People may have open minds on whether a life-extending drug or technology is going to be developed before their sixties and may strongly desire that development. Do they therefore hope that it occurs? Do they hope for it in the substantive sense of “pinning their hopes” on the development? No, they do not. Hoping for a prospect in that sense certainly presupposes having an open mind on whether it will occur and having a desire for its occurrence. But, more crucially, (...) it means investing the prospect with a characteristic, galvanizing, and orientating role: it involves setting aside doubts about the possible nonoccurrence of the prospect and acting accordingly. This article offers a characterization of hope in that substantive sense and argues both that it can be rational and that it is ubiquitous. (shrink)

Means-based harms are frequently seen as forbidden, even when they lead to a greater good. But, are there mitigating factors? Results from five experiments show that judgments about means-based harms are modulated by: 1) Pareto considerations (was the harmed person made worse off?), 2) the directness of physical contact, and 3) the source of the threat (e.g. mechanical, human, or natural). Pareto harms are more permissible than non-Pareto harms, Pareto harms requiring direct physical contact are less permissible than those that (...) do not, and harming someone who faces a mechanical threat is less permissible than harming someone who faces a non-mechanical threat. These results provide insight into the rich representational structure underlying folk-moral computations, including both the independent and interacting roles of the inevitability, directness and source of harm. (shrink)

What determines whether an action is right or wrong? Morality, Rules, and Consequences: A Critical Reader explores for students and researchers the relationship between consequentialist theory and moral rules. Most of the chapters focus on rule consequentialism or on the distinction between act and rule versions of consequentialism. Contributors, among them the leading philosophers in the discipline, suggest ways of assessing whether rule consequentialism could be a satisfactory moral theory. These essays, all of which are previously unpublished, provide students in (...) moral philosophy with essential material and ask key questions on just what the criteria for an adequate moral theory might be. (shrink)

Abstract This paper offers an appraisal of Phillip Pettit's approach to the problem how a merely finite set of examples can serve to represent a determinate rule, given that indefinitely many rules can be extrapolated from any such set. I argue that Pettit's so-called ethnocentric theory of rule-following fails to deliver the solution to this problem he sets out to provide. More constructively, I consider what further provisions are needed in order to advance Pettit's general approach (...) to the problem. I conclude that what is needed is an account that, whilst it affirms the view that agents' responses are constitutively involved in the exemplification of rules, does not allow such responses the pride of place they have in Pettit's theory. (shrink)

An esteemed philosopher discusses his theory of universal freedom, describing how even those who are members of free societies may find their liberties curtailed and includes tests of freedom including the eyeball test and the tough-luck test.

This chapter contains section titled: Rawls's Anti‐Cosmopolitanism Rawls's Ontology of Peoples Reconstructing Rawls's Rejection of Cosmopolitanism Acknowledgments Notes.

In this work, the prominent political philosopher Philip Pettit embarks on a massive undertaking to offers major new accounts of the foundations of the state and the nature of justice. In doing so Pettit builds a new theory of what the state is and what it ought to be, addresses the normative question of how justice serves as a measure of the success of a state, and the way it should operate in relation to its citizens and other (...) people. (shrink)

The early nineteenth century saw the demise of the Italian-Atlantic tradition of republicanism and the rise of classical liberalism. A distinct Franco-German tradition of republicanism emerged from the time of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, which differs from the older way of thinking associated with neo-republicanism. This chapter examines the key differences between the Italian-Atlantic and Franco-German traditions of republicanism and places them in a historical context. It first considers classical republicanism and how the ideological ideal of equal freedom as (...) nondomination differs from the twin institutional ideals of a mixed constitution and a contestatory citizenry. It then looks at the classical liberal opposition that arose in response to Italian-Atlantic republicanism. It also discusses the views of Kant and Rousseau about freedom and the role of the citizenry, as well as their theory of the constitution. The absolutist opposition in Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes to the institutional ideals of republicanism is also explored. (shrink)

Algorithms wield increasing control over our lives—over which jobs we get, whether we're granted loans, what information we're exposed to online, and so on. Algorithms can, and often do, wield their power in a biased way, and much work has been devoted to algorithmic bias. In contrast, algorithmic neutrality has gone largely neglected. I investigate three questions about algorithmic neutrality: What is it? Is it possible? And when we have it in mind, what can we learn about algorithmic bias?

