An increasing number of parents are electing to use daycare to assist them with their parenting from infancy onward. Strikingly, there is scant discussion of whether or not such a practice is morally permissible. In this paper, I shall discuss three different arguments that I believe are implicitly thought to support the use of daycare. I shall argue that the current widespread use of daycare, particularly with respect to infant children, often involves arbitrarily subjugating the needs of children in favor (...) of the desires of parents, and thus is often morally wrong. Finally, I consider a possible fourth argument; one that I believe stands a better chance of justifying the use of daycare, though in the final analysis I argue that it also fails to justify the current widespread use of daycare. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS At the Origins of Modern Atheism. By MICHAEL J. BucKLEY, S.J. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1987. Pp. viii+ 445. Writing ostensibly a history of the philosophical origins of 18th century atheism in 17th century theism, Michael Buckley, S.J., has contributed a learned, subtle, and provocative hook whose length is significantly increased and whose focus is considerably enlarged by a running commentary about (...) the metatheory (Richard McKeon's philosophical semantics) that structures his reading of the chosen theists and atheists. Buckley provides the best summary of his own historical conclusion: "... theology generated apologetic philosophy and philosophy generated Universal Mechanics, and these in turn co-opted theology to become the foundations of theistic assertions... [But] when the contradictions between Cartesian and Newtonian mechanics were further negated... god became a deus otiosus" [pp. 358-359]. This conclusion rests on a philosophical principle whose elements are taken from Plato's Seventh Epistle: " The name, the definition, and the instance for the atheistic negations are all set by the current theism " [p. 15]. In turn, this principle is justified by a cluster of meta-theses that are not easily summarized, although one stands above the rest: " Much more may he involved in such a process of ideas [from 17th century theism to 18th century atheism] than their· own internal necessity, hut internal necessity remains and governs inherently " [p. 334]. The latter meta-thesis asserts that there is a dialectic of ideas and it is from this point of view that Buckley reads the conceptual history of modern atheism. Dialectical necessity is a bugbear for many contemporary philosophers, hut Buckley argues, convincingly I think, that some kind of conceptual necessity links theism and atheism. Atheism is, essentially, the negation of a particular form of theism. In Hegelian terms, atheism is a determinate negation which draws all of its conceptual content from what it negates. Buckley, however, puts an even greater Hegelian spin on the same point. If the theism carries within itself a contradiction, it negates itself and, thereby, dialectically generates its contradiction-atheism [cf. p. 17]. " Modern atheism took not only its meaning hut its existence from the self-alienation of religion " [p. 359]. A theism that believes in the existence of an intelligent, personal God, Who creates and orders the universe, but that attempts a rational 144 BOOK REVIEWS 145 justification of this belief apart from the religious experience that alone can embody such a faith contains exactly the kind of inner contradiction that generates the negation of itself. Buckley focuses on the poignant contradiction of a Christian theology abandoning " the religious figure of Jesus as the principal evidence for the reality of God" [p. 41] in favor of some philosophy (whether that of Descartes, Malebranche, or Newton) which provides a different and allegedly more certain kind of evidence for God's existence. This theology, or more precisely the theistic philosophies it spawned, are the sources of modern atheism because, if Descartes and Newton are consistently combined, philosophy can do quite well without God. Laplace's famous reply to Napoleon, although it was not originally an atheistic slogan, captures what Diderot and d'Holbach thought: God is an unnecessary hypothesis in a truly universal mechanics which needs to presuppose only matter and motion. The historical story, of course, is more complicated than this skeleton dialectic can suggest. Buckley richly details the story but I shall rehearse only its opening chapter. Buckley begins with the Jesuit theologian, Leonard Lays (1554-1623), usually known under his Latin name, Lessius, whose De providentia numinis et anima immortalitate (1613) set the pattern for subsequent Catholic theology. Lessius, who was convinced that atheism by eliminating the eternal judge destroys morals and sound politics, revived Stoic arguments, numerous variations on a theme, which show that the universe is everywhere imprinted with a divine design. Lessius's intent, although he referred only to ancient philosophers, was not to replay the classical battle between the Stoics and the Epicureans but to combat the atheism, silent and disguised in contemporary Europe, that Lessius thought to be the inevitable outcome of the wars of religion and theological fights. Lessius, however, paid scant attention to his own insight... (shrink)

