The broad, ancient notion of the “soul” was replaced by Descartes with a more narrow notion of the “mind.” As well as limiting the scope of the soul, Descartes separated it from the body, giving the soul a substantive status. These two features gave rise to severe conceptual problems which remain unsolved till the present day. I believe that retaining some features of the ancient notion of the “soul”—particularly those found in Aristotle’s view—may resolve many of these problems. As (...) an alternative approach I suggest the following three assumptions concerning the nature of the soul : the soul consists of dispositional and actualized states and not of internal, isolated entities; physiological and mental states are not actually separate but belong to two different levels of description, hence the relation between them is that of correlation and not of causality; mental and physical states can be arranged along a spectrum ranging from simple to more complex states. This approach treats mental properties just as common sense and science treat other natural properties. Thus, many of the traditional problems concerning the mind-body gap disappear. Though the approach presented here returns, in some aspects, to the ancient, broad notion of the soul, I will continue to use the term “mind” which is used more today. (shrink)

In this work I reject the contention that there is a perceptual stage which is devoid of contributions from the agent's cognitive framework. This contention is expressed in two different noncognitive views of perception. The traditional sensory core view which has prevailed since the seventeenth century; it claims that there is a stage of pure sensory core which precedes the interpretive percepts . The recent ecological approach whose main representative is J. J. Gibson; it claims that not only a certain (...) perceptual stage, but the whole perceptual process, is devoid of cognitive contributions. Before I deal with these views, I discuss the basic features of cognition in general. ;Cognition is concerned with the establishment of relations and order; it is a purposive placing of a cognized object into a meaningful order. Cognition begins with modifying a given order for the purpose of making it fit into a given meaningful framework. Throughout the work I show that, contrary to the aforementioned noncognitive views, perception fulfills this depiction of cognition. ;In the discussion of the sensory core view, I illustrate its main assumptions in various philosophical writings, and then indicate main reasons for its appearance in the seventeenth century. These reasons stem from the intermediate role sensation was supposed to have in the mental-physical gap. Sensations were considered to be primitive mental entities with physical causes; their physical origin prevents them from containing complex mental features such as the cognitive ones, and, thus, they are regarded as pure. This stage of pure sensation was postulated primarily out of theoretical considerations. Those did not coincide with the empirical and phenomenological description of that stage; hence, the empirical characterization and the phenomenological status of that stage were constantly modified. The various suggestions for describing that stage are examined and criticized from both empirical and theoretical respects. The empirical evidence presented indicates that there is no qualitative difference between perceiving what is regarded as pure sensations and what is regarded as inferential perceptions. The theoretical criticism points out that the assumption regarding pure sensation is not necessary for an adequate explanation of perception; and, since it has no empirical grounds, it is superfluous. ;After rejecting the sensory core view, I examine the ecological approach. This view rejects the traditional sensation-perception distinction and contends that we do not have to assume the existence of cognitive activities that interpret meaningless sensations into meaningful perceptions, since the perceiver directly encounters meaningful features. I claim that this solution is similar to Kant's approach, and, therefore, it has to pay a price which is similar to that which Kant pays, viz. the relational nature of the perceptual environment. The neglect of this feature results in unsolvable difficulties in central notions of the ecological approach. ;I conclude the work by suggesting a crude outline for approaching perception; in many respects it is close to Aristotle's view. I contend that causal explanations of the physiological processes cannot wholly explain perceiving; these processes are necessary supportive bases for perceiving and not the causes which precede and produce it. Accordingly, we should not assume the existence of separate percepts in the agent's head. The cognitive system is an integral part of the perceptual system; hence, perception may be conceived of as direct understanding. (shrink)

Three common strategies used by informal logicians are considered: (1) the appeal to standard cases, (2) the attempt to partially formalize so-called "informal fallacies," and (3) restatement of arguments in such a way as to make their logical character more perspicuous. All three strategies are found to be useful. Attention is drawn to several advantages of a "stock case" approach, a minimalist approach to formalization is recommended, and doubts are raised about the applicability, from a logical point of view, (...) of a principle of charitable construal in the reconstruction of arguments. (shrink)

