A new term, "the new conservatism," has recently appeared in the American sociopolitical lexicon. The meaning given it does not resolve merely to a description of the current conservative trends in the United States , which until recently were termed neoconservative in the critical literature. A number of American writers have begun to employ the term "new conservatism" in a narrower sense: to denote the evolution of the sociopolitical views of those ideologists of capitalist reformism who were, until recently, known (...) as neoliberals. The term "new conservatism" was first employed in that sense by the American radical sociologist Michael Harrington in analyzing the evolution, in the realm of political ideas and social policy, of the views of such prominent bourgeois ideologists as Daniel Bell, Seymour Martin Lipset, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Nathan Glazer, and others. To those listed, this identification appeared so well chosen and reflective of the essence of the matter that subsequently they themselves began to speak of themselves as new conservatives. This term has become firmly established in the American sociological literature. It is the purpose of the present article to examine the "legitimacy" of the use of this term and the points of contact between this group and the conservatives or neoconservatives and the lines of demarcation between them. (shrink)

The triumph of the socialist revolution in Russia, the fiftieth anniversary of which the Soviet people are marking this year, the building of socialism in the USSR, and the coming into being of a world socialist system eliminated the ideological monopoly theretofore enjoyed by exploitative society in the contemporary world. For the first time in human history, an ideology of the toiling masses has extensively taken root in a number of countries. This has meant a narrowing of the sphere in (...) which bourgeois ideology is dominant, and could not fail to have a bearing upon all the forms of social consciousness in the capitalist world, including philosophy. (shrink)

. The purpose of this essay is to argue that considerations of fairness play an essential role in the justification of democratic decision procedures. The first part argues that considerations of fairness form part of a practical authority's legitimacy, and that in the political context, those considerations of fairness entail a principle of equal distribution of political power. Subsequently, the article elaborates on the kind of equality which is required in democratic procedures, arguing that different principles of equality should apply (...) to the deliberation and the decision stages of democracy. Finally, the article concludes with a few sketchy remarks on the possible relations between considerations of fairness and soundness of democratic procedures. (shrink)

In this article I want to support a certain conception of legal authority. The question I want to address is this: Is it possible to attribute legal authority to a given norm if its authority does not derive from the authority of someone who has issued that norm? Basically, I will try to defend here a negative answer to this question, espousing a personal conception of authority.

The Franciscan Geraldus Odonis (d. 1349) presented his indivisibilist theory of continua in Paris at a time when similar theses were advanced in the studia across the Channel. The Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Henry of Harclay (d. 1317), caused considerable stir among his colleagues by endorsing a mathematical atomism, and his most famous follower, Walter Chatton, O. F. M., developed his brand of atomism in the early 1320s. The present article focuses on one of the five different redactions (...) of Odonis’s famous question De continuo, preserved in his commentary on Book ii of Peter Lombard’s Sentences (d. 44, q. 4). The first part of the article examines the main differences between the various redactions of the question De continuo. The second part explores the philosophical content and the circumstances surrounding the redaction found in Book ii of Odonis’s Sentences commentary. While acknowledging that Odonis’s atomism is similar to Harclay’s, it is argued that Odonis’s theory is a significant departure from the type of atomism espoused by Harclay. The Appendix provides the first complete critical edition of the said redaction of Odonis’s question De continuo. (shrink)

Although the idea of constitutionalism has been widely discussed and in fact, most countries in the world have a written Constitution, it is still an in- teresting question whether Constitutions are legitimate, topic that is ad- dressed in this study. The article, through a detailed analysis of the main arguments in favor and against constitutionalism, examines the main moral concerns regarding legitimacy of Constitutions.

