Extended Cognition (EC) hypothesizes that there are parts of the world outside the head serving as cognitive vehicles. One criticism of this controversial view is the problem of “cognitive bloat” which says that EC is too permissive and fails to provide an adequate necessary criterion for cognition. It cannot, for instance, distinguish genuine cognitive vehicles from mere supports (e.g. the Yellow Pages). In response, Andy Clark and Mark Rowlands have independently suggested that genuine cognitive vehicles are distinguished from supports in (...) that the former have been “recruited,” i.e. they are either artifacts, or, products of evolution. I argue against this proposal. There are counter examples to the claim that “Teleological” EC is either necessary or sufficient for cognition. Teleological EC conflates different types of scientific projects, and inherits content externalism’s alienation from historically impartial cognitive science. (shrink)

Existing puzzles about coinciding objects can be divided into two types, corresponding to the manner in which they bear upon the endurantism v. perdurantism debate. Puzzles of the first type, which involve temporary spatial co-location, can be solved simply by abandoning endurantism in favor of perdurantism, whereas those of the second type, which involve career-long spatial co-location, remain equally puzzling on both views. I show that the possibility of backward time travel would give rise to a new type of puzzle. (...) The new puzzles confront perdurantists and can be solved just by shifting to endurantism. (shrink)

A lively and lucid introduction to one of the great Marxist thinkers of the 20th century by the master cultural critic.

Using an analogy between moths and men, in 1916, Richard Goldschmidt proposed that homosexuality was a case of genetic intersexuality. As he strove to create a unified theory of sex determination that would encompass animals ranging from moths to men, Goldschmidt's doubts grew concerning the association of homosexuality with intersexuality until, in 1931, he dropped homosexuality from his theory of intersexuality. Despite Goldschmidt's explicit rejection of his theory of homosexuality, Theo Lang, a researcher in the Genealogical-Demographic Department of the Institute (...) for Psychiatric Research in Munich, revived it, maintained Goldschmidt's association with it, and argued on its behalf in publications from 1936 to 1960. Lang's appropriation of Goldschmidt's theory did not depend on his resolution of the difficulties Goldschmidt had found with his own theory. Lang and Goldschmidt, I argue, had fundamentally different scientific and social commitments that allowed one to reject this theory of homosexuality and the other to accept it. (shrink)

When do the folk think that material objects persist? Many metaphysicians have wanted a view which fits with folk intuitions, yet there is little agreement about what the folk intuit. I provide a range of empirical evidence which suggests that the folk operate with a teleological view of persistence: the folk tend to intuit that a material object survives alterations when its function is preserved. Given that the folk operate with a teleological view of persistence, I argue for (...) a debunking explanation of folk intuitions, concluding that metaphysicians should dismiss folk intuitions as tied into a benighted view of nature. (shrink)

"Caroline Williams marks what is distinctive about 20th Century French philosophy's interrogation of the subject and demonstrates its historical continuity in a ...

The central aim of this paper is to use a particular view about how the laws of nature govern the evolution of our universe in order to develop and evaluate the two main competing options in the metaphysics of persistence, namely endurantism and perdurantism. We begin by motivating the view that our laws of nature dictate not only qualitative facts about the future, but also which objects will instantiate which qualitative properties. We then show that both traditional doctrines in (...) the metaphysics of persistence must take on surprising further commitments in order to vindicate our universe being law-governed in this strong sense. For example, we argue that endurantists should adopt a particular version of monism, and that perdurantists should adopt a qualitativist doctrine that dispenses with all individuals at the fundamental level. (shrink)