The sensation-perception distinction did not appear before the seventeenth century, but since then various formulations of it have gained wide acceptance. This is not an historical accident and the article suggests an explanation for its appearance. Section 1 describes a basic assumption underlying the sensation-perception distinction, to wit, the postulation of a pure sensory stage--viz. sensation--devoid of active influence of the agent's cognitive, emotional, and evaluative frameworks. These frameworks are passive in that stage. I call this postulation the passivity assumption. (...) Section 2 suggests three major reasons for the emergence of this assumption in the seventeenth century: the mental-physical gap, the causal theory of perception, and epistemological considerations regarding the status of the sensory given. In the last section a critical discussion is presented. The passivity assumption is found to have serious empirical and theoretical flaws. (shrink)

Students systematically and deliberately apply rule‐based but erroneous algorithms to solving unfamiliar arithmetic problems. These algorithms result in erroneous solutions termed rational errors. Computationally, students' erroneous algorithms can be represented by perturbations or bugs in otherwise correct arithmetic algorithms (Brown & VanLehn, 1980; Langley & Ohilson, 1984; VanLehn, 1983, 1986, 1990; Young S O'Sheo, 1981). Bugs are useful for describing how rational errors occur but bugs are not sufficient for explaining their origin. A possible explanation for this is that rational (...) errors are the result of incorrect induction from examples. This prediction is termed the “induction hypothesis” (VanLehn, 1986). The purpose of the present study was to: (a) expand on post formulations of the induction hypothesis, and (b) use a new methodology to test the induction hypothesis more carefully than has been done previously. The first step involved teaching participants a new number system called NewAbacus, a written modification of the abacus system. The second step consisted of dividing them into different groups, where each individual received an example of only one port of the NewAbacus addition algorithm. During the third and final step, participants were instructed to solve both familiar and unfamiliar types of addition problems in NewAbacus. The induction hypothesis was supported by using both empirical and computational investigations. (shrink)

Decision making theory in general, and mental models in particular, associate judgment and choice. Decision choice follows probability estimates and errors in choice derive mainly from errors in judgment. In the studies reported here we use the Monty Hall dilemma to illustrate that judgment and choice do not always go together, and that such a dissociation can lead to better decision-making. Specifically, we demonstrate that in certain decision problems, exceeding working memory limitations can actually improve decision choice. (...) We show across four experiments that increasing the number of choice alternatives forces people to collapse choices together, resulting in better decision-making. While choice performance improves, probability judgments do not change, thus demonstrating an important dissociation between choice and probability judgments. We propose the Collapsing Choice Theory (CCT) which explains how working memory capacity, probability estimation, choice alternatives, judgment, and regret all interact and effect decision quality. (shrink)

