rise to an enormous advance in biomedical science—the first immortal human cell line, or HeLa cells.

It is critical to remember details about meetings with healthcare providers. Forgetting could result in inadequate knowledge about ones' health, non-adherence with treatments, and poorer health outcomes. Hearing the health care provider plays a crucial role in consolidating information for recall. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has meant a rapid transition to videoconference-based medicine, here described as telehealth. When using telehealth speech must be filtered and compressed, and research has shown that degraded speech is more challenging to remember. Here we (...) present preliminary results from a study that compared memory for health information provided in-person to telehealth. The data collection for this study was stopped due to the pandemic, but the preliminary results are interesting because the pandemic forced a rapid transition to telehealth. To examine a potential memory deficit for health information provided through telehealth, we presented older and younger adults with instructions on how to use two medical devices. One set of instructions was presented in-person, and the other through telehealth. Participants were asked to recall the instructions immediately after the session, and again after a 1-week delay. Overall, the number of details recalled was significantly lower when instructions were provided by telehealth, both immediately after the session and after a 1-week delay. It is likely that a mix of technological and communication strategies by the healthcare provider could reduce this telehealth memory deficit. Given the rapid transition to telehealth due to COVID-19, highlighting this deficit and providing potential solutions are timely and of utmost importance. (shrink)

Is knowledge justified true belief? Most philosophers believe that the answer is clearly ‘no’, as demonstrated by Gettier cases. But Gettier cases don’t obviously refute the traditional view that knowledge is justified true belief (JTB). There are ways of resisting Gettier cases, at least one of which is partly successful. Nevertheless, when properly understood, Gettier cases point to a flaw in JTB, though it takes some work to appreciate just what it is. The nature of the flaw helps (...) us better understand the nature of knowledge and epistemic justification. I propose a crucial improvement to the traditional view, relying on an intuitive and independently plausible metaphysical distinction pertaining to the manifestation of intellectual powers, which supplements the traditional components of justification, truth and belief. (shrink)

This paper will examine some of the epistemological issues that emerge in the context of discussing the relationship between knowledge, control and power. These concerns raise questions about self-authenticating intuition and about who should control knowledge and how it should be disseminated. The importance of Plato as a key contributor to this debate will be discussed and it will be suggested that his writings provide a basic frame of reference for subsequent thinkers whose concerns also lie in (...) this area. The political importance of philosophy, the centrality of education, the use of language and the function of censorship are issues in Platonic epistemology that merit some discussion. The medieval views of Averroes, Maimonides and Aquinas will be examined for their contributions to the literature on this subject in the context of the respective theological frameworks, and something will be said about the implications of their conclusions for a theocratic society. Finally, I suggest that there is a need for a contemporary reappraisal of how an adequate balance between the individual's right to know and the socio-political implications of knowledge might be achieved. (shrink)

Historically, academic freedom is a concept aimed at resolving conflicts about the relationship between power and knowledge, politics and truth, action and thought by positing a sharp distinction between them, a distinction that has been difficult to maintain. This paper analyzes those tensions by looking at early statements of the founders of the American Association of University Professors , by exploring the paradoxes of disciplinary authority which at once guarantees and limits professorial autonomy, and by examining several cases (...) in which the question of the meaning of academic responsibility was in dispute. It argues that because the tensions are not susceptible to final resolution, the principle of academic freedom must be preserved in order to mediate them. (shrink)

What kind of relationship has modernity established between knowledge and power? What forms does such a relationship take in contemporary society? Theattempt here is to enter into the merits of its new formulations, focusing attention on the degradation to which power and knowledge have been subjected. The essay also indicates a solution that does not consist in a return to the past or escape into the future, but in the possibility of viewing the present as an (...) opportunity for cultural emancipation. (shrink)

This book is part of that American phenomenon whereby senior or emeritus scholars turn away from their speciality to write something about the institutions they have lived in all their lives, the u...

