Social Phenomenology offers an account of collective intentionality informed by the tradition of Husserlian phenomenology.

Our world can be a bewildering place. The sense of awe and wonder at the states of affairs in which we find ourselves immersed give rise to philosophical questions. Philosophical reflection is a critical attempt to come to grips with our place in the world and the various problems we encounter in respect to the complexities encountered in everyday life. In the most basic terms, phenomenology is the study of the structures and relations of phenomena. Phenomenology begins from a descriptive (...) analysis of our experiences of the world. It grants precedent to the first person perspective-how phenomena appear to consciousness. There are any number of problems related to the plenitude of kinds of experiences which confront us through the course of our lives, in addition to the structure of consciousness itself. This volume presents a variety of views on a number of the phenomena of our everyday lives, offering positions on such things from the nature of consciousness to the structures of religious or political experiences. Its appeal, however, should not be limited to philosophers alone-given that all persons can relate to the subject matter of the essays. For instance, one author asks, "what is friendship?" The present work may also be understood as a gesture toward bridging the division between the valuable insights of continental and analytic philosophical traditions. The authors include a combination of established academics, such as Jeffrey Wattles-the best-selling author of The Golden Rule-and young scholars from varied philosophical backgrounds. This collection is divided into four sections: (I) Foundational Elements of Experience; (II) The Experiencing Subject: What is it to be a Subject?; (III) Amongst Others: The Social World; and (IV) Social Objects and Institutions. Each section represents a level of experience, from the most basic structures of experience, to the subject's experience of the world and objects in it, to experiences and interactions with others, ending at the results of the codifications of certain social practices and beliefs. The sections treat their respective topics principally, even if they share material with other essays. Our experiences of the life-world, the world of human praxis, contain a multiplicity of elements; the divisions of this work are meant to demarcate various types of phenomena, not to offer any definitive thesis regarding a hierarchy or structure of relations. (shrink)

One of the more ambitious and yet fruitful attempts in recent years to untangle general questions about the nature of aesthetic phenomena and their socially constituted nature rests in Lambert Zuidervaart’s critical hermeneutical theory of artistic truth. In this paper, I explore one part of Zuidervaart’s project, namely his conception of “aesthetic validity as a horizon of imaginative cogency.” I seek to develop Zuidervaart’s conception by bringing his thesis into dialogue with phenomenological analyses of “horizon” and the collective intentional approach (...) to institutional and social objects. Zuidervaart relies primarily on Gadamer’s view of horizon, but does not offer very much by way of clarification as to exactly what a horizon is. Phenomenological analysis of horizon should serve to add content to the idea of horizon. I contend that the Husserlian notion is both more informative and has more utility for Zuidervaart’s project. (shrink)

In The Expanse, Naomi Nagata, the Roci's XO and engineering marvel, is a person caught between worlds, someone torn in multiple directions by the social situations she finds herself immersed in. Throughout the series, she embodies multiplicitous subjectivity. In Nemesis Games Naomi Nagata experiences the kind of inner conflict of the self that can occur in moving between worlds. Internal conflict illuminates the multiple worlds Naomi inhabits. Just as one can travel between Earth and Mars, “one can ‘travel’ between these (...) [social] ‘worlds.’” Unlike places such as Earth and Mars, with worlds in the social sense, “one can inhabit more than one of these ‘worlds’ at the very same time.” In framing spaces of meaning, the establishment of borders between worlds creates borderlands. (shrink)

The Analysis of Wonder is a stimulating and worthy introduction to the difficult and unique thought of Nicolai Hartmann. In this venue, the focus is upon criticisms of Cicovacki’s book. The opportunity to elicit further clarification and argumentation from Cicovacki should be fruitful. Hartmann’s philosophy is truly unique in nature and vast. As such, it is worth noting at the outset that, given the nature of Cicovacki’s book and a lack of deeper familiarity with Hartmann’s philosophy, the concerns raised herein (...) may very well be issues in Hartmann that Cicovacki is replicating. The criticisms addressed herein present five sets of worries related to The Analysis of Wonder. The first three may be relatively minor concerns having to do with what is meant by the rediscovery of the world; Cicovacki’s criticisms of post-modernism and existentialism; and Cicovacki’s use of Arendt as a way of framing Hartmann’s value to contemporary philosophy and beyond. The latter two sets of worries are more substantive. They involve Hartmann’s account of the importance of a loving attitude and Hartmann’s theory of personality. Again, these are presented in the spirit of an invitation to dialogue more about Hartmann, a figure who Cicovacki represents well in The Analysis of Wonder. (shrink)

