The Doomsday Argument is alive and kicking, and since its formulation in the beginning of the Eighties by the astrophysicist Brandon Carter it has gained wide attention, been strongly criticized and has been described in many different, and sometimes non-interchangeable analogies. I will briefly present the argument here, and departing from Nick Bostrom's interpretation, I will defend that doom may be sooner than we think if we start building conscious machines soon in the future.

Computers are increasingly interactive. They are no more transformational systems producing a final output after a finite execution. Instead, they continuously react in time to external events that modify the course of computing execution. While philosophers have been interested in conceptualizing computers for a long time, they seem to have paid little attention to the specificities of interactive computing. We propose to tackle this issue by surveying the literature in theoretical computer science, where one can find explicit (...) proposals for a model of interactive computing. In that field, the formal modelling of interactive computing systems has been brought down to whether the new interaction models are reducible to Turing Machines. There are three areas where interaction models are framed. The comparison between TMs and interactive system models is at stake in all of them. These areas are namely some works on concurrency by Milner, on Reactive Turing Machines, and on interaction as a new computing paradigm. For each of the three identified models, we present its motivation, sum up its account for interaction and its legacy, and point out issues regarding the understanding of computers. The survey shows difficulties for epistemologists. The reason is that these analyses focus on the formal equivalence between interactive models of computation and classic ones. Such a project is different from addressing how a computing machine can be interactive: in other words, which mechanisms allow it. (shrink)

Since its inception, modern anthropology has stood at the confluence of two mutually constitutive modes of knowledge production: participant-observation and theoretical analysis. This unique combination of practice and theory has been the subject of recurrent intellectual and methodological debate, raising questions that strike at the very heart of the discipline. How Do We Know? is a timely contribution to emerging debates that seek to understand this relationship through the theme of evidence. Incorporating a diverse selection of case studies ranging from (...) the Tibetan emotion of shame to films of Caribbean musicians, it critically addresses such questions as: What constitutes viable anthropological evidence? How does evidence generated through small-scale, intensive periods of participant-observation challenge or engender abstract theoretical models? Are certain types of evidence inherently better than others? How have recent interdisciplinary collaborations and technological innovations altered the shape of anthropological evidence? Extending a long-standing tradition of reflexivity within the discipline, the contributions to this volume are ethnographically-grounded and analytically ambitious meditations on the theme of evidence. Cumulatively, they challenge the boundaries of what anthropologists recognise and construct as evidence, while pointing to its thematic and conceptual potential in future anthropologies. (shrink)

In this article, I introduce a new interpretation of the puzzling thesis “bai 白 ma 馬 fei 非 ma 馬 ” argued by Gongsun Long 公孫龍 in his essay “On White Horse.” I argue that previous interpretations, which can be grouped under the name of “attribute-object interpretations,” are not satisfactory, and that the thesis on the new interpretation is not about attributes or objects, but about names. My argument focuses on the disagreement over inseparability of white between Gongsun (...) class='Hi'>Long and his interlocutor in the text of “On White Horse.” On my interpretation or the name interpretation, the disagreement is about whether constituents of a syntactically complex or multi-term name are separable or have their contextually independent meanings. Gongsun Long’s thesis makes perfect sense on my interpretation, and is supported by the text and other preserved texts collected in GongsunLong Zi 公孫龍子. The name interpretation can also make sense of some puzzling expressions of sophists in the classic period. (shrink)

Autism fiction has become a genre of novel‐writing in its own right. Many examples are given in the essay. What does this activity do for us? There used to be no language in which autistic experience could be described. One characteristic difficulty for autistic people is understanding what other people are doing. So absence of a discourse of autistic experience is to be expected. Analyses advanced by Wolfgang Köhler and Lev Vygotsky already made plain long ago that social interaction (...) is a precondition for a language of the inner life. One role for the wave of autism stories now being published, is to create such a language of autism. This in turn affects how autistic people think of themselves. It certainly affects how nonautistic, “neurotypical,” individuals think about autism. Not all of this is a good thing, for all too many stories foster images of “the” autistic person as having special gifts that ordinary people lack. (shrink)

Publishers love titles that begin How or Why. Better still, How and Why, combining edification with utility. The target group is that overlap between the self-help audience and the idly curious—which is to say, most of us. And since emotions are very much about self-help and self-harm, they offer rich pickings in a burgeoning market. Flanagan's How to Do things with Emotions is a philosopher's take on moral emotions, the allusion to J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words (...) chiming with the self-help milieu. Reviewing cases, Flanagan points out that most scientific work in this field derives from experiments on psychology students, about as unrepresentative a slice of humanity as you could find. For Flanagan, they are too WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) to tell us much about the non-weird majority. To learn to “do emotions better,” he argues, we have to look farther afield. Although the emotional lives of cultural others are surely different from those taking Psychology 101, at some functional level they might be similar. Work out the conceptual logic and practical rationale of culturally elaborated emotions—Minangkabau “shame,” Ifaluk “righteous anger,” American “road rage”—and there is scope for comparison. Indeed, anthropology has shown as much, and it is from anthropology that Flanagan takes his cues. To mention two famous cases, what can we learn about anger management from Utku igloo-dwellers and Ilongot headhunters? Mutually dependent for survival in their snowy isolation, the Utku cannot risk getting angry. (They mercilessly tease their children into learning the futility of anger.) In the jungles of Luzon, Ilongot youths cast away their anger in externally directed violence: headhunting as cathartic sport. We can think of parallels closer to home.Flanagan's vigorously argued book, a tour de force of its kind, is both an anatomizing of anger and shame—two moral emotions we tend to “do badly”—and a proposal to “change how we do these emotions.” Indignation is fine, but anger that is vengeful or “pain-passing,” rather than righteous, is irrational and socially harmful. Shame can be incapacitating and cruel (the undeserved burn of a Twitter pile-on). What we need is reflective anger directed at injustice and a “mature sense of shame” that reminds us of the social contract and stops us misbehaving.In its How-and-Why format, the book combines theory and practice, metaethics with moralism. Here is how a prof should do self-help. But if the diagnosis is well made, the remedy is hard to imagine. As Flanagan recognizes, moral sentiments and practices are embedded in intricate forms of life and not readily detachable. Anger Utku-style is not a transferable skill, nor are educative routines forged in social ecologies remote from our own. Lacking serviceable models, Flanagan falls back on the anthropological justification that knowledge of cultural diversity expands our sense of human possibility, of other roads taken. In a globalizing world, difference is its own reward. For me, an anthropologist, that maxim is enough. Yet difference bedevils comparison, jinxing the units, warping criteria. Most languages lack a word for emotion or an equivalent umbrella concept; nor do emotion words translate well across languages. Emotion may be an incoherent notion, or at best a heuristic.Flanagan's use of the WEIRD tag makes things a bit too easy. Does it cover farmhands and factory workers? Are we so democratic, anyway? More damagingly, a typological approach blurs