A popular response to the Exclusion Argument for physicalism maintains that mental events depend on their physical bases in such a way that the causation of a physical effect by a mental event and its physical base needn’t generate any problematic form of causal overdetermination, even if mental events are numerically distinct from and irreducible to their physical bases. This paper presents and defends a form of dualism that implements this response by using a dispositional essentialist view (...) of properties to argue that the psychophysical laws linking mental events to their physical bases are metaphysically necessary. I show the advantages of such a position over an alternative form of dualism that merely places more “modal weight” on psychophysical laws than on physical laws. The position is then defended against the objection that it is inconsistent with dualism. Lastly, some suggestions are made as to how dualists might clarify the contribution that mental causes make to their physical effects. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 8.4 (2001) 317-322 [Access article in PDF] On Wolfgang Blankenburg, Common Sense, and Schizophrenia Aaron L. Mishara Introduction In its increasing openness to neuroscience (Cowan, Harter, and Kandel 2000) and other of its neighboring disciplines, mainstream biological psychiatry has allowed psychopathology, philosophy, and philosophical approaches to psychopathology to play an increased role in current research interests. Given this new openness, and the acknowledgment of (...) the severity of one of psychiatry's most debilitating, costly, and intractable disorders, 1 the translation of W. Blankenburg's 1969 article concerning the psychopathology of common sense does not merely serve historical interest. It is an exceptional example of a not well-known trend in German- and French-speaking psychiatry to apply philosophical phenomenology and existentialism to psychopathological research. This trend, which reached a peak in the late 1950s and was strong well into the 1970s, has dwindling, but nevertheless, current representatives in Heidelberg and Zurich and is scattered in a few other places in Europe, Japan, the United States, and South America. The view of the Zeitgeist—which may sound astonishing, even antiquated to contemporary readers—was highly ambitious: Conceptual approaches, such as philosophical ("transcendental") phenomenology, were expected to supply knowledge about the structure of consciousness and its disturbance in various mental disorders.Following the lead of Binswanger and Szilasi, who viewed schizophrenia as an "experiment of nature" that enables us to view underlying processes otherwise hidden to "natural, everyday consciousness," Blankenburg believed that it may be possible to map the formal properties of the psychopathology of schizophrenia—precisely in the loss of common sense—as a disturbance to the basic organization of conscious experience. Any attempt to summarize this rather abstract and complex approach in a brief commentary would be ill advised. In passing, rather, I will remark that such efforts could have profound relevance to the current research of schizophrenia and its underlying neurobiology. This research has gradually acknowledged the importance of taking the patient's subjective experience of the disorder into account (Mishara, Parnas, and Naudin 1998). In this commentary, I will first give an account of the biographical and clinical reasons that led Blankenburg to turn to the problem of common sense and its relevance for schizophrenia. I will then explore what implications [End Page 317] his work may have for more recent findings concerning schizophrenia. Blankenburg's Intellectual Development Born in 1928, W. Blankenburg, the son of a Lufthansa pilot who pioneered transatlantic commercial flights, began his studies in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1947. While at Freiburg, Blankenburg heard lectures in philosophy given by E. Fink (the former assistant to Husserl) and Max Mueller, and in psychology, by R. Heiss and others. After three years, Blankenburg turned to the study of medicine, producing a dissertation in 1956 on an application of Daseinsanalysis (Heidegger and Binswanger) to a case of paranoid schizophrenia. Binswanger wrote the forward to the publication. Between 1956 and 1958, Blankenburg studied internal medicine in Heidelberg with the accomplished phenomenologist of bodily experience (Leibphaenomenologer) and student of V. von Weizsaecker Herbert Pluegge. He spent one semester in Goettingen where he attended lectures by the ontological philosopher Nicolai Hartmann, who provided for Blankenburg a more useful approach to the problem of nature and natural science than Heidegger's primary emphasis on the question of Being. During his Freiburg years, Blankenburg attended small seminars led by Heidegger in the Schwarzwald forest. (Heidegger had been forbidden to teach after the end of World War II.) Blankenburg recalls that the participants would sit on logs in an open field as if to invoke Heidegger's concept of the clearing (Lichtung) of Being. While not entirely sympathetic with Heidegger's philosophy, Blankenburg learned to carefully "listen"—as Heidegger would repeatedly emphasize—to language, not merely poetic or philosophical language, but the language of the patients he would meet in clinical practice.During this time, Blankenburg heard lectures by W. Szilasi, the philosopher-scientist who held Husserl's and Heidegger's chair in the department of philosophy. Szilasi collaborated with the phenomenological psychiatrist, L. Binswanger. Their effort to apply concepts from Husserl's... (shrink)