The normal way to establish that a person has authority over another requires a rulegoverned institutional setting. To have authority is to have power, in the juridical sense of the term, and power can only be conferred by norms constituting it. Power conferring norms are essentially institutional, and the obligation to comply with a legitimate authority’s decree is, first and foremost, institutional in nature. Thus, the main argument presented in this essay is that an explanation of practical authorities is a (...) two-stage affair: the special, practical import of an authority can only be explained on the background of an institutional setting which constitutes the authority’s power and the corresponding obligation to comply. However, this obligation is not an all things considered obligation, it is conditioned on reasons to participate in the relevant institution or practice. A complete account of the reasons to regard authoritative decisions as binding must also rely on the reasons for having the institution or practice in question and the kind of authoritative structure that it has. This argument is presented here on the background of a critique of two alternative accounts, Joseph Raz’s service conception of authority and Stephen Darwall’s second personal standpoint account. (shrink)

In _Animacies_, Mel Y. Chen draws on recent debates about sexuality, race, and affect to examine how matter that is considered insensate, immobile, or deathly animates cultural lives. Toward that end, Chen investigates the blurry division between the living and the dead, or that which is beyond the human or animal. Within the field of linguistics, animacy has been described variously as a quality of agency, awareness, mobility, sentience, or liveness. Chen turns to cognitive linguistics to stress how language habitually (...) differentiates the animate and the inanimate. Expanding this construct, Chen argues that animacy undergirds much that is pressing and indeed volatile in contemporary culture, from animal rights debates to biosecurity concerns. Chen's book is the first to bring the concept of animacy together with queer of color scholarship, critical animal studies, and disability theory. Through analyses of dehumanizing insults, the meanings of queerness, animal protagonists in recent Asian/American art and film, the lead in toys panic in 2007, and the social lives of environmental illness, _Animacies_ illuminates a hierarchical politics infused by race, sexuality, and ability. In this groundbreaking book, Chen rethinks the criteria governing agency and receptivity, health and toxicity, productivity and stillness—and demonstrates how attention to the affective charge of matter challenges commonsense orderings of the world. (shrink)

In our paper, ‘Escaping hell: divine motivation and the problem of hell’, we defended a theory of hell that we called ‘escapism’. We argued that, given God's just and loving character, it would be most rational for Him to maintain an open-door policy to those who are in hell, allowing them an unlimited number of chances to be reconciled with God and enjoy communion with Him. In this paper we reply to two recent objections to our original paper. The first (...) is an argument from religious luck offered by Russell Jones. The second is an argument from Kyle Swan that alleges that our commitments about the nature of reasons for action still leaves escapism vulnerable to an objection we labelled the ‘Job objection’ in our original paper. In this paper we argue that escapism has the resources built into it needed to withstand the objections from Jones and Swan. (shrink)

Much has been written about the free energy principle (FEP), and much misunderstood. The principle has traditionally been put forth as a theory of brain function or biological self-organisation. Critiques of the framework have focused on its lack of empirical support and a failure to generate concrete, falsifiable predictions. I take both positive and negative evaluations of the FEP thus far to have been largely in error, and appeal to a robust literature on scientific modelling to rectify the situation. A (...) prominent account of scientific modelling distinguishes between model structure and model construal. I propose that the FEP be reserved to designate a model structure, to which philosophers and scientists add various construals, leading to a plethora of models based on the formal structure of the FEP. An entailment of this position is that demands placed on the FEP that it be falsifiable or that it conform to some degree of biological realism rest on a category error. To this end, I deliver first an account of the phenomenon of model transfer and the breakdown between model structure and model construal. In the second section, I offer an overview of the formal elements of the framework, tracing their history of model transfer and illustrating how the formalism comes apart from any interpretation thereof. Next, I evaluate existing comprehensive critical assessments of the FEP, and hypothesise as to potential sources of existing confusions in the literature. In the final section, I distinguish between what I hold to be the FEP—taken to be a modelling language or modelling framework—and what I term “FEP models.”. (shrink)

First published in 1995, The Visual Brain in Action remains a seminal publication in the cognitive sciences. For this new edition, a very substantial and illustrated epilogue has been added to the book in which Milner and Goodale review the key developments that support or challenge the views that were put forward in the first edition.

According to traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic theism, God is an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect agent. This volume shows that philosophy of religion needs to take seriously alternative concepts of the divine, and demonstrates the considerable philosophical interest that they hold.

