A history of the Atomic Bomb from Marie Curie to Hiroshima. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” — Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita after witnessing the successful demonstration of the atom bomb. The bomb, which killed an estimated 140,000 civilians in Hiroshima and destroyed the countryside for miles around, was one of the defining moments in world history. That mushroom cloud cast a terrifying shadow over the contemporary world and continues to do so today. But how could this (...) have happened? What led to the creation of such a weapon of mass destruction? From the moment scientists contemplated the destructive potential of splitting the atom, the role of science changed. Ethical and moral dilemmas faced all those who realized the implications of their research. Before the Fall-Out charts the chain of events from Marie Curie’s scientific breakthrough through the many colourful characters such as Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer and Lord Rutherford, whose discoveries contributed to the bomb. The story of the atomic bomb spans 50 years of prolific scientific innovation, turbulent politics, foreign affairs and world-changing history. Through personal stories of exile, indecision and soul-searching, to charges of collaboration, spying and deceit, Diana Preston presents the human side of an unstoppable programme with a lethal outcome. (shrink)

Stance-independent nonnaturalist moral realism is subject to two related epistemological objections. First, there is the metaethical descendant of the Benacerraf problem. Second, there are evolutionary debunking arguments. Standard attempts to solve these epistemological problems have not appealed to any particular moral epistemology. The focus on these epistemologically neutral responses leaves many interesting theoretical stones unturned. Exploring the ability of particular theories in moral epistemology to handle these difficult epistemological objections can help illuminate strengths or weaknesses within these theories themselves, as (...) well as opening up potentially unexplored avenues for responding to deeply entrenched concerns about our epistemic access to the moral properties. In this paper, I assess the prospects of an empiricist and perceptualist model of moral knowledge for responding to epistemological arguments against non-skeptical moral realism. I argue that such a view has powerful responses to these objections that are not open to other moral epistemologists. The upshot is that if some version of the view is correct, then the realist has less to fear from Benacerraf and evolutionary debunking–style epistemological objections. Insofar as one is already a committed realist, then, this provides some indirect support for moral perceptualism. (shrink)

All else being equal, most of us typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future rather than the past and negative experiences in the past rather than the future. Recent empirical evidence tends not only to support the idea that people have these preferences, but further, that people tend to prefer more painful experiences in their past rather than fewer in their future (and mutatis mutandis for pleasant experiences). Are such preferences rationally permissible, or are they, as time-neutralists contend, (...) rationally impermissible? And what is it that grounds their having the normative status that they do have? We consider two sorts of arguments regarding the normative status of future-biased preferences. The first appeals to the supposed arbitrariness of these preferences, and the second appeals to their upshot. We evaluate these arguments in light of the recent empirical research on future-bias. (shrink)

This book focuses on material culture as a subject of philosophical inquiry and promotes the philosophical study of material culture by articulating some of the central and difficult issues raised by this topic and providing innovative solutions to them, most notably an account of improvised action and a non-intentionalist account of function in material culture. Preston argues that material culture essentially involves activities of production and use; she therefore adopts an action-theoretic foundation for a philosophy of material culture. Part (...) 1 illustrates this foundation through a critique, revision, and extension of existing philosophical theories of action. Part 2 investigates a salient feature of material culture itself—its functionality. A basic account of function in material culture is constructed by revising and extending existing theories of biological function to fit the cultural case. Here the adjustments are for the most part necessitated by special features of function in material culture. These two parts of the project are held together by a trio of overarching themes: the relationship between individual and society, the problem of centralized control, and creativity. (shrink)

This book is the first comprehensive critical study of the work of Paul Feyerabend, one of the foremost twentieth-century philosophers of science. The book traces the evolution of Feyerabend's thought, beginning with his early attempt to graft insights from Wittgenstein's conception of meaning onto Popper's falsificationist philosophy. The key elements of Feyerabend's model of the acquisition of knowledge are identified and critically evaluated. Feyerabend's early work emerges as a continuation of Popper's philosophy of science, rather than as a contribution to (...) the historical approach to science with which he is usually associated. In his more notorious later work, Feyerabend claimed that there was, and should be, no such thing as the scientific method. The roots of Feyerabend's 'epistemological anarchism' are exposed and the weaknesses of his cultural relativism are brought out. Throughout the book, Preston discusses the influence of Feyerabend's thought on contemporary philosophers and traces his stimulating but divided legacy. The book will be of interest to students of philosophy, methodology, and the social sciences. (shrink)

