The present essay examines the conflicting ontological assumptions that one can find behind the word dao in the texts of the Laozi and Zhuangzi and argues that the relative indifference to these texts toward whether or not dao has an ontic reality should not be considered a flaw of early Daoism. Rather, the historical process by which the term dao collects various possible ontological implications can be thought of as a philosophical stance in its own right. That is, if the (...) terms which one is obliged to use in discussing the immaterial necessarily hide, at least as much as they explain, the nature of Being, then it is a reasonable response to decline to ground one’s ethics in an ontology, and that while the resulting philosophy may not qualify as a fully-adumbrated system, this does not diminish its potential usefulness. (shrink)

The orthodoxy on the concept of ownership is given by Honoré's list of incidents. The idea this portrays is as ownership as a very flexible concept. The main purpose of this paper is to argue that the concept of property has much more integrity than the notion of a bundle of incidents may suggest. The Libertarian Challenge claims that redistributive theories of Justice, in so far as they impose involuntary taxes, are inconsistent with property rights, and are therefore unjustifiable. One (...) response to the libertarian challenge is to present alternative conceptions of ownership that are based on less than the complete list of incidents. These conceptions, we are told, avoid the inconsistency inherent in redistributive taxation by rejecting the incidents that are the source of the inconsistency, while retaining the moral appeal by leaving in place the core incidents and thus remaining faithful to what is primarily justifiable in property rights. Such an approach has been taken by several writers (notably, Waldron, Christman, and Fried). These different attempts to present a "truncated", "bifurcated", or "purist" concept of property invariably fail. Taxation must be an infringement of property. The upshot of this is that a justification of redistributive taxation requires a restriction of property or abandoning it altogether rather than redefining it. (shrink)

This new edition of one of Heidegger’s most important works features a revised and expanded translators’ introduction and an updated translation, as well as the first English versions of Heidegger’s draft of a portion of the text and of his later critique of his own lectures. Other new features include an afterword by Petra Jaeger, editor of the German text. “This revised edition of the translation of Heidegger’s 1935 lectures, with its inclusion of helpful new materials, superbly augments the excellent (...) translation provided in the first edition. The result is a richly rewarding volume, to be recommended to every student of Heidegger’s works, whether a novice or a long-time reader.”—Daniel Dahlstrom, Boston University. (shrink)

