This study discusses narcissism and problems of the self from the perspective of psychoanalysis. The contributors define the major differences between the interpersonal viewpoint and other schools of psychoanalysis in terms of both diagnosis and treatment.

Hopes for biasing the odds towards the development of AGI that is human-friendly depend on finding and employing ethical theories and practices that can be incorporated successfully in the construction; programming and/or developmental growth; education and mature life world of future AGI. Mainstream ethical theories are ill-adapted for this purpose because of their mono-logical decision procedures which aim at “Golden rule” style principles and judgments which are objective in the sense of being universal and absolute. A much more helpful framework (...) for ethics is provided by a dialogical approach using conflict resolution and negotiation methods; a “Rainbow rule” approach to diversity; and a notion of objectivity as emergent impartiality. This conflict resolution approach will also improve our chances in dealing with two other problems related to the “Friendly AI” problem; the difficulty of programming AI to be not merely smarter but genuinely wiser and the dilemmas that arise in considering whether AGIs will be Friendly to humans out of mere partisanship or out of genuine intent to promote the Good. While these issues are challenging; a strategy for pursuing and promoting research on them can be articulated and basic legislation and corporate policies can be adopted to encourage their development as part of the project of biasing the odds in favor of Friendly and Wise AGI. (shrink)

Three pivotal claims of Kant’s moral philosophy are that: the obliged agent’s will is some form of practical reason; the supreme principle of obligation is an a priori moral law which can in some way determine the agent’s choices; the obliged agent must be thought of as some kind of being with a will free in both a negative sense and a positive sense. The traditional explication of these takes Kant to be claiming that: the obliged agent’s will is pure (...) practical reason; the a priori moral law can determine the agent’s choice in a wholly a priori way; we must suppose the obliged agent is a noumenon. I shall call this the “pure, a priori, noumenal reading” or “PAN.” My aim here is to make out a case for taking Kant instead to claim that: the obliged agent’s will is empirical practical reason; the a priori moral law can determine the obliged agent’s will as applied in an a posteriori way and only as applied in that way; we must suppose the obliged agent is neither a phenomenal object nor a thing in itself but of a third ontological kind I shall refer to as a “subject.” I shall call this the “empirical, a posteriori, subject reading” or “EAS.” There is ample textual support for PAN but philosophically it is a radically unacceptable, because self-defeating, view. EAS is equally plausible as a reading of Kant’s texts and markedly superior philosophically. (shrink)

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How do we recognize distinct types of emotion in music?

This report highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012: 1. How should we demarcate perceptual learning from perceptual development? 2. What are the origins of multimodal associations? 3. Does our representation of time provide an amodal framework for multi-sensory integration? 4. What counts as cognitive penetration? 5. How can philosophers and psychologists most fruitfully collaborate?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: What counts as cognitive penetration?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How can philosophers and psychologists most fruitfully collaborate?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: How should we demarcate perceptual learning from perceptual development?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: Does our representation of time provide and amodal framework for multi-sensory integration?

This is an excerpt from a report that highlights and explores five questions which arose from the workshop on perceptual learning and perceptual recognition at the University of Toronto, Mississauga on May 10th and 11th, 2012. This excerpt explores the question: What are the origins of multimodal associations?

Isaiah Berlin was the greatest intellectual historian of the twentieth century. But his work also made an original and important contribution to moral and political philosophy and to liberal theory. In 1921, at the age of eleven, Isaiah Berlin arrived in England from Riga, Latvia. By the time he was thirty he was at the heart of British intellectual life. He has remained its commanding presence ever since, and few would dispute that he was one of Britain's greatest thinkers. His (...) reputation extends worldwide--as a great conversationalist, intellectual historian, and man of letters. He has been called the century's most inspired reader. Yet Berlin's contributions to thought--in particular to moral and political philosophy, and to liberal theory--are little understood, and surprisingly neglected by the academic world. In this book, they are shown to be animated by a single, powerful, subversive idea: value-pluralism which affirms the reality of a deep conflict between ultimate human values that reason cannot resolve. Though bracingly clear-headed, humane and realist, Berlin's value-pluralism runs against the dominant Western traditions, secular and religious, which avow an ultimate harmony of values. It supports a highly distinctive restatement of liberalism in Berlin's work--an agnostic liberalism, which is founded not on rational choice but on the radical choices we make when faced with intractable dilemmas. It is this new statement of liberalism, the central subject of John Gray's lively and lucid book, which gives the liberal intellectual tradition a new lease on life, a new source of life, and which comprises Berlin's central and enduring legacy. In a new introduction, Gray argues that, in a world in which human freedom has spread more slowly than democracy, Berlin's account of liberty and basic decency is more instructive and useful than ever. (shrink)

(2006). John Gray and the Political Theory of Modus Vivendi. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 9, The Political Theory of John Gray, pp. 155-169.

