Public reason in practice and theory -- False starts: unsuccessful justifications of public reason -- Respect for persons as a constraint on coercion -- Higher-order unanimity escape clause -- Civic friendship as a constraint on reasons for decision -- Public reason and (same-sex) marriage.

Intelligent neurotechnology is an emerging field that combines neurotechnologies like brain-computer interface (BCI) with artificial intelligence. This paper introduces a capability framework to assess the responsible use of intelligent BCI systems and provide practical ethical guidance. It proposes two tests, the threshold and flourishing tests, that BCI applications must meet, and illustrates them in a series of cases. After a brief introduction (Section 1), Section 2 sets forth the capability view and the two tests. It illustrates the threshold test using (...) examples from clinical medicine of BCI applications that enable patients with profound disabilities to function at a threshold level through computer mediation. Section 3 illustrates the flourishing test by exploring possible future applications of BCI involving neuroenhancements for healthy people, using examples adapted from research currently underway in the US military. Section 3 applies a capability lens to a complex case involving dual effects, both therapeutic and non-therapeutic, showing how the threshold and flourishing tests resolve the case. Section 4 replies to three objections: neurorights are the best tool for assessing BCI; the two tests are moving targets; and the analysis utilizes a capability view to do work it is not designed for. The paper concludes that a capability view offers unique advantages and gives practical guidance for evaluating the responsible use of present and future BCI applications. Extrapolating from our analysis may help guide other emerging technologies, such as germline gene editing, expected to impact central human capabilities. (shrink)

In this essay I explore the relationship of sport to art. I do not intend to argue that sport is one of the arts. I will rather argue that sport and art have a commonality, in that both are alienated philosophy. This is to propose – in an argument that has its roots in Hegel's aesthetics – that sport and art may both be interpreted as a way of reflecting upon metaphysical and normative issues, albeit in media that are alien (...) to philosophy's conceptual language. The medium of art is the manipulation of sensuous materials, such as stone, paint, or sound. The medium of sport is the pursuit of a physical challenge, at which the athlete may fail. I will develop this argument by borrowing from the philosophy of art of Arthur C. Danto. In particular, I will suggest that a parallel to his concept of ‘artworld’ can be seen in a ‘sportworld’. As the artworld is an ‘atmosphere of theory’ and a ‘knowledge of history’ through which an event is interpreted and thereby constituted as art, so a sportworld is the atmosphere of theory through which an event is constituted as sport. I will argue that much of the existing discussion of the relationship between sport and art is grounded in an ill-conceived aesthetics. In order to be appreciated and appropriately interpreted, sport must be understood within a modernist aesthetics and hermeneutics. As such, the core issue of an aesthetics of sport is not that of beauty, but rather of the meaning of the sport, and what I shall call the capacity of sport to ‘speak as a world’ – to bring to consciousness through play the taken-for-granted cultural conditions through which our social lives are constituted, and within which metaphysical and normative problems are articulated. I will propose that the hermeneutics of music provides a useful model for the interpretation of sport. (shrink)

Andrew Cooper presents the first systematic study of Kant's account of natural history. Cooper contends that Kant made a decisive contribution to one of the most explosive and understudied revolutions in the history of science: the addition of time to the frame in which explanations are required, sought, and justified in natural science. Through addressing a wide range of Kant's works, Cooper challenges the claim that Kant's theory of science denies a developmental conception of nature and argues instead that (...) it establishes a method by which natural historians can genuinely dispute historical claims and potentially come to consensus. This method, Cooper argues, can be used to expose serious flaws in Kant's own historical reasoning, including the formation and defence of his racist views. The book will be valuable to philosophers seeking to discern both the power and limitations of Kant's theory of science, and to historians of science working on the fractured landscape of eighteenth-century Newtonianism. (shrink)

This study assessed the extent to which within-individual variation in schizotypy and paranormal belief influenced performance on probabilistic reasoning tasks. A convenience sample of 725 non-clinical adults completed measures assessing schizotypy (Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences; O-Life brief), belief in the paranormal (Revised Paranormal Belief Scale; RPBS) and probabilistic reasoning (perception of randomness, conjunction fallacy, paranormal perception of randomness, and paranormal conjunction fallacy). Latent profile analysis (LPA) identified four distinct groups: class 1, low schizotypy and low paranormal belief (43.9% (...) of sample); class 2, moderate schizotypy and moderate paranormal belief (18.2%); class 3, moderate schizotypy (high cognitive disorganization) and low paranormal belief (29%); and class 4, moderate schizotypy and high paranormal belief (8.9%). Identification of homogeneous classes provided a nuanced understanding of the relative contribution of schizotypy and paranormal belief to differences in probabilistic reasoning performance. Multivariate analysis of covariance revealed that groups with lower levels of paranormal belief (classes 1 and 3) performed significantly better on perception of randomness, but not conjunction problems. Schizotypy had only a negligible effect on performance. Further analysis indicated that framing perception of randomness and conjunction problems in a paranormal context facilitated performance for all groups but class 4. (shrink)