This paper aims to review the empirical and theoretical research on engineering ethics education, by focusing on the challenges reported in the literature. The analysis is conducted at four levels of the engineering education system. First, the individual level is dedicated to findings about teaching practices reported by instructors. Second, the institutional level brings together findings about the implementation and presence of ethics within engineering programmes. Third, the level of policy situates findings about engineering ethics education in the context of (...) accreditation. Finally, there is the level of the culture of engineering education. The multi-level analysis allows us to address some of the limitations of higher education research which tends to focus on individual actors such as instructors or remains focused on the levels of policy and practice without examining the deeper levels of paradigm and purpose guiding them. Our approach links some of the challenges of engineering ethics education with wider debates about its guiding paradigms. The main contribution of the paper is to situate the analysis of the theoretical and empirical findings reported in the literature on engineering ethics education in the context of broader discussions about the purpose of engineering education and the aims of reform programmes. We conclude by putting forward a series of recommendations for a socio-technical oriented reform of engineering education for ethics. (shrink)

Current societal changes and challenges demand a broader role of technological universities, thus opening the question of how their role evolved over time and how to frame their current responsibility. In response to urgent calls for debating and redefining the identity of contemporary technological universities, this paper has two aims. The first aim is to identify the key characteristics and orientations marking the development of technological universities, as recorded in the history of engineering education. The second aim is to articulate (...) the responsibility of contemporary technological universities given their different orientations and characteristics. For this, we first provide a non-systematic literature review of the key pedagogical orientations of technological universities, grounded in the history of engineering education. The five major orientations of technological universities presented in the paper are technical, economic, social, political, and ecological. We then use this historical survey to articulate the responsibilities of contemporary technological universities reflecting the different orientations. Technological universities can promote and foster the development of scientific, professional, civic, legal, or intra- and inter- generational responsibility. We argue that responsibility is not specific to any particular orientation, such that the concept is broadened to complement each orientation or mix of orientations of a technological university. Our contribution thus serves as a call for technological universities to self-reflect on their mission and identity, by offering a lens for identifying the orientations they currently foster and making explicit the responsibility arising from their current orientation or the ones they strive to cultivate. (shrink)

Our soft survey reveals that the assumption underlying much of the business ethics literature -- that the conduct of business can and ought to support the social good -- is not accepted within the workplace. This paper considers an apparent dichotomy, with companies investing in ethical programs whose worth their employees and managers question. We examine the relationship between work, bureaucracy and "the market" and conclude that employees often question the existence of business ethics because there is no good and (...) bad between which to choose. The choice is between success and failure. A common view of success and the "good life" is one determined by hard work in a well-organised company operating in a free market. Analysing the three aspects of this view (the free market, hard work, bureaucracy) we suggest these are mere fictions. A major problem we identify in business is that organisations are designed as profit making mechanisms and have no interest in the good of society. The challenge is to convince such organisations that a direct benefit accrues to them through their own ethical behaviour. In order to do this organisations must first be shown the importance of long termism. Executives, managers and other employees can be expected to attain high ethical standards only when they feel they are a integral part of an organisation and the organisation itself respects those standards. One of the keys to unravelling the undesirable situation of a perceived absence of ethics in business is in encouraging a greater identity community, company and workforce. We provide some examples of ways companies can meet the challenge of encouraging more ethical, long-sighted behaviour. In addition, we highlight ways in which the expectations of the organisations of the organisation can be communicated more strongly through corporate structures that foster ethical action that benefits the long term interests of the individual and the organisation. Overall implementing a successful ethical program is shown to parallel that of the implementation of a quality program. (shrink)

Most of us spend a significant portion of our lives learning, practising, and performing a wide range of skills. Many of us also have a great amount of control over which skills we learn and develop. From choices as significant as career pursuits to those as minor as how we spend our weeknight leisure time, we exercise a great amount of agency over what we know and what we can do. In this paper we argue, using a framework first developed (...) by Carbonell (2013) that in many real-world circumstances we have moral obligations to develop some skills rather than others. (shrink)

Chater & Loewenstein argue for a shift in focus from individual- to structural-level approaches to societal ills. This is valid and important but overlooks the barriers inherent in the current US partisan context. Psychology can be applied to help people of mixed allyship join together, to effectively and quickly force institutions and corporations to accept structural change.