FN:s allmänna förklaring om de mänskliga rättigheterna innehåller en katalog över ett antal mänskliga fri- och rättigheter. I den här uppsatsen argumenterar jag för att det krävs en kvantifierad deontisk logik för att förstå den logiska formen hos flera av de normer som uttrycks i denna förklaring. Jag kommer att gå igenom ett antal argument som intuitivt är giltiga, men som inte kan bevisas i klassisk logik. Därefter kommer jag att visa hur dessa argument kan formaliseras och bevisas med hjälp (...) av kvantifierad deontisk logik. Diskussionen ger stöd åt uppfattningen att vi behöver en kvantifierad deontisk logik för att analysera många typer av normativa uttryck och kastar också förhoppningsvis nytt ljus över hur vissa centrala utsagor i FN:s allmänna förklaring bör tolkas och vilken logisk form de har. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 42.1 (2004) 110-112 [Access article in PDF] Terry Pinkard. German Philosophy, 1670-1860: The Legacy of Idealism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. x + 382. Cloth, $65.00. Paper, $23.00. In one respect, the story related in Terry Pinkard's new book on German idealism is a very old-fashioned one of the "from Kant to Hegel" sort, inasmuch as Hegel's system is here presented (...) as the logical culmination of a single movement of thought, initiated by Kant and carried forward, first by Fichte and then by Schelling; and post-Hegelian philosophy is interpreted as a desperate reaction to the apparent failure of the grand idealist project. In other respects, however, Pinkard offers a welcome variation on this familiar tale by including chapter on less familiar figures and by interpreting the idealist project in the context of some current philosophical concerns.A distinctive feature of this new history is its powerful narrative thrust. Pinkard organizes his tale around a single, central issue, which he calls the "Kantian paradox." The paradox in question is that of self-legislation or self-authorization, a paradox implicit in Kant's claim that one can be bound by laws of which one is also the free author. Though this paradox obviously pertains to Kant's moral philosophy, Pinkard shows that it also extends to the application of any rational norms whatsoever. Pinkard's object is to show how each of the thinkers he discusses responded to this "Kantian paradox," culminating in Hegel's alleged recognition that this paradox is "the basic problem that all post-Kantian philosophies had to solve" (226) and in his effort to provide an essentially social solution to the problem of reason's self-authorization.The book commences with a superb essay on "'Germany' and German Philosophy," examining the relation of "German philosophy" to "Germany" during the period in question, an essay that would be an ideal first assignment for any course on nineteenth-century philosophy. Each of the four major parts of the book begins with a similarly useful, short historical/contextual introduction.Part One is a brilliant summary of the Kantian revolution, not just in epistemology and metaphysics, but also in moral philosophy, aesthetics, and teleology. Without bogging down in unnecessary details or arcane scholarly disputes, Pinkard manages to provide a nuanced account of Kant's arguments and conclusions, emphasizing those tensions and problems in Kant's writings that occupied the attention of the philosophers who followed.Part Two is devoted to the pre-Hegelian "post-Kantians," not just Fichte and the early Schelling, but also Jacobi, Reinhold, Hölderlin, Novalis, Schleiermacher, Frederich Schlegel, and Fries. Pinkard's discussions of these lesser-known figures is welcome and illuminating. The same cannot, unfortunately, be said of his discussion of Fichte. Though the paradox of self-authorization is obviously a central Fichtean concern, Pinkard's account of the Wissenschaftslehre seriously distorts Fichte's project and accomplishments—beginning with Pinkard's failure to distinguish between the Wissenschaftslehre itself, as the name for a complete system of philosophy, and the 1794/95Foundations of the Entire Wissenschaftslehre, which is concerned only with the rudimentary foundations of the same. (This leads him to the mistaken view that Fichte's treatises on right and ethics are "revisions" of the Wissenschaftslehre, [End Page 110] rather than systematic branches of the same.) The account of the Foundations is itself skewed, inasmuch as it fails to take account of how Part III of this text provides a "practical" solution to the "theoretical" impasse of Parts I and II. Instead, Pinkard offers an interpretation of Fichte's early system that simply ignores the centrality thereto of willing and striving, makes no mention of the key role of productive imagination, and characterizes Fichtean intellectual intuition as "an insight into the necessary structure of things themselves" (110). Though Pinkard is aware that the overwhelming majority of Fichte scholars reject such an interpretation, he nevertheless advances it, claiming the right to "argue the opposite view." Unfortunately, he keeps his "argument" to himself... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to describe and defend the moving spotlight theory of time. I characterise the moving spotlight theory as the conjunction of two theses: permanentism, the thesis that everything exists forever, and the A-theory, the thesis that there is an absolute, objective present time. I begin in Sect. 2 by clearing up some common misconceptions about the moving spotlight theory, focusing on the discussion of the theory in Sider. In doing so, I also fill-out the barebones (...) picture of the moving spotlight theory as the conjunction of permanentism and the A-theory. In Sect. 3 I show how moving spotlighters can avoid the two common objections to their view, the McTaggartian argument that the view is contradictory, and the epistemic argument that the view implies that we should believe we are not located at the present moment. I conclude that the moving spotlight theory does not deserve its current relative unpopularity. (shrink)

In this article I discuss what I am calling “ally aesthetics.” I suggest a set of necessary, though not necessarily sufficient, considerations for the creation of successful instances of ally art. Focusing on three case studies, I propose some key characteristics of ally aesthetics, such as its contextual/temporal nature and how that relates to success and the importance of understanding the place of the ally aesthetic within the larger movements they are allying with.