Ecology - unlike astronomy, physics, or chemistry - is a science with an associated political and ethical movement: the Green Movement. As a result, the ecological position is often accompanied by appeals to holism, and by a mystical quasi-religious conception of the ecosystem. In this title, first published in 1988, Andrew Brennan argues that we can reduce much of the mysticism surrounding ecological discussions by placing them within a larger context, and illustrating that our individual interests are bound with (...) larger, community interests. Using an interdisciplinary approach, which bridges the gap between the sciences, philosophy, and ethics, this is an accessible title, which will be of particular value to students with an interest in the philosophy of environmental science and ethics. (shrink)

Previously, we introduced a capability approach to assess the responsible use of brain-computer interface. In this commentary, we say more about the ethical basis of our capability view and respond to three objections. The first objection holds that by stressing that capability lists are provisional and subject to change, we threaten the persistence of human dignity, which is tied to capabilities. The second objection states that we conflate capabilities and abilities. The third objection claims that the goal of using neuroenhancements (...) should be preserving capabilities, not altering them. (shrink)

Paul Krugman and others deny that bitcoin has legitimate uses. Critics like Krugman also fail to distinguish bitcoin from other cryptocurrencies. But once we isolate bitcoin from the rest of the field, we see how special, and how useful, it is. In this chapter, we explain why bitcoin is unique among cryptocurrencies as a credibly neutral monetary asset and why this is important. Its uniqueness doesn’t owe entirely to its age (as the oldest) or market ranking (as the most valuable). (...) As a credibly neutral monetary asset, bitcoin solves problems for those in less than ideal circumstances. And beyond bitcoin’s functionality, its origin and surrounding culture also help to explain why people trust bitcoin more than any other cryptocurrency to solve these problems. Nothing else comes close. This gap between bitcoin and everything else has implications for policy-making, journalism, and academic research. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn his account of public reason Rawls assumes that some facts ought to be treated as ‘fixed’, or beyond reasonable disagreement. These include, for him, facts upon which there is a scientif...

Pornography is everywhere, and it raises a host of difficult questions. What counts as pornography, first of all? When does material cross the line from being erotic to being objectionable? Where does a person's entitlement to sexual freedom end and another person's right not to feel objectified begin? How should rights be weighed against consequences in deciding what laws and policies ought to be adopted? Philosophers Andrew Altman and Lori Watson explore these and other issues in this succinct and (...) readable for-and-against volume. (shrink)

The Yogācāra school of logic developed a theory of sign-inferences that has many features of the Stoic and Epicurean logical teachings with small inclusions of Aristotelian ideas. In the Nyāyabindu of Dharmakīrti, we can find the following schemes of formal reasoning: modus Barbara (Figure I) and modus Camenes (Figure IV) of the Aristotelian syllogistic, and all the inference rules of the Stoic logic: modus ponens, modus tollens, modus ponendo tollens, modus tollendo ponens I, modus tollendo ponens II. The three premises (...) of Yogācāra inference (if p, then q; there is an example that p and q occur together; p; then q) corresponds to the Epicurean doctrine of three premises with a necessary exemplification. Thus, the paper is a comparative study of Greek and Buddhist theory of sign-inferences, showing a deep similarity between them. (shrink)

Gruber and Smith (2019) have conducted some interesting virtual reality (VR) experiments, but we think that these experiments fail to illuminate why people think that the present is special. Their experiments attempted to test a suggestion by Hartle (2005) that with VR one might construct scenarios in which people experience the same present twice. If that’s possible, then it could give us a reason to think that when we experience the present as being special, that’s not because it’s objectively so. (...) Instead, our experience of the present being special is a feature of having a psychology like ours. While we are sympathetic to the thought that there is no objective present, we do not think that these experiments give us a reason to think this. That said, VR experiments, such as Gruber and Smith’s, hold much promise for being able to illuminate various aspects of our temporal psychology.According to Hartle’s (2005) IGUS model (which is meant to resemble entities like us) sensory information is routed to two kinds of processes: conscious processes C, which cause behavior, and unconscious processes, U, which construct a schematic representation of the environment. Hartle proposed that we experience the present as being special because of the sensory information at a time entering into C. For Gruber et al. (2020), the succession of sensory information entering into C underpins our experience of time passing. Our experience of time passing is illusory because it fails to be verid... (shrink)