The article argues that mainstream value-sensitive approaches to design have been based on narrow understandings of personhood and social dynamics, which are biased toward Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic cultures and contradicted by empirical evidence. To respond to this weakness, the article suggests that design may benefit from focusing on user behaviours from the joint perspective of values and norms, especially across cultural contexts. As such, it proposes Norm Sensitive Design as a complement to value-sensitive approaches when designing and (...) implementing new technologies. Versus values, norms serve as more accurate predictors or descriptors of behaviours and can thus support value-sensitive approaches to realize the aspiration of informing user behaviour via design. The article makes two key contributions. On the theoretical side, it promotes the consideration of norms in design. On the practical side, it offers designers and instructors prompts for reflecting on design ethics from the perspective of norms. (shrink)

The Phenomenology of Spiritis the crowning point of several projects elaborated by Hegel between the years 1803-1807, and anticipates in some sense his Science ofLogic. The aim of this paper is to lay out some basic meditations about the origins of this work in connection with the courses of the Jena period, the possible conceptual tranformations of the Phenomenologyduring the time devoted to its writing, and its links with Hegel's posterior piece of work, the Science of Logic.

In the tradition of philosophy in Argentina, Hegel has meant to this day a source of important views on the nature of society and history. The Phenomenology of the spirit turns out to be a provocation of the thought that finds in Julio De Zan a privileged interpreter. From his academic beginnings as a professor and researcher, he was initially interested in this work. In the context of this dossier dedicated to “Hegel’s philosophy in Argentina”, we propose an analysis of (...) two articles by Julio De Zan published at different times: “Sense and validity of the Phenomenology of the spirit” and “Experience and praxis. Method questions in Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit”. (shrink)

Nuestro trabajo se orienta a presentar lo desarrollado por Hegel sobre el pensamiento de Descartes en sus Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, teniendo en cuenta tres momentos: 1) la opción de Hegel por los Principios; 2) el lugar de Descartes en la “historia de la filosofía”; y 3) algunas conclusiones en torno a la tesis de que “avanzar en el pensamiento” sólo es posible en la medida en que uno reconozca a la historia de la filosofía no como una (...) “galería de opiniones” sino como una fuente inagotable de problemas y cuestiones. (shrink)

El núcleo central de este trabajo consiste en presentar a la Crítica de la Facultad de Juzgar de Kant como un recurso significativo en la formación del pensamiento político de Hanna Arendt. Según la interpretación que la autora realiza del juicio reflexivo y su vinculación con la comunidad ampliada presente en la concepción kantiana de sensus communis, es posible considerar una redefinición del juicio ahora más ligada a la contingencia de la acción y a la pluralidad de los espectadores en (...) el ámbito de la esfera política. En síntesis, se trata de señalar los aspectos más problemáticos de la localización del legado de Kant en los últimos trabajos de Arendt a la vez que llamar la atención sobre la cuestión concerniente a la importancia del aporte kantiano a los ejes centrales del debate de la teoría política contemporánea. (shrink)

Hegel reconoce en la “idealidad” de la mónada un antecedente necesario para la comprensión lógico-ontológica del “ser para sí” en el contexto de la superación de la oposición entre finito e infinito de la lógica del ser, a la vez que la anticipación de la formulación idealista del principio “la sustancialidad es subjetividad”. A los efectos de la comprobación de esta tesis el presente artículo comienza por las nociones de “representación” e “idealismo” a partir de las cuales Kant se permite (...) asociar la doctrina de Leibniz a un “dogmatismo metafísico”, dado que Hegel presupone su conocimiento. Para pasar en un segundo momento a la crítica posición de Hegel en torno a la “idealidad” de la mónada, en la que ésta se mide con el aporte de interpretaciones que el propio idealismo alemán –transcendental, primero, y subjetivo, después- fue generando. (shrink)

La tarea de la filosofía consiste, para Fichte, en elevar a la conciencia al ámbito de su actuar originario de la mano de la reflexión trascendental. El filósofo sigue al Yo en su génesis, y su sistema se convierte en una "historia pragmática del espíritu humano". Esta "intuición intelec-tual" descu..

El espíritu científico del siglo XVII, inclinado a demostrar la verdadmore geométrico y a sostener el ideal de un conocimiento seguro que dé cuenta de la totalidad de lo real partiendo de principios evidentes, influye de manera deteminante sobre la justificación racional de las condiciones más adecuadas para la ordenación de la vida en sociedad. En esta línea se inscribe el ambicioso proyecto de Tomas Hobbes, al postular una filosofía práctica demostrativa capaz de articular definitivamente la naturaleza humana el "estado (...) natural" de la sociedad y el ideal de un orden jurídico-normativo cuya expresión máxima, el Estado como ente de razón, asume la forma de un "cuerpo artificial" construido técrucamente por los hombres. La contrastación con el pensamiento de Aristóteles, permite ver que con Hobbes no sólo nos encontramos frente auna original teoría del poder, sino ante la manifestación naciente de un movimiento cultural, filosófico, científico y político, cuyos efectos de sentido nos son hoy contemporáneos. (shrink)