Part I Introduction -/- Passion at a Distance (Don Howard) -/- Part II Philosophy, Methodology and History -/- Balancing Necessity and Fallibilism: Charles Sanders Peirce on the Status of Mathematics and its Intersection with the Inquiry into Nature (Ronald Anderson) -/- Newton’s Methodology (William Harper) -/- Whitehead’s Philosophy and Quantum Mechanics (QM): A Tribute to Abner Shimony (Shimon Malin) -/- Bohr and the Photon (John Stachel) -/- Part III Bell’s Theorem and Nonlocality A. Theory -/- Extending the Concept of an (...) “Element of Reality” to Work with Inefficient Detectors (Daniel M. Greenberger) -/- A General Proof of Nonlocality without Inequalities for Bipartite States (GianCarlo Ghirardi and Luca Marinatto) -/- On the Separability of Physical Systems (Jon P. Jarrett) -/- Bell Inequalities: Many Questions, a Few Answers (Nicolas Gisin) -/- B. Experiment -/- Do Experimental Violations of Bell Inequalities Require a Nonlocal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics? II: Analysis a la Bell (Edward S. Fry, Xinmei Qu, and Marlan O. Scully) -/- The Physics of 2 = 1 + 1 (Yanhua Shih) -/- Part IV Probability, Uncertainty, and Stochastic Modifications of Quantum Mechanics -/- Interpretations of Probability in Quantum Mechanics: A Case of “Experimental Metaphysics” (Geoffrey Hellman) -/- “No Information Without Disturbance”: Quantum Limitations of Measurement (Paul Busch) -/- How Stands Collapse II (Philip Pearle) -/- Is There a Relation Between the Breakdown of the Superposition Principle and an Indeterminacy in the Structure of the Einsteinian Space-Time? (Andor Frenkel) -/- Indistinguishability or Stochastic Dependence? (D. Costantini and U. Garibaldi) -/- Part V Relativity -/- Plane Geometry in Spacetime (N. David Mermin) -/- The Transient nows (Steven F. Savitt) -/- Quantum in Gravity? (Michael Horne) -/- A Proposed Test of the Local Causality of Spacetime (Adrian Kent) -/- Quantum Gravity Computers: On the Theory of Computation with Indefinite Causal Structure (Lucien Hardy) -/- “Definability,” “Conventionality,” and Simultaneity in Einstein–Minkowski Space-Time (Howard Stein) -/- Part VI Concluding Words -/- Bistro Banter: A Dialogue with Abner Shimony and Lee Smolin -/- Unfinished Work: A Bequest (Abner Shimony) -/- Bibliography of Abner Shimony. (shrink)

Claims pertaining to understanding are made in a variety of contexts and ways. As a result, few in the philosophical literature have made an attempt to precisely characterize the state that is y understanding x. This paper builds an account that does just that. The account is motivated by two main observations. First, understanding x is somehow related to being able to manipulate x. Second, understanding is a mental phenomenon, and so what manipulations are required to be an understander must (...) only be mental manipulations. Combining these two insights, the paper builds an account (URM) of understanding as a certain representational capacity—specifically, understanding x involves possessing a representation of x that could be manipulated in useful ways. By tying understanding to representation, the account correctly identifies that understanding is a fundamentally cognitive achievement. However, by also demanding that which representations count as understanding-conferring be determined by their practical effects, URM captures the insight that understanding is vitally connected to practice. URM is fully general, and can apply equally well to understanding states of affairs, understanding events, and even understanding people and works of art. The ultimate test of URM is its applicability in actual scientific and philosophical discourse. To that end the paper discusses the importance of understanding in the philosophy of science, psychology, and computer science. (shrink)

Clark has recently suggested that predictive processing advances a theory of neural function with the resources to put an ecumenical end to the “representation wars” of recent cognitive science. In this paper I defend and develop this suggestion. First, I broaden the representation wars to include three foundational challenges to representational cognitive science. Second, I articulate three features of predictive processing’s account of internal representation that distinguish it from more orthodox representationalist frameworks. Specifically, I argue that it posits a resemblance-based (...) representational architecture with organism-relative contents that functions in the service of pragmatic success, not veridical representation. Finally, I argue that internal representation so understood is either impervious to the three anti-representationalist challenges I outline or can actively embrace them. (shrink)

Predictive processing has recently been advanced as a global cognitive architecture for the brain. I argue that its commitments concerning the nature and format of cognitive representation are inadequate to account for two basic characteristics of conceptual thought: first, its generality—the fact that we can think and flexibly reason about phenomena at any level of spatial and temporal scale and abstraction; second, its rich compositionality—the specific way in which concepts productively combine to yield our thoughts. I consider two strategies for (...) avoiding these objections and I argue that both confront formidable challenges. (shrink)

The nonconsequentialist revival in tort theory has focused almost exclusively on one issue: showing that the rules governing compensation for acts reflect corrective justice rather than welfarist norms. The literature either is silent on what makes an act wrongful in the first place or suggests criteria that seem indistinguishable from some version of cost/benefit analysis. As a result, cost/benefit analysis is currently the only game in town for determining appropriate standards of conduct for socially useful but risky acts. This is (...) no small omission, and the failure of nonconsequentialists to acknowledge it or cure it can be traced to a number of recurring problems in the nonconsequentialist tort literature. Chief among them is the tendency to conflate prohibition and compensation, and to treat imposition of risk and imposition of harm as if they were distinct forms of conduct rather than the same conduct viewed from different temporal perspectives. (shrink)