Conceptual knowledge inspires imagination. On the other hand, it is a claim to power as well. Multiple knowledge claims often, therefore, are engaged in a contest. This contest can take the form of several discourses. Extant power structures play a significant role in lending (or not lending) a voice to one or several such discourses. To one with the power to govern, knowledge claims flowing from abstract concepts generated in an elite discourse not only (...) inspires imagination but also often leads to ‘norms’ and ‘rules’ that drive governance in the system which leads to action. Norms and rules define actionability of the conceptual knowledge claim. However, for the one weighed by powerlessness in being governed, knowledge claims often get generated only in action, since an autonomous discourse is often lacking. Yet the sheer powerlessness of the authors of such knowledge claims generated in action leads to its non-celebration. It fails to get elevated. It might also wither away. Such actionable knowledge claims of the powerless often then gets manifested as something like an ‘unvoiced’ or an ‘unvoicable’ discourse, in macabre forms of subversion of ‘norms’ and ‘rules’ of the system that leads to a sense of failure in governance among those with power as well. Power, thus, brings actionable knowledge to the fore, but in two different forms. For the power-holder, it takes the form of a ‘deviation’ from norms and rules in the actionable domain through subversion by the powerless, revealing a gap between knowledge in the conceptual and actionable domain that is reluctantly (often tacitly) tolerated. For the powerless, on the other hand, actionable knowledge is living; negotiating on the ‘deviation’ is an existential requirement. This paper is an attempt to explore these dichotomies, how power (and the lack of it) alters the significance and implications of actionable knowledge. (shrink)

The relation between virtue and knowledge is at the heart of the Socratic view of human excellence, but it also points to a central puzzle of the Platonic dialogues: Can Socrates be serious in his claims that human excellence is constituted by one virtue, that vice is merely the result of ignorance, and that the correct response to crime is therefore not punishment but education? Or are these assertions mere rhetorical ploys by a notoriously complex thinker? Lorraine Smith Pangle (...) traces the argument for the primacy of virtue and the power of knowledge throughout the five dialogues that feature them most prominently—the _Apology, Gorgias, Protagoras, Meno,_ and _Laws_—and reveals the truth at the core of these seemingly strange claims. She argues that Socrates was more aware of the complex causes of human action and of the power of irrational passions than a cursory reading might suggest. Pangle’s perceptive analyses reveal that many of Socrates’s teachings in fact explore the factors that make it difficult for humans to be the rational creatures that he at first seems to claim. Also critical to Pangle’s reading is her emphasis on the political dimensions of the dialogues. Underlying many of the paradoxes, she shows, is a distinction between philosophic and civic virtue that is critical to understanding them. Ultimately, Pangle offers a radically unconventional way of reading Socrates’s views of human excellence: Virtue is not knowledge in any ordinary sense, but true virtue is nothing other than wisdom. (shrink)

© The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: [email protected] book engages with the established scholarly tradition in sociology related to the study of Islam. Such engagement is required to clear the ground to make possible access to the lived reality of Islam in the contemporary world. A large part of the book is author’s conversation with the tradition of scholarship around the study of Islam (...) in its global and local context. This conversation consists of critical appraisals, methodological questions and useful distinctions that must inform a sociological venture into examining the ‘Islamic ecumene’ in the context of history and present frames of globalism.The author admits that the field is continuously challenged in the global public sphere on account of the politicization of Islam-related themes. The author identifies the relations of religion... (shrink)

In this paper I appropriate the philosophical critique of Michel Foucault as it applies to the engagement of Western science and indigenous peoples in the context of biomedical research. The science of population genetics, specifically as pursued in the Human Genome Diversity Project, is the obvious example to illustrate the contraposition of modern science and ‘indigenous science’, the tendency to depreciate and marginalize indigenous knowledge systems, and the subsumption of indigenous moral preferences in the juridical armature of international human (...) rights law. I suggest that international bioethicists may learn from Foucault’s critique, specifically of the need for vigilance about the knowledge/power relation expressed by the contraposition of modern science and ‘indigeneity’. (shrink)