Social conventions are those arbitrary rules and norms governing the countless behaviors all of us engage in every day without necessarily thinking about them, from shaking hands when greeting someone to driving on the right side of the road. In this book, Andrei Marmor offers a pathbreaking and comprehensive philosophical analysis of conventions and the roles they play in social life and practical reason, and in doing so challenges the dominant view of social conventions first laid out by David (...) Lewis. Marmor begins by giving a general account of the nature of conventions, explaining the differences between coordinative and constitutive conventions and between deep and surface conventions. He then applies this analysis to explain how conventions work in language, morality, and law. Marmor clearly demonstrates that many important semantic and pragmatic aspects of language assumed by many theorists to be conventional are in fact not, and that the role of conventions in the moral domain is surprisingly complex, playing mostly an auxiliary and supportive role. Importantly, he casts new light on the conventional foundations of law, arguing that the distinction between deep and surface conventions can be used to answer the prevalent objections to legal conventionalism. Social Conventions is a much-needed reappraisal of the nature of the rules that regulate virtually every aspect of human conduct. (shrink)

The controversial issue of whether Chief Executive Officer (CEO) compensation is excessive or appropriate is examined in terms of two competing claims: that CEOs are overpaid for the value they provide to an enterprise, and that CEO compensation is inherently equitable. Various arguments and perspectives on both sides of the issue are assessed. Little evidence supports the claim that CEO performance justifies very high compensation. Further, the complex interactive alliance between boards of directors and CEOs compromises rational decision-making about CEO (...) compensation, with the Enron affair offered as an illustration of what can go wrong when dishonest CEO actions combine with lax board oversight. Recommendations for restoring trust in the system include continuing current regulatory actions, using different metrics for determining CEO compensation, making board member-CEO relationships transparent to all company stakeholders, and several more radical ideas for change. Stakeholders must resist being distracted by other social, economic, or political issues from pursuing serious, lasting reform. (shrink)

Machine learning (ML) refers to a class of computer-facilitated methods of statistical modelling. ML modelling techniques are now being widely adopted across the sciences. A number of outspoken representatives from the general public, computer science, various scientific fields, and philosophy of science alike seem to share in the belief that ML will radically disrupt scientific practice or the variety of epistemic outputs science is capable of producing. Such a belief is held, at least in part, because its adherents take ML (...) to exist on novel epistemic footing relative to classical mathematical or statistical modelling approaches utilised in science. Namely, they take modelling with ML to be a “theory-free” enterprise, in the sense of not resting essentially on input from human conceptual grasp on the target phenomenon and domain expertise. I take this view to arise from the further, and more deeply entrenched belief that data is worldly and objective; i.e., data is viewed as recapitulating or representing with perfect fidelity the structure or properties of the systems in nature it is sampled from. Yet most contemporary philosophers of science take on board, in one version or other, the thesis of theory-ladenness or theory-mediation of observation or measurement. From this, it follows that most philosophers of science (and, I will venture, many scientists) hold irreconcilable views on the nature of data, an internal tension which threatens the integrity of their appraisals of ML in science. Taking the thesis of theory-ladenness on board---and its implications for the nature of data seriously---it follows that there is no reason to believe that ML differs fundamentally in its epistemic footing from established mathematical modelling approaches in the sciences. I show that usage and interpretation can differ from “standard practice” in scientific projects which wield the tools of ML without accepting a difference in the epistemic or representational status of such tools. (shrink)

In Philosophy of Law, Andrei Marmor provides a comprehensive analysis of contemporary debates about the fundamental nature of law—an issue that has been at the heart of legal philosophy for centuries. What the law is seems to be a matter of fact, but this fact has normative significance: it tells people what they ought to do. Marmor argues that the myriad questions raised by the factual and normative features of law actually depend on the possibility of reduction—whether the legal (...) domain can be explained in terms of something else, more foundational in nature. In addition to exploring the major issues in contemporary legal thought, Philosophy of Law provides a critical analysis of the people and ideas that have dominated the field in past centuries. It will be essential reading for anyone curious about the nature of law. (shrink)