In this article, we focus on the link between the new populisms and the crisis of neoliberal capitalism, as well as its post-democratic forms of governance, in the context of digital politics and its social effects, such as the intense polarisation of public life or the distrust of citizens towards traditional forms of politics. Brexit is a paradigmatic case that encapsulates all of these problems and prompts us to think about how philosophy can challenge the way we understand contemporary political (...) coordinates, modes of socialisation, or democratic action. The weakness of our deliberative democracies and the undermining of the bonds, interaction, and decision-making within our civil society seem to have found a compensatory function in the digital world. By carrying out a philosophical-political and film analysis of Brexit: The Uncivil War ; we would like to focus specifically on how digital media foster the conditions for the success of a populist moment like Brexit. (shrink)

The literature on engineering ethics education highlights the diversity of goals and topics employed in its instruction. The contribution aims to examine the conceptualisation of engineering ethics education in terms of how it is defined and how its goals are articulated. The research is conducted in cooperation with the national accrediting body Engineers Ireland. It is based on interviews with instructors teaching courses self-identified by engineering programmes as having a strong ethical component and evaluators serving on accreditation panels. The main (...) findings confirm the existence of a varied and uneven understanding of engineering ethics education. The study encountered conflicting views and lack of clarity as to what falls under the scope of engineering ethics education, especially when considering the topics of sustainability and safety. In terms of goals, instructors emphasize fostering responsibility, enabling agency and developing broad and critical thinkers, while value sensitive design was found to have a lesser conceptual prominence. The study also found that engineering ethics is preponderantly defined through its connection to engineering practice, rather than in its theoretical dimension. The chapter is envisioned to contribute to debates tracing the conceptual domain of engineering ethics education, given that clarifying educational goals is an important prerequisite for employing and designing consistent instructional methods. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap introduced and endorsed a philosophical methodology which he called the method of ‘explication’. P.F. Strawson took issue with this methodology, but it is currently undergoing a revival. In a series of articles, Patrick Maher has recently argued that explication is an appropriate method for ‘formal epistemology’, has defended it against Strawson’s objection, and has himself put it to work in the philosophy of science in further clarification of the very concepts on which Carnap originally used it (degree of (...) confirmation, and probability), as well as some concepts to which Carnap did not apply it (such as justified degree of belief. We outline Carnap’s original idea, plus Maher’s recent application of such a methodology, and then seek to show that the problem Strawson raised for it has not been dealt with. The method is indeed, we argue, problematic and therefore not obviously superior to the ‘descriptive’ method associated with Strawson. (shrink)

This book radically counters the optimism sparked by Competence Based Education and Training, an educational philosophy that has re-emerged in Schooling, Vocational and Higher Education in the last decade. CBET supposedly offers a new type of learning that will lead to skilled employment; here, Preston instead presents the competency movement as one which makes the concept of human learning redundant. Starting with its origins in Taylorism, the slaughterhouse and radical behaviourism, the book charts the history of competency education to (...) its position as a global phenomenon today, arguing that competency is opposed to ideas of process, causality and analog human movement that are fundamental to human learning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Epistemology and Environmental Philosophy:The Epistemic Significance of PlaceChristopher J. Preston (bio)IntroductionEnvironmental philosophy began its life as a series of investigations into the question of whether an ethic of the environment was necessary and possible. A good deal of interesting ink was spilled in this quest. But over time a vigorous community of inquirers has created a territory much more broad. Questions of politics and metaphysics, meta-ethics and aesthetics (...) are now staples of the discipline. The philosophies of science and technology, of biology and ecology, each now contain questions that belong to environmental philosophy. Continental thought in general and phenomenology in particular have both come to include major thinkers happy to call themselves environmental philosophers.Despite the significant current breadth of the field, there still remain a few philosophers that dismiss environmental philosophy. They do this because they think that the real business of philosophy resides far away from environmental concerns in Platonic and Cartesian questions about [End Page 1] knowledge, truth, and mind. This collection is an attempt to draw the attention of those few remaining skeptics by bringing the concerns of environmental philosophers into direct contact with epistemology and its cognates. Each of the following articles addresses relationships between knowledge, truth, and mind and the physical environments from which those central features of human life emerge. The physical environments that are the concerns of these authors include the flesh and blood physiologies, the rock and earth geographies, and the life and death ecologies out of which all knowledge claims ultimately emerge. These authors endeavor to contextualize epistemology relative to the material environments from which it issues. This task of environmentally contextualizing the life of the mind is one I have termed elsewhere the grounding of knowledge (Preston 2003).The articles that follow draw together threads that the careful observer might have already noticed in several areas of philosophy. This observer might have seen feminist epistemologists grounding knowledge not only in social contexts that include gender, race, and class, but also in physical contexts that include bodies and geographies (Haraway 1988, Harding 1998). She might have noticed laboratory theorists grounding scientific theories among the physical realities of the lab (Latour and Woolgar 1979, Knorr-Cetina 1992). She might also have read the work of philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists exploring how the mind seems often to rely upon embodied experience in external environments in the work it does (Johnson 1987, Clark 1997). She might have been captured by the texts of phenomenologists reporting how people perceive and experience from enfleshed and embedded locations (Casey 1993, Abram 1996). She would also, no doubt, be familiar with environmental philosophers admiring how Native American epistemologies take geography seriously, a process Sioux Indian Vine Deloria has called "thinking from a spatial point of view" (Deloria 1994). She might even have had her attention drawn to an area of perceptual studies known as ecological psychology promoting the radical idea that inner processes of perception are in fact more fruitfully studied by focusing on outer considerations such as animacy and environmental structure (Gibson 1979, Reed 1996). These quite radical departures from the traditional picture together suggest that what was previously thought to be located exclusively in the deep recesses of the human mind is in reality intricately woven into a number of external and environmental factors. [End Page 2] Environments can no longer be looked at as just incidentally relevant to epistemology. They are not just the scenes in which the making of a knowledge claim happens to take place. Physical environments can be in subtle but important ways partly constitutive of those claims.The grounding of knowledge that this collection proposes holds forth a number of promises. It promises, for example, to make epistemology more earth-bound and attentive to the ecologies in which it takes place. It promises to illuminate how the human mind and its activities do not so much distance us from the rest of nonhuman nature as demonstrate our connection with it through its very workings. Grounding knowledge also suggests a corrective to the disembodied epistemologies of Platonists and their heirs while simultaneously supplying another way for environmental philosophy to broaden its scope beyond ethics... (shrink)