For virtually all the major schools of Western opinion, the collapse of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union, between 1989 and 1991, represents a triumph of Western values, ideas, and institutions. If, for triumphal conservatives, the events of late 1989 encompassed an endorsement of “democratic capitalism” that augured “the end of history,” for liberal and social democrats they could be understood as the repudiation by the peoples of the former Soviet bloc of Marxism-Leninism in all (...) its varieties, and the reemergence of a humanist socialism that was free of Bolshevik deformation. The structure of political and economic institutions appropriate to the transition from post-Communism in the Soviet bloc to genuine civil society was, accordingly, modeled on Western exemplars—the example of Anglo-American democratic capitalism, of Swedish social democracy, or of the German social market economy— or on various modish Western academic conceptions, long abandoned in the Soviet and post-Soviet worlds, such as market socialism. No prominent school of thought in the West doubted that the dissolution of Communist power was part of a process of Westernization in which contemporary Western ideas and institutions could and would successfully be exported to the former Communist societies. None questioned the idea that, somewhere in the repertoire of Western theory and practice, there was a model for conducting the transition from the bankrupt institutions of socialist central planning, incorporated into the structure of a totalitarian state, to market institutions and a liberal democratic state. Least of all did anyone question the desirability, or the possibility, of reconstituting economic and political institutions on Western models, in most parts of the former Soviet bloc. (shrink)

_Liberalisms_, a work first published in 1989, provides a coherent and comprehensive analytical guide to liberal thinking over the past century and considers the dominance of liberal thought in Anglo-American political philosophy over the past 20 years. John Gray assesses the work of all the major liberal political philosophers including J. S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, Karl Popper, F. A Hayek, John Rawls and Robert Nozick, and explores their mutual connections and differences.

A great philosopher will change the way you think about your life. For most of human history, religion provided a clear explanation of life and death. But in the late 19th and early 20th centuries new ideas -- from psychiatry to evolution to Communist -- seemed to suggest that our fate was now in our own hands. We would ourselves become God. This is the theme of a remarkable new book by one of the world's greatest lving philosophers. It is (...) a brilliant and frightening look at the problems and opportunities of a world coming to grips with humankind's now solitary, unaided place in the universe. Gray takes two major examples: the belief that the science-backed Communism of the new USSR could reshape the planet, and the belief among a group of Edwardian intellectuals -- popularized through mediums and automatic writing -- that there was a non-religious form of life after death. Gray presents an extraordinary cast of philosophers, journalists, politicians, charlatans and mass murderers, all of whom felt driven by a specifically scientific and modern world view. He raises a host of fascinating questions about what it means to be human. The implications of Gray's book will haunt its readers for the rest of their lives. (shrink)

(2006). John Gray: A Political Theorist Of and Against Our Times. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 9, The Political Theory of John Gray, pp. 113-115.

Why is the human imagination to blame for the worst crimes of the twentieth century? Why is progress a pernicious myth? Why is contemporary atheism just a hangover from Christian faith? John Gray, author of Straw Dogsand Black Mass, is one of the most original and iconoclastic thinkers of our time. In this pugnacious and brilliantly readable collection of essays from across his career, he smashes through humanity's most cherished beliefs to overturn our view of the world, and (...) our place in it. 'If humans are different from other animals it is chiefly in being governed by myths, which are not creations of the will but creatures of the imagination.' 'No traditional myth is as untruthful as the modern myth of progress. All prevailing philosophies embody the fiction that human life can be altered at will. Better aim for the impossible, they say, than submit to fate. Invariably, the result is a cult of human self-assertion that soon ends in farce.'. (shrink)

This book explores the work of John Gray, controversial and widely read contemporary philosopher. This comprehensive volume links a critique of Gray’s views on Marxism, humanism, and the Enlightenment—as well as his deep pessimism—with his position that attempts to tackle the core of issues like globalization and multiculturalism are hopelessly utopian. Challenging these and other assumptions in Gray’s work in a clear and accessible way, John Hoffman focuses his criticism on the philosopher’s traditionalist and problematic (...) conception of utopia in the modern world. (shrink)

Chapter one JS Mill and the future of liberalism If there is a consensus on the value of Mill's political writings, it is that we may turn to them for the ...