Stanley Fish opens the collection with a persuasive argument for the role of intention and biography. Michael McKeon, Gordon Turnbull, and Jerome Christensen are concerned with the late eighteenth--and early nineteenth-century English cultural discourse that gave rise to the nearly simultaneous emergence of literary biography, Romantic sensibility, and reflexive human consciousness. The essays by Alison Booth, Cheryl Walker, and Sharon O'Brien reveal that the recognition or lack thereof the biographical subject has received and remains both a problem and (...) an opportunity for women writers and readers. The essays by Valerie Ross, Rob Wilson, Steven Weiland, and William Epstein pursue the question of difference and cultural reification in the theory and practice of a specifically American biography and biographical criticism. (shrink)

During and after the Second World War, public intellectuals in Britain and the United States grappled with concerns about the future of democracy, the prospects of liberty, and the decline of the imperial system. Without using the term 'globalization,' they identified a shift toward technological, economic, cultural, and political interconnectedness and developed a 'globalist' ideology to reflect this new postwar reality. The Emergence of Globalism examines the competing visions of world order that shaped these debates and led to the development (...) of globalism as a modern political concept. Shedding critical light on this neglected chapter in the history of political thought, Or Rosenboim describes how a transnational network of globalist thinkers emerged from the traumas of war and expatriation in the 1940s and how their ideas drew widely from political philosophy, geopolitics, economics, imperial thought, constitutional law, theology, and philosophy of science. She presents compelling portraits of Raymond Aron, Owen Lattimore, Lionel Robbins, Barbara Wootton, Friedrich Hayek, Lionel Curtis, Richard McKeon, Michael Polanyi, Lewis Mumford, Jacques Maritain, Reinhold Niebuhr, H. G. Wells, and others. Rosenboim shows how the globalist debate they embarked on sought to balance the tensions between a growing recognition of pluralism on the one hand and an appreciation of the unity of humankind on the other."--Dust jacket. (shrink)

In this paper I explore Phyllis Rooney’s 2003 chapter, “Feminist Epistemology and Naturalized Epistemology: An Uneasy Alliance,” taking guidance from her critique of naturalized epistemology in pursuing my own analysis of another uneasy alliance: that between feminist epistemology and social epistemology. Investigating some of the background assumptions at work in prominent conceptions of social epistemology, I consider recent analyses of "epistemic bubbles" to ask how closely such analyses are aligned with ongoing research in feminist epistemology. I argue that critical feminist (...) insights in political philosophy are called for here, especially those that focus on multiple politically salient relationships and also emphasize practices of personal transformation as inseparably bound up with broader movements for social transformation. Insofar as feminist epistemology continues to carry another world in its heart, I argue that it will continue to rest uneasily with any effort to align it with—let alone subsume it within—the still emerging field of social epistemology. (shrink)

This paper contributes to our understanding of farm data value chains with assistance from 54 semi-structured interviews and field notes from participant observations. Methodologically, it includes individuals, such as farmers, who hold well-known positionalities within digital agriculture spaces—platforms that include precision farming techniques, farm equipment built on machine learning architecture and algorithms, and robotics—while also including less visible elements and practices. The actors interviewed and materialities and performances observed thus came from spaces and places inhabited by, for example, farmers, crop (...) scientists, statisticians, programmers, and senior leadership in firms located in the U.S. and Canada. The stability of “the” artifacts followed for this project proved challenging, which led to me rethinking how to approach the subject conceptually. The paper is animated by a posthumanist commitment, drawing heavily from assemblage thinking and critical data scholarship coming out of Science and Technology Studies. The argument’s understanding of “chains” therefore lies on an alternative conceptual plane relative to most commodity chain scholarship. To speak of a data value chain is to foreground an orchestrating set of relations among humans, non-humans, products, spaces, places, and practices. The paper’s principle contribution involves interrogating lock-in tendencies at different “points” along the digital farm platform assemblage while pushing for a varied understanding of governance depending on the roles of the actors and actants involved. (shrink)