The LEGO Movie provides more ways to think about the nature of autonomy and how others can either help or hinder one's development. At the beginning of The LEGO Movie, Emmet Brickowoski is an extreme case of someone who is not autonomous. Emmet is also contrasted with the Master Builders, who are autonomous, making decisions for themselves with confidence and gusto. When Emmet comes into his own as The Special, it is only with the help of others. Emmet begins his (...) development by convincing the Master Builders to follow his plan. Among them, only he has the capacity to really understand others' expectations in a way that will result in a successful plan to stop Lord Business's plot. Wyldstyle experiences a development similar to Emmet's. Her given name is Lucy, and she molds her personality to others' expectations. Wyldstyle's case examines what might be missing in the Master Builders. (shrink)

I endeavor to explore Farber’s work leading into the Foundation in order to construct an understanding both of his idiosyncratic interpretation of Husserl, and of what lead to Farber’s break with phenomenology. A great irony of Farber’s career may turn out to be that a scholar so deeply bothered by presuppositions and so committed a methodological pluralist may have discarded phenomenology because of his own philosophical commitments, a fact noted by Farber’s former student, Sang-Ki Kim. In an essay in Farber’s (...) memory, Kim questions whether Farber himself was subject to the limitations and prejudices inherent in his commitments to scientific Marxism and naturalism. Farber’s pervasive interests in naturalism are likely influenced, in part, by consideration for the cancer research of his brother, Sidney. This work will first examine Farber’s attitudes towards metaphysics and naturalism. Second, it will turn to an examination of his interests in logic – which largely prompted his interests in phenomenology. Farber’s methodological pluralism is driven in part by his understanding of logic and in part his other interests. Further disagreements with Husserl will be reappraised in the concluding section of the essay. (shrink)

This paper is a reply to Eric Chelstrom’s “Criticism of Cicovacki’s The Analysis of Wonder.” Chelstrom mostly critiques my reconstruction of the role of love and personality in Hartmann’s philosophy. I offer a defense of my interpretation by illuminating how Hartmann’s philosophical project differs from that of Kant. Although Hartmann does not sufficiently develop either his conception of love or his understanding of personality, I argue that both conceptions could be further elaborated and that they could serve (...) as the ways to reintroduce Hartmann into the mainstream of the current philosophical discussion. (shrink)

The Moral Foundations of Trust seeks to explain why people place their faith in strangers, and why doing so matters. Trust is a moral value that does not depend upon personal experience or on interacting with people in civic groups or informal socializing. Instead, we learn to trust from our parents, and trust is stable over long periods of time. Trust depends on an optimistic world view: the world is a good place and we can make it better. Trusting people (...) are more likely to give through charity and volunteering. Trusting societies are more likely to redistribute resources from the rich to the poor. Trust has been in decline in the United States for over 30 years. The roots of this decline are traceable to declining optimism and increasing economic inequality, which Uslaner supports by aggregate time series in the United States and cross-sectional data across market economies. (shrink)

I argue that to have an attitude is, primarily, (1.) to have a dispositional profile that matches, to an appropriate degree and in appropriate respects, a stereotype for that attitude, typically grounded in folk psychology, and secondarily, (2.) in some cases also to meet further stereotypical attitude-specific conditions. To have an attitude, on the account I will recommend here, is mainly a matter of being apt to interact with the world in patterns that ordinary people would regard as characteristic of (...) having that attitude. I contrast this view with alternative views that treat having an attitude as a matter of possessing some particular internally stored representational content or some other "deep" structural feature. (shrink)

" Dr. Cassell discusses the world of the sick, the healing connection and healer's battle, the role of omnipotence in the healer's art, illness and disease, and ...