Let us begin with what all of us here agree on: folk psychology is not immune to revision. It has a certain vulnerability in principle. Any particular part of it might be overthrown and replaced by some other doctrine. Yet we disagree about how likely it is that that vulnerability in principle will turn into the actual demise of large portions--or all--of folk psychology. I am of the view that folk psychology is here for the long haul, and for some (...) very good reasons. But I am not going to concentrate on that in my remarks. What nobody has bothered saying here yet, but is probably worth saying, is that for all of its blemishes, warts and perplexities, folk psychology is an extraordinarily powerful source of prediction. It is not just prodigiously powerful but remarkably easy for human beings to use. We are virtuoso exploiters of not so much a theory as a craft. That is, we might better call it a folk craft rather than a folk theory. The theory of folk psychology is the ideology about the craft, and there is lots of room, as anthropologists will remind us, for false ideology. (shrink)

Hybrid metaethical theories attempt to incorporate essential elements of expressivism and cognitivism, and thereby to accrue the benefits of both. Hybrid theories are often defended in part by appeals to slurs and other pejoratives, which have both expressive and cognitivist features. This paper takes far more seriously the analogy between pejoratives and moral predicates. It explains how pejoratives work, identifies the features that allow pejoratives to do that work, and models a theory of moral predicates on those features. The result (...) is an expressivist theory that, among other advantages, is immune to embedding difficulties and avoids an overlooked difficulty concerning attitude ascriptions that is lethal to most other hybrid theories. (shrink)

What is understanding? My goal in this paper is to lay out a new approach to this question and clarify how that approach deals with certain issues. The claim is that understanding is a matter of compressing information about the understood so that it can be mentally useful. On this account, understanding amounts to having a representational kernel and the ability to use it to generate the information one needs regarding the target phenomenon. I argue that this ambitious new account (...) can accommodate much of the data that has motivated theories of understanding in philosophy of science, and can also be generally applicable in epistemology and daily life as well. (shrink)

Functional localization has historically been one of the primary goals of neuroscience. There is still debate, however, about whether it is possible, and if so what kind of theories succeed at localization. I argue for a contextualist approach to localization. Most theorists assume that widespread contextual variability in function is fundamentally incompatible with functional decomposition in the brain, because contextualist accounts will fail to be generalizable and projectable. I argue that this assumption is misplaced. A properly articulated contextualism can ground (...) successful theories of localization even without positing completely generalizable accounts. Via a case study from perceptual neuroscience, I suggest that there is strong evidence for contextual variation in the function of perceptual brain areas. I then outline a version of contextualism that is empirically adequate with respect to this data, and claim that it can still distinguish brain areas from each other according to their functional properties. Finally, I claim that the view does not fail the norms for good theory in the way that anticontextualists suppose. It is true that, on a contextualist view, we will not have theories that are completely generalizable and predictive. We can, however, have successful partial generalizations that structure ongoing investigation and lead to novel functional insight, and this success is sufficient to ground the project of functional localization. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: Introduction 9 -- Postmodernism and the End of 'Humanism'? 19 -- Postmodern Ambiguities: -- Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire 34 -- In Postmodern Disorder: -- The Confused and Confusing World of The Hand that Signed the Paper 40 -- Ethics, the Literary Imagination, and the 'Other': The Hand that Ought, or was Imagined, to have Signed the Paper 47 -- Jew and Anti-Jew in Australian Fiction 58 -- Helen Garner's The First Stone: Ethical Confusions (...) and Contretemps 72 -- Antisemitism and Literature: Robert Manne's The Culture of Forgetting and Anthony Julius' T.S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form 83 -- Abraham Biderman, Daniel Goldhagen,and Telling It as It Was 96 -- Literary Studies as Ethics or Anarchy? 110 -- An Imbrication of Heteroglossic Discourses? Or Plain Speaking? 118 -- The Flowers that Bloom in the Spring, tra-la: Postcolonialism and Other Messiahs 127 -- Postcolonialism and the Exotic 135 -- Perpetually Moralists: Truth, Ethics and The Empire Writes Back 146 -- Towards a New Ethics 159 -- Conclusion 167 -- Index -- 176. (shrink)