One recurrent objection to the idea that the right kind of reasons for or against an attitude are object-given reasons for or against that attitude is that object-given reasons for or against belief and disbelief are incapable of explaining certain features of epistemic normativity. Prohibitive balancing, the behaviour of bare statistical evidence, information about future or easily available evidence, pragmatic and moral encroachment, as well as higher-order defeaters, are all said to be inexplicable in terms of those object-given reasons. In (...) this paper, I provide a rebuttal to all these challenges by drawing attention to the object-given reasons for and against the third doxastic state, namely the suspension of judgement. First, I introduce an original picture of how suspension relates to belief and disbelief – as ways of being decided – which yields a novel weighing model of the corresponding reasons. Second, I demonstrate that this new take on doxastic deliberation can accommodate all five features of epistemic normativity. Finally, I extend the weighing model to cover practical deliberation and the suspension of intentions. The resulting theory provides an explanation of why epistemic and practical normativity differ in certain respects in terms of a significant difference between doxastic and conative suspension. (shrink)

While philosophers hold that it is patently absurd to blame robots or hold them morally responsible [1], a series of recent empirical studies suggest that people do ascribe blame to AI systems and robots in certain contexts [2]. This is disconcerting: Blame might be shifted from the owners, users or designers of AI systems to the systems themselves, leading to the diminished accountability of the responsible human agents [3]. In this paper, we explore one of the potential underlying reasons for (...) robot blame, namely the folk's willingness to ascribe inculpating mental states or "mens rea" to robots. In a vignette-based experiment (N=513), we presented participants with a situation in which an agent knowingly runs the risk of bringing about substantial harm. We manipulated agent type (human v. group agent v. AI-driven robot) and outcome (neutral v. bad), and measured both moral judgment (wrongness of the action and blameworthiness of the agent) and mental states attributed to the agent (recklessness and the desire to inflict harm). We found that (i) judgments of wrongness and blame were relatively similar across agent types, possibly because (ii) attributions of mental states were, as suspected, similar across agent types. This raised the question - also explored in the experiment - whether people attribute knowledge and desire to robots in a merely metaphorical way (e.g., the robot "knew" rather than really knew). However, (iii), according to our data people were unwilling to downgrade to mens rea in a merely metaphorical sense when given the chance. Finally, (iv), we report a surprising and novel finding, which we call the inverse outcome effect on robot blame: People were less willing to blame artificial agents for bad outcomes than for neutral outcomes. This suggests that they are implicitly aware of the dangers of overattributing blame to robots when harm comes to pass, such as inappropriately letting the responsible human agent off the moral hook. (shrink)

Can we change our logic and if so how? In ‘The Question of Logic’ (this volume), Saul Kripke takes a certain message about this from Lewis Carroll’s famous pape.

Proponents of zetetic encroachment claim that certain zetetic or inquiry-related considerations can have a bearing on the epistemic rationality of one’s belief formation. Since facts about the interestingness or importance of a topic can be the right kind of reasons for inquisitive attitudes, such as curiosity, and inquisitive attitudes are ways to suspend judgement, these facts also amount to reasons against believing. This mechanism is said to explain several contentious phenomena in epistemology, such as the occurrence of pragmatic encroachment. In (...) this paper, I provide two lines of reasoning against zetetic encroachment. First, on any contrastivist understanding of epistemic reasons, the case in favour of zetetic encroachment loses all its motivational force. Second, the thesis of zetetic encroachment is incompatible with the most promising way to understand degrees of inquisitive attitudes. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments.

Cases of inexact observations have been used extensively in the recent literature on higher-order evidence and higher-order knowledge. I argue that the received understanding of inexact observations is mistaken. Although it is convenient to assume that such cases can be modeled statically, they should be analyzed as dynamic cases that involve change of knowledge. Consequently, the underlying logic should be dynamic epistemic logic, not its static counterpart. When reasoning about inexact knowledge, it is easy to confuse the initial situation, the (...) observation process, and the result of the observation; I analyze the three separately. This dynamic approach has far reaching implications: Williamson’s influential argument against the KK principle loses its force, and new insights can be gained regarding synchronic and diachronic introspection principles. (shrink)

The elephant in the room -- Crabs and octopuses -- The central intelligence of a frog -- The cerebral cortex and consciousness -- Social consciousness -- Yoda and Darth: how can we find -- Consciousness in the brain? -- The hard problem and other perspectives on consciousness -- Conscious machines -- Uploading minds -- How to build visual consciousness.