The prevailing scientific paradigm is that matter is primary and everything, including consciousness can be derived from the laws governing matter. Although the scientific explanation of consciousness on these lines has not been realized, in this view it is only a matter of time before consciousness will be explained through neurobiological activity in the brain, and nothing else. There is an alternative view that holds that it is fundamentally impossible to explain how subjectivity can arise solely out of material processes—“the (...) hard problem of consciousness”—and instead consciousness should be regarded in itself as a primary force in nature. This view attempts to derive, for example, the laws of physics from models of consciousness, instead of the other way around. While as scientists we can understand and have an intuition for the first paradigm, it is very difficult to understand what “consciousness is primary” might mean since it has no intuitive scientific grounding. Here we show that worlds experienced through virtual reality are such that consciousness is a first order phenomenon. We discuss the Interface Theory of Perception which claims that in physical reality perceptions are not veridical and that we do not see the “truth” but that perception is based on evolutionary payoffs. We show that this theory may provide an accurate description of perception and consciousness within VR, and we put forward an experimental study that could throw light on this. We conclude that VR does offer an experimental frame that provides intuition with respect to the idea that “consciousness is first” and what this might mean regarding the perceived world. However, we do not draw any conclusions about the veracity of this notion with respect to physical reality or question the emergence of consciousness from brain function. (shrink)

We propose that human reasoning relies on an inherence heuristic, an implicit cognitive process that leads people to explain observed patterns (e.g., girls wear pink) in terms of the inherent features of their constituents (e.g., pink is an inherently feminine color). We then demonstrate how this proposed heuristic can provide a unified account for a broad set of findings spanning areas of research that might at first appear unrelated (e.g., system justification, nominal realism, is–ought errors in moral reasoning). By revealing (...) the deep commonalities among the diverse phenomena that fall under its scope, our account is able to generate new insights into these phenomena, as well as new empirical predictions. A second main goal of this paper, aside from introducing the inherence heuristic, is to articulate the proposal that the heuristic serves as a foundation for the development of psychological essentialism. More specifically, we propose that essentialism—which is the common belief that natural and social categories are underlain by hidden, causally powerful “essences”—emerges over the first few years of life as an elaboration of the earlier, and more open-ended, intuitions supplied by the inherence heuristic. In the final part of the paper, we distinguish our proposal from competing accounts (e.g., Strevens' K-laws) and clarify the relationship between the inherence heuristic and related cognitive tendencies (e.g., the correspondence bias). In sum, this paper illuminates a basic cognitive process that emerges early in life and is likely to have profound effects on many aspects of human psychology. (shrink)

Generic statements (e.g., “Birds lay eggs”) express generalizations about categories. In this paper, we hypothesized that there is a paradoxical asymmetry at the core of generic meaning, such that these sentences have extremely strong implications but require little evidence to be judged true. Four experiments confirmed the hypothesized asymmetry: Participants interpreted novel generics such as “Lorches have purple feathers” as referring to nearly all lorches, but they judged the same novel generics to be true given a wide range of prevalence (...) levels (e.g., even when only 10% or 30% of lorches had purple feathers). A second hypothesis, also confirmed by the results, was that novel generic sentences about dangerous or distinctive properties would be more acceptable than generic sentences that were similar but did not have these connotations. In addition to clarifying important aspects of generics’ meaning, these findings are applicable to a range of real-world processes such as stereotyping and political discourse. (shrink)

Using a new materialist line of questioning that looks at the agential potentialities of water and its entanglements with Big Data and surveillance, this article explores how the recent Snowden revelations about the National Security Agency have reignited media scholars to engage with the infrastructures that enable intercepting, hosting, and processing immeasurable amounts of data. Focusing on the expansive architecture, location, and resource dependence of the NSA’s Utah Data Center, I demonstrate how surveillance and privacy can never be disconnected from (...) the material infrastructures that allow and render natural the epistemological state of mass surveillance. Specifically, I explore the NSA’s infrastructure and the million of gallons of water it requires daily to cool its servers, while located in one of the driest states in the US. Complicating surveillance beyond the NSA, as also already imbricated with various social media companies, this article questions the emplacement and impact of corporate data centers more generally, and the changes they are causing to the landscape and local economies. I look at how water is an intriguing and politically relevant part of the surveillance infrastructure and how it has been constructed as the main tool for activism in this case, and how it may eventually help transform the public’s conceptualization of Big Data, as deeply material. (shrink)

In his article Evgeny Borisov offers an original solution to Kripke’s sceptical problem of meaning. Its conceptual core is the point of view of the participant of speech acts. He believes that first-person statements of speech act participants like “I know for certain that the expression ‘e’ is used by me in the meaning of m” cannot carry any epistemic fallacies. As a criticism, I propose to point out that non-factual Cartesian semantics have serious epistemic flaws that make it vulnerable (...) to sceptical attacks and accusations of petitio principii. (shrink)