Power is everywhere. But what is it and how does it infuse personal and institutional relationships in higher education? Power, Knowledge and the Academy: The Institutional is Political takes a close-up and critical look at both the elusive and blatant workings and consequences of power in a range of everyday sites in universities. Chapters focus on specific locations in which power shapes personal and institutional knowledge including student-supervisor relationships, research teams, networking, the Research Assessment (...) Exercise in the UK, and literature reviews. (shrink)

Michel Foucault has become famous for a series of books that have permanently altered our understanding of many institutions of Western society. He analyzed mental institutions in the remarkable Madness and Civilization; hospitals in The Birth of the Clinic; prisons in Discipline and Punish; and schools and families in The History of Sexuality. But the general reader as well as the specialist is apt to miss the consistent purposes that lay behind these difficult individual studies, thus losing sight of the (...) broad social vision and political aims that unified them. Now, in this superb set of essays and interviews, Foucault has provided a much-needed guide to Foucault. These pieces, ranging over the entire spectrum of his concerns, enabled Foucault, in his most intimate and accessible voice, to interpret the conclusions of his research in each area and to demonstrate the contribution of each to the magnificent -- and terrifying -- portrait of society that he was patiently compiling. For, as Foucault shows, what he was always describing was the nature of power in society; not the conventional treatment of power that concentrates on powerful individuals and repressive institutions, but the much more pervasive and insidious mechanisms by which power "reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives" Foucault's investigations of prisons, schools, barracks, hospitals, factories, cities, lodgings, families, and other organized forms of social life are each a segment of one of the most astonishing intellectual enterprises of all time -- and, as this book proves, one which possesses profound implications for understanding the social control of our bodies and our minds. (shrink)

Whether an individual doctoral study or a large-scale multidisciplinary project, researchers working across cultures face particular challenges around power, identity, and voice, as they encounter ethical dilemmas which extend beyond the micro-level of the researcher-researched relationship. In using a cross-cultural perspective on how to conceptualise research problems, collect data, and disseminate findings in an ethical manner, they also engage with the geopolitics of academic writing, language inequalities, and knowledge construction within a globalised economy. It is increasingly recognised that (...) existing ethical codes and paradigms either do not sufficiently address such issues or tend to be rather restrictive and insensitive to multiple and complex cultural and contextual differences. This book extends our understanding of the ethical issues and dilemmas faced by researchers in comparative and international education. It asks what the relevance of postcolonial theory is for understanding research ethics in comparative and international education; whether Western ethical practices in qualitative social research are incompatible with cultures outside the West; how a ‘situated’ approach can be developed for exploring research ethics across cultures and institutions; and how ‘informed consent’ can be negotiated when the process appears to contradict community values and practices. In sharing experiences from a wide range of cultural and institutional contexts, the authors offer both theoretical resources and practical guidance for conducting research ethically across cultures. This book was originally published as a special issue of _Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education. _. (shrink)

John Henry gives a dramatic account of the background to Bacon's innovations and the sometimes unconventional sources for his ideas.

The link between liberty and knowledge is neither static nor simple. Until recently the mutual support between knowledge, science, democracy and emancipation was presupposed. Recently, however, the close relationship between democracy and knowledge has been viewed with skepticism. The growing societal reliance on specialized knowledge often appears to actually undermine democracy. Is it that we do not know enough, but that we know too much? What are the implications for the freedom of societies and their citizens? (...) Does knowledge help or heed them in unraveling the complexity of new challenges? This book systematically explores the shifting dynamics of knowledge production and the implications for the conditions and practices of freedom. It considers the growth of knowledge about knowledge and the impact of an evolving media. It argues for a revised understanding of the societal role of knowledge and presents the concept of 'knowledge societies' as a major resource for liberty. (shrink)