Der Artikel untersucht den Zusammenhang zwischen Erinnerung, Vergessen und personaler Identität und wendet die Ergebnisse auf den Fall der Alzheimer-Demenz an. Während in der philosophischen Debatte Gedächtnis und Erinnerung zumeist im Kontext von Theorien zur diachronen Identität als formale Kriterien für die Zuschreibung von Identität über die Zeit aufgefasst werden, steht hier das Konzept der biographischen Identität im Zentrum. Es wird argumentiert, dass sowohl explizite als auch implizite Erinnerungen und das Wechselspiel zwischen beiden auf unterschiedliche Weise an der Konstituierung und (...) Aufrechterhaltung biographischer Identität beteiligt sind, und dass die Einbeziehung der empirischen Gedächtnisforschung für die philosophische Analyse von großem Wert sein kann. Auf dieser Grundlage kann für den Fall der Alzheimer-Demenz gezeigt werden, welche Elemente biographischer Identität durch die Erkrankung berührt werden. (shrink)

Respect appears to generate a puzzling self-other asymmetry: Respect for others can demand that we avoid knowledge of others or ignore that knowledge in deciding how we treat others. This demand for epistemic distancing lies behind the imperatives not to violate others’ privacy or to treat them paternalistically. Self-respect, in contrast, mandates that we pursue knowledge of ourselves and that we choose and act light of that self-knowledge. Individual agents thus do not have a duty to epistemically distance themselves from (...) themselves; a fortiori, they have self-regarding duties to reduce such distance. This article elaborates this asymmetry and offers a plausible solution to it, rooted in the distinctive importance that self-knowledge (and acting in the world on the basis of that self-knowledge) has for self-respecting rational agents: Self-respecting agents have reasons to have others defer to their ‘surfaces’ or self-presentations in order to inhibit making themselves vulnerable to others in ways that undermine their self-respect by subordinating their wills to the wills of others. A measure of control over what others know about us and over what they do with that knowledge thus undergirds self-respect by enabling self-knowledge to play the role that it should play in the lives of self-respecting agents. Epistemic distancing thus operates in concert with the ways in which self-respecting agents value and pursue epistemic intimacy with themselves. (shrink)

A central dispute in discussions of self-locating attitudes is whether attitude relations like believing and knowing are relations between an agent and properties (things that vary in truth value across individuals) or between an agent and propositions (things that do not so vary). Proponents of the proposition view have argued that the property view is unable to give an adequate account of relations like communication and agreement. We agree with this critique of the property view, and in this essay we (...) show that the problems facing the property view are much more serious than has been appreciated. We then develop and explore two versions of the proposition view. In each case, we show how facts about the self-ascription of properties may be determined by facts about propositional attitudes in conjunction with certain other facts. (shrink)

What are the properties of composite objects, and how do the properties of composite objects and the properties of their proper parts relate to one another? The answers to these questions depend upon which view of composition one adopts. One view, which I call the orthodox view, is that composite objects are numerically distinct from their proper parts, individually and collectively. Another view, known as composition as identity, is that composite objects are numerically identical to their proper parts, taken together. (...) I argue that the orthodox view entails that the intuitive picture of composite objects and their properties that most accept is false. Not so for composition as identity. I also show that all of the available alternatives face serious difficulties. This puts composition as identity at an advantage over the orthodox view, at least when it comes to accounting for the properties of composite objects. (shrink)

Perhaps the most commonly discussed argument against the possibility of extended simples is the argument from heterogeneity. The argument states that, if extended simples are possible, then extended simples which exhibit intrinsic qualitative variation across space (or spacetime) are also possible [Premise 1]. But, the argument goes, it is impossible for an extended simple to exhibit intrinsic qualitative variation across space (or spacetime) [Premise 2]. Thus, extended simples are impossible. I argue that there is a serious problem with the argument (...) from heterogeneity: the best arguments in support of the first premise undermine support for the second. Thus, there appears to be no good reason to accept both premises. (shrink)

Hume famously warned us that the ‘[The] ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from human curiosity and enquiry’. Or, again, Newton: ‘Hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of these properties of gravity … and I frame no hypotheses.’ Aristotelian science was concerned with just such questions, the specification of occult qualities, the real essences that answer the question What is matter, etc?, the preoccupation with circular definitions such as dormative virtues, and so on. The (...) rise of modern science is usually seen as a break with the sterility of Aristotelianism, so what exactly is it that modern science does discover, if it is not the essential nature of matter, of force, of energy, of space and time? A famous answer was provided by Poincaré: ‘The true relations between these real objects are the only reality we can attain.’ This is often regarded as the manifesto of so-called structural realism, as espoused in recent years by John Worrall, for example ). In response to the arguments of Larry Laudan against convergent realism, Worrall points to the continuity in the formal relations between elements of reality expressed by mathematical equations, while the intrinsic nature of these elements of reality gets constantly revised. (shrink)

