I propose to consider the question, "Can machines think?" This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think." The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous, If the meaning of the words "machine" and "think" are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to (...) the question, "Can machines think?" is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words. The new form of the problem can be described in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game." It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart front the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either "X is A and Y is B" or "X is B and Y is A." The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B. We now ask the question, "What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?" Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?". (shrink)

Language -- Image -- Time -- Body -- Dream -- Myth -- Baudelaire -- Rescue -- Remembrance.

What is the basis for arguing that a volunteer army exploits citizens who lack civilian career opportunities? How do we determine that a doctor who has sex with his patients is exploiting them? In this book, Alan Wertheimer seeks to identify when a transaction or relationship can be properly regarded as exploitative--and not oppressive, manipulative, or morally deficient in some other way--and explores the moral weight of taking unfair advantage. Among the first political philosophers to examine this important topic (...) from a non-Marxist perspective, Wertheimer writes about ordinary experience in an accessible yet philosophically penetrating way. He considers whether it is seriously wrong for a party to exploit another if the transaction is consensual and mutually advantageous, whether society can justifiably prohibit people from entering into such a transaction, and whether it is wrong to allow oneself to be exploited. Wertheimer first considers several contexts commonly characterized as exploitive, including surrogate motherhood, unconscionable contracts, the exploitation of student athletes, and sexual exploitation in psychotherapy. In a section outlining his theory of exploitation, he sets forth the criteria for a fair transaction and the point at which we can properly say that a party has consented. Whereas many discussions of exploitation have dealt primarily with cases in which one party harms or coerces another, Wertheimer's book focuses on what makes a mutually advantageous and consensual transaction exploitive and analyzes the moral and legal implications of such exploitation. (shrink)

In this incisive new work, Eli Friedlander demonstrates that Walter Benjamin's entire corpus, from early to late, comprises a rigorous and sustained philosophical questioning of how human beings belong to nature. Across seemingly heterogeneous writings, Friedlander argues, Benjamin consistently explores what the natural in the human comes to, that is, how nature is transformed, actualized, redeemed, and overcome in human existence. The book progresses gradually from Benjamin's philosophically fundamental writings on language and nature to his Goethean empiricism, from (...) the presentation of ideas to the primal history of the Paris arcades. Friedlander's careful analysis brings out how the idea of natural history inflects Benjamin's conception of the work of art and its critique, his diagnosis of the mythical violence of the legal order, his account of the body and of action, of material culture and technology, as well as his unique vision of historical materialism. Featuring revelatory new readings of Benjamin's major works that differ, sometimes dramatically, from prevailing interpretations, this book reveals the internal coherence and philosophical force of Benjamin's thought. (shrink)

Demonstrating how radical political transformation might be facilitated from within the much maligned aesthetic category of realism, the author examines a number of contemporary works from Big Brother, Melancholia, catfish, and This is Not a Film to Alize Shvarts' "abortion art." Her discussion of these pieces suggests new understandings of the role of trope l'oeil in illusion, the rendering of realism's limitations, and relationships between hypervirtuality and simulation. The author's core project throughout is to develop a framework for thinking about (...) contemporary forms of realism which, rather than focusing on the importance of seeing beyond deceptions that distort reality, argues that reality lies within the deceptions themselves. (shrink)

This paper describes Wittgenstein's pre-theoretical transcendentalist conception of ethics and the challenge it presents for the kind of global cosmopolitan perspective required of any multinational social responsibility strategy. It is argued that this challenge can be overcome through establishing a sense of solidarity with all stakeholders via a corporate social compact rooted in what Wittgenstein refers to as spontaneous agreement and sympathy. Contemporary examples of successful strategies are provided.

Kant’s The Critique of Judgment laid the groundwork of modern aesthetics when it appeared in 1790. Eli Friedlander’s reappraisal emphasizes the internal connection of judgment and meaning, showing how the pleasure in judging is intimately related to our capacity to draw meaning from our encounter with beauty.

Introduction: Natural necessity, being, and becoming -- Accentuate the negative -- Diffracting dialectic -- Opening totality -- Constellating ethics -- Metacritique I : philosophy's primordial failing -- Metacritique II : dialectic and difference -- Conclusion: Natural necessity and the grounds of justice : natural necessity as material meshwork.