The idea that research should become more interdisciplinary has become commonplace. According to influential commentators, the unprecedented complexity of problems such as climate change or the social implications of biomedicine demand interdisciplinary efforts integrating both the social and natural sciences. In this context, the question of whether a given knowledge practice is too disciplinary, or interdisciplinary, or not disciplinary enough has become an issue for governments, research policy makers and funding agencies. Interdisciplinarity, in short, has emerged as a key political (...) preoccupation; yet the term tends to obscure as much as illuminate the diverse practices gathered under its rubric. This volume offers a new approach to theorising interdisciplinarity, showing how the boundaries between the social and natural sciences are being reconfigured. It examines the current preoccupation with interdisciplinarity, notably the ascendance of a particular discourse in which it is associated with a transformation in the relations between science, technology and society. Contributors address attempts to promote collaboration between, on the one hand, the natural sciences and engineering and, on the other, the social sciences, arts and humanities. From ethnography in the IT industry to science and technology studies, environmental science to medical humanities, cybernetics to art-science, the collection interrogates how interdisciplinarity has come to be seen as a solution not only to enhancing relations between science and society, but the pursuit of accountability and the need to foster innovation. Interdisciplinarity is essential reading for scholars, students and policy makers across the social sciences, arts and humanities, including anthropology, geography, sociology, science and technology studies and cultural studies, as well as all those engaged in interdisciplinary research. It will have particular relevance for those concerned with the knowledge economy, science policy, environmental politics, applied anthropology, ELSI research, medical humanities, and art-science. (shrink)

My last editorial was written before the world became aware of the covid-19 pandemic, and the impact that it would have on our lives. (Editorials are written some three months before publication, l...

Michel Foucault was at times critical of the Marxist tradition, and at other times more sympathetic. After his dismissal of Marx in The Order of Things , he conceded the existence of a more compelling, non-humanist version of this discourse. Louis Althusser’s innovations are crucial for the existence of this second Marxism. While consideration of the relation between Foucault and Althusser varies between those who emphasize relations between State and capital, and conversely those who inscribe Marxist considerations into a micro-political (...) account, the distinction between the two thinkers takes place earlier in the development of their respective outlooks. Foucault initially emphasized Marxism as an anthropological eschatology; he revises this argument, commending the possibility of an epistemological mutation of history inherent in Marx’s thought. I locate crucial distinctions between Foucault and Althusser in the early work of the 1960s as inflecting relations in the seemingly more proximate work of the 1970s. In this approach, we can better examine Foucault’s non-Marxist contentions in order to consider the reciprocal distinctions and contributions between these two forms of anti-humanism, providing the necessary groundwork for debates regarding the nature of subjectivity, the State, and revolution. (shrink)

One of the key achievements of critical realism has been to expose the modernist myth of universal reason, which holds that authentic knowledge claims must be objectively ‘pure’, uncontaminated by the subjectivity of local place, specific time and particular culture. Wright aims to address the lack of any substantial and sustained engagement between critical realism and theological critical realism with particular regard to: (a) the distinctive ontological claims of Christianity; (b) their epistemic warrant and intellectual legitimacy; and (c) scrutiny of (...) the primary source of the ontological claims of Christianity, namely the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth. As such, it functions as a prolegomena to a much needed wider debate, guided by the under-labouring services of critical realism, between Christianity and various other religious and secular worldviews. This important new text will help stimulate a debate that has yet to get out of first gear. This book will appeal to academics, graduate and post-graduate students especially, but also Christian clergy, ministers and informed laity, and members of the general public concerned with the nature of religion and its place in contemporary society. (shrink)

Yarkoni recommends that psychology researchers should take care to align their statistical models to the verbal theories they are studying and testing. This principle applies not just to qualitative theories in psychology but also to more quantitative sciences: there, too, mismatch between open-ended theories and specific statistical models have led to confusion.