In a recent paper Shieva Kleinschmidt has argued that if certain scenarios involving extended simple regions are possible (so-called ‘Place Cases’), then no logic of location with only one primitive locative notion (i.e., no ‘parsimonious logic of location’) will suffice to describe all of the locative possibilities. Since almost all existing logics of location are parsimonious (and apparently for good reason) the argument is a considerable obstacle to the development of a satisfactory logic of location. Kleinschmidt suggests that the best (...) way out of the difficulty is to deny the possibility of Place Cases by denying that extended simple regions are possible. I argue that much the same problem arises even in cases not involving extended simple regions or indeed exotic regions of any kind. Thus, simply denying the possibility of extended simple regions will not save parsimonious logics of location. (shrink)

Poverty in many societies is racialized, with poverty concentrated among particular racial groups. This article aims (a) to provide a philosophical account of how racialized poverty can represent an unjust form of inequality, and (b) to suggest the general direction that policies aiming to reduce racialized poverty ought to take in light of this account. (a) As a species of inequality, racialized poverty (whether absolute or relative) is not intrinsically morally objectionable. However, it can be extrinsically objectionable because it is (...) caused by past or current racial injustice, undermines the value of specific goods to the impoverished, or contributes to objectionable deficiencies in impoverished groups’ political efficacy. (b) Racialized poverty is strongly intergenerational, tending to replicate itself between generations within racial groups. This suggests that approaches to its alleviation that offer income security to all members of those groups, rather than targeted opportunity to subsets of such groups, are both more just and more effective. In particular, societies with racialized poverty should strongly consider policies such as income guarantees, which act to counteract the income volatility that contribute to intergenerational racial poverty. (shrink)

Nach Freuds anfänglichen Überlegungen hat die Verdrängung die Dissoziation als die primäre Abwehrreaktion auf ein schweres Trauma eher ersetzt als ergänzt. Dabei ist es zu einem unnötigen Schisma zwischen Traumatheorien und dem Mainstream der Psychoanalyse gekommen. Um die Rolle der Dissoziation in primitiven psychischen Zuständen wieder in den Blick zu bekommen, ist ein Verständnis der triadischen Natur des Traumas nötig, die die Faktoren der Triebökonomie, des strukturellen Konflikts und Defizits sowie der Objektbeziehung umfasst. Die Behandlungstechnik erfordert eine Beschäftigung mit verdrängten (...) Phantasien, die mit dem Trauma in Verbindung stehen, mit Objektbeziehungsmustern, die in die Bindung eingreifen, sowie mit den psychoökonomischen Problemen, die die Ich-Funktionen durcheinandergebracht haben. Eine klinische Fallstudie illustriert dies. (shrink)

A central question in the philosophy of science is: What is a law of nature? Different answers to this question define an important schism: Humeans, in the wake of David Hume, hold that the laws of nature are nothing over and above what actually happens and reject irreducible facts about natural modality (Lewis, 1983, 1994; cf. Miller, 2015). According to Non-Humeans, by contrast, the laws are metaphysically fundamental (Maudlin, 2007) or grounded in primitive modal structures, such as dispositional essences of (...) powerful properties (Bird, 2007), necessitation relations (Armstrong, 1983), or primitive subjunctive facts (Lange, 2009). This volume focuses on recent developments in the discussion of Humeanism, specifically on pragmatic versions of the view that put the needs of limited agents like us front and center. (shrink)

From the philosopher’s perspective, the interest in quantum computation stems primarily from the way that it combines fundamental concepts from two distinct sciences: Physics, in particular Quantum Mechanics, and Computer Science, each long a subject of philosophical speculation and analysis in its own right. Quantum computing combines both of these more traditional areas of inquiry into one wholly new, if not quite independent, science. Over the course of this chapter we will be discussing some of the most important philosophical questions (...) that arise from this merger and philosophical lessons to be learned. (shrink)