An understanding of the roles and representations of women in classical Chinese philosophy is here derived from central texts such as the Analects, the Lienu Zhuan, and the I Ching. We argue that the roles of women during the classical period of Chinese philosophy tended to be as part of the “inner,” working domestically as a housewife and mother. This will be shown from three passages from the Analects. Women were represented as submissive and passive, as with the qualities ascribed (...) to yin energy, and therefore as rightfully subordinate to men. However, despite representations of women in philosophy being thus at this time, there were exceptions, specific women who could take a male “outer” political role. The story of Ling Liang from the Lienu Zhuan suggests that although women being involved in “outer” affairs was looked down on, there were still women who would be and who would occasionally get praised for doing so. This shows that it was realised, explicitly or otherwise, that women were capable of taking those roles, but also that they were not allowed to take such roles at that time. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Epistemology and Environmental Philosophy:The Epistemic Significance of PlaceChristopher J. Preston (bio)IntroductionEnvironmental philosophy began its life as a series of investigations into the question of whether an ethic of the environment was necessary and possible. A good deal of interesting ink was spilled in this quest. But over time a vigorous community of inquirers has created a territory much more broad. Questions of politics and metaphysics, meta-ethics and aesthetics (...) are now staples of the discipline. The philosophies of science and technology, of biology and ecology, each now contain questions that belong to environmental philosophy. Continental thought in general and phenomenology in particular have both come to include major thinkers happy to call themselves environmental philosophers.Despite the significant current breadth of the field, there still remain a few philosophers that dismiss environmental philosophy. They do this because they think that the real business of philosophy resides far away from environmental concerns in Platonic and Cartesian questions about [End Page 1] knowledge, truth, and mind. This collection is an attempt to draw the attention of those few remaining skeptics by bringing the concerns of environmental philosophers into direct contact with epistemology and its cognates. Each of the following articles addresses relationships between knowledge, truth, and mind and the physical environments from which those central features of human life emerge. The physical environments that are the concerns of these authors include the flesh and blood physiologies, the rock and earth geographies, and the life and death ecologies out of which all knowledge claims ultimately emerge. These authors endeavor to contextualize epistemology relative to the material environments from which it issues. This task of environmentally contextualizing the life of the mind is one I have termed elsewhere the grounding of knowledge (Preston 2003).The articles that follow draw together threads that the careful observer might have already noticed in several areas of philosophy. This observer might have seen feminist epistemologists grounding knowledge not only in social contexts that include gender, race, and class, but also in physical contexts that include bodies and geographies (Haraway 1988, Harding 1998). She might have noticed laboratory theorists grounding scientific theories among the physical realities of the lab (Latour and Woolgar 1979, Knorr-Cetina 1992). She might also have read the work of philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists exploring how the mind seems often to rely upon embodied experience in external environments in the work it does (Johnson 1987, Clark 1997). She might have been captured by the texts of phenomenologists reporting how people perceive and experience from enfleshed and embedded locations (Casey 1993, Abram 1996). She would also, no doubt, be familiar with environmental philosophers admiring how Native American epistemologies take geography seriously, a process Sioux Indian Vine Deloria has called "thinking from a spatial point of view" (Deloria 1994). She might even have had her attention drawn to an area of perceptual studies known as ecological psychology promoting the radical idea that inner processes of perception are in fact more fruitfully studied by focusing on outer considerations such as animacy and environmental structure (Gibson 1979, Reed 1996). These quite radical departures from the traditional picture together suggest that what was previously thought to be located exclusively in the deep recesses of the human mind is in reality intricately woven into a number of external and environmental factors. [End Page 2] Environments can no longer be looked at as just incidentally relevant to epistemology. They are not just the scenes in which the making of a knowledge claim happens to take place. Physical environments can be in subtle but important ways partly constitutive of those claims.The grounding of knowledge that this collection proposes holds forth a number of promises. It promises, for example, to make epistemology more earth-bound and attentive to the ecologies in which it takes place. It promises to illuminate how the human mind and its activities do not so much distance us from the rest of nonhuman nature as demonstrate our connection with it through its very workings. Grounding knowledge also suggests a corrective to the disembodied epistemologies of Platonists and their heirs while simultaneously supplying another way for environmental philosophy to broaden its scope beyond ethics... (shrink)