Hybrid metaethical theories attempt to incorporate essential elements of expressivism and cognitivism, and thereby to accrue the benefits of both. Hybrid theories are often defended in part by appeals to slurs and other pejoratives, which have both expressive and cognitivist features. This paper takes far more seriously the analogy between pejoratives and moral predicates. It explains how pejoratives work, identifies the features that allow pejoratives to do that work, and models a theory of moral predicates on those features. The result (...) is an expressivist theory that, among other advantages, is immune to embedding difficulties and avoids an overlooked difficulty concerning attitude ascriptions that is lethal to most other hybrid theories. (shrink)

In “The Choice Theory of Contracts,” we explain contractual freedom and celebrate the plurality of contract types. Here, we reply to critics by refining choice theory and showing how it fits and shapes what we term the “Contract Canon”. I. Freedom. (1) Charles Fried challenges our account of Kantian autonomy, but his views, we show, largely converge with choice theory. (2) Nathan Oman argues for a commerce-enhancing account of autonomy. We counter that he arbitrarily slights noncommercial spheres central to (...) human interaction. (3) Yitzhak Benbaji suggests that choice theory’s commitment to autonomy is overly perfectionist. Happily, in response to Benbaji, we can cite with approval Charles Fried’s point that contract types are “enabling our liberties.” II. Choice. (4) Aditi Bagchi criticizes our inattention to impediments to choice. We show how choice theory’s commitments to both multiplicity and relational justice ameliorate these impediments. (5) Gregory Klass explores parol evidence to highlight the mechanisms of choice. We substantially concur with his position, and show how such mechanisms can ensure voluntariness, an essential element of choice. (6) Oren Bar-Gill and Clayton Gillette question the institutional capacity of existing legal actors to implement choice theory. Working from the example of cohabitation, we offer a somewhat more optimistic view. III. Contracts. (7) Peter Benson contends our focus on the rational slights the reasonable. Although we did not use this Rawlsian vocabulary, choice theory complies with its strictures — more so than transfer theory. (8) Daniel Markovits and Alan Schwartz claim provocatively that contract theory must: capitulate before pluralism (as they endorse); leverage it; or fall victim to a so-called “embracing” approach (their charge against us). We reject the charge that choice theory is foundationally value-pluralist. Instead, we cabin pluralism and put it to work. (9) The Contract Canon starts on the next big step for choice theory by explaining existing doctrine (rebutting Benson on lack of fit) and helping adjudicate contract practice (countering Markovits and Schwartz on the vices of our pluralism). Each Article in this Issue advances the field; each prompts us to refine choice theory — all steps, we hope, toward a more just and justified law of contract. (shrink)

To be human is to be in the world with others, and so what it means to be goes to the root of ethical and political life. One would have to be exceptionally obtuse not to recognize that this age, which we now share as a planetary humanity, is indeed in crisis, despite all our apparent progress if not because of it: the economic and political upheavals that threaten to throw whole regions into uproar, the shifts in climate that threaten (...) the entire globe with unparalleled disruption, the “advances” in technology that threaten to lay waste to entire cities and reduce human beings to “human resources.” Despite these ongoing or potential disasters, what Heidegger’s work challenges us to think is that the most fundamental disaster is a failure to think what it means to be human, that these other dangers can only be addressed if we confront this question first. My argument here is that Heidegger misreads a form of thinking vital to ethical–political life, phronêsis, so-called practical wisdom, because his radical historicism prevents him from seeing the intersection of principled norms with life as we find it. (shrink)

Debating Humanity explores sociological and philosophical efforts to delineate key features of humanity that identify us as members of the human species. After challenging the normative contradictions of contemporary posthumanism, this book goes back to the foundational debate on humanism between Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger in the 1940s and then re-assesses the implicit and explicit anthropological arguments put forward by seven leading postwar theorists: self-transcendence, adaptation, responsibility, language, strong evaluations, reflexivity and reproduction of life. Genuinely interdisciplinary and boldly argued, (...) Daniel Chernilo has crafted a novel philosophical sociology that defends a universalistic principle of humanity as vital to any adequate understanding of social life. (shrink)