The recent work of logician Jc Beall marks a paradigm shift within the fields of analytic theology and philosophy of religion. Thanks to Beall’s work, the long held (and generally unquestioned) assumption that theology is governed by (or closed under) the classical account of logic, is no longer free for the assumption. More importantly, by dropping this unquestioned commitment to the classical account, Beall’s work has uncovered natural and well-motivated solutions to some of monotheistic theologies’ most difficult and longstanding problems. (...) That said, much of Beall’s work (and the work of others who have followed his lead) has been paraconsistent, utilizing glut-theoretic (contradictory) models to solve theologies problems. In this essay, my plan is to go paracomplete, with the aim of exploring a yet to be explored solution to the infamous foreknowledge and freedom problem. My solution finds its roots in the recent work Jc Beall and Aaron Cotnoir (‘God of the Gaps’, Analysis, 2017). Specifically, in this essay I will explore a gap-theoretic solution to the foreknowledge and freedom problem; one in which it is neither true nor false that God has foreknowledge. By utilizing Beall’s and Cotnoir’s model — which sees limit claims on God’s omni-properties as either just false or gappy — a natural and well-motivated solution to the foreknowledge and freedom problem emerges. Moreover, by utilizing the Beall-Cotnoir gap-theoretic model, not only is the foreknowledge and freedom problem circumvented, but an interesting and novel account of divine omniscience emerges. (shrink)

If I say that Alice is everything Oscar hopes to be, I seem to be quantifying over properties. That suggestion faces an immediate difficulty, however: though Alice may be wise, she surely is not the property of being wise. This problem can be framed in terms of a substitution failure: if a predicate like ‘happy’ denoted a property, we would expect pairs like ‘Oscar is happy’ and ‘Oscar is the property of being happy’ to be equivalent, which they clearly are (...) not. I argue that a Fregean response that draws a distinction between objects and concepts faces serious difficulties, and that a syntactic solution to the substitution problem likewise fails. I propose to account for the substitution failure by instead distinguishing different ways that expressions can stand for properties: whereas ‘the property of being happy’ refers to a property, ‘happy’ expresses or ascribes that property. I go on to compare this view to proposals made by Wright and Liebesman, and end by drawing out a consequence my proposal has for a debate about the ontological commitments of predicatively quantified sentences. (shrink)

This paper defends three theses on the normativity of the suspension of judgment. First, even if beliefs have to fit the truth and disbelief the false, suspension can still have satisfiable fittingness conditions. Second, combining this view with specific theses on the link between fittingness and normative reasons in favour of attitudes commits one to the existence of reasons to suspend judgement, which are neither reasons to believe nor reasons to disbelieve. These independent reasons, in turn, generate a form of (...) epistemic permissivism. Finally, I argue that there are different routes to derive this commitment to independent reasons for suspending judgement. Not only fittingness-centred approaches to epistemic normativity but also many analyses in terms of reasons are committed to this form of epistemic permissivism. (shrink)

The learning process of both students and teachers can be predicted based on the learning mode. Therefore, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, schools must start using online learning and abandon more traditional teaching techniques. Thus, this study investigates the relationship between self-efficacy and academic resilience among 150 senior high school students. Thus, the researchers employed General Self-Efficacy and Resilience Scale. Finally, the statistical analysis reveals that the r coefficient of 0.78 indicates a high positive correlation between the variables. The p-value (...) of 0.00, which is less than 0.05, leads to the decision to reject the null hypothesis. Hence, a significant relationship exists between self-efficacy and resilience among senior high school students. (shrink)

This paper appears in Earthly Engagements: Reading Sartre after the Holocene, edited by Matthew Ally and Damon Boria. From the introduction: "In Chapter 6, Michael Butler critically examines the misguided effort to shop our way out of climate change problems. After expositions of some key concepts from Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason, he criticizes ethical consumerism in a way reminiscent of Sartre's criticism of voting as a trap for fools. His concluding section juxtaposes two competing responses to climate change (...) mitigation as a collective action problem, namely the Nudge Agenda and the Green New Deal.". (shrink)

Could the concept of 'evil' apply to AI? Drawing on PF Strawson's framework of reactive attitudes, this paper argues that we can understand evil as involving agents who are neither fully inside nor fully outside our moral practices. It involves agents whose abilities and capacities are enough to make them morally responsible for their actions, but whose behaviour is far enough outside of the norms of our moral practices to be labelled 'evil'. Understood as such, the paper argues that, when (...) it comes to AI and evil, we have more to fear from semi-autonomous, hybrid agents: agents who have enough of a capacity to operate within a minimal form of human practices of participation and responsibility, yet remain partially outside of it, capable of acting from outside the parameters of ordinary interactions in certain circumstances, perhaps sometimes for reasons unknown. (shrink)