This article addresses two questions related to the discrimination of homosexuals in the British Armed Forces as illuminated in the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in the casesSmith and Grady v. the United KingdomandBeck, Copp and Bazeley v. the United Kingdom. First, how does the military organization obtain knowledge about its subjects? Two works by Michel Foucault concerning the thematic of confession—The Will to KnowledgeandAbout the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self: Two Lectures at Dartmouth—provide (...) a foundation for answering this question. Second, what happens when this knowledge obtained by the military organization comes into contact with the legal system? In relation to this question, Foucauldian theories of law are discussed, namely the so-called ‘expulsion thesis’ and ‘polyvalence theory’. It is argued that the production of knowledge in the context of these cases is intertwined with the technique of confession. However, the confession does not only operate at the level of the military organization but also as an internal practice of the individual. When this knowledge then encounters the legal system, it appears that the law puts up a certain resistance towards other forms of power, e.g. disciplinary power. It is argued that this resistance is due to the law’s ‘strategic openness’, i.e. the possibility to harness the law to different strategic purposes, due to which law can never be fully subordinated by external powers. (shrink)

A major figure in British political history, Francis Bacon is also one of the great names in the history of science.

This paper provides a detailed discussion of the questions relating to the role of the researcher in relation to the researched when the researcher and the researched are both of Muslim origin. Issues relating to questions of objectivity, transparency, bias and interpretation are elaborated upon as part of the analysis of impacts and outcomes in relation to methodological process. It is argued that, ultimately, the subjective positions of researcher and researched are less important than the objective nature of the research (...) process. The intention of this paper is to convey, to other Muslim and non-Muslim social researchers engaged in research on Islam and Muslims, how to avoid or identify the range of risks and pitfalls that may emerge in operationalising and evaluating social research in a highly charged political, cultural and social research arena. (shrink)

Structural Injustice advances a theory of what structural injustice is and how it works. Powers and Faden present both a philosophically powerful, integrated theory about human rights violations and structural unfairness, alongside practical insights into how to improve them.

In bioethics, discussions of justice have tended to focus on questions of fairness in access to health care: is there a right to medical treatment, and how should priorities be set when medical resources are scarce. But health care is only one of many factors that determine the extent to which people live healthy lives, and fairness is not the only consideration in determining whether a health policy is just. In this pathbreaking book, senior bioethicists Powers and Faden confront foundational (...) issues about health and justice. How much inequality in health can a just society tolerate. The audience for the book is scholars and students of bioethics and moral and political philosophy, as well as anyone interested in public health and health policy. (shrink)

This paper offers a critique of ‘powerful knowledge’ – a concept in Education Studies that has been presented as a just basis for school curricula. Powerful knowledge is disciplinary knowledge produced and refined through a process of ‘specialisation’ that usually occurs in universities. Drawing on postcolonial, decolonial and Indigenous studies, we show how powerful knowledge seems to focus on the progressive impulse of modernity while overlooking the ruination of colonial racism. We call on scholars and practitioners (...) working with the powerful knowledge framework to address more fully the hegemonic relations of disciplinary specialisation and its historical connections to colonial-modernity. This, we argue, would enable curriculum knowledge that is ‘powerful’ in its interrogation of racial violence, rather than in its epistemic reproduction of it. (shrink)

It is often said that knowledge is power, but more often than not relevant knowledge is not used when political decisions are made. This book examines how political decisions relate to scientific knowledge and what factors determine the success of scientific research in influencing policy. The authors take a comparative and historical perspective and refer to well-known theoretical frameworks, but the focus of the book is on three case studies: the discourse of racism, Keynesianism, and climate (...) change. These cases cover a number of countries and different time periods. In all three the authors see a close link between 'knowledge producers' and political decision makers, but show that the effectiveness of the policies varies dramatically. This book will be of interest to scientists, decision makers and scholars alike. (shrink)

The map is not the territory - from ontology to epistemology in knowledge construction -- Dialectics: a mechanism of knowledge construction -- Reflectivity reconsidered -- Reflectivity and the researchers' perspective -- Reflectivity and the participants' perspective -- Ethical differences and similarities as sources of reflection and knowledge construction -- Research relations and power differentials: from resistance to collaboration and in-between -- Frames of reference and the control of knowledge -- Reciprocity: the nature and attributes of (...) research relations and power -- Epilogue: from dialectics to dialog across liminal spaces. (shrink)

