This fascinating collection on artifacts brings together seven papers by philosophers with nine by psychologists, biologists, and an archaeologist. The psychological papers include two excellent discussions of empirical work on the mental representation of artifact concepts – an assessment by Malt and Sloman of a large variety of studies on the conflicting ways we classify artifacts and extend our applications of artifact categories to new cases, and a review by Mahon and Caramazza of data from semantically impaired patients and (...) from neuroimaging on concepts of living kinds versus artifact kinds. Following these are three papers on the development of artifact concepts in children, including a short but provocative piece by Keil, Greif, and Kerner arguing that there is a mismatch between the patterns of development for our concepts of artifacts and the patterns of representation we end up developing. The final part of the book includes authoritative papers on artifact use by insects, birds, and mammals, by primates, and by Australopithecines and Neanderthals. (shrink)

In Posthumanism: A Guide for the Perplexed, Peter Mahon goes beyond recent theoretical approaches to 'the posthuman' to argue for a concrete posthumanism, which arises as humans, animals and technology become entangled, in science, society and culture. Concrete posthumanism is rooted in cutting-edge advances in techno-science, and this book offers readers an exciting, fresh and innovative exploration of this undulating, and often unstable, terrain. With wide-ranging coverage, of cybernetics, information theory, medicine, genetics, machine learning, politics, science fiction, philosophy and (...) futurology, Mahon examines how posthumanism played-and continues to play-a crucial role in shaping how we understand our world. This analysis of posthumanism centers on human interactions with tools and technology, the centrality of science, as well as an understanding of techno-science as a pharmakon-an ancient Greek word for a substance that is both poison and cure. Mahon argues that posthumanism must be approached with an interdisciplinary attitude: a concrete posthumanism is only graspable through knowledge derived from science and the humanities. He concludes by sketching a 'post-humanities' to help us meet the challenges of posthumanism, challenges to which we all must rise.Posthumanism: A Guide for the Perplexed provides a concise, detailed and coherent exploration of posthumanism, introducing key approaches, concepts and themes. It is ideal for readers of all stripes who are interested in a concrete posthumanism and require more than just a simple introduction. (shrink)

Like several prominent moral philosophers before him, such as St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, Kant held that it is never morally permissible to tell a lie. Although a great deal has been written on why and how he argued for this conclusion, comparatively little has been written on what, precisely, Kant considered a lie to be, and on how he differentiated between being truthful and being candid, between telling a lie and being reticent, and between telling a lie and (...) other forms of linguistic deception. That is to say, very little has been written on the scope of Kant's prohibition against lying. In this article I will argue that the scope of the prohibition against lying is narrower than it is commonly supposed to be. (shrink)

The chapter examines fifty years of philosophers working on lying - from the 1970s to the current day – focusing on how lying is defined (descriptively and normatively), whether lying involves an intention to deceive (Deceptionists) or not (Non-Deceptionists), why lying is wrong, and whether lying is worse than other forms of deception, including misleading with the truth. Philosophers discussed include Roderick Chisholm and Thomas Feehan, Alan Donagan, Sissela Boy, Charles Fried, David Simpson, David Simpson, Bernard Williams, Paul Faulkner, Thomas (...) Carson, Roy Sorensen, Don Fallis, Jennifer Saul, Andreas Stoke, Jonathan Webber and Clea Rees. (shrink)

Brian Leftow offers a theist theory of necessity and possibility, and a new sort of argument for God's existence. He argues that necessities of logic and mathematics are determined by God's nature, but that it is events in God's mind - his imagination and choice - that account for necessary truths about concrete creatures.

This chapter examines the views of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle on lying. It it outlines the differences between different kinds of falsehoods in Plato (real falsehoods and falsehoods in words), the difference between myths and lies, the 'noble' (i.e., pedigree) lie in The Republic, and how Plato defended rulers lying to non-rulers about, for example, eugenics. It considers whether Socrates's opposition to lying is consistent with Socratic irony, and especially with his praise of his interlocutors as wise. Finally, it looks (...) at Aristotle's condemnation of lies, and asks whether lies to enemies, and self-deprecating lies by the magnanimous person, are not base. (shrink)

Return of the invisible tomato -- What's the use of calling Cavell a pragmatist? -- The turn to literature -- Stylists of the philosophical -- The personal and the political.