Decision making theory in general, and mental models in particular, associate judgment and choice. Decision choice follows probability estimates and errors in choice derive mainly from errors in judgment. In the studies reported here we use the Monty Hall dilemma to illustrate that judgment and choice do not always go together, and that such a dissociation can lead to better decision-making. Specifically, we demonstrate that in certain decision problems, exceeding working memory limitations can actually improve decision choice. (...) We show across four experiments that increasing the number of choice alternatives forces people to collapse choices together, resulting in better decision-making. While choice performance improves, probability judgments do not change, thus demonstrating an important dissociation between choice and probability judgments. We propose the Collapsing Choice Theory (CCT) which explains how working memory capacity, probability estimation, choice alternatives, judgment, and regret all interact and effect decision quality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume on Space (and Time) BEN MIJUSKOVIC HUME'S LABYRINTHINE ANALYSES of our ideas of space and time, textually occuring so early in the Treatise, 1clearly testify to his conviction of their central role in the physical sciences, then making such fantastic progress. Furthermore, quite early in the Treatise, Hume indicates his ambition to effect a revolution in the mental sciences comparable to the one Newton had achieved (...) in the physical disciplines, through the latter's conception of the force and effects of gravity. Accordingly, Hume regards the three principles or laws of the association of ideas as a "kind of ATTRACTION, which in the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as in the natural" (T, 12-13). In pursuit of his investigations Hume commences, in the first part of the Treatise, by insisting on the principle that all our simple ideas are derived from simple impressions and that impressions always precede their correspondent ideas (T, 4, 7). This being firmly established, Hume nevertheless immediately proceeds in the very next part of the work to declare, paradoxically enough, that our ideas of space and time are complex ideas that lie beyond the nature of each and all of our simple impressions. Differently put, Hume is insisting that our ideas of space and time, unlike our idea of, say, a shade of blue, are not derived unproblematically from a precedent, simple mental impression (or physiological sensation, ~ la Locke). Thus, according to Hume, our idea of space is not sensationally given; it is not traceable to an antecedent extended impression as our idea of blue is derived from a precedent impression of blue. Hume's insistence that our conception of space is nonsensational has perplexed competent commentators on Hume. Consequently, even so able an interpreteter as Kemp Smith has been puzzled "why it was that [Hume] did not take the more easy line of allowing 'extensity' to the sensations of sight and touch. ''2 Or again, "How is it that [Hume] has not taken what would seem to be for him the easier and more obvious course, at least as regards space--the course usually taken by those who hold a sensationalist theory of knowledge--that extensity is a feature of certain of our sensations (those given through the senses of touch and sight), and in consequence sensibly imaged?" (PDH, 280). Of this simpler solution both Hobbes (Leviathan, Pt. I, 1; De Corpore, Pt. II, 7, 8) and Locke (Essay, II, 8) had availed themselves prior to Hume. Hence, Kemp Smith has found the section to be tough going indeed and has contented himself, to a great extent, in simply offering a number of historical appendices, suggesting lines of influence on Hume, through passages discovered in the works of Pierre Bayle, Nicholas de Malezieu, and Isaac Barrow. Now, without denying that Hume studied and was influenced in part by the ' A Treatise of Hurnan Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford, 1888); hereafter cited as T. 2 The Philosophy of David Hume (New York, 1964), p. 277; hereafter cited as PDH. [3871 388 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY thinking of these authors (as well as by Francis Hutcheson), I wish to take up and develop in this paper a "historical" suggestion first offered by a student of Kemp Smith's, Charles Hendel; and I shall extend Hendel's point and try to argue a "theoretic" one, namely, that Hume's phenomenalism in the section devoted to space and time is derived from, and closely akin to, a form of Leibnizian idealism. In 1925, Hendel argued that Hume was directly influenced by the Leibniz-Clarke debate over the ontological and epistemological status of space and time; and he held that for Hume space and time, as appearances, were ultimately grounded in the associative power of the imagination.' Thirty years later, in a second edition, Hendel disavowed his earlier claim concerning the imagination and avoided discussion of his prior view that Hume was influenced by the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence (1963 edition, pp. 501, 503). In Hume's Philosophy of Human Nature, which first appeared in 1932 (reissued by Archon, 1967; see pp. 64-65, 67, 73, 77), John Laird also intimated that... (shrink)

This article provides a conceptual map of the affective terrain while focusing on enduring positive affective attitudes, such as love and happiness. The first section of the article examines the basic characteristics of affective attitudes, i.e., intentionality, feeling, and dispositionality, and classifies the various affective attitudes accordingly. An important distinction in this regard is between acute, extended, and enduring affective attitudes. Then a discussion on the temporality of affective attitudes is presented. The second section discusses major mechanisms that enable long-lasting (...) affective attitudes to endure. These mechanisms include, Hedonic adaptation, which reduces affective intensity, thereby enabling adaptation to a stable, average level of affective intensity; Positive mood offset, which maintains a moderate level of positive mood in the absence of adverse stimuli; The enduring mood of being dissatisfied, thereby keeping the agent’s interest high, and Meaningful development, which underlies the continuation and enhancement of the affective attitude. Each of these mechanisms sustains, in its own unique way, the balance required for enduring affective attitudes. The third section applies the above considerations to two major enduring positive affective attitudes: the mood of lasting happiness and the enduring emotion of profound romantic love. Time is typically a necessary condition for the creation and enhancement of such love. However, it is not a sufficient condition. So only in some cases, but not in all, does loving longer mean loving more. (shrink)

The relationship between emotions and argumentation is not always clear. I attempt to clarify this issue by referring to three basic questions: (1) Do emotions constitute a certain kind of argumentation?; (2) Do emotions constitute rational argumentation?; (3) Do emotions constitute efficient argumentation? I will claim that there are many circumstances in which the answer to these questions is positive. After describing such circumstances, the educational implications of the connection between emotions and argumentation will be indicated.