The paper deals with the questions of whether naturalization of ethical theory is possible and how radical it should be. The answer to these questions depends largely on the scientific explanations of the process of moral evaluation. The author concentrates on a moderate version of naturalization, which involves merely correcting the conclusions of normative ethics by appealing to scientific evidence. A good example of moderate naturalization is the project of debunking deontological moral principles of J. Green. From J. Green’s point (...) of view, the most important of such principles (“it is impermissible to harm other people as a means of achieving a utilitarian goal, but it is permissible to cause such harm as a side-effect of its achievement”) reflects the functioning of the emotional alarm system, which in the early ages of human history protected small groups from internal violence using contact means of harm. The means of harm have since expanded, but the inflexible emotional part of our psyche still dictates the limits of permissibility. This dictate has no reasonable grounds, and the abovementioned principle cannot claim to be objective and universal. The author shows that the data used by J. Green is different from the results of studies by Yu.I. Aleksandrov and K.R. Arutyunova on the impact of alcohol intoxication on making deontological and utilitarian moral evaluations. These results indicate that both the deontological and the utilitarian principles are partly based on the emotional subsystem. Accordingly, a normative ethicist is forced to choose as the scientific basis of his or her research some of the opposing scientific models that explain the process of making moral evaluations. Some of the models are consistent with the moderate naturalization project, others are not. The choice between models depends exclusively on already taken metaethical and normative preferences. (shrink)

The basic biological situation -- Credulity, and the skeptical tradition -- The early period -- Construction of the inner realm -- Brain, mind, religion -- Infantile amnesia -- Prayer and faith -- Angelic encounters -- Are we 'wired for God'?.

The article analyzes the possibilities and limitations of artificial intelligence. The article considers the subjectivity of artificial intelligence, determines its necessity for solving intellectual problems depending on the possibility of representing the real world as a deterministic system. Methodological limitations of artificial intelligence, which is based on the use of big data technologies, are stated. These limitations cause the impossibility of forming a holistic representation of the objects of cognition and the world as a whole. As a tool for deterministic (...) description of the universe it is proposed to use empirical-metaphysical general theory of systems, which is an extension of existing general theories of systems due to ontological justification of the phenomenon of isomorphism and definition of a limited set of laws, rules, patterns and primitives of forms and relations of objects in the universe. The distinction of natural (human) and artificial intelligence is considered, including the realization of multisystem integration of intelligence in physical, biological, social and spiritual systems. A philosophically grounded approach to ensuring the evolutionary properties of artificial intelligence is formulated, based on the inclusion of non-equilibrium mechanisms through which stability is realized. (shrink)

Deictic coding offers a useful model for understanding the interactions between the dorsal and ventral streams of visual processing in the cerebral cortex. By extending Ballard et al.'s ideas on teleassistance, I show how dedicated low-level visuomotor processes in the dorsal stream might be engaged for the services of high-level cognitive operations in the ventral stream.

The article is devoted to the study of the nature of consciousness within the framework of the information concept. The paper proposes a definition of consciousness as an informational environment in which an extended model of reality is realized. The process of realization of this extended model is defined as thinking. The result of thinking is information objects that form a system in the form of information environment. Information objects are reflections of the real world properties, not directly, but by (...) means of translation through a special object – a carrier of consciousness. In the case of human consciousness, such a carrier is a human being (represented in the form of his nervous system). As a result, consciousness can be qualified as a simulacrum of reality, i.e., a model of a model: an information model of the carrier of consciousness, which in turn is a means of physical modeling of the real "big" world. Possible mechanisms mediating thinking are considered. For this purpose, two new concepts are introduced: neural circuit and neurophysical pattern. An approach to the study of self-consciousness based on the localization of the consciousness carrier in the multidimensional space of states of initial real objects, as well as their reflections in the form of information objects is proposed. This localization is ensured by the presence of feedbacks. Summarizing the results of the study, the article states the following connection between consciousness, self-consciousness and subjectness: under certain conditions (when consciousness is localized in the state space of the carrier of consciousness), consciousness acquires the property of self-consciousness, a special case of which (when the initiator of changes determining localization is the carrier of consciousness) is self-consciousness endowed with subjectness. (shrink)