Rawls's theory of justice has had two parallel lives in political theory. The first is framed as an alternative to utilitarianism, and in particular utilitarianism's failure to take seriously the separateness of persons and each individual's right to pursue his or her own projects in life. The second is framed as an alternative to libertarianism, and in particular libertarianism's failure to take seriously our moral obligations to the well‐being of our fellow citizens. This chapter explores where and why Rawls's “justice (...) as fairness” and libertarianism come apart. It focuses on their respective treatments of the just distribution of wealth. Finally, in the real world one would have to worry about the strains of commitment not just for those who want to defect from “justice as fairness” once they see how things turn out for them, but also from those who never accept its normative vision. (shrink)

In the first book-length study of American philosophy at the turn of the century, Daniel J. Wilson traces the formation of philosophy as an academic discipline. Wilson shows how the rise of the natural and physical sciences at the end of the nineteenth century precipitated a "crisis of confidence" among philosophers as to the role of their discipline. Deftly tracing the ways in which philosophers sought to incorporate scientific values and methods into their outlook and to redefine philosophy itself, (...) Wilson moves between close analysis of philosophical texts and consideration of professional careers of illustrative philosophers, such as Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and Josiah Royce. The author situates the emergence of professional philosophy in the context of the professionalization of American higher education and articulates, in the case of philosophy, the structures and values of a professional discipline. One of the most important consequences of this transformation was a new emphasis on communal theories of truth. Peirce, Dewey, and Royce all developed sophisticated and important theories of community as they were engaged in reshaping and redefining the limits of philosophy. This book will be of great importance for those interested in the history of philosophy, the rise of professions, and American intellectual and educational history, and to all those seeking to understand the contemporary revival of pragmatic thought and theories of community. (shrink)

A large body of research in political science claims that the way in which democratic citizens think about politics is motivationally biased by partisanship. Numerous critics argue that the evidence for this claim is better explained by theories in which party allegiances influence political cognition without motivating citizens to embrace biased beliefs. This article has three aims. First, I clarify this criticism, explain why common responses to it are unsuccessful, and argue that to make progress on this debate we need (...) a more developed theory of the connections between group attachments and motivated reasoning. Second, I develop such a theory. Drawing on research on coalitional psychology and the social functions of beliefs, I argue that partisanship unconsciously biases cognition by generating motivations to advocate for party interests, which transform individuals into partisan press secretaries. Finally, I argue that this theory offers a superior explanation of a wide range of relevant findings than purely non-motivational theories of political cognition. (shrink)

Background Our objective was to evaluate whether the description of a machine learning (ML) app or brain imaging technology to predict the onset of schizophrenia or alcohol use disorder (AUD) influences healthcare professionals’ judgments of stigma, empathy, and compassion. Methods We randomized healthcare professionals (N = 310) to one vignette about a person whose clinician seeks to predict schizophrenia or an AUD, using a ML app, brain imaging, or a psychosocial assessment. Participants used scales to measure their judgments of stigma, (...) empathy, and compassion. Results Participants randomized to the ML vignette endorsed less anger and more fear relative to the psychosocial vignette, and the brain imaging vignette elicited higher pity ratings. The brain imaging and ML vignettes evoked lower personal responsibility judgments compared to the psychosocial vignette. Physicians and nurses reported less empathy than clinical psychologists. Conclusions The use of predictive technologies may reinforce essentialist views about mental health and substance use that may increase specific aspects of stigma and reduce others. (shrink)

An anthology of works on the philosophy of economics, including classic texts and essays exploring specific branches and schools of economics. Completely revamped, this edition contains new selections, a revised introduction and a bibliography. The volume contains 26 chapters organized into five parts: Classic Discussions, Positivist and Popperian Views, Ideology and Normative Economics, Branches and Schools of Economics and Their Methodological Problems and New Directions in Economic Methodology. It includes crucial historical contributions by figures such as Mill, Marx, Weber, Robbins, (...) Knight, and Veblen and works by most of the leading contemporary figures writing on economic methodology, including five Nobel Laureates in Economics. (shrink)

Despite growing interest in risks of societal collapse due to anthropogenic climate change, there exists no consensus about how collapse should be understood. In this article, we critically examine existing definitions and argue that none adequately address the challenges for conceptualizing collapse that climate change presents. We therefore propose an alternative conception, which regards collapse as a reduction of collective capacity resulting in a pervasive and difficult-to-reverse loss of basic functionality. Our conception is dynamic in that it focuses on the (...) interrelations of constituent subsystems. It also distinguishes collapse from transformations needed to address climate change and provides insight into the relationship between collapse and sustainability. [Open access]. (shrink)

In this book, Daniel Cohen explores the connections between arguments and metaphors, most pronounced in philosophy because philosophical discourse is both thoroughly metaphorical and replete with argumentation. Cohen covers the nature of arguments, their modes and structures, and the principles of their evaluation, and addresses the nature of metaphors, their place in language and thought, and their connections to arguments, identifying and reconciling arguments' and metaphors' respective roles in philosophy.