Whataboutism is een strategie waarbij op een beschuldiging wordt gereageerd met een wedervraag die eveneens een beschuldiging impliceert, waardoor de oorspronkelijke vraag eerder wordt ontweken dan beantwoord. Het is een effectieve methode om de aandacht te verplaatsen naar een andere situatie door een vergelijkbaar, dan wel onvergelijkbaar, contrast te bieden, waardoor de beschuldigde het eigen gedrag probeert te rechtvaardigen en verantwoordelijkheid probeert te ontlopen. Maar niet alle vormen van whataboutism impliceren echter een drogredenering, noch worden ze altijd verkeerd toegepast. Het (...) contrast dat voortkomt uit de vraag ‘what about’ kan dan een cruciale bijdrage leveren aan een situatie die een verdere kritische analyse vereist, en daarmee de geloofwaardigheid van de argumentatie versterken. (shrink)

For Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, secondary literature on Kant, Fichte, and Hegel is not philosophy in the proper sense. It is best to think the relation between the history of philosophy, philosophy, and its future in terms of a set of virtues that should be binding both for the historians of philosophy and philosophers.

I flesh out the sense in which the informational approach to interpreting quantum mechanics, as defended by Pitowsky and Bub and lately by a number of other authors, is (neo-)Bohrian. I argue that on this approach, quantum mechanics represents what Bohr called a “natural generalisation of the ordinary causal description” in the sense that the idea (which philosophers of science like Stein have argued for on the grounds of practical and epistemic necessity) that understanding a theory as a theory of (...) physics requires that one be able to “schematise the observer” within it is elevated in quantum mechanics to the level of a postulate in the sense that interpreting the outcome of a measurement interaction, as providing us with information about the world, requires as a matter of principle, the specification of a schematic representation of an observer in the form of a ‘Boolean frame’—the Boolean algebra representing the yes-or-no questions associated with a given observable representative of a given experimental context. I argue that the approach’s central concern is with the methodological question of how to assign physical properties to what one takes to be a system in a given experimental context, rather than the metaphysical question of what a given state vector represents independently of any context, and I show how the quantum generalisation of the concept of an open system may be used to assuage Einstein’s complaint that the orthodox approach to quantum mechanics runs afoul of the supposedly fundamental methodological requirement to the effect that one must always be able, according to Einstein, to treat spatially separated systems as isolated from one another. (shrink)

This article is a cross-disciplinary investigation into the role of political violence, in the present era, from a progressive’s viewpoint. Starting from the view that explanations of the rapidly changing politics in the West must take account of an often unconscious, emotional landscape, it invokes Lacanian concepts and artistic representations, including references to Anthony Burgess’s classic novel of dystopian ultra-violence, A Clockwork Orange. Here, I review a long history of the enjoyment of violent performance in politics, from the arenas of (...) Ancient Rome to extremist right-wing websites. Along the way, we hear from neo-Nazis, political activists, stand-up comedians, satirists and philosophers. My aim to prevent an increasingly polarised society descending further into authoritarianism and eventually outright warfare, provokes a surprising final reversal: resistance, sometimes violent (both to self and others) must be protected, in order to lead progressives to those “excluded” from our demos and towards what Connolly (2017) refers to as “multifaceted democracy”. (shrink)

An engaging account of how Shaftesbury revolutionized Western philosophy At the turn of the eighteenth century, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, developed the first comprehensive philosophy of beauty to be written in English. It revolutionized Western philosophy. In A Philosophy of Beauty, Michael Gill presents an engaging account of how Shaftesbury’s thought profoundly shaped modern ideas of nature, religion, morality, and art—and why, despite its long neglect, it remains compelling today. Before Shaftesbury’s magnum opus, Charactersticks of (...) Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, it was common to see wilderness as ugly, to associate religion with fear and morality with unpleasant restriction, and to dismiss art as trivial or even corrupting. But Shaftesbury argued that nature, religion, virtue, and art can all be truly beautiful, and that cherishing and cultivating beauty is what makes life worth living. And, as Gill shows, this view had a huge impact on the development of natural religion, moral sense theory, aesthetics, and environmentalism. Combining captivating historical details and flashes of humor, A Philosophy of Beauty not only rediscovers and illuminates a fascinating philosopher but also offers an inspiring reflection about the role beauty can play in our lives. (shrink)