The measurement of household welfare is one of the most compelling yet demanding areas in economics. To place the analysis of inequality and poverty within an economic framework where individuals are making decisions about current and lifetime incomes and expenditures is a difficult task, made all the more challenging by the complexity of the decision-making process in which households are involved and the variety of constraints they face. This 1994 book examines the conceptual and practical difficulties of making inferences from (...) observed behaviour. It addresses the problems of making comparisons across a range of very different households and discusses how data for such comparisons should be collected. The contributions, from experts from Europe, North America and Australia, have the unifying theme that there is a strong relationship between theoretical concepts from microeconomics and the appropriate use of micro data in evaluating household welfare. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that at least some moral properties can be part of the contents of experience. I argue for this claim using a _contrast argument_, a type of argument commonly found in the literature on the philosophy of perception. I first appeal to psychological research on what I call emotionally empathetic dysfunctional individuals to establish a phenomenal contrast between EEDI s and normal individuals in some moral situations. I then argue that the best explanation for this contrast, assuming (...) non-skeptical moral realism, is that _badness_ is represented in the normal individual’s experience but not in the EEDI ’s experience. I consider and reject four alternative explanations of the contrast. (shrink)

According to phenomenal conservatism, seemings can provide prima facie justification for beliefs. In order to fully assess phenomenal conservatism, it is important to understand the nature of seemings. Two views are that (SG) seemings are a sui generis propositional attitude, and that (D2B) seemings are nothing over and above dispositions to believe. Proponents of (SG) reject (D2B) in large part by providing four distinct objections against (D2B). First, seemings have a distinctive phenomenology, but dispositions to believe do not. Second, seemings (...) can provide a non-trivial explanation for dispositions to believe, which wouldn’t be possible if seemings were dispositions to believe. Third, there are some dispositions to believe that are not seemings. Fourth, there are instances of seemings which are not dispositions to believe. I consider and reject each of these objections. The first and third objections rely on a misunderstanding of (D2B). The second objection fails because there are contexts in which an appeal to a previously unknown identity can provide an interesting explanation. The fourth objection overlooks the possibility of finkish and masked dispositions, phenomena which are widely accepted in the dispositions literature. I conclude that (D2B) escapes these common objections unscathed. (shrink)

It has widely been assumed, by philosophers, that our first-person preferences regarding pleasurable and painful experiences exhibit a bias toward the future (positive and negative hedonic future-bias), and that our preferences regarding non-hedonic events (both positive and negative) exhibit no such bias (non-hedonic time-neutrality). Further, it has been assumed that our third-person preferences are always time-neutral. Some have attempted to use these (presumed) differential patterns of future-bias—different across kinds of events and perspectives—to argue for the irrationality of hedonic future-bias. This (...) paper experimentally tests these descriptive hypotheses. While as predicted we found first-person hedonic future-bias, we did not find that participants were time-neutral in all other conditions. Hence, the presumed asymmetry of hedonic/non-hedonic and first/third-person preferences cannot be used to argue for the irrationality of future-bias, since no such asymmetries exist. Instead, we develop a more fine-grained approach, according to which three factors—positive/negative valence, first/third-person, and hedonic/non-hedonic—each independently influence, but do not determine, whether an event is treated in a future-biased or time-neutral way. We discuss the upshots of these results for the debate over the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