A number of egalitarians have reached the conclusion that inequalities are just provided that they are the outcome of holding people appropriately responsible for their choices, and that only inequalities which can be traced back to the circumstances in which people happen to find themselves are objectionable. But this form of egalitarianism needs to be supplemented with an account of when it is appropriate to hold people responsible for their choices that is properly sensitive to the profound effects of socialisation. (...) Two of the most promising attempts to develop such an account-those of Ronald Dworkin and John Roemer-are found to be problematic in the light of a range of cases where gender socialisation influences values and aspirations. (shrink)

Many skeptics throughout the centuries have accused the New Testament characterization of the incarnation as being incoherent. The reason is that it appears impossible that any person can exemplify human properties such as ignorance, fatigability, and spatial limitation, as the New Testament testifies of Jesus, while possessing divine properties such as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence at the same time. This paper proposes a possible model which asserts that at the incarnation, the Logo's mind was divided into conscious and preconscious, and (...) the divine properties were transferred from the conscious into the preconscious, which became part A of Jesus' preconscious. Simultaneously, the conscious acquired newly created human properties, while a human preconscious which would become part B of Jesus' preconscious and a human body were also created. It is demonstrated that this model does not suffer from the problems that beset other models such as Apollinarianism, two-consciousness Christology, and ontological Kenoticism, and that based on this model the full attributes of divinity and humanity of Jesus as testified by the Scriptures could have simultaneously coexisted in one person without contradiction. (shrink)

This paper explores space as a core source of aesthetic pleasure in various codes of football. The paper begins by applying Kant’s distinction between the agreeable and the pleasurable to sport, arguing that the appreciation of sport entails more than just excitement. Pleasure comes from an appreciation of the rules, strategies and history of the game. The significance of the rules of various codes of football in articulating our experience of space will be taken as fundamental to such appreciation. Drawing (...) on the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty and the ‘topoanalysis’ of Gaston Bachelard, it will be argued that the aesthetic appreciation of football lies, not simply in recognising the complexity and subtlety of the movement of players and ball about the pitch, but more significantly in the creative and poetic imagination that the player embodies, and the striving of the player to create places within the course of play within which they can exercise their own competence as a player, and inhibit the competence of their opponents. A poetics of football is suggested to lie in the response that poetry and reverie about football can make through the metaphorical articulation and explication of the player’s embodied imagination and their experience of the game. (shrink)

Theodor Adorno’s reputation as a cultural critic has been well-established for some time, but his status as a philosopher remains unclear. In _Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy_ Andrew Bowie seeks to establish what Adorno can contribute to philosophy today. Adorno’s published texts are notably difficult and have tended to hinder his reception by a broad philosophical audience. His main influence as a philosopher when he was alive was, though, often based on his very lucid public lectures. Drawing on (...) these lectures, both published and unpublished, Bowie argues that important recent interpretations of Hegel, and related developments in pragmatism, echo key ideas in Adorno’s thought. At the same time, Adorno’s insistence that philosophy should make the Holocaust central to the assessment of modern rationality suggests ways in which these approaches should be complemented by his preparedness to confront some of the most disturbing aspects of modern history. What emerges is a remarkably clear and engaging re-interpretation of Adorno’s thought, as well as an illuminating and original review of the state of contemporary philosophy. _Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy_ will be indispensable to students of Adorno’s work at all levels. This compelling book is also set to ignite debate surrounding the reception of Adorno’s philosophy and bring him into the mainstream of philosophical debate at a time when the divisions between analytical and European philosophy are increasingly breaking down. (shrink)

In this superbly argued and deeply engaging book, Andrew Linzey not only shows that animals can and do suffer but also that many of the justifications for inflicting animal suffering in fact provide grounds for protecting them.

:A qualified pluralism is defended that recognizes value in a variety of forms of political theory and resists arguments that purport to show that one particular approach should occupy a privileged position. Against realists, it is argued that abstract analyses of political values that bracket a wide range of facts about people and their circumstances can be both coherent and important, whereas against those who think “ideal theory” or the identification of ultimate principles should come first, it is argued that (...) the case for always giving priority to either one of these is weak. (shrink)

On 5th June 2022 Wales played Ukraine for a place in the FIFA World Cup finals, which are due to be held in Qatar in November and December 2022.I suspect that all right-mined people wanted Ukraine...

Volume 14, Issue 1, February 2020, Page 1-3.