If individuals possess robust rights over their own persons and legitimately acquired possessions does any action on the part of another person that has any physical effect on the right-holder or her property to which the right-holder has not consented violate those rights? If so, it seems that almost every ordinary exercise of one’s rights—e.g., starting one’s car up in one’s own driveway, emitting some smoke while grilling in one’s own backyard—violate the rights of one’s neighbors. To avoid this conclusion (...) must the libertarian theorist shift to a less robust understanding of rights? This chapter argues against the need for such a general attenuation of rights. Any sensible delineation of rights must leave moral elbow room for the exercise of those rights. So, a sensible delineation of rights will not construe the minor physical intrusions under consideration as moral boundary-crossings. (shrink)

Deontic Logic goes back to Ernst Mally’s 1926 work, Grundgesetze des Sollens: Elemente der Logik des Willens [Mally. E.: 1926, Grundgesetze des Sollens: Elemente der Logik des Willens, Leuschner & Lubensky, Graz], where he presented axioms for the notion ‘p ought to be the case’. Some difficulties were found in Mally’s axioms, and the field has much developed. Logic of Knowledge goes back to Hintikka’s work Knowledge and Belief [Hintikka, J.: 1962, Knowledge and Belief: An Introduction to the Logic of (...) the Two Notions, Cornell University Press] in which he proposed formal logics of knowledge and belief. This field has also developed quite a great deal and is now the subject of the TARK conferences. However, there has been relatively little work combining the two notions of knowledge (belief) with the notion of obligation. (See, however, [Lomuscio, A. and Sergot, M.: 2003, Studia Logica 75 63–92; Moore, R. C.: 1990, In J. F. Allen, J. Hendler and A. Tate (eds.), Readings in Planning, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, CA]) In this paper we point out that an agent’s obligations are often dependent on what the agent knows, and indeed one cannot reasonably be expected to respond to a problem if one is not aware of its existence. For instance, a doctor cannot be expected to treat a patient unless she is aware of the fact that he is sick, and this creates a secondary obligation on the patient or someone else to inform the doctor of his situation. In other words, many obligations are situation dependent, and only apply in the presence of the relevant information. Thus a case for combining Deontic Logic with the Logic of Knowledge is clear. We introduce the notion of knowledge based obligation and offer an S5, history based Kripke semantics to express this notion, as this semantics enables us to represent how information is transmitted among agents and how knowledge changes over time as a result of communications. We consider both the case of an absolute obligation (although dependent on information) as well as the (defeasible) notion of an obligation which may be over-ridden by more relevant information. For instance a physician who is about to inject a patient with drug d may find out that the patient is allergic to d and that she should use d′ instead. Dealing with the second kind of case requires a resort to non-monotonic reasoning and the notion of justified belief which is stronger than plain belief, but weaker than absolute knowledge in that it can be over-ridden. This notion of justified belief also creates a derived notion of default obligation where an agent has, as far as the agent knows, an obligation to do some action a. A dramatic application of this notion is our analysis of the Kitty Genovese case where, in 1964, a young woman was stabbed to death while 38 neighbours watched from their windows but did nothing. The reason was not indifference, but none of the neighbours had even a default obligation to act, even though, as a group, they did have an obligation to take some action to protect Kitty. (shrink)

Drawing from Benjamin's and Scholem's ideas on messianism, language, and divine justice, this book traces the intellectual exchange through the early decades of the twentieth century—from Berlin, Bern, and Munich in the throws of war and revolution to Scholem's departure for Palestine in 1923. It begins with a close reading of Benjamin's early writings and a study of Scholem's theological politics, followed by an examination of Benjamin's proposals on language and the influence these ideas had on Scholem's scholarship on Jewish (...) mysticism. From there the book turns to their ideas on divine justice—from Benjamin's critique of original sin and violence to Scholem's application of the categories to the prophets and Bolshevism. Metaphysics of the Profane is the first book to make this early period available to a wider audience, revealing the intricate structure of this early intellectual partnership on politics and theology. (shrink)

ABSTRACT There is a growing interest in various forms of naturalism in bioethics, but there is a clear need for further clarification. In an effort to address this situation, I present three epistemological stances: anti‐naturalism, strong naturalism, and moderate pragmatic naturalism. I argue that the dominant paradigm within philosophical ethics has been a form of anti‐naturalism mainly supported by a strong ‘is’ and ‘ought’ distinction. This fundamental epistemological commitment has contributed to the estrangement of academic philosophical ethics from major social (...) problems and explains partially why, in the early 1980s, ‘medicine saved the life of ethics’. Rejection of anti‐naturalism, however, is often associated with strong forms of naturalism that commit the naturalistic fallacy and threaten to reduce the normative dimensions of ethics to biological imperatives. This move is rightly dismissed as a pitfall since ethics is, in part, a struggle against the course of nature. Rejection of naturalism has drawbacks, however, such as detering bioethicists from acknowledging the implicit naturalistic epistemological commitments of bioethics. I argue that a moderate pragmatic form of naturalism represents an epistemological position that best embraces the tension of anti‐naturalism and strong naturalism: bioethics is neither disconnected from empirical knowledge nor subjugated to it. The discussion is based upon historical writings in philosophy and bioethics. (shrink)