Shows that the very same asymmetries that arise for intentionally also arise from deciding, desiring, in favor of, opposed to, and advocating. It seems that the phenomenon is not due to anything about the concept of intentional action in particular. Rather, the effects observed for the concept of intentional action should be regarded as just one manifestation of the pervasive impact of moral judgment.

Why equality cannot be conditional on a shared human “nature” but has to be for all For centuries, ringing declarations about all men being created equal appealed to a shared human nature as the reason to consider ourselves equals. But appeals to natural equality invited gradations of natural difference, and the ambiguity at the heart of “nature” enabled generations to write of people as equal by nature while barely noticing the exclusion of those marked as inferior by their gender, race, (...) or class. Despite what we commonly tell ourselves, these exclusions and gradations continue today. In Unconditional Equals, political philosopher Anne Phillips challenges attempts to justify equality by reference to a shared human nature, arguing that justification turns into conditions and ends up as exclusion. Rejecting the logic of justification, she calls instead for a genuinely unconditional equality. Drawing on political, feminist, and postcolonial theory, Unconditional Equals argues that we should understand equality not as something grounded in shared characteristics but as something people enact when they refuse to be considered inferiors. At a time when the supposedly shared belief in human equality is so patently not shared, the book makes a powerful case for seeing equality as a commitment we make to ourselves and others, and a claim we make on others when they deny us our status as equals. (shrink)

It follows from Humean principles of plenitude, I argue, that island universes are possible: physical reality might have 'absolutely isolated' parts. This makes trouble for Lewis's modal realism; but the realist has a way out. First, accept absolute actuality, which is defensible, I argue, on independent grounds. Second, revise the standard analysis of modality: modal operators are 'plural', not 'individual', quantifiers over possible worlds. This solves the problem of island universes and confers three additional benefits: an 'unqualified' principle of compossibility (...) can be accepted; the possibility of nothing can be accommodated; and the identity of indiscernible worlds can be decisively refuted. (shrink)

Tradition has it that, although we experience darkness, we can neither hear nor hallucinate silence. At most, we hear that it is silent, in virtue of lacking auditory experience. This cognitive view is at odds with our ordinary thought and talk. Yet it is not easy to vouchsafe the perception of silence: Sorensen‘s recent account entails the implausible claim that the permanently and profoundly deaf are perpetually hallucinating silence. To better defend the view that we can genuinely hear and hallucinate (...) silence, we must reject the austere picture of conscious experience which underpins the cognitive theory. According to that picture, conscious experience is a simple relation between subjects and objects. In the absence of an object, there is no relation, and so no experience. By enriching this picture, room can be found for the experience of silence. I explore this idea in two phases. First, I defend the thought that we can hear and hallucinate certain forms of silence, such as pauses, in virtue of experiencing contrastive sounds. Second, I draw on Moore‘s analysis of sensation to suggest that simply experiencing silence is a special form of objectless consciousness. I offer two ways of fleshing out this idea. According to the first, auditory experience possesses a temporal field within which the absence of sounds can be perceived. According to the second, purely Moorean account, it is our capacity to listen in the absence of sounds that underlies the phenomenon of experiencing silence. (shrink)

This volume offers authoritative discussions of all aspects of Epicurus's philosophy and then traces out some of its most important subsequent influences throughout the Western intellectual tradition. Such a detailed and comprehensive study of Epicureanism is especially timely given the tremendous current revival of interest in Epicurus and his rivals, the Stoics. The thirty-one contributions in this volume offer an unmatched resource for all those wishing to deepen their knowledge of Epicurus' powerful arguments about happiness, death, and the nature of (...) the material world and our place in it. At the same time, his arguments are carefully placed in the context of ancient and subsequent disputes, thus offering readers the opportunity of measuring Epicurean arguments against a wide range of opponents--from Platonists, Aristotelians and Stoics, to Hegel and Nietzsche, and finally on to such important contemporary philosophers as Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams. (shrink)

According to the Desiderative Lockean Thesis, there are necessary and sufficient conditions, stated in the terms of decision theory, for when one is truly said to want. What one is truly said to want, it turns out, varies remarkably by context—and to an underappreciated degree. To explain this context-sensitivity—and closure properties of wanting—I advance a Desiderative Lockean view that is distinctive in having two context-sensitive parameters.