In this paper we open up the topic of ethical corporate identity: what we believe to be a new, as well as highly salient, field of inquiry for scholarship in ethics and corporate social responsibility. Taking as our starting point Balmer’s (in Balmer and Greyser, 2002) AC2ID test model of corporate identity – a pragmatic tool of identity management – we explore the specificities of an ethical form of corporate identity. We draw key insights from conceptualizations of corporate social responsibility (...) and stakeholder theory. We argue ethical identity potentially takes us beyond the personification of the corporation. Instead, ethical identity is seen to be formed relationally, between parties, within a community of business and social exchange. Extending the AC2ID test model, we suggest the management of ethical identity requires a more socially, dialogically embedded kind of corporate practice and greater levels of critical reflexivity. (shrink)

In this 2nd edition, John Gray adds an extensive postscript which defends the interpretation of Mill set out in the first edition, but develops radical criticisms of the substance of Millian and other liberalism.

The British bestseller Straw Dogs is an exciting, radical work of philosophy, which sets out to challenge our most cherished assumptions about what it means to be human. From Plato to Christianity, from the Enlightenment to Nietzsche and Marx, the Western tradition has been based on arrogant and erroneous beliefs about human beings and their place in the world. Philosophies such as liberalism and Marxism think of humankind as a species whose destiny is to transcend natural limits and conquer the (...) Earth. John Gray argues that this belief in human difference is a dangerous illusion and explores how the world and human life look once humanism has been finally abandoned. The result is an exhilarating, sometimes disturbing book that leads the reader to question our deepest-held beliefs. Will Self, in the New Statesman , called Straw Dogs his book of the year: “I read it once, I read it twice and took notes . . . I thought it that good.” “Nothing will get you thinking as much as this brilliant book” ( Sunday Telegraph ). (shrink)

The feasibility of reversing human aging within a matter of decades has traditionally been dismissed by all professional biogerontologists, on the grounds that not only is aging still poorly understood, but also many of those aspects that we do understand are not reversible by any current or foreseeable therapeutic regimen. This broad consensus has recently been challenged by the publication, by five respected experimentalists in diverse subfields of biogerontology together with three of the present authors, of an article (Ann NY (...) Acad Sci 959, 452–462) whose conclusion was that all the key components of mammalian aging are indeed amenable to substantial reversal (not merely retardation) in mice, with technology that has a reasonable prospect of being developed within about a decade. Translation of that panel of interventions to humans who are already alive, within a few decades thereafter, was deemed potentially feasible (though it was not claimed to be likely). If the prospect of controlling human aging within the foreseeable future cannot be categorically rejected, then it becomes a matter of personal significance to most people presently alive. Consequently, we suggest that serious public debate on this subject is now warranted, and we survey here several of the biological, social and political issues relating to it. BioEssays 24:667–676, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Spinoza: Moral Philosophy Like many European philosophers in the early modern period, Benedict de Spinoza developed a moral philosophy that fused the insights of ancient theories of virtue with a modern conception of humans, their place in nature, and their relationship to God. Unlike many other authors in this period, however, Spinoza was strongly … Continue reading Spinoza: Moral Philosophy →.

Philosophy is one of the most intimidating and difficult of disciplines, as any of its students can attest. This book is an important entry in a distinctive new series from Routledge: The Great Philosophers . Breaking down obstacles to understanding the ideas of history's greatest thinkers, these brief, accessible, and affordable volumes offer essential introductions to the great philosophers of the Western tradition from Plato to Wittgenstein. In just 64 pages, each author, a specialist on his subject, places the philosopher (...) and his ideas into historical perspective. Each volume explains, in simple terms, the basic concepts, enriching the narrative through the effective use of biographical detail. And instead of attempting to explain the philosopher's entire intellectual history, which can be daunting, this series takes one central theme in each philosopher's work, using it to unfold the philosopher's thoughts. (shrink)