The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben is having an increasingly significant impact on Anglo-American political theory. His most prominent intervention to date is the powerful reassessment of sovereignty and the politics of life and death laid out in his multivolume _Homo Sacer_ project. Agamben argues that in both the modern world and the ancient, politics inevitably involves a sovereign decision that bans some individuals from the political and human communities. For Agamben, the Nazi concentration camps—in which some inmates are reduced to (...) a form of living death—are not a political aberration but instead the place where this essential political decision about life most clearly reveals itself. Engaging specifically with _Homo Sacer_, the essays in this collection draw out and contend with the wide-ranging implications of Agamben’s radical and controversial interpretation of modern political life. The contributors analyze Agamben’s thought from the perspectives of political theory, philosophy, jurisprudence, and the history of law. They consider his work not only in relation to that of his major interlocutors—Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, and Martin Heidegger—but also in relation to the thought of Plato, Pindar, Heraclitus, Descartes, Kafka, Bataille, and Derrida. The essayists’ approaches are varied, as are their ultimate evaluations of the cogency and accuracy of Agamben’s arguments. This volume also includes an original essay by Agamben in which he considers the relation of Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” to Schmitt’s _Political Theology_. _Politics, Metaphysics, and Death_ is a necessary, multifaceted exposition and evaluation of the thought of one of today’s most important political theorists. _Contributors:_ Giorgio Agamben, Andrew Benjamin, Peter Fitzpatrick, Anselm Haverkamp, Paul Hegarty, Andreas Kalyvas, Rainer Maria Kiesow, Catherine Mills, Andrew Norris, Adam Thurschwell, Erik Vogt, Thomas Carl Wall. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 25-49 [Access article in PDF] Descartes's Nomic Concurrentism:Finite Causation and Divine Concurrence Andrew Pessin DESCARTES APPEARS TO HOLD the traditional view that God acts in the world via willing. 1 In recent papers on his successor Malebranche, who also holds that view, I have argued that since volitions are paradigm representational states, close attention to the representational content of God's (...) volitions has substantial exegetical rewards. 2 The same, I will argue, is true regarding Descartes. In particular, due to lack of such attention, scholars have largely failed to realize that Descartes retains [End Page 25] a version of the scholastic doctrine that God ordinarily concurs with the causal activities of both mental and material finite substances ("concurrentism"). 3 Since concurrentism implies the true causal powers of those finite substances, in exposing Descartes's adherence to it I aim to open up new ways of thinking about some old problems in Cartesian exegesis.The plan:(I) I will first sketch a partial "worldview," along with evidence that Descartes held something like it, then(II) argue, both on the basis of this worldview and other evidence, that we should interpret Descartes's account of divine and finite causality as a version of concurrentism, then(III) show how interpreting Descartes this way has significant implications for understanding his views on the causal powers of both mental and material finite substances, and finally(IV) contrast my interpretation with two recent relevant ones: Kenneth Clatterbaugh's and Daniel Garber's. 1. A Partial Worldview If Descartes's God acts on the world via willing, we may inquire into the contents of those volitions. I suggest that Descartes's God has, among others, distinguishable volitions with roughly the following contents. 4 These constitute a partial worldview (W), and will be discussed in turn:(V1) At all times beginning with original Creation matter exists everywhere.(V2) There is at original Creation a particular quantity q and particular distribution d of motion.(V3) At all times, the laws of motion apply.(V4) Mind m exists at time t (appropriately substituted).(V5) At all times, the laws of mind-body union apply.Our first task is to accommodate God's role in the Cartesian system as the continuous conserver of the material world. 5 One divine volition which would accomplish that might have the content, not that each individual body persists, but rather, simply, that [End Page 26](V1) at all times beginning with original Creation matter exists everywhere. 6Now (V1) may require us to rethink the way continuous conservation arguments are typically framed. In the texts of La Forge and Malebranche, for example, what God conserves are individual bodies,and Cartesian texts seem sometimes to suggest the same. 7 Such framing might suggest, contra (V1), that God's conservational volitional contents make explicit reference to each individual body. Nevertheless, there are reasons to think that Descartes's God's conserving activity is and ought to be framed as in (V1):(i) God's willing that (V1) provides an easy way to reconcile Cartesian mind —> body causal interaction with continuous conservation. 8 Many think that there is a tension between these two doctrines, since God, in conserving bodies, would seem to be responsible for all their modes including motion, leaving nothing for minds to contribute to them. Now that might be true where God's conserving volition explicitly represents each individual body, particularly given the role that motion plays in distinguishing individual Cartesian bodies. 9 (V1), however, in making no reference to individual bodies, is perfectly consistent with minds affecting either the quantity or distribution of motion in the material world.(ii) Similarly in Physiologia, Des Chene convincingly defends the claim that for Descartes, "since the existence of motion... is not entailed by the existence of matter, the creation of motion [is] independent of the creation of matter" (329). In light, again, of Descartes's conception of individual bodies (n. 9, below), this independence is best modeled by distinguishing God's conserving volition from those volitions... (shrink)