Eli Friedlander reads Rousseau's autobiography, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, as philosophy. Reading this work against Descartes's Meditations, Friedlander shows how Rousseau's memorable transformation of experience through writing opens up the possibility of affirming even the most dejected state of being and allows the emergence of the innocence of nature out of the ruins of all social attachments. In tracing the re-creation of a human subject in reverie, Friedlander is alive to the very form of the experience (...) of reading the Reveries by showing the ways this work needs to--and in effect does--generate a reader, without betraying Rousseau's utter solitude. Friedlander's book provides an afterlife for the Reveries in modern philosophy. It constitutes an alternative to the analytic tradition's revival of Rousseau, primarily through Rawls's influential vision of the social contract. It also counters the fate of Rousseau's writings in the continental tradition, determined by and large by Derrida's deconstruction. Friedlander's reading of the Reveries, a work that has fascinated generations of readers, is an incomparable introduction to one of the greatest thinkers in Western culture. (shrink)

Alan H. Goldman argues for the internalist or subjectivist view of practical reasons on the grounds that it is simpler, more unified, and more comprehensible ...

In a discussion of rule-following inspired by Wittgenstein, Kripke asks us to consider the relation which holds between meaning plus by ‘+’ and answering questions like, ‘What is the sum of 68 and 57?’. A dispositional theory has it that if you mean plus by ‘+’ then you will probably answer, ‘125’. That is because, according to such a theory, to mean plus by ‘+’is, roughly speaking, to be disposed, by and large, and among other things, to answer such questions (...) with the correct sum. Kripke wants to emphasize, by contrast, that if you mean plus by ‘+’ then, faced with the question, ‘What is 68 + 57?’ yououghtto answer, ‘125’. One could sum up the assumption about meaning which appears to underpin this criticism of dispositional theories in terms of the slogan that meaning is normative. Allan Gibbard gives us a way of reading that slogan which is suggested by Kripke's brief remarks:The crux of the slogan that meaning is normative … might be another slogan: thatmeansimpliesought. To use roughly Kripke's example, from statements saying what I mean by the plus sign and other arithmetic terms and constructions, it will follow that Ioughtto answer ‘7’ when asked ‘What's 5 + 2?’. (shrink)

Four important arguments for probabilism—the Dutch Book, representation theorem, calibration, and gradational accuracy arguments—have a strikingly similar structure. Each begins with a mathematical theorem, a conditional with an existentially quantified consequent, of the general form: if your credences are not probabilities, then there is a way in which your rationality is impugned. Each argument concludes that rationality requires your credences to be probabilities. I contend that each argument is invalid as formulated. In each case there is a mirror-image theorem and (...) a corresponding argument of exactly equal strength that concludes that rationality requires your credences not to be probabilities. Some further consideration is needed to break this symmetry in favour of probabilism. (shrink)

Explores language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. Gold Winner for Philosophy, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards To commemorate the 2015 centenary of the birth of Alan Watts (1915–1973), Peter J. Columbus and Donadrian L. Rice have assembled a much-needed collection of Watts’s scholarly essays and lectures. Compiled from professional journals, monographs, scholarly books, conferences, and symposia proceedings, the volume sheds valuable light on the developmental arc of Watts’s thinking (...) about language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. This definitive collection challenges Watts’s reputation as a “popularizer” or “philosophical entertainer,” revealing his concerns to be much more expansive and transdisciplinary than is suggested by the parochial “Zen Buddhist” label commonly affixed to his writings. The editors’ authoritative introduction elucidates contemporary perspectives on Watts’s life and work, and supports a bold rethinking of his contributions to psychology, philosophy, and religion. Peter J. Columbus is Administrator of the Shantigar Foundation in Rowe, Massachusetts. Donadrian L. Rice is Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia. Together they are the coeditors of Alan Watts—Here and Now: Contributions to Psychology, Philosophy, and Religion, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

This paper lays out the basic structure of any view involving coincident entities, in the light of the grounding problem. While the account is not novel, I highlight fundamental features, to which attention is not usually properly drawn. With this in place, I argue for a number of further claims: The basic differences between coincident objects are modal differences, and any other differences between them need to be explained in terms of these differences. More specifically, the basic difference is not (...) a difference in sort. A number of recent defenses of coincidence, which share the basic structure I outline, misidentify what, in their accounts, plays the basic role of addressing the grounding problem. More tentatively, I argue Coincident entities differ only in these modal properties, and properties they entail. In particular, they do not differ in properties like ‘being a tree,’ ‘being a statue,’ or aesthetic properties, and finally in light of how the account of coincidence offered addresses the grounding problem, the grounding problem provides no reason to prefer monism to pluralism. (shrink)