In this book John Gray argues that we live in a time of endings for the ideologies that governed the modern period. The Enlightenment projects of universal emancipation animates all the political doctrines and movements that are central in contemporary western societies. Yet it does not reflect the reality of the plural world in which we live. The western cultural hegemony which the Enlightenment embodied is coming to a close. Western liberal societies are not precursors of a universal (...) civilization, but only one form of life among many in the late modern world. Our inherited stock of political ideas no longer tracks that world. The crisis of New Right thought is as profound as that of the Left. Green theorists and communitarian thinkers have not understood the deep diversity and intractable conflicts of contemporary societies. And postmodernists, whose thought is ruled by the dated utopias of the modern period, do not engage with the real conditions of the world's emerging postmodern societies. Late modern thought occurs in an interregnum between modern projects that are no longer credible and postmodern realities that many find intolerable. John Gray suggests that some Enlightenment hopes of progress must be extinguished if we are to learn to respect cultural diversity and accept ecological limits. Respect for the Earth and for other species and cultures means abandoning the utopian and arcadian projects that haunt modern thought. We should aim to moderate the impact of human activity on the Earth while alleviating the unavoidable evils of human life. Yet the hubris which treats the Earth as an instrument of human purposes, and which regards other cultures as approximations to a universal civilization, embodies ancient and powerful traditions. John Gray's aim is to question these traditions and thereby to prepare our thinking for a time of beginnings. (shrink)

In a series of important papers, G.A. Cohen has developed a forceful argument for the claim that workers are rendered unfree by capitalist institutions. His argument poses a powerful challenge to those who think that capitalist institutions best promote freedom. Yet, formidable as it is, Cohen's argument can be shown to be flawed at several crucial points. It is not one argument, but three at least, and one of the goals of my criticism of Cohen on this question is to (...) distinguish and assess the various separate lines of reasoning that together make up his case for the unfreedom under capitalism of workers as a class. Cohen argues of workers that they are rendered unfree by the institution of private property on which the capitalist system depends, that they suffer a form of collective unfreedom under capitalism, and that they are forced to sell their labor power under capitalism. (shrink)

Is time travel just a confusing plot device deployed by science fiction authors and Hollywood filmmakers to amaze and amuse? Or might empirical data prompt a scientific hypothesis of time travel? Structured on a fascinating dialogue involving  ...

Turning his back on neoliberalism, voicing 'the end of history' and the unstoppable spread of liberal values across the globe, Gray's was a lone voice of scepticism. The thinking he criticised would lead to the invasion of Iraq. Today, its folly might seem obvious, but Gray has been trying to warn us for years.

Does Anne Conway (1631–79) hold that the created world consists of a single underlying substance? Some have argued that she does; others have argued that she is a priority monist and so holds that there are many created substances, but the whole created world is ontologically prior to each particular creature. Against both of these proposals, this article makes the case for a substance pluralist interpretation of Conway: individual creatures are distinct substances, and the whole created world is not ontologically (...) prior to the individual creatures that compose it. The basic argument for such a view draws on Conway's claims about the freedom and moral responsibility of individual creatures. The pluralist reading is straightforwardly compatible with these claims, while the monistic readings are not. (shrink)

Cognitive deficits were produced in rats by different methods of damaging the brain: chronic ingestion of alcohol, causing widespread damage to diffuse cholinergic and aminergic projection systems; lesions (by local injection of the excitotoxins, ibotenate, quisqualate, and AMPA) of the nuclei of origin of the forebrain cholinergic projection system (FCPS), which innervates the neocortex and hippocampal formation; transient cerebral ischaemia, producing focal damage especially in the CA1 pyramidal cells of the dorsal hippocampus; and lesions (by local injection of the neurotoxin, (...) colchicine) of the granule cells of the dentate gyrus. Following chronic alcohol or lesions of the FCPS, transplants of cholinergically rich fetal brain tissue into the terminal areas (neocortex and/or hippocampus) restored performance almost to control levels, with a time course consistent with growth of the transplants and integration with host tissue; transplants of cholinergically poor fetal tissue (hippocampus) were without effect, as were transplants of cholinergically rich tissue into the region containing the nuclei of origin of the FCPS. Grafts of primary cells enriched in glia and cultured neuroblastoma cells into the terminal areas of the FCPS were equally effective, suggesting that there are multiple mechanisms by which neural transplants can restore cognitive function following diffuse cholinergic damage. In contrast, after ischaemia- or neurotoxin-induced damage to CA1 or dentate granule cells respectively, cholinergically rich fetal transplants into the damaged hippocampal formation were ineffective in restoring performance. After ischaemic damage, however, performance was restored by suspension grafts of CA1 cells but not by transplants containing CA3 pyramidal cells or granule cells; and after colchicine damage it was restored by solid grafts containing granule but not CA1 pyramidal cells. Furthermore, electrophysiological evidence has demonstrated functional, graft type-specific host-graft functional neuronal connectivity. Thus, restoration of cognitive function by neural transplants is possible after damage to either diffuse (cholinergic) or point-to-point (intrahippocampal) forebrain systems, but the transplant must be appropriate to the damage to be repaired. Because the different types of brain damage studied provide analogues of human alcoholic dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and heart attack, these results are encouraging with regard to the eventual application of neural transplant surgery to the treatment of cognitive deficits in humans. (shrink)