In many circumstances compromises seem to be of great value to our well-being; compromises can help us avoid disputes and fights and enable us to live peacefully with each other. However, compromises can also require us to surrender some of our values. These two opposing aspects implicit in compromise express the need to be sensitive to external circumstances and in particular to the wishes of other people, and at the same time to be willing to relinquish something of value. So (...) are compromises, and in particular romantic compromises, good or bad for our well-being? McIntyre’s view in general and Aristotle’s distinction between extrinsically and intrinsically valuable activities in particular, are very useful in this regard. Compromises can be characterized as involving dissatisfied acceptance of a gap between a perceived feasible desire and our actual situation. The acceptance of the gap is merely behavioral stemming from unfavorable external circumstances. It is not psychologically accepted, as deep down we are not happy with the compromise, and still yearning for a better solution. Romantic compromises are particularly hard to accept in light of the prominent place of the Romantic Ideology, in which ideal love can overcome all obstacles and hence there is no place for compromises. (shrink)

Jesus has been accused of committing a fallacy (of denying the antecedent) at John 8:47. Careful analysis of this text (1) reveals a hitherto unrecognized valid form of argument which can superficially look like the predicate-logic analogue of denying the antecedent; (2) shows that determining whether a published text can be fairly charged with committing a fallacy may require (but often does not get) extensive and detailed analysis; (3) acquits Jesus of the charge; and thereby (4) conflnns a claim by (...) Michael Burke that published arguments can seldom be fairly charged with denying the antecedent, or analogous fallacies. (shrink)

Emotions punctuate almost all significant events in our lives, but their nature, causes, and consequences are among the least well understood aspects of human experience. It is easier to express emotions than to describe them and even harder to analyse and explain them. Despite their apparent familiarity, emotions are an extremely subtle and complex topic. Unfortunately, the topic was neglected by philosophers and scientists in the past. In recent decades, however, interest in the emotions has grown considerably among scholars and (...) students from many disciplines, as well as among the public at large. If there is to be any progress in this theoretically and practically important field, not only is a broad philosophical examination of basic concepts and issues essential, but also an interdisciplinary approach that combines philosophical analysis with other types of scientific research. The clarification of basic emotional concepts as well as the unification of linguistic usages across disciplines and natural languages are necessary for integrating the growing body of interdisciplinary emotional research. The contemporary philosophy of emotions is equipped for this integrative task. It can provide us with a better and more comprehensive picture of the nature of emotions. (shrink)

Answering the question, ‘Who is a rational agent?’ is of utmost importance for all moral theories which conceive of the rational agent as their basic moral unit. Surprisingly enough, these theories do not pay much attention to this question, and assume, without offering detailed discussions, certain characterizations of the rational agent. In this paper, I examine what kind of attribute ‘rational’ is. In light of this examination I claim that the rational moral theories are based on a mistaken characterization of (...) the rational agent. (shrink)

In face of the multiple controversies surrounding the DSM process in general and the development of DSM-5 in particular, we have organized a discussion around what we consider six essential questions in further work on the DSM. The six questions involve: 1) the nature of a mental disorder; 2) the definition of mental disorder; 3) the issue of whether, in the current state of psychiatric science, DSM-5 should assume a cautious, conservative posture or an assertive, transformative posture; 4) (...) the role of pragmatic considerations in the construction of DSM-5; 5) the issue of utility of the DSM - whether DSM-III and IV have been designed more for clinicians or researchers, and how this conflict should be dealt with in the new manual; and 6) the possibility and advisability, given all the problems with DSM-III and IV, of designing a different diagnostic system. Part I of this article took up the first two questions. Part II will take up the second two questions. Question 3 deals with the question as to whether DSM-V should assume a conservative or assertive posture in making changes from DSM-IV. That question in turn breaks down into discussion of diagnoses that depend on, and aim toward, empirical, scientific validation, and diagnoses that are more value-laden and less amenable to scientific validation. Question 4 takes up the role of pragmatic consideration in a psychiatric nosology, whether the purely empirical considerations need to be tempered by considerations of practical consequence. As in Part 1 of this article, the general introduction, as well as the introductions and conclusions for the specific questions, are written by James Phillips, and the responses to commentaries are written by Allen Frances. (shrink)