Predictive processing and its apparent commitment to explaining cognition in terms of Bayesian inference over hierarchical generative models seems to flatly contradict the pragmatist conception of mind and experience. Against this, I argue that this appearance results from philosophical overlays at odd with the science itself, and that the two frameworks are in fact well-poised for mutually beneficial theoretical exchange. Specifically, I argue: first, that predictive processing illuminates pragmatism’s commitment to both the primacy of pragmatic coping in accounts of the (...) mind and the profound organism-relativity of experience; second, that this pragmatic, “narcissistic” character of prediction error minimization undermines its ability to explain the distinctive normativity of intentionality; and third, that predictive processing therefore mandates an extra-neural account of intentional content of exactly the sort that pragmatism’s communitarian vision of human thought can provide. (shrink)

The first major section of the Critique of Pure Reason, the Transcendental Aesthetic, is concerned with the nature of space and time, and with the nature of our representation of them. In interpretations of this part of the Critique, there is a very widespread tendency to present Kant’s discussion of space as attempting to establish that the representation of space is a condition for individuating or distinguishing objects, and that it is on this basis that Kant establishes the apriority of (...) this representation. I believe that this way of interpreting the Aesthetic is wholly misguided. The interpretive tendency I have in mind takes a number of different forms. On one approach, the role of space is to allow us to distinguish objects even if they are qualitatively identical. This represents Kant as making a certain kind of anti-Leibnizian point, one that concerns Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles. On another approach, space—or something closely analogous to space—is regarded as essential on account of its role in allowing us to re-identify objects over time. Interpretations of Kant that follow the second approach are largely inspired by Strawson’s discussions of these matters in chapter 2 of Individuals. (shrink)

Epistemologists have posed the following puzzle, known as the proof paradox: Why is it intuitively problematic for juries to convict on the basis of statistical evidence and yet intuitively unproblematic for juries to convict on the basis of far less reliable, non-statistical evidence? To answer this question, theorists have explained the exclusion of statistical evidence by arguing that legal proof requires certain epistemic features. In this paper, I make two contributions to the debate. First, I establish the Criminal Verdict Asymmetry, (...) a previously-unarticulated asymmetry between the epistemic norms of guilty and not guilty verdicts. I argue that the prosecution and defense’s different epistemic burdens influence whether statistical evidence can generate the type of verdict each side pursues. Second, I point out a mistake in how theorists have understood the role of statistical evidence in criminal trials. Though epistemologists have primarily focused on whether statistical evidence can generate specific epistemic features required for convictions, I consider whether statistical evidence can demonstrate a lack of such features. I find that there are epistemic advantages to allowing the defense to introduce statistical evidence which can reveal the prosecution’s failure to prove the defendant’s guilt. (shrink)

The psychological condition of being happy is best understood as a matter of a person's emotional condition. I elucidate the notion of an emotional condition by introducing two distinctions concerning affect, and argue that this “emotional state” view is probably superior on intuitive and substantive grounds to theories that identify happiness with pleasure or life satisfaction. Life satisfaction views, for example, appear to have deflationary consequences for happiness’ value. This would make happiness an unpromising candidate for the central element in (...) a theory of well-being, as it is in L. W. Sumner's work. Yet on an emotional state conception, happiness may prove to be a key constituent of well-being. the emotional state view also makes happiness less vulnerable to common doubts about the importance of happiness, and indicates that mood states are more important for well-being than is generally recognized.Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.Ernest Hemingway. (shrink)

Are human beings linked by a common nature, one that makes them see the world in the same moral way? Or are they fragmented by different cultural practices and values? These fundamental questions of our existence were debated in the Enlightenment by Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson. Daniel Carey provides an important new historical perspective on their discussion. At the same time, he explores the relationship between these founding arguments and contemporary disputes over cultural diversity and multiculturalism. Our own conflicting (...) positions today reflect long-standing differences that emerged during the Enlightenment. (shrink)