ABSTRACT While Jeffrey Friedman’s Power Without Knowledge offers a welcome corrective to the technocratic statism that dominates modern politics, Wittgenstein’s view of language suggests that the problem of ideational heterogeneity is less worrisome than Friedman maintains. In addition, Friedman’s “exitocracy” is as epistemically demanding as ordinary technocracy and thus cannot provide an alternative to it. Anarchism, however, might provide a more consistent alternative to technocracy.

This book provides a comprehensive investigation into Hans Morgenthau's life and work. Identifying power, knowledge, and dissent as the fundamental principles that have informed his worldview, this book argues that Morgenthau's lasting contribution to the discipline of International Relations is the human condition of politics.

Should citizens have equal say regarding the running of society? Following the principles of democracy, and most of political philosophy: yes (at least at a fundamental level, thus allowing for representatives and the like). Indeed, comparing the main alternative seemingly supports this intuition. Epistocracy would instead give power just to the most epistemically competent. Yet testing citizens’ political and economic knowledge looks apt to disproportionately disempower marginalised groups, making the position seem like a nonstarter and democracy the clear (...) winner. Nevertheless, this paper argues against giving citizens equal say, or at least, it offers the strongest possible motivation for this position. In particular, I introduce the progressive case for epistocracy, and what I term standpoint epistocracy. This account refigures the relevant notion of political competence such that it is not the most privileged classes who would most likely constitute our epistocracy, but rather, the least. The resulting picture considerably improves on traditional versions of epistocracy and also democracy. (shrink)

'Post-truth', Oxford Dictionary's 2016 word of the year, appears to cover only the turn away from reason in contemporary politics. In fact the truth behind 'post-truth' is historically and philosophically more complex. As Fuller shows in this book, it reaches into the nature of knowledge itself.

There is currently intense interest in the question of the source of our presumed knowledge of truths concerning what is, or is not, metaphysically possible or necessary. Some philosophers locate this source in our capacities to conceive or imagine various actual or non-actual states of affairs, but this approach is open to certain familiar and seemingly powerful objections. A different and ostensibly more promising approach has been developed by Timothy Williamson, according to which our capacity for modal knowledge (...) is just an extension, or by-product, of our general capacity to acquire knowledge of true counterfactual conditionals — a capacity that we deploy ubiquitously in everyday life. Williamson’s account crucially involves a thesis to the effect that modal truths can be explained in terms of counterfactual truths. In this paper, I query Williamson’s account on a number of points, including this thesis. My positive proposal, which owes a debt to the work of Kit Fine on modality and essence, appeals instead to our capacity to grasp essences, understood in a neo-Aristotelian fashion, according to which essences are expressed by ‘real definitions’. (shrink)

In this article, we address the relevance of J.S. Mill’s political philosophy for a framework of public health ethics. In contrast to some readings of Mill, we reject the view that in the formulation of public policies liberties of all kinds enjoy an equal presumption in their favor. We argue that Mill also rejects this view and discuss the distinction that Mill makes between three kinds of liberty interests: interests that are immune from state interference; interests that enjoy a presumption (...) in favor of liberty; and interests that enjoy no such presumption. We argue that what is of focal importance for Mill in protecting liberty is captured by the essential role that the value of self-determination plays in human well-being. Finally, we make the case for the plausibility of a more complex and nuanced Millian framework for public health ethics that would modify how the balancing of some liberty and public health interests should proceed by taking the thumb off the liberty end of the scale. Mill’s arguments and the legacy of liberalism support certain forms of state interference with marketplace liberties for the sake of public health objectives without any presumption in favor of liberty. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss the power of corporations as epistemic agents. Corporations need to hold certain forms of knowledge in order to develop and produce goods and services. Intellectual property is meant to incentivize them to do so, in ways that orient their activities towards the public good. However, corporations often use their knowledge strategically, not only within markets, but also in the processes that set the rules for markets. I discuss various historical examples, including the (...) so-called “tobacco strategy” of creating doubt about scientific evidence, and argue that as long as corporations are set up as profit-oriented entities, it is a dangerous strategy to provide them with too much epistemic power. I suggest various policies for reigning in this form of corporate power, for example regulations on PR activities. I then turn to the power of digital corporations, which is based on their collection and analysis of data. These kinds of companies, and the technologies they use, make the control of corporations as epistemic agents all the more urgent for democratic societies. (shrink)