The thesis that aesthetic testimony cannot provide aesthetic justification or knowledge is widely accepted--even by realists about aesthetic properties and values. This Kantian position is mistaken. Some testimony about beauty and artistic value can provide a degree of aesthetic justification and, perhaps, even knowledge. That is, there are cases in which one can be justified in making an aesthetic judgment purely on the basis of someone else's testimony. But widespread aesthetic unreliability creates a problem for much aesthetic testimony. (...) Hence, most testimony about art does not have much epistemic value. The situation is somewhat different with respect to aesthetic testimony about nature, proofs, and theories. (shrink)

When performing a skilled action—whether something impressive like a double somersault or something mundane like reaching for a glass of water—you exercise control over your bodily movements. Specifically, you guide their course. In what does that control consist? In this dissertation, I argue that it consists in attending to what you are doing. More specifically, in attending, agents harness their perceptual and perceptuomotor states directly and practically in service of their goals and, in doing so, settle the fine-grained manner (...) in which their bodies will move—details an intention alone leaves unsettled. This requires, among other things, that we reject views on which agents’ control is identical with their practical rationality. When all goes well, agents attentionally prioritize what is motivationally relevant to them to the exclusion of what would otherwise distract them from achieving their goals. However, sometimes agents attend distractedly—i.e., without prioritizing. As the aim of attention is to avoid distraction, this entails the possibility of defective attention. Defective attention, in turn, casts light on scenarios in which agents lose control over what they are doing, as when a skilled practitioner ‘chokes under pressure’. A complaint sometimes levelled against accounts, like mine, that claim to reduce agents’ control of their behaviour to that of causally efficacious mental states or events is that these accounts invariably deprive agents themselves of their rightful role in the generation of behaviour. This is the “Disappearing Agent Problem” for “reductive” or “event-causal” theories of action. I argue that, correctly understood, extant reductive theories do face a genuine Disappearing Agent Problem. However, it is a problem we solve by recognizing the role that conscious attention plays in making an action the agent’s own. Accordingly, I develop and defend an attentional account of action ownership. On this view, allocating conscious attention in service of your goals is sufficient for a kind of conscious perspective (“motivational perspective”), which, when active in controlling your behaviour, constitutes the behaviour as your own doing. As I explain, such perspective also contributes to explaining the subjective structure of your perceptual awareness of the world around you. (shrink)

Abstract: Philosophers interested in Kant's relevance to contemporary debates over the nature of mental content—notably Robert Hanna and Lucy Allais—have argued that Kant ought to be credited with being the original proponent of the existence of ‘nonconceptual content’. However, I think the ‘nonconceptualist’ interpretations that Hanna and Allais give do not show that Kant allowed for nonconceptual content as they construe it. I argue, on the basis of an analysis of certain sections of the A and B editions of (...) the Transcendental Deduction, for a ‘conceptualist’ reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. My contention is that since Kant's notion of empirical intuition makes essential reference to the categories, it must be true for him that no empirical intuition can be given in sensibility independently of the understanding and its categories. (shrink)

This paper extends three decades of work arguing that researchers who discuss consciousness should not restrict themselves only to (adult) human minds, but should study (and attempt to model) many kinds of minds, natural and artificial, thereby contributing to our understanding of the space containing all of them. We need to study what they do or can do, how they can do it, and how the natural ones can be emulated in synthetic minds. That requires: (a) understanding sets (...) of requirements that are met by different sorts of minds, i.e. the niches that they occupy, (b) understanding the space of possible designs, and (c) understanding complex and varied relationships between requirements and designs. Attempts to model or explain any particular phenomenon, such as vision, emotion, learning, language use, or consciousness lead to muddle and confusion unless they are placed in that broader context. A methodology for making progress is summarised and a novel requirement proposed for a theory of how human minds work: the theory should support a single generic design for a learning, developing system that, in addition to meeting familiar requirements, should be capable of developing different and opposed philosophical viewpoints about consciousness, and the so-called hard problem. In other words, we need a common explanation for the mental machinations of mysterians, materialists, functionalists, identity theorists, and those who regard all such theories as attempting to answer incoherent questions. No designs proposed so far come close. (shrink)