From dogs to gods, the science of understanding mysterious minds--including your own. Nothing seems more real than the minds of other people. When you consider what your boss is thinking or whether your spouse is happy, you are admitting them into the "mind club." It's easy to assume other humans can think and feel, but what about a cow, a computer, a corporation? What kinds of mind do they have? Daniel M. Wegner and Kurt Gray are award-winning psychologists who (...) have discovered that minds--while incredibly important--are a matter of perception. Their research opens a trove of new findings, with insights into human behavior that are fascinating, frightening and funny. The Mind Club explains why we love some animals and eat others, why people debate the existence of God so intensely, how good people can be so cruel, and why robots make such poor lovers. By investigating the mind perception of extraordinary targets--animals, machines, comatose people, god--Wegner and Gray explain what it means to have a mind, and why it matters so much. Fusing cutting-edge research and personal anecdotes, The Mind Club explores the moral dimensions of mind perception with wit and compassion, revealing the surprisingly simple basis for what compels us to love and hate, to harm and to protect. (shrink)

Classical liberalism stipulates that individuals may only reliably escape a state of war by joining a body politic whose unity is consolidated and preserved by the formation of a sovereign government. Frederick Douglass, through his own experience of slavery and then as a radical abolitionist critiquing the racialized laws and society of the United States, shows that there is an inherent scandal, a schism in the very idea of a body politic. This scandal cannot be overcome, but Douglass enacts a (...) treatment for it through a polemical ethic that endeavors to reconstruct political community, expansively and inclusively understood, by ever again bringing the ideal, as a regulative idea, into confrontation with the real. By putting Douglass and the historical situation of his time into dialogue with the natural law tradition of Aquinas, Locke, and the American Founding, this essay argues that Douglass’s thought and example provide a fresh way to address the crisis of liberal democracy in our time. This requires understanding the instability of the body politic as a source of strength rather than weakness, if properly confronted in a polemical ethics. (shrink)

In recent years, neuroscience has begun to transform itself into a “big data” enterprise with the importation of computational and statistical techniques from machine learning and informatics. In addition to their translational applications such as brain-computer interfaces and early diagnosis of neuropathology, these tools promise to advance new solutions to longstanding theoretical quandaries. Here I critically assess whether these promises will pay off, focusing on the application of multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to the problem of reverse inference. I argue that (...) MVPA does not inherently provide a new answer to classical worries about reverse inference, and that the method faces pervasive interpretive problems of its own. Further, the epistemic setting of MVPA and other decoding methods contributes to a potentially worrisome shift towards prediction and away from explanation in fundamental neuroscience. (shrink)

The expressivist advances a view about how we explain the meaning of a fragment of language, such as claims about what we morally ought to do. Critics evaluate expressivism on those terms. This is a serious mistake. We don’t just use that fragment of language in isolation. We make claims about what we morally, legally, rationally, and prudentially ought to do. To account for this linguistic phenomenon, the expressivist owes us an account not just of each fragment of language, but (...) of how they weave together into a broader tapestry. I argue that expressivists face a dilemma in doing so: either they fail to explain the univocality of terms like 'ought', or they fail to explain when normative statements are and aren't inconsistent. (shrink)

Business Ethics is designed to serve as a textbook for first year students of MBA and diploma students of management courses. The book provides a deep insight into the crucial role played by ethical choices in managerial decision making within an organization as well as the impact of such decisions on the world at large. Starting with a broad overview of the meaning and scope of ethics and the development of ethical thought, the book puts forward the applications of ethical (...) standards to business areas such as corporate governance, marketing and brand management, advertising, and finance. The discussion shifts to a more human level with the various issues of workplace ethics as well as consumer rights. Special focus is given to ethical choices related to the environment, cyber space and criminal intimidation. Contemporary issues like corporate code of ethics, political correctness and the role played by NPO and NGO in upholding moral values are discussed in detail. Finally, several open-ended issues like Intellectual Property. The book follows a debate-based approach where both for and against views are presented, followed by concept analysis and logical deductions. This approach is well aided with a number of caselets, case studies and end chapter review questions. This book will also serve as a useful reference for BBA faculty and professionals. (shrink)