You want to see the concert, but don’t want to take a long drive (even though the concert is far away). Such *strongly conflicting desire ascriptions* are, I show, wrongly predicted incompatible by standard semantics. I then object to possible solutions, and give my own, based on *some-things-considered desire*. Considering the fun of the concert, but ignoring the drive, you want to see the concert; considering the boredom of the drive, but ignoring the concert, you don’t want to take the (...) drive. (shrink)

What is a human being? The twentieth and twenty-first century tradition known as 'philosophical anthropology' has approached this question with unusual sophistication, experimentalism, and subtlety. Such innovations as Arnold Gehlen's description of humans as naturally 'deficient' beings in need of artificial institutions to survive; Max Scheler's concept of 'spirit' (Geist) as the physically and organically irreducible realm of persons and spiritual acts; and Helmuth Plessner's analysis of the way human embodiment transcends spatial locations and limitations ('ex-centric positionality') have inspired generations (...) of European intellectuals. This edited collection from an international network of scholars critically engages the philosophical anthropologies of Scheler, Plessner, Gehlen, Blumenberg, and others in unparalleled detail, showing their applicability to the themes of nature and naturalism, organic life, comparative primatology, cultural anthropology, paleoanthropology, the body, addiction, and death. The volume sets a new standard for Anglophone scholarship on this tradition and will be required reading for specialists in twentieth-century philosophy, history of the human sciences, history of the life sciences, and philosophies of human nature. (shrink)

Introduction -- Sidgwick's metaethics -- Sidgwick's moral epistemology -- Utilitarianism versus dogmatic intuitionism -- Utilitarianism versus egoism.

Trusting someone in an intuitive, rich sense of the term involves not just relying on that person, but manifesting reliance on them in the expectation that this manifestation of reliance will increase their reason and motive to prove reliable. Can trust between people be formed on the basis of Internet contact alone? Forming the required expectation in regard to another person, and so trusting them on some matter, may be due to believing that they are trustworthy; to believing that they (...) seek es teem and will be rationally responsive to the good opinion communicated or promised by an act of trust; or to both factors at once. Neither mechanism can rationally command confidence, however, in the case where people are related only via the Internet. On the Internet everyone wears the ring of Gyges; everyone is invisible, in their personal identity, to others. (shrink)

David Lewis [1988; 1996] canvases an anti-Humean thesis about mental states: that the rational agent desires something to the extent that he or she believes it to be good. Lewis offers and refutes a decision-theoretic formulation of it, the 'Desire-as-Belief Thesis'. Other authors have since added further negative results in the spirit of Lewis's. We explore ways of being anti-Humean that evade all these negative results. We begin by providing background on evidential decision theory and on Lewis's negative results. We (...) then introduce what we call the indexicality loophole: if the goodness of a proposition is indexical, partly a function of an agent's mental state, then the negative results have no purchase. Thus we propose a variant of Desire-as-Belief that exploits this loophole. We argue that a number of meta-ethical positions are committed to just such indexicality. Indeed, we show that with one central sort of evaluative belief--the belief that an option is right--the indexicality loophole can be exploited in various interesting ways. Moreover, on some accounts, 'good' is indexical in the same way. Thus, it seems that the anti-Humean can dodge the negative results. (shrink)

Philosophers have lately seized upon Sperling's partial report technique and subsequent work on iconic memory in support of controversial claims about perceptual experience, in particular that phenomenology overflows cognitive access. Drawing on mounting evidence concerning postdictive perception, I offer an interpretation of Sperling's data in terms of cue-sensitive experience which fails to support any such claims. Arguments for overflow based on change-detection paradigms (e.g. Landman et al., 2003; Sligte et al., 2008) cannot be blocked in this way. However, such paradigms (...) are fundamentally different from Sperling's and, for rather different reasons, equally fail to establish controversial claims about perceptual experience. (shrink)

“I am only what I make myself to be”, Fichte tells us. In this paper, I outline Fichte’s views on sex, marriage and gender, with two aims. Firstly, to elucidate an aspect of his moral theory which has received little attention, and secondly to argue that Fichte’s distinctive stance on selfhood, freedom, and normativity lead to a revisionary account of gender expression and identity, where people can freely carve out their own identity, irrespective of “nature”. In this paper, I therefore (...) outline Fichte’s own views, highlighting what I see as a tension in the texts between essentialism and antiessentialism about gender, before reconstructing a neo-Fichtean view which foregrounds the anti-essentialist aspect. (shrink)