Collected here in a single volume for the first time, On Liberty, Utilitarianism, Considerations on Representative Government, and The Subjection of Women show Mill applying his liberal utilitarian philosophy to a range of issues that remain vital today - issues of the nature of ethics, the scope and limits of individual liberty, the merits of and costs of democratic government, and the place of women in society. In his Introduction John Gray describes these essays as applications of Mill's (...) doctrine of the Art of Life, as set out in A System of Logic. Using the resources of recent revisionist scholarship, he shows Mill's work to be far richer and subtler than traditional interpretations allow. (shrink)

This volume brings together J.S. Mills On Liberty and a selection of important essays by such eminent scholars as Isaiah Berlin, Alan Ryan, John Rees, C.L. Ten and Richard Wollheim. As well as providing authoritative commentary upon On Liberty , the essays reflect a broader debate about the philosophical foundations of Mill's liberalism, particularly the question of the connection betweenMill's professed utilitarianism and his commitment to individual liberty. Introduced and edited by John Gray and G.W. Smith, the (...) book will be of interest to students of Mill, to ethical and political philosophers and to anyone interested in the contemporary status of liberalism. (shrink)

For more than three decades judgements of schools' quality have been dominated by the frameworks, developed by members of Her Majesty's Inspectorate (HMI). This article reviews the approaches employed in the national survey conducted for the Plowden Committee, subsequent surveys undertaken by HMI during the seventies and eighties and the changes brought about by the advent of the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) in the early nineties. The frameworks employed appear to have changed from one decade to the next, (...) sometimes subtly, at other times more radically. Overall, such changes have been sufficiently major for it to be difficult, if not impossible, to make anything other than the broadest statements about changes in the state and quality of the nation's schooling over time. (shrink)

Voor wie geen troost kan vinden in het al-te-menselijke, valt hoop te putten uit de natuur. Daarvan getuigt ook Thomas Hardy’s gedicht op de nachtegaal. Het dier is verminkt door mensen, maar het zingt nog altijd en bezorgt de mens levensvreugde.

A study of the political philosophy of the Russian born thinker explains how Isaiah Berlin came to reject ideological frameworks in favor of a pluralism that acknowledges the inevitable diversity of human values.

Value-pluralism is commonly held to support liberal political morality. This is argued by John Rawls and his school and, more instructively, by Isaiah Berlin and Joseph Raz. Against this common view it is argued that a strong version of value-pluralism and liberalism are incompatible doctrines. Some varieties of ethical pluralism are distinguished, and the claim of value-incommensurability made by strong pluralism is elucidated. The argument that liberal political morality consists of principles of right that are unaffected by the truth (...) of strong pluralism is examined and rejected. Strong pluralism is understood as the view that some goods and bads are rationally incommensurable. It is argued that if strong value-pluralism is true, then liberal political morality cannot be defended. Neither negative liberty nor individual autonomy can have general priority if it is true that the central goods specified by liberal political morality are incommensurables. This difficulty is not avoided by liberal theories that do not demand the maximization of a single value such as liberty. If strong pluralism is true, then liberal institutions are not a standard of legitimacy by reference to which all regimes are to be assessed. They are merely one variety of modus vivendi . Liberal institutions have no universal legitimacy. Yet liberal cultures are partly constituted by a belief in the universal authority of the principles which inform their practices and institutions. This belief strong pluralism subverts. Value-pluralism and liberalism are rival doctrines. The political implication of strong pluralism is not liberalism but modus vivendi . Sometimes modus vivendi is best fostered by liberal institutions. Sometimes it is best fostered by non-liberal institutions. Where the latter is true, liberals and pluralists part company. (shrink)

The use of neural transplantation to alleviate cognitive deficits is still in its infancy. We have an inadequate understanding of the deficits induced by different types of brain damage and their homologies in animal models against which to assess graft-induced recovery, and of the ways in which graft growth and function are influenced by factors within the host brain and the environment in which the host is operating. Further, use of fetal tissue may only be a transitory phase in the (...) search for appropriate donor sources. Nevertheless, findings from our laboratory and elsewhere have made a prima facie case for successful cognitive reconstruction by graft methods. (shrink)