The publication of Form and Object: A Treatise on Things by Tristan Garcia, Prix de Flore-winning novelist, philosopher, essayist, and screenwriter is a genuine event in the history of philosophy. Situating this event within classical, modern, and contemporary dialectical space, Jon Cogburn evaluates Garcia's metaphysics, differential ontology, and militant anti-reductionism through a series of seemingly incompatible oppositions concerning: substance and process, analysis and dialectic, simple and whole, and discovery and creation. Cogburn also includes a critical assessment of the consequences of (...) Garcia's philosophy, the various unresolved problems in his treatise, and the future prospects of speculative metaphysics. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Influence of Personalism on Harkness and King, Their Pacifism, and Their PersistenceNatalya A. Cherry (bio)I. IntroductionAs it is the hallmark of liberal theologies to take their critics seriously and learn from the criticisms offered, it is important to acknowledge a valid potential criticism of this article at its outset. Rufus Burrow, in God and Human Dignity: The Personalism, Theology, and Ethics of Martin Luther King, Jr., observed that (...) scholarship on King demonstrates a tendency on the part of white scholars to try to use the work of Boston Personalists to claim outsized influence on King.1 Perhaps these tendencies reflect an effort by white scholars to cling to the coattails of King’s massive popularity or to mask our own complicity in white supremacy. This paper therefore refrains from claiming that Georgia Harkness, the first woman appointed a theology professor in an American theological school, had a major, direct influence on King. Rather it identifies Personalist-influenced models of God common to Harkness and King—as a result of their both having studied under Borden Parker Bowne’s student Edgar S. Brightman—that appear to undergird their commitments to nonviolence. It respectfully considers their influences and their models of God, the confluences of their commitments, and the outlook for nonviolence at the ends of their lives, as well as for the present and future, over 55 and 49 years since their respective deaths.II. Evidences of InfluencesTwo pieces of textual evidence demonstrate Harkness’s and King’s mutual respect for one another and offer some insight into their experiences with Boston Personalism. One is an epistolary exchange between the two that includes a letter from King, in which he acknowledged his familiarity with Harkness’s [End Page 57] work.2 Though he did not mention it in this letter, the other piece of textual evidence is his brief reference to an article by Harkness in the third chapter of his doctoral dissertation3 completed at Boston University.4 [End Page 58]The first, epistolary evidence results from the fact that King had received a letter from Harkness as he recuperated from a very nearly successful, apparent assassination attempt carried out on September 20, 1958. The letter from Harkness was dated ten days later, incidentally the same day he publicly forgave his attacker, who was later found to be criminally insane. In her letter, Harkness wished him well, expressed admiration for his work in the civil rights movement and specifically offered her appreciation for his recently published book about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Stride Toward Freedom. A book-signing for it, in fact, had put him in the path of his attacker in Harlem that September day. In the opening of her letter, Harkness had taken pains to identify herself to him, to which King replied,You needed not take the extra paragraph to introduce yourself to me. I have known you for several years through your writings. When I was a student in theological seminary...I had the great privilege of reading some of your books and articles. When I went to Boston University for my doctoral studies, I naturally heard your name many times, for Boston University, as you know, is very proud of you and never forgets to mention that you are one of its graduates. I have long admired your Christian witness and your sound theology. I hope it will be possible for us to meet personally in the not-too-distant future.5While there does not appear to be a record of whether this hope of meeting in person was ever fulfilled, nor of which of Harkness’s “books and articles” King had read in seminary, there is clear record—in the other textual evidence mentioned above—of his encounter with her work while he studied at Boston.There, his dissertation, “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman,” referred his readers to an article Harkness had published in 1938, entitled “The Abyss and the Given.”6 The reference emerges in King’s third chapter, on “Tillich’s conception of God,” where he eventually would describe love and justice as inextricably... (shrink)

Multi-level marketing companies such as Amway, Herbalife, or Tupperware differ from most other companies. They market their products and services by means of self-employed distributors who typically work from home, sell products to end consumers, and recruit, motivate, and educate new distributors to do the same. Although the industry’s growth seems to illustrate the attractiveness of MLMs, the industry has been facing several legal and ethical problems. In this paper, we focus on these problems and argue that an extended MLM (...) model may help us to understand why such problems continue to occur, despite the countermeasures that have been implemented. By explicating how problems relate to a specific but often overlooked characteristic of MLMs, i.e., the so-called distributor network, we provide an extended understanding of MLMs’ mode of operation, the sources of their legal and ethical problems, and the reason that currently implemented and suggested countermeasures may not suffice. Moreover, based on our extended understanding of MLMs and their problems, we propose additional countermeasures. (shrink)

The metaphysical commitment to the circle as the essential element in the analysis of celestial motion has long been recognized as the hallmark of classical astronomy. What has not always been clear, however, is that the circle continued to serve Kepler as a central element in his astronomy after the discovery of the elliptical orbit of Mars. Moreover, the circle also functioned for Kepler in geometry to select the basic polygons, in music to select the basic harmonies, and in astrology (...) to select the basic aspects. His basic set of polygons consisted of those figures that could be constructed using only a compass and a rule; the set of fundamental harmonies consisted of the consonances of the just intonation; and the traditional set of astrological aspects were enlarged by Kepler to include three new aspects in order to make the astrological set consistent with geometry and music. And as the circle served to unify these three areas, so also did it serve to supply the fundamental answers to astronomical problems well after the discovery of his new astronomy—a topic to be discussed in Part II of this paper. (shrink)

The Persistence of Subjectivity examines several approaches to, and critiques of, the core notion in the self-understanding and legitimation of the modern, 'bourgeois' form of life: the free, reflective, self-determining subject. Since it is a relatively recent historical development that human beings think of themselves as individual centers of agency, and that one's entitlement to such a self-determining life is absolutely valuable, the issue at stake also involves the question of the historical location of philosophy. What might it mean (...) to take seriously Hegel's claim that philosophical reflection is always reflection on the historical 'actuality' of its own age? Discussing Heidegger, Gadamer, Adorno, Leo Strauss, Manfred Frank, and John McDowell, Robert Pippin attempts to understand how subjectivity arises in contemporary institutional practices such as medicine, as well as in other contexts such as modernism in the visual arts and in the novels of Marcel Proust. (shrink)