Pragmatism established a philosophical presence over a century ago through the work of Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey, and has enjoyed an unprecedented revival in recent years owing to the pioneering efforts of Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam. The essays in this volume explore the history and themes of classic pragmatism, discuss the revival of pragmatism and show how it engages with a range of areas of inquiry including politics, law, education, aesthetics, religion and feminism. Together they provide (...) readers with an overview of the richness and vitality of pragmatist thinking and the influence that it continues to exert both in philosophy and other disciplines. The volume will be of interest to students and scholars of pragmatism, American philosophy and political theory. (shrink)

The widespread confusion of Nature with God and "natural" with holy has far-reaching negative consequences, from misinformation about everyday food and health choices to mistaken justifications of sexism, racism, and flawed economic policies.

There has been an upsurge of interest in Rorty's contribution to philosophy in recent years, and his extensive influence is now widely acknowledged. Clear division of RR's work to give people a way in to the study of this wide-ranging philosopher. Five parts dealing with: (1) Rorty's early work (2) key texts (3) Rorty's unique pragmatist approach to key philosophical themes (4) reactions to, and appropriations of, Rorty's work, and (5) a selection of essays dealing with the practical application of (...) Rorty's work to a selection of issues in culture, ethics, and politics. The clear presentation of Rorty's diverse work makes the volume ideal for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate-level courses in philosophy (with strong potential interest from those studying Law, Literature, Feminism and Aesthetics, to name a few). (shrink)

When does a woman give valid consent to sexual relations? When does her consent render it morally or legally permissible for a man to have sexual relations with her? Why is sexual consent generally regarded as an issue about female consent? And what is the moral significance of consent? These are some of the questions discussed in this important book, which will appeal to a wide readership in philosophy, law, and the social sciences. Alan Wertheimer develops a theory of (...) consent to sexual relations that applies to both law and morality in the light of the psychology of sexual relations, the psychology of perpetrators, and the psychology of the victims. He considers a wide variety of difficult cases such as coercion, fraud, retardation, and intoxication. We can all agree that 'no' means 'no'. This book suggests that the difficult question is whether 'yes' means 'yes'. (shrink)

Abstract This paper examines the treatment of thick ethical concepts in Williams's work in order to evaluate the consistency of his treatment of ethical and epistemic concepts and to assess whether the idea of a thick concept can be extended from ethics to epistemology. A virtue epistemology is described modeled on a cognitivist virtue ethics. Williams's genealogy of the virtues surrounding propositional knowledge (the virtues of ?truthfulness?) is critically evaluated. It is concluded that this genealogy is an important contribution to (...) the project of virtue epistemology. Thick concepts must not only feature in the account but will sustain more of the marks of objectivity than their ethical counterparts. This is so even on Williams's demanding assumptions. (shrink)

Sport categorization is often justified by benefits such as increased fairness or inclusion. Taking inspiration from John Rawls, Sigmund Loland’s fair equality of opportunity principle in sport (FEOPs) is a tool for determining whether the existence of an inequality ethically justifies the institution of a new category in any given sport. It is an elegant ethical normative framework, but since FEOPs does not account explicitly for athlete safety (i.e. athlete physical and mental wellbeing), we are left in an ethically dubious (...) situation where the risk of harm associated with a categorization regime might in fact prove to be greater than the risk of harm present within the sport before its introduction. To address this critical gap, I propose the ‘scales of ignorance’ ethical normative framework to weigh the relative risk of harm within a sport, crucially inserting athlete safety into the discourse surrounding ethical justification for categorization in sport. The current paper is the first explicit formulation of assessment and ethical justification of risk of harm in the familiar logic of FEOPs. The scales of ignorance framework can also be used independently of Loland’s approach. Two new concepts are also proposed: ‘insidious risk of harm’ and ‘pernicious risk of harm’. (shrink)