A key question for research on the evolutionary origins of morality concerns just what the target of an evolutionary explanation of morality should be. Some researchers focus on behaviors, others on systems of norms, yet others on moral emotions. Richard Joyce (2006) offers an evolutionary explanation for the trait of making moral judgments. Here, I defend Joyce’s account of moral judgment against two objections from Stephen Stich (2008). Stich’s first objection concerns the supposed universality of moral judgments as Joyce (...) conceives of them. I respond by undermining the empirical evidence upon which this objection is based. Stich’s second objection concerns the extent of the moral domain, which he takes to include far more than the considerations of harm and fairness central to Joyce’s account. In response, I outline several strategies for reconciling Stich’s observations with Joyce’s account. (shrink)

Through an absorbing investigation into recent, high-profile scandals involving one of the largest kosher slaughterhouses in the world, located unexpectedly in Postville, Iowa, Aaron S. Gross makes a powerful case for elevating the category of the animal in the study of religion. Major theorists have almost without exception approached religion as a phenomenon that radically marks humans off from other animals, but Gross rejects this paradigm, instead matching religion more closely with the life sciences to better theorize human (...) nature. Gross begins with a detailed account of the scandals at Agriprocessors and their significance for the American and international Jewish community. He argues that without a proper theorization of "animals and religion," we cannot fully understand religiously and ethically motivated diets and how and why the events at Agriprocessors took place. Subsequent chapters recognize the significance of animals to the study of religion in the work of Ernst Cassirer, Emile Durkheim, Mircea Eliade, Jonathan Z. Smith, and Jacques Derrida and the value of indigenous peoples' understanding of animals to the study of religion in our daily lives. Gross concludes by extending the Agribusiness scandal to the activities at slaughterhouses of all kinds, calling attention to the religiosity informing the regulation of "secular" slaughterhouses and its implications for our relationship with and self-imagination through animals. (shrink)

Does expertise have a place in ethics? As this question has been raised in moral philosophy and bioethics literatures over the past twenty years, skepticism has been a common theme, whether metaphysical (there is no such thing as ethics expertise), epistemological (we cannot know who has ethics expertise) or social-political (we should not treat anyone as having ethics expertise). Here I identify three common, contestable assumptions about ethics expertise which underwrite skepticism of one form or another: (1) a singular conception (...) of ethics expertise constituted by a core property or unity among multiple properties, (2) equivocation of ethics expertise and ethicists’ expertise, and (3) priority of moral deference as an unavoidable implication of ethics expertise. Taken separately, each assumption can have unpalatable implications for ethics expertise that make skepticism seem more attractive; taken together, the resulting picture of ethics expertise is that much worse. Each of these assumptions is vulnerable to criticism, however, and jettisoning them enables a pluralist approach to ethics expertise less prone to skepticism and better suited for the ranging functions of ethics expertise in healthcare and other contexts. (shrink)

Providing a bold and original rethinking of environmental ethics, Ben Minteer's Refounding Environmental Ethics will help ethicists and their allies resolve critical debates in environmental policy and conservation practice. Minteer considers the implications of John Dewey's pragmatist philosophy for environmental ethics, politics, and practice. He provides a new and compelling intellectual foundation for the field - one that supports a more activist, collaborative, and problem-solving philosophical enterprise. Combining environmental ethics, democratic theory, philosophical pragmatism, and the environmental social sciences, Minteer (...) makes the case for a more experimental, interdisciplinary, and democratic style of environmental ethics - one that stands as an alternative to the field's historically dominant "nature-centred" outlook. Minteer also provides examples of his pragmatic approach in action, considering a wide range of application and issues, including invasive species, ecological research, biodiversity loss, protected area management, and conservation under global climate change. (shrink)

Are property rights absolute? This paper attempts to reframe this question by drawing on insights from the field of social ontology. My main claim is that, even if we accept the most extreme view of the absoluteness of property rights, there are some non-normative conceptual limitations to these rights. The conceptual limitations are based on two claims about the nature of property rights and their subject matter, namely objects in the world: (1) property law regulates relations between persons through the (...) use of objects, and not relations between persons and objects; (2) even when owned, objects retain some of their ‘independent’, unowned, existence. Taken together, these claims confine property law to the institutional meaning that is given to objects, which is distinct from their social and natural meanings. Since property law defines objects in a certain way, it makes space for other social considerations but without the need to qualify property rights. (shrink)