Proponents of impure moral perception claim that, while there are perceptual moral experiences, these experiences epistemically depend on a priori moral knowledge. Proponents of pure moral perception claim that moral experiences can justify independently of substantive a priori moral knowledge. Some philosophers, most notably David Faraci, have argued that the pure view is mistaken, since moral perception requires previous moral background knowledge, and such knowledge could not itself be perceptual. I defend pure moral perception against this objection. I consider two (...) ways to understand the notion of “background knowledge” that is crucial to the objection. On a reading, the claim that background knowledge is necessary for moral perception is likely false. On a second and weaker reading, the claim is true, but the background knowledge in question could be perceptual, and thus compatible with pure moral perception. Thus, the objection fails. (shrink)

Left and right libertarians alike are attracted to the thesis of self-ownership because, as Eric Mack says, they ‘believe that it best captures our common perception of the moral inviolability of persons’. Further, most libertarians, left and right, accept that some version of the Lockean Proviso restricts agents’ ability to acquire worldly resources. The inviolability of SO purports to make libertarianism more appealing than its egalitarian counterparts, since traditional egalitarian theories cannot straightforwardly explain why, e.g. forced organ donation and forced (...) labor are serious wrongs even when they generate more equitable outcomes or benefit the greater good. I argue that, when SO is coupled with LP, this appeal is unfounded. SO, as usually construed, allows for the possibility of justified incursions of non-culpable agents up to and including forced organ donation. I conclude by considering a few possible responses on behalf of the libertarian, assessing each one’s plausibility. (shrink)

In Science, Faith and Society, Michael Polanyi speaks about various ‘interpretations of nature’. I discuss the items that he has in mind, identify two of his major theses about them, and investigate the extent to which he treated science as resting on different ‘ultimate suppositions’ at different times in its history.I then consider what he says about how to decide between science and rival ‘interpretations of nature’, arguing that the idea of such a choice or decision is dubious, and that (...) there is no prospect, nowadays, of rejecting science ‘as a whole’. Polanyi’s better approach to the issue, I urge, is in terms of the replacement of our natural inclination through education.Polanyi’s account of free discussion rests on the two principles of fairness and tolerance. Rival interpretations of nature, though, are too different for the decision procedure that he envisages to work. And only a public committed to a scientific interpretation of nature could nowadays count as judicious.Finally, I discuss the debate between what Polanyi calls the ‘metaphysical believer’ and the ‘nihilist’, arguing that Polanyi’s recognition that universal nihilism is logically untenable implies that we do not have to resort to the ‘mental satisfactions’ to which he appealed. (shrink)

The sensory constraint on conscious thought says that if a thought is phenomenally conscious, its phenomenal properties must be reducible to some sensory phenomenal character. I argue that the burgeoning psychological literature on aphantasia, an impoverishment in the ability to generate mental imagery, provides a counterexample to the sensory constraint. The best explanation of aphantasics’ introspective reports, neuroimaging, and task performance is that some aphantasics have conscious thoughts without sensory mental imagery. This argument against the sensory constraint supports the existence (...) of a non-sensory phenomenology of thought. Moreover, this argument can be extended to show that this non-sensory phenomenology determines a thought content. Finally, it can potentially diagnose the disagreement over cognitive phenomenology in the philosophy of mind, as such disagreement may turn on interpersonal variation in mental imagery. (shrink)

Proponents of phenomenal intentionality share a commitment that, for at least some paradigmatically intentional states, phenomenal character constitutively determines narrow intentional content. If this is correct, then any two states with the same phenomenal character will have the same narrow intentional content. Using a twin-earth style case, I argue that two different people can be in intrinsically identical phenomenological states without sharing narrow intentional contents. After describing and defending the case, I conclude by considering a few objections that help to (...) further illustrate the problem. (shrink)

The careful historical and metaphilosophical attention recently bestowed upon analytic philosophy has revealed that traditional ways of defining it are inadequate. In the face of this inadequacy, contemporary authors have proposed new definitions that detach analytic philosophy from its turn of the twentieth century origins. I argue that this contemporary trend in defining analytic philosophy is misguided, and that it diminishes the likelihood of our coming to an accurate historical and metaphilosophical understanding of it. This is especially unsatisfactory since such (...) understanding is essential to finding an adequate remedy for the widely perceived ills of contemporary analytic philosophy. I suggest that a more fruitful approach to developing such understanding might begin with treating the unity of analytic philosophy as illusory. (shrink)