In 1889, the German philologist Friedrich Blass isolated a section of Chapter 20 from Iamblichus’ Exhortation to Philosophy (mid- or late 3rd Century CE) as an extract from a lost sophistic or philosophical treatise from the late 5th Century BCE. In this article, I introduce the text, which is now known as 'Anonymus Iamblichi' (or 'the anonymous work preserved in Iamblichus') by appeal to its two main contexts (source preservation and original historical composition), translate and discuss all eight surviving fragments (...) in their entirety, and provide some closing remarks about its importance to this history of democratic thought. The text itself presents a series of very carefully interwoven arguments concerning the three “parts” of excellence (ἀρετή) – wisdom, courage, and eloquence – and their successful application in society. In the course of presenting this case, Anonymus Iamblichi comments on the conditions under which one should learn to be excellent (Fragments 1-2) and the ends to which one should direct one’s excellence (Fragments 3-4); he provides an anthropological discussion of the weaknesses of human psychology and its effects on the good man (Fragments 5-6) and an hypothetical thought experiment concerning the “Superman” (which naturally solicits comparison with Nietzsche’s übermensch) and his inability to overcome the multitude in a lawless state (Fragments 6 and 8); and a positive defense of law and justice, reflecting a pro-democratic philosophical perspective (Fragments 7-8) – a rara avis indeed in ancient philosophy. (shrink)

Dr. Floyd-Thomas’s paper brings nuance to the discussion of pride and the hubris brought by the Westernized Enlightenment across disciplines. As much as I have the impulse to throttle others or shout or spit with the onslaught of mis-truths and ‘alternative facts’, this would not be a wise moment to conclude inquiry as an oral historian, or a Christian ethicist. I ask, can we decolonize ourselves, our syllabi, the canon, and thus our students with grace, understanding, even forgiveness so as (...) not to repeat the trespasses? (shrink)

Meet Tega. Blue, fluffy, and AI-enabled, Tega is a relational robot: a robot designed to form relationships with humans. Created to aid in early childhood education, Tega talks with children, plays educational games with them, solves puzzles, and helps in creative activities like making up stories and drawing. Children are drawn to Tega, describing him as a friend, and attributing thoughts and feelings to him ("he's kind," "if you just left him here and nobody came to play with him, he (...) might be sad"). Scholars and members of the public alike have raised the alarm about relational robots, worrying that the relationships that people, and especially children, form with such robots are objectionably inauthentic. We, members of an interdisciplinary team that developed and studies Tega, make this inauthenticity worry precise and offer practical recommendations for addressing it. We distinguish two kinds of (in)authenticity -- inauthenticity as unreality, and inauthenticity as deception -- arguing that neither is just what others have thought it is. With our distinction in hand, we argue that the authenticity concern can be met only through co-design methods -- methods that give stakeholders of all kinds (e.g. parents, educators, and children themselves) a genuine say in how relational robots are built. (shrink)

Metaphor has a double life. It can be described as a directional process in which a stable, familiar base domain provides inferential structure to a less clearly specified target. But metaphor is also described as a process of finding commonalities, an inherently symmetric process. In this second view, both concepts may be altered by the metaphorical comparison. Whereas most theories of metaphor capture one of these aspects, we offer a model based on structure-mapping that captures both sides of metaphor processing. (...) This predicts (a) an initial processing stage of symmetric alignment; and (b) a later directional phase in which inferences are projected to the target. To test these claims, we collected comprehensibility judgments for forward (e.g., “A rumor is a virus”) and reversed (“A virus is a rumor”) metaphors at early and late stages of processing, using a deadline procedure. We found an advantage for the forward direction late in processing, but no directional preference early in processing. Implications for metaphor theory are discussed. (shrink)

Introduces students to theories that have stood the test of time and those that have provided the historical foundation for the best of contemporary educational theory and practice.