The period following World War Two required a major reassessment of the very nature of political philosophy and political ideas and witnessed the emergence or reemerging of major concepts, such as political freedom, liberty and justice. In this clear and engaging introduction to recent political philosophy Alan Haworth explores the following topics: The philosophical nature of totalitarianism Hannah Arendt's explanation of totalitarianism in the context of Hitler and Stalin's regimes Karl Popper and the idea of the open society The (...) themes of authenticity, freedom and power in the work of Sartre and Foucault The Enlightenment and its relevance to liberalism in post-war political philosophy Rawls and the search for principles of justice Nozick's libertarianism and Sandel's communitarianism Persons, liberty and reason Global justice and the nation state Habermas and the continuation of the Enlightenment project. Haworth skillfully blends assessment of the ideas of important philosophers and political theorists with analysis of fundamental concepts in political philosophy such as freedom, justice and reason, making Political Philosophy After 1945 ideal reading for all students of political philosophy and political theory. (shrink)

Though less well known than his other work, Turings 1938 Princeton Thesis, this title which includes his notion of an oracle machine, has had a lasting influence on computer science and mathematics. It presents a facsimile of the original typescript of the thesis along with essays by Appel and Feferman that explain its still-unfolding significance.

Hegel and the Spirit explores the meaning of Hegel's grand philosophical category, the category of Geist, by way of what Alan Olson terms a pneumatological thesis. Hegel's philosophy of spirit, according to Olson, is a speculative pneumatology that completes what Adolf von Harnack once called the "orphan doctrine" in Christian theology--the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Olson argues that Hegel's development of philosophy as pneumatology originates out of a deep appreciation of Luther's dialectical understanding of Spirit and that Hegel's (...) doctrine of Spirit is thus deeply interfused with the values of Würtemberg Pietism. Olson further maintains that Hegel's Enzyklopdie is the post-Enlightenment philosophical equivalent of a Trinitätslehre and that his Rechtsphilosophie is an ecclesiology. Thus Hegel and the Spirit demonstrates the truth of Karl Barth's observation that Hegel is the potential Aquinas of Protestantism. Exploring Hegel's philosophy of spirit in historical, cultural, and personal religious context, the book identifies Hegel's relationship with Hölderlin and his response to Hölderlin's madness as key elements in the philosopher's religious and philosophical development, especially with respect to the meaning of transcendence and dialectic. (shrink)

Part I. Philosophy of novels. 1. Introduction: philosophical content and literary value -- 2. Interpreting novels -- 3. The sun also rises: incompatible interpretations -- 4. The appeal of the mystery -- Part II. Philosophy in novels. 5. Moral development in Pride and prejudice -- 6. Huckleberry Finn and moral motivation -- 7. What we learn about rules from The cider house rules -- 8. Nostromo and the fragility of the self.

This chapter contains sections titled: From Liberalism to Republican Liberalism Cohen's Critique of Rawls A Liberal Republican Political Economy Liberal and Republican Approaches to Effective Political Agency The Republican Alternative Conclusion References.

Angela Ballantyne (2010) argues that international research is exploitative when the transactions between researchers and participants who lack basic goods do not provide participants with the maxi...

According to finite frequentism, the probability of an attribute A in a finite reference class B is the relative frequency of actual occurrences of A within B. I present fifteen arguments against this position.

This essay examines and compares two paradigms of technology, nature, and social life, and their associated environmental impacts. I explore moving from technocratic paradigms to the emerging ecological paradigms of planetary person ecosophies. The dominant technocratic philosophy's guiding policy and technological power is mechanistic. It conceptualizes nature as a resource to be controlled for human ends. Its global practices are drastically altering the integrity of the planet's ecosystems. In contrast, the organic, planetary person approaches respect the intrinsic values of all (...) beings. Deep ecology movement principles give priority to community and ecosystem integrity. These deep ecology movement principles guide the design and applications of technology by principles following from ecological understanding. I describe this shift in philosophical paradigms and how it affects our perceptions, values, and actions. (shrink)

The themes of the book—the value of knowledge and epistemic appraisal broadly conceived—are introduced in this chapter. The Meno problem is explained and related to the swamping problem as discussed by Jonathan Kvanvig. The stance of virtue epistemologists is outlined. This is followed by a brief discussion of the role of truth in epistemic appraisal. The remainder of the introduction summarises the contributions to the book.