The standard formulation of Newcomb's problem compares evidential and causal conceptions of expected utility, with those maximizing evidential expected utility tending to end up far richer. Thus, in a world in which agents face Newcomb problems, the evidential decision theorist might ask the causal decision theorist: "if you're so smart, why ain’cha rich?” Ultimately, however, the expected riches of evidential decision theorists in Newcomb problems do not vindicate their theory, because their success does not generalize. Consider a theory that allows (...) the agents who employ it to end up rich in worlds containing Newcomb problems and continues to outperform in other cases. This type of theory, which I call a “success-first” decision theory, is motivated by the desire to draw a tighter connection between rationality and success, rather than to support any particular account of expected utility. The primary aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive justification of success-first decision theories as accounts of rational decision. I locate this justification in an experimental approach to decision theory supported by the aims of methodological naturalism. (shrink)

The Problem with (i) -- Illustration -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Index.

New Materialisms brings into focus and explains the significance of the innovative materialist critiques that are emerging across the social sciences and humanities. By gathering essays that exemplify the new thinking about matter and processes of materialization, this important collection shows how scholars are reworking older materialist traditions, contemporary theoretical debates, and advances in scientific knowledge to address pressing ethical and political challenges. In the introduction, Diana Coole and Samantha Frost highlight common themes among the distinctive critical projects that (...) comprise the new materialisms. The continuities they discern include a posthumanist conception of matter as lively or exhibiting agency, and a reengagement with both the material realities of everyday life and broader geopolitical and socioeconomic structures. Coole and Frost argue that contemporary economic, environmental, geopolitical, and technological developments demand new accounts of nature, agency, and social and political relationships; modes of inquiry that privilege consciousness and subjectivity are not adequate to the task. New materialist philosophies are needed to do justice to the complexities of twenty-first-century biopolitics and political economy, because they raise fundamental questions about the place of embodied humans in a material world and the ways that we produce, reproduce, and consume our material environment. Contributors Sara Ahmed Jane Bennett Rosi Braidotti Pheng Cheah Rey Chow William E. Connolly Diana Coole Jason Edwards Samantha Frost Elizabeth Grosz Sonia Kruks Melissa A. Orlie. (shrink)

Salient stimuli presented at unattended locations are not always perceived, a phenomenon termed inattentional blindness. We hypothesized that inattentional blindness may be mediated by attentional inhibition. It has been shown that attentional inhibition effects are maximal near an attended location. If our hypothesis is correct, inattentional blindness effects should similarly be maximal near an attended location. During central fixation, participants viewed rapidly presented colored digits at a peripheral location. An unexpected black circle was concurrently presented. Participants were instructed to maintain (...) central fixation and name each color/digit, requiring focused attention to that location. For each participant, the critical stimulus was presented either near to or far from the attended location . In support of our hypothesis, inattentional blindness effects were maximal near the attended location, but only at intermediate task accuracy. (shrink)

Historically, the hypothesis that our world is a computer simulation has struck many as just another improbable-but-possible “skeptical hypothesis” about the nature of reality. Recently, however, the simulation hypothesis has received significant attention from philosophers, physicists, and the popular press. This is due to the discovery of an epistemic dependency: If we believe that our civilization will one day run many simulations concerning its ancestry, then we should believe that we are probably in an ancestor simulation right now. This essay (...) examines a troubling but underexplored feature of the ancestor-simulation hypothesis: the termination risk posed by both ancestor-simulation technology and experimental probes into whether our world is an ancestor simulation. This essay evaluates the termination risk by using extrapolations from current computing practices and simulation technology. The conclusions, while provisional, have great implications for debates concerning the fundamental nature of reality and the safety of contemporary physics. (shrink)

An adequate semantics for generic sentences must stake out positions across a range of contested territory in philosophy and linguistics. For this reason the study of generic sentences is a venue for investigating different frameworks for understanding human rationality as manifested in linguistic phenomena such as quantification, classification of individuals under kinds, defeasible reasoning, and intensionality. Despite the wide variety of semantic theories developed for generic sentences, to date these theories have been almost universally model-theoretic and representational. This essay outlines (...) a range of proof-theoretic analyses for characterizing generics. Particular attention is given to an expressivist proof-theory that can be traced to 1) work on logical syntax that Carnap undertook prior to his turn toward truth-conditional model theory in the late 1930s, and 2) research on sequent calculi and natural deduction systems that originate in work from Gentzen and Prawitz.1. (shrink)