In this article I argue that justice often requires that candidates who are sufficiently qualified for jobs be hired via lottery on the basis that this is the best way to recognise each candidate's equal moral claim to access meaningful work. In reaching this conclusion I consider a variety of potential objections from the perspectives of the employer, of the most qualified candidate, and of third parties, but ultimately reject the idea that a person's status as the most qualified candidate (...) can explain why they ought to be appointed over other sufficiently qualified candidates. (shrink)

This paper re-examines the tension between professional and liberal education by revisiting The Idea of the University (1852), the seminal mid-nineteenth century treatise of John Henry Newman. In returning to Newman’s classic text, we are interested in the significance of his lectures for a contemporary Higher Education increasingly under pressure to be ‘useful:’ on this understanding, ‘useful’ denotes an arguably limited and utilitarian sense where the university guarantees its students a well-paying job on graduation. In pressing on this distinction between (...) ‘the useful’ and ‘the useless’ – a distinction that continues to plague discourse on the contemporary university – our paper focuses on the experiential and pedagogical aspects of education that find recurring emphasis in Newman’s classic work: aspects of place, of community, and of the teacher–student relationship. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest Western philosphers and one of the greatest theologians of the Christian church. In this book we at last have a modern, comprehensive presentation of the total thought of Aquinas. Books on Aquinas invariably deal with either his philosophy or his theology. But Aquinas himself made no arbitrary division between his philosophical and his theological thought, and this book allows readers to see him as a whole. It introduces the full range of Aquinas' thinking; (...) and it relates his thinking to writers both earlier and later than Aquinas himself. (shrink)

In this article I argue that we should understand some forms of hypocritical behaviour in terms of epistemic injustice; a type of injustice in which a person is wronged in their capacity as a knower. If each of us has an interest in knowing what morality requires of us, this can be undermined when hypocritical behaviour distorts our perception of the moral landscape by misrepresenting the demandingness of putative moral obligations. This suggests that a complete theory of the wrongness of (...) hypocrisy must account for hypocrisy as epistemic injustice. (shrink)

The view that phenomenally conscious robots are on the horizon often rests on a certain philosophical view about consciousness, one we call “nomological behaviorism.” The view entails that, as a matter of nomological necessity, if a robot had exactly the same patterns of dispositions to peripheral behavior as a phenomenally conscious being, then the robot would be phenomenally conscious; indeed it would have all and only the states of phenomenal consciousness that the phenomenally conscious being in question has. We experimentally (...) investigate whether the folk think that certain (hypothetical) robots made of silicon and steel would have the same conscious states as certain familiar biological beings with the same patterns of dispositions to peripheral behavior as the robots. Our findings provide evidence that the folk largely reject the view that silicon-based robots would have the sensations that they, the folk, attribute to the biological beings in question. (shrink)

Our aim here is to lay the groundwork for formal tree-ring analysis combining data from dendrochronology with formal techniques from semantics. We will present the basic syntax of, and basic compositional semantics of tree-ring structures.

The comic‐book superheroine Wonder Woman, who debuted in All Star Comics #8 in December 1941, was created by psychologist Dr. William Moulton Marston. Most of all, Marston was known for his work on lie detection. Because of the extensive work done on lie detection by her character's creator, it is commonly believed that Wonder Woman's lasso is a magic lie detector. As Matthew Brown says in his article "Love Slaves and Wonder Women: Radical Feminism and Social Reform in the Psychology (...) of Marston", according to Marston there were four basic emotions: inducement, submission, dominance, and compliance. Wonder Woman displays the strong quality of submission by wearing the bracelets of submission. She has an inducement/submission relationship with Aphrodite, which enables her to experience love. Both the bracelets of submission and the magic lasso of Aphrodite have been dropped from contemporary Wonder Woman comic books. (shrink)

For the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original (SAMCRO), loyalty to the club's other members is the most important quality in a member. Tig's attempt on Laroy's life is a case of misplaced loyalty, in aid of a murderer and inspired by a lie. Some philosophers are highly suspicious of loyalty, because they see it as focused on something higher than another person or group. Loyalty to fellow members is what the club is and disloyalty to fellow members is (...) a serious threat to its existence. While SAMCRO's punishment for disloyalty is severe, some kind of sanction for disloyalty is required for any club or group to survive. Since loyalty itself does not require any particular act, it does not require an act of wrongdoing. But we can be fairly certain that Tig would agree that loyal brothers are good to have if you ever need an escort home. (shrink)

This book uses computer modeling to investigate trends in what is published in leading philosophy journals over the last century and a half. The notable trends include the rise of realism from a fringe view to the mainstream metaphysical outlook, the increase in specialization, and the increasing depth of integration between philosophy and physical sciences. It also contains a guide to how to do similar investigations, and discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of the approach.