This paper is reprinted in the book Machine Ethics, eds. M. Anderson and S. Anderson, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Plato justifies the concentration and exercise of power for persons endowed with expertise in political governance. This article argues that this justification takes two distinctly different sets of arguments. The first is what I shall call his 'ideal political philosophy' described primarily in the Republic as rule by philosopher-kings wielding absolute authority over their subjects. Their authority stems solely from their comprehension of justice, from which they make political judgements on behalf of their city-state. I call the second set (...) of arguments Plato's 'practical political philosophy' underlying his later thought, where absolute rule by philosopher-kings is undermined by the impure character of all political knowledge. Whereas the complete comprehension of justice sanctions the absolute political power of those with this expertise, partial knowledge of justice disallows for such a large investment of power. Plato's practical political philosophy argues for a mixed theory of governance fusing the institutions of monarchy with democracy in the best practical city-state. Thus, Plato comes to realize the insurmountable difficulties of his ideal political thought, preferring a more practical political philosophy instead. (shrink)

Can computer systems ever be considered moral agents? This paper considers two factors that are explored in the recent philosophical literature. First, there are the important domains in which computers are allowed to act, made possible by their greater functional capacities. Second, there is the claim that these functional capacities appear to embody relevant human abilities, such as autonomy and responsibility. I argue that neither the first (Domain-Function) factor nor the second (Simulacrum) factor gets at the central issue in the (...) case for computer moral agency: whether they can have the kinds of intentional states that cause their decisions and actions. I give an account that builds on traditional action theory and allows us to conceive of computers as genuine moral agents in virtue of their own causally efficacious intentional states. These states can cause harm or benefit to moral patients, but do not depend on computer consciousness or intelligence. (shrink)

As a growing area of research, the philosophy of time is increasingly relevant to different areas of philosophy and even other disciplines. This book describes and evaluates the most important debates in philosophy of time, under several subject areas: metaphysics, epistemology, physics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, rationality, and art. -/- Questions this book investigates include: Can we know what time really is? Is time possible, especially given modern physics? Must there be time because we cannot think (...) without it? What do we experience of time? How might philosophy of time be relevant to understanding the mind-body relationship or evidence in cognitive science? Can the philosophy of time help us understand biases toward the future and the fear of death? How is time relevant to art – and is art relevant to philosophical debates about time? Finally, what exactly could time travel be? And could time travel satisfy emotions such as nostalgia and regret? -/- Through asking such questions, and showing how they might be best answered, the book demonstrates the importance philosophy of time has in contemporary thought. Each of the book’s 10 chapters begins with a helpful introduction and ends with study questions and an annotated list of further readings. This and a comprehensive bibliography at the end of the book prepare the reader to go further in their study of the philosophy of time. (shrink)

Beginning with the well-knowncyber-rape in LambdaMOO, I argue that it ispossible to have real moral wrongs in virtualcommunities. I then generalize the account toshow how it applies to interactions in gamingand discussion communities. My account issupported by a view of moral realism thatacknowledges entities like intentions andcausal properties of actions. Austin's speechact theory is used to show that real people canact in virtual communities in ways that bothestablish practices and moral expectations, andwarrant strong identifications betweenthemselves and their online identities. Rawls'conception (...) of a social practice is used toanalyze the nature of the wrong and thestage-setting aspect of engaging in a practice. (shrink)