Computers are used to make decisions in an increasing number of domains. There is widespread agreement that some of these uses are ethically problematic. Far less clear is where ethical problems arise, and what might be done about them. This paper expands and defends the Ethical Gravity Thesis: ethical problems that arise at higher levels of analysis of an automated decision-making system are inherited by lower levels of analysis. Particular instantiations of systems can add new problems, but not ameliorate more (...) general ones. We defend this thesis by adapting Marr’s famous 1982 framework for understanding information-processing systems. We show how this framework allows one to situate ethical problems at the appropriate level of abstraction, which in turn can be used to target appropriate interventions. (shrink)

Stephen Mumford has argued that dispositionalists ought to be endurantists because perdurantism, by breaking down persisting objects in sequences of static discrete existents, is at odds with a powers metaphysics. This has been contested by Neil Williams who offers his own version of ‘powerful’ perdurance where powers function as links between the temporal parts of persisting objects. Weighing up the arguments given by both sides, I show that the profile of ‘powerful’ persistence crucially depends on how one conceptualises the (...) processes involved in the manifestation of powers. As this turns out not to be determined per se by subscribing to some view labelled ‘powers view’, further discussion is needed as to what processes are and to what kind of process theory a powers metaphysics should commit itself in order to be convincing. I defend the claim that dispositionalism is best combined with a version of process ontology that is indeed incompatible with a perdurantist analysis of persistence. However, I argue that this does not imply that dispositionalists ought to be endurantists. (shrink)

The United States, unlike most developed countries, continues to use the marital couple as the taxable unit for its income tax. This continued use of the marital unit— like its original establishment —rests on cultural preferences. This Article suggests that the roles of marriage, religion and taxation in America are essential factors in America’s retention of the marital unit. Part I examines the distinctive contribution marriage — especially the traditional single-earner breadwinner marriage — makes to the political life of the (...) country. Part II explores the similar role of religion. Part III describes some congressional efforts over the past two decades to aid, ostensibly, married couples through the income tax. Part IV concludes that although these actions have not been the most effective or efficient means of helping married couples, they nevertheless serve an important expressive purpose. Tax has been the arena for many political issues since the founding of the nation. Consequently, congressional actions and rhetoric regarding the income tax’s "marriage penalty" reinforce the marital unit/joint return and reaffirm — even if only symbolically — a national commitment to marriage as instrumental to American democracy. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue for a novel three-dimensionalist solution to the problem of persistence, i.e. cross-temporal identity. We restrict the discussion of persistence to simple substances, which do not have other substances as their parts. The account of simple substances employed in the paper is a trope-nominalist strong nuclear theory, which develops Peter Simons' trope nominalism. Regarding the distinction between three dimensionalism and four dimensionalism, we follow Michael Della Rocca's formulation, in which 3D explains persistence in (...) virtue of same entities and 4D in virtue of distinct entities. SNT is a 3D'ist position because it accounts for the persistence of simple substances in virtue of diachronically identical ‘nuclear’ tropes. The nuclear tropes of a simple substance are necessary for it and mutually rigidly dependent but distinct. SNT explains qualitative change by tropes that are contingent to a simple substance. We show that it avoids the standard problems of 3D: temporal relativization of ontic predication, Bradley's regress and coincidence, fission and fusion cases. The temporal relativization is avoided because of the analysis of temporary parts that SNT gives in terms of temporal sub-location, which is atemporal part–whole relation. (shrink)

ExcerptMore than six hundred not entirely new pages from Fredric Jameson is an occasion that provides something for almost everyone. In Valences of the Dialectic, philosophers, all sorts of theorists (political, literary, social), historians, and even people with activist inclinations (for is not Marxism a type of praxis?) will discover rich provocations. By my count a little more than half of the book is new material; the rest is a varied set of articles brought together here to give greater breadth (...) to Jameson's long engagement with dialectical thought. Valences is not the culmination of that engagement, but rather Jameson keeping…. (shrink)

I BEGIN THIS ESSAY BY EXAMINING HOW OUR "VIAGRA CULTURE"—ATAN-gled web of biotechnology, consumerism, and medicalization—creates an opening for patriarchy in our era. The second section examines how such large sociocultural forces invade women's bedrooms, impacting their intimate relationships. We then consider men who adopt a counternarrative to that of patriarchy and anxiety, whose sexuality is distinguished by tenderness and mutual regard. The essay closes with reflections on how the Viagra culture reminds us of the need to nurture the virtue (...) of generosity, a virtue that marks good sex and characterizes the lovers who practice it. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Debates about “populism” in recent years have used thin understandings of the term, which conceal theoretically richer possibilities. This essay explores the thicker understanding of populism developed in Christopher Lasch’s The True and Only Heaven and bell hooks’s belonging. In so doing, the essay suggests other roads forward for arguments about populism in America.