An artistic discussion on the critical potential of African American expressive culture In a major reassessment of African American culture, Phillip Brian Harper intervenes in the ongoing debate about the “proper” depiction of black people. He advocates for African American aesthetic abstractionism—a representational mode whereby an artwork, rather than striving for realist verisimilitude, vigorously asserts its essentially artificial character. Maintaining that realist representation reaffirms the very social facts that it might have been understood to challenge, Harper contends that abstractionism (...) shows up the actual constructedness of those facts, thereby subjecting them to critical scrutiny and making them amenable to transformation. Arguing against the need for “positive” representations, Abstractionist Aesthetics displaces realism as the primary mode of African American representational aesthetics, re-centers literature as a principal site of African American cultural politics, and elevates experimental prose within the domain of African American literature. Drawing on examples across a variety of artistic production, including the visual work of Fred Wilson and Kara Walker, the music of Billie Holiday and Cecil Taylor, and the prose and verse writings of Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, and John Keene, this book poses urgent questions about how racial blackness is made to assume certain social meanings. In the process, African American aesthetics are upended, rendering abstractionism as the most powerful modality for Black representation. (shrink)

Education as a necessity of life -- Education as a social function -- Education as direction -- Education as growth -- Preparation, unfolding, and formal discipline -- Education as conservative and progressive -- The democratic conception in education -- Aims in education -- Natural development and social efficiency as aims -- Interest and discipline -- Experience and thinking -- Thinking in education -- The nature of method -- The nature of subject matter -- Play and work in the curriculum -- (...) The significance of geography and history -- Science in the course of study -- Educational values -- Labor and leisure -- Intellectual and practical studies -- Physical and social studies : naturalism and humanism -- The individual and the world -- Vocational aspects of education -- Philosophy of education -- Theories of knowledge -- Theories of morals. (shrink)

In this paper, I will investigate the early work of William Temple (1881–1944). My contention is that Temple’s systematic philosophy contains resources for an interesting variant of a desire argument for God’s existence and for the truth of Christianity. This desire argument moves from claims about the nature of human reason to the conditions for its satisfaction and how that satisfaction might be achieved. In constructing this argument, Temple confronts the problem of evil, and so I will also outline his (...) response to the problem here. Temple is often overlooked in histories of philosophy, though he was conversant with philosophical classics, including Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, and Lotze, and, to list a few of the contemporaries or near-contemporaries: Balfour, Haldane, F. H. Bradley, A. C. Bradley, Moore, Bosanquet, Joachim, and Croce. He also acknowledges, in the preface to his main philosophical work Mens Creatrix, a special debt to Bergson, but also signals distance from him in the same place. Temple presents an interesting case of a philosopher and theologian (most of his books are a mixture of the two, some being more predominantly one or the other) because of his commitment to philosophical system in the midst of early analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Wilderness provides a multidisciplinary introduction into the diverse ways in which we make sense of wilderness: how we conceptualise it, experience it, interact with, and imagine it. Drawing upon key theorists, philosophers, and researchers who have contributed important knowledge to the topic, this title argues for a relational and process based notion of the term and understands it as a keystone for the examination of issues from conservation to more-than-human relations. The text is organized around themed chapters discussing the concept (...) of wilderness and its place in the social imagination, wilderness regulation and management, access, travel and tourism, representation in media and arts, and the use of wilderness for education, exploration, play, and therapy, as well as its parcelling out in parks, reserves, or remote "wastelands." The book maps out the historical transformation of the idea of wilderness, highlighting its intersections with notions of nature and wildness and teasing out the implications of these links for theoretical debate. It offers boxes that showcase important recent case studies ranging from the development of adventure travel and eco-tourism to the practice of trekking to the changing role of technology use in the wild. Summaries of key points, further readings, Internet-based resources, short videos, and discussion questions allow readers to grasp the importance of wilderness to wider social, cultural, political, economic, historical and everyday processes. "Wilderness "is designed for courses and modules on the subject at both postgraduate and undergraduate levels. The book will also assist professional geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, environmental and cultural studies scholars to engage with recent and important literature on this elusive concept.". (shrink)

Invoking Hope: Reading Theory and Utopia in Dark Times argues for the undiminished importance of the practices of theory, utopia, and deep, close, and even critical reading in our current situation of what Brecht refers to as finsteren Zeiten, dark times. Written during 2016, an extraordinarily consequential year, Wegner reflects on the question: what does any particular theory allow us to do, what is the value of so doing, and, most importantly, who benefits?