This chapter explores a way in which visual processing may involve innate constraints and attempts to show how such processing overcomes one enduring challenge to nativism. In particular, many challenges to nativist theories in other areas of cognitive psychology have focused on the later development of such abilities, and have argued that such development is in conflict with innate origins. Innateness, in these contexts, is seen as antidevelopmental, associated instead with static processes and principles. In contrast, certain perceptual models demonstrate (...) how the very same mental processes can both be innately specified and yet develop richly in response to experience with the environment. This process is entirely unmysterious, as shown in certain formal theories of visual perception, including those that appeal to spontaneous endogenous stimulation and those based on Bayesian inference. (shrink)

This article extends earlier research concerning the relationship between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance, with particular emphasis on methodological inconsistencies. Research in this area is extended in three critical areas. First, it focuses on a particular industry, the chemical industry. Second, it uses multiple sources of data-two that are perceptual based (KLD Index and Fortune reputation survey), and two that are performance based (TRI database and corporate philanthropy) in order to triangulate toward assessing corporate social performance. Third, it (...) uses the five most commonly applied accounting measures in the corporate social performance and corporate financial performance (CSP/CFP) literature to assess corporate financial performance. The results indicate that the a priori use of measures may actually predetermine the CSP/CFP relationship outcome. Surprisingly, Fortune and KLD indices very closely track one another, whereas TRI and corporate philanthropy differentiate between high and low social performers and do not correlate to the firm's financial performance. (shrink)

Infallibilism leads to skepticism, and fallibilism is plagued by the threshold problem. Within this narrative, the pragmatic turn in epistemology has been marketed as a way for fallibilists to address the threshold problem. In contrast, pragmatic versions of infallibilism have been left unexplored. However, I propose that going pragmatic offers the infallibilist a way to address its main problem, the skeptical problem. Pragmatic infallibilism, however, is committed to a shifty view of epistemic certainty, where the strength of a subject’s epistemic (...) state can vary depending upon the practical context. Pragmatic views of epistemic strength are quite radical so the argumentative goal of my discussion is to argue for its plausibility, thereby arguing for the plausibility of pragmatic infallibilism. To do so, I discuss the role that the framing of decision problems and the construction of our deliberative attitudes have in our theories of rational choice. And I explore a way in which these necessary components of a normative theory of rationality can be used to motivate pragmatic views of evidential support. Finally, since the plausibility of our pragmatic account will depend upon the plausibility of a constructive account of rational choice, I conclude by comparing the adequacy of the constructive account with orthodox Bayesian and knowledge-based accounts. (shrink)

The popularity of direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry services has exploded over the past five years, with as many as 250 direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry testing companies currently operating and estimates that 1 in 5 Americans are customers of one or more of those companies. Marketing of genetic ancestry testing has consistently linked the results of DNA testing to a consumer’s racial and ethnic identity, and, because of that, can help consumers find out “who they really are.” We argue that the “biologization” of (...) race and ethnicity promoted in such marketing violates norms of marketing ethics. In particular, we show that this marketing technique violates a number of the core commitments and values of the American Marketing Association Statement of Ethics. (shrink)

This book examines John Locke as a theorist of migration, immigration, and the movement of peoples. It outlines the contours of the public discourse surrounding migration in the seventeenth century and situates Locke's in-depth involvement in these debates. The volume presents a variety of undercurrents in Locke's writing - his ideas on populationism, naturalization, colonization and the right to withdrawal, the plight of refugees, and territorial rights - which have great import in present-day debates about migration. Departing from the popular (...) extant literature that sees Locke advocating for a strong right to exclude foreigners, the author proposes a Lockean theory of immigration that recognizes the fundamental right to emigrate, thus, catering to an age wrought with terrorism, xenophobia and economic inequality. A unique and compelling contribution, the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of political theory, political philosophy, history of international politics, international relations, international political economy, public policy, seventeenth century English history, migration and citizenship studies, and moral philosophy. (shrink)