Philosophy plays an integral role in French society, affecting its art, drama, politics, and culture. In this accessible, chronological survey, Matthews offers some explanations for the enduring popularity of the subject and traces the developments that French philosophy has taken in the twentieth century, from its roots in the thought of Descartes to key figures such as Bergson, Sartre, Marcel, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Derrida, and the recent French Feminists.

International media have reported cases of pregnant women who have had their children apprehended by social services, or who were incarcerated or forced into treatment programs based on a history of substance use or lack of adherence to addiction treatment programs. Public discourse on the biology of addiction has been criticized for generating stigma and a diminished perception of self-control in individuals with an addiction, potentially contributing to coercive approaches and criminalization of women who misuse substances during pregnancy. We explored (...) whether this is the case based on literature from social psychology, ethics, addiction research, science communication, and philosophy. The literature shows that the relationship between public discourse on biological aspects of addiction and issues such as stigma and perceptions of diminished self-control are unclear, largely due to the complexity of these phenomena. However, concerns about the biological approach are nevertheless legitimate given the broader social and policy context of women’s health. (shrink)

(2013). In the beginning was the doing: the premises of the practical syllogism. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 303-321.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Problems of Personal Identity Understanding the Persistence Question Accounts of Our Identity Through Time The Psychological Approach The Fission Problem The Problem of the Thinking Animal The Somatic Approach Conclusion.

Two proofs are given which show that if some set of truths fall under finitely many concepts (so-called Collectivity), then they all fall under at least one of them even if we do not know which one. Examples are given in which the result seems paradoxical. The first proof crucially involves Moorean propositions while the second is a reconstruction and generalization of a proof due to Humberstone free from any reference to such propositions. We survey a few solution routes including (...) Tennant-style restriction strategies. It is concluded that accepting Collectivity for some set of truths while also denying that any of the involved concepts in isolation capture all of them requires that one of these concepts cannot be closed under conjunction elimination. This is surprising since the paper surveys several applications in which Collectivity and the latter closure condition seemed jointly satisfiable for concepts of actual philosophical interest. (shrink)

Before the story can be told, however, some stage-setting is necessary. First, it is important to be clear about the most basic doctrines of Pre-established Harmony, Occasionalism, and Physical Influx. Physical Influx asserts intersubstantial causation amongst finite substances. For instance, when I appear to kick a ball, I really am the cause of the ball's motion. Pre-established Harmony denies intersubstantial causation, but affirms intrasubstantial causation. According to Pre-established Harmony, then, I am not the cause of the ball's motion, but rather (...) the ball is simply causing itself to move. Occasionalism, like Pre-established Harmony, denies intersubstantial causation, but, unlike Pre-established Harmony, it denies intrasubstantial causation as well. Occasionalism typically asserts that God alone, that is, an infinite substance, is the cause of all changes, and thus of the ball's motion. Though there are other ways of defining these causal theories, this way has the advantage that the causal theories form an exhaustive disjunction. (shrink)

Scientific modelling is a value-laden process: the decisions involved can seldom be made using 'scientific' criteria alone, but rather draw on social and ethical values. In this paper, we draw on a body of philosophical literature to analyze a COVID-19 vaccination model, presenting a case study of social and ethical value judgments in health-oriented modelling. This case study urges us to make value judgments in health-oriented models explicit and interpretable by non-experts and to invite public involvement in making them.

This volume presents a comprehensive analysis of the Confucian thinker Xunzi and his work, which shares the same name. It features a variety of disciplinary perspectives and offers divergent interpretations. The disagreements reveal that, as with any other classic, the Xunzi provides fertile ground for readers. It is a source from which they have drawn—and will continue to draw—different lessons. In more than 15 essays, the contributors examine Xunzi’s views on topics such as human nature, ritual, music, ethics, and politics. (...) They also look at his relations with other thinkers in early China and consider his influence in East Asian intellectual history. A number of important Chinese scholars in the Song dynasty sought to censor the Xunzi. They thought that it offered a heretical and impure version of Confuciansim. As a result, they directed study away from the Xunzi. This has diminished the popularity of the work. However, the essays presented here help to change this situation. They open the text’s riches to Western students and scholars. The book also highlights the substantial impact the Xunzi has had on thinkers throughout history, even on those who were critical of it. Overall, readers will gain new insights and a deeper understanding of this important, but often neglected, thinker. (shrink)

Whether firms can be said to be moral agents and to have the capacity for moral responsibility has significant practical consequences. In most legal systems in the world, business firms are recognized as persons with the ability to own property, to maintain and defend lawsuits, and to self-organize governance structures. To recognize that these business persons can also act morally or immorally as organizations, however, would justify the imposition of other legal constraints and normative expectations on organizations. In the criminal (...) law, for example, the idea that an organized firm may itself have criminal culpability is accepted in many countries (such as the United States) but rejected in others (such as Germany). This book collects new contributions by leading business scholars in business ethics, philosophy, and related disciplines to extend our understanding of the moral responsibility of firms. (shrink)

Although the periodic system of elements is central to the study of chemistry and has been influential in the development of quantum theory and quantum mechanics, its study has been largely neglected in philosophy of science. The present article is a detailed criticism of one notable exception, an attempt by Hettema and Kuipers to axiomatize the periodic table and to discuss the reduction of chemistry in this context.

The paradox of increase in an ancient argument purporting to show that nothing can grow by acquiring new parts. If it is sound, similar reasoning leads to the more general conclusion that nothing can ever change its parts. After discussing the implicationsof this principle, the paper lays out the paradox in a way that reveals the premises that figure in it. It emerges that the paradox has no easy solution, and can be resisted only by taking on one of five (...) serious metaphysical commitments. (shrink)

Richard Swinburne’s formulation of the argument from evil is representative of a pervasive way of understanding the challenge evil poses for theistic belief. But there is an error in Swinburne’s formulation : he fails to consider possible deontological constraints on God’s legitimate responses to evil. To demonstrate the error’s significance, I show that some important objections to Swinburne’s theodicy admit of a novel answer once we correct for Swinburne’s Lapse. While more is needed to show that the resultant “deontological theodicy” (...) succeeds, its promise highlights the significance of Swinburne’s Lapse and the prospects for theodicy it has obscured. (shrink)

The main task for philosophers is introducing, clarifying, articulating, or simply redirecting concepts as—to echo Quine’s poetic formulation— “devices for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.” I sometimes use “coining concepts” as shorthand for this task. When the concepts are quantitative they are part of a possible science ; when the concepts are qualitative they can be part of a possible philosophy. Of course, in practice, concepts are oft en stillborn, while others have multiple functions in fi (...) elds of inquiry that may straddle philosophy and science. In this chapter I argue that historians of philosophy must, among other things, coin concepts that disclose the near or distant past and create a shared horizon for our philosophical future. In virtue of our expertise we can often do so by drawing on previously orphaned concepts. The more narrow aim of this paper is to introduce two concepts, “Newton’s challenge to philosophy” and, especially, “philosophic prophecy,” that are suitable to philosophers who engage with texts in a scholarly fashion. I do so by re-telling the story of early analytical philosophy and its connection to the reception of Spinoza. By “Newton’s challenge to philosophy,” I mean the following: from about 1700 onward, “natural science” is increasingly taken to be authoritative in settling debates within philosophy; it is a concept that focuses attention on the authority of science and its various manifestations within philosophy. By “philosophic prophecy,” I mean the structured ways in which concept formation by philosophers can shape possible futures, including that of philosophy. In what follows, I first develop and characterize philosophic prophecy more precisely. In order to illuminate the concept, I contrast it with several related, more familiar concepts. Second, I offer brief critical comments on two alternative approaches to the history of philosophy promoted by Quentin Skinner and Michael Kremer in order to make more precise the approach favored here. Third, I offer a fresh narrative about the prehistory and origin of analytical philosophy. My story focuses on Ernest Nagel, who, I claim, is the philosophic prophet of analytical philosophy. Along the way, I explore the shared origins of analytical philosophy and analytical history of philosophy in the anti-Spinozistic writings of George Boole and Bertrand Russell. I oppose Nagel’s and Russell’s narratives in light of Moritz Schlick, the founder of the Vienna Circle. I adopt Schlick’s bold and unappreciated vision of the task of philosophy in scientific age. I focus on his identification of philosophical legislation with qualitative concepts. (shrink)

A critique of LaPorte's views on chemical kinds, like jade and ruby, is presented. More positively, a new slant is provided on the question of whether elements are natural kinds. This is carried out by appeal to the dual nature of elements, a topic that has been debated in the philosophy of chemistry but not in the natural kinds literature. It is claimed that the abstract notion of elements, as opposed to their being simple substances, is relevant to the Kripke–Putnam (...) approach to natural kinds and to some criticisms that have been raised against it, although I do not support the K–P account. The proposed view avoids the traditional microstructuralist approach to natural kinds. The article also addresses the question of whether natural kinds concern metaphysical or epistemological considerations. Recent attempts by chemists to modify the periodic table are brought to bear on the question of classification and consequently on whether the identification of elements is interest dependent. (shrink)

Offers a history of the philosophy of time and a comparison of the ways of conceiving the temporal, concentrating on European philosophy and its impact the connection between time and money in Western civilization.

This paper attempts to shed light on Kant’s notion of autonomy in his moral philosophy by considering the extent to which he presents a similar doctrine in his theoretical philosophy, where he strikingly claims (e.g., in the Prolegomena) that the understanding prescribes laws to nature. It argues that even though there are important points of difference between the cases of theoretical legislation of the laws of nature and autonomy in moral philosophy, their extensive parallels make a strong, even if not (...) definitive case in favor of the Prolegomena forming at least an important part of the explanation of the emergence of autonomy in the Groundwork. In addition, the comparison proves instructive insofar as it reveals deep structural parallels between Kant’s theoretical and practical philosophy regarding his conception of laws. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 6, Page 860-881, July 2022. This article aims to rewrite Emerson’s moral perfectionism – his anti-foundationalist pursuit of an always more perfect state of self and society – onto his moral and intellectual participation in the abolitionist movement. I argue that Cavell artificially separated Emerson’s moral perfectionism from his extensive, decades-long abolitionism. The source of Cavell’s oversight is his participation in the long-standing norm of dichotomizing Emerson’s work into the theoretical ‘essays’ and the (...) ‘anti-slavery writings’ or the philosophical and the polemical. Recent scholars of Emerson have questioned and even dismissed this dichotomy, however, while recentring Emerson’s politics in his oeuvre as a whole. They find much to praise, and also plenty to criticize, in Emerson’s abolitionist writings. I follow and extend that scholarly trend here and introduce what I call Emerson’s abolitionist perfectionism as an expansion of Cavell’s influential work on moral perfectionism. (shrink)

This chapter explores Nagel’s polemics. It shows these have a two-fold character: to defend liberal civilization against all kinds of enemies. And to defend what he calls ‘contextual naturalism.’ And the chapter shows that reinforce each other and undermine alternative political and philosophical programs. The chapter’s argument responds to an influential argument by George Reisch that Nagel’s professional stance represents a kind of disciplinary retreat from politics. In order to respond to Reisch the relationship between Nagel’s philosophy of science and (...) his politics is explored and this chapter shows how both are anchored in what Nagel once called his ‘contextual naturalism’—a metaphysics that resists imposing the unity of the world and treats all entities as embedded in a wider network of entities. Part of the argument traces out how Nagel’s views on responsible speech and professionalism reflect a distinct understanding of the political role of philosophers of science. (shrink)

The article disputes the recent claim featured in "Nature" magazine and many other science magazines to the effect that atomic orbitals have been observed for the first time. The claim is incorrect in view of the unconvincing nature of the evidence adduced and since atomic orbitals are deemed unobservable in principle by quantum mechanics. In addition, the possible educational drawbacks of this incorrect claim are discussed.

Can computers think? This book is intended to demonstrate that thinking, understanding, and intelligence are more than simply the execution of algorithms--that is, that machines cannot think. Written and edited by leaders in the fields of artificial intelligence and the philosophy of computing.

A brief overview of Classical Athenian views of persuasion.