Pt. I. Zeno and the metaphysics of quantity. Zeno's paradox of measure -- Tractarian nominalism -- Logical atoms and combinatorial possibility -- Strict coherence, sigma coherence, and the metaphysics of quantity -- pt. II. Coherent degrees of belief. Higher-order degrees of belief -- A mistake in dynamic coherence arguments? -- Dynamic coherence and probability kinematics -- Updating, supposing, and MAXENT -- The structure of radical probabilism -- Diachronic coherence and radical probabilism -- pt. III. Induction. Carnapian inductive logic for Markov (...) chains -- Carnapian inductive logic and Bayesian statistics -- Bayesian projectability. (shrink)

This Handbook is therefore meant to be useful to someone wanting to learn about Aquinas's philosophy and theology while also looking for help in philosophical ...

Would God's existence be a good thing for us? According to anti-theism, the answer is No. Probably, many theists will want to reject anti-theism. But it isn’t obvious why. After all, whether p is good for us is logically independent from whether p is true. So anti-theism seems entirely compatible with theism. In this essay, however, I argue this seeming compatibility is mistaken. If anti-theism is true, then the theism of most practicing believers is false. And if I am right (...) about this, then anti-theism presents a serious challenge to traditional theistic belief, notably theistic belief anchored in the Bible. (shrink)

Ziran, an idea from ancient Daoism, defies easy translation into English but can almost be captured by the term "spontaneity." It means "self-causation," if "self" is understood as fundamentally plural, and "causation" is understood as sensitivity and responsiveness. Applying ziran to the fields of action theory, attention theory, and aesthetics, Brian Bruya uses easy-to-read, straightforward prose to show, step-by-step, how this philosophical concept from an ancient tradition can be used to advance theory today. Incorporated into contemporary philosophy of action, (...) ziran opens us to the notion of movement and action as self-organizing. Incorporated into contemporary cognitive science, ziran opens us to the possibility of effortless attention, contrary to the reigning paradigm. Incorporated into contemporary aesthetics, ziran opens us to a new category of art--somatic art--and a new, refined understanding of improvisation"-- Back cover. (shrink)

This commentary on Adam Pautz's excellent book, Perception, explores the consequences of “spatial illusionism,” the view that the spatial properties presented in experience aren't instantiated in the extra-mental world. First, I consider whether spatial illusionism entails that our ordinary beliefs about the physical world are mostly false. I then argue that spatial illusionism threatens to undermine two arguments Pautz's defends in Perception: his argument that sense data theory is incompatible with physicalism, and his central argument against the internal physical state (...) view of perception. (shrink)

The Senate filibuster is among the most criticized political institutions in the United States. This paper examines the ethics of filibustering. The way filibustering currently proceeds in the Senate, I argue, is morally indefensible. Yet, there is a way filibustering could proceed that is both defensible and desirable from a normative perspective. This is because filibustering—if it is properly institutionalized—allows minority parties in the legislature to protect and advance their interests in a manner that avoids shortcomings faced by other institutions (...) proposed to accomplish these goals, such as supermajority rule and judicial review. (shrink)

Pareto principles are at the core of ethics and decision theory. The Strong Pareto principle says that if one thing is better than another for someone and at least as good for everyone else, then the one is overall better than the other. But a host of famous figures express it differently, with ‘not worse’ in place of ‘at least as good.’ In the presence of parity (or incommensurability), this results in a strictly stronger Pareto principle, which I call Super‐Strong (...) Pareto. Super‐Strong Pareto, however, yields cyclic betterness and is therefore false. I point out a number of influential arguments—concerning population ethics, collective action problems, and decision‐making in the face of parity and uncertainty—that crucially rely on Super‐Strong Pareto and are therefore unsound. I then turn to the most influential argument against the possibility of parity—Broome's collapsing argument—and argue that it likewise relies on Super‐Strong Pareto reasoning and is therefore question‐begging. Finally, I turn to the much‐neglected question of how to justify Strong Pareto. The answer I arrive at, which emphasizes tie‐breaking, yields a striking insight, namely that Super‐Strong Pareto amounts to the denial of insensitivity to mild sweetening. That is what makes it problematic in the presence of parity. (shrink)

Language and culture endow humans with access to conceptual information that far exceeds any which could be accessed by a non-human animal. Yet, it is possible that, even without language or specific experiences, non-human animals represent and infer some aspects of similarity relations between objects in the same way as humans. Here, we show that monkeys’ discrimination sensitivity when identifying images of animals is predicted by established measures of semantic similarity derived from human conceptual judgments. We used metrics from computer (...) vision and computational neuroscience to show that monkeys’ and humans’ performance cannot be explained by low-level visual similarity alone. The results demonstrate that at least some of the underlying structure of object representations in humans is shared with non-human primates, at an abstract level that extends beyond low-level visual similarity. Because the monkeys had no experience with the objects we tested, the results suggest that monkeys and humans share a primitive representation of object similarity that is independent of formal knowledge and cultural experience, and likely derived from common evolutionary constraints on object representation. (shrink)

[Brian P. McLaughlin] In recent years, some philosophers have claimed that we can know a priori that certain external world skeptical hypotheses are false on the basis of a priori knowledge that we are in certain kinds of mental states, and a priori knowledge that those mental states are individuated by contingent environmental factors. Appealing to a distinction between weak and strong a priority, I argue that weakly a priori arguments of this sort would beg the question of whether (...) the skeptical hypothesis under assessment is true, and that the prospect of a sound strongly a priori argument of this sort seems dim. \\\ [David Owens] Contemporary discussion of scepticism focuses on the possibility that most or all of our beliefs might be false. I argue that the hypothesis of massive falsity and the associated 'problem of the external world' are inessential to the scepticisms of Descartes and Hume. What drives Cartesian and Humean scepticism is the demand for certainty: any possibility of error, however local, must be ruled out before we can claim either justified belief or knowledge. Contemporary philosophers have ignored this form of scepticism because they doubt that the demand for certainty can be motivated. But Descartes provides a sound motivation for this demand in the Meditations. (shrink)

This chapter provides a general overview of the issues surrounding so-called semantic monsters. In section 1, I outline the basics of Kaplan’s framework and spell out how and why the topic of “monsters” arises within that framework. In Section 2, I distinguish four notions of a monster that are discussed in the literature, and show why, although they can pull apart in different frameworks or with different assumptions, they all coincide within Kaplan’s framework. In Section 3, I discuss one notion (...) that has spun off into the linguistics literature, namely “indexical shift”. In Section 4, I emphasize the connection between monsters and the compositionality of asserted content in Kaplan’s original discussion. Section 5 discusses monsters and the more general idea of re-interpretation or meaning-shift. Section 6 closes with a brief survey of where monsters may dwell, and pointers to avenues for future research. (shrink)

This book examines a basic problem in critical approaches to political and social inquiry: in what way is social inquiry animated by a practical intent? This practical intent is not external to inquiry as an add-on or a choice by the inquirer, but is inherent to the process of inquiry. The practical intent in inquiry derives from the connection between social inquiry and the participant's perspective. The social inquirer, in order to grasp the sense of those who are the subject (...) of inquiry, has to adopt the perspective of the participant in the social world. Caterino opposes the view that research is an autonomous activity distinct from or superior to a participant's perspective. He argues that since the inquirer is on the same level as the participant, all inquiry should be considered mutual critique in which those who are addressed by inquiry have an equal right and an equal capacity to criticize addressors. Brian Caterino is an independent researcher who works in public media. He is the co-editor of Making Political Science Matter (2006) with Sanford Schram and has published in a variety of journals. His most recent article "Lowering the Basement Floor" appeared in New Political Science. (shrink)

This book extends philosophy's engagement with the double beyond hierarchized binary oppositions. Brian Seitz explores the double as a necessary ontological condition or figure that gets represented, enacted, and performed repeatedly and in a myriad of configurations. Seitz suggests that the double in all of its forms is simultaneously philosophy's shadow, its nemesis, and the condition of its possibility. This book expands definitions and investigations of the double beyond the confines of philosophy, suggesting that the concept is at work (...) in many other fields including politics, cultural narratives, literature, mythology, and psychology. Seitz approaches the double by means of a series of case studies and by engaging loosely in eidetic variation, a methodological maneuver borrowed from phenomenology. The book explores the ways in which wide-ranging instances of the double are connected by the dynamics of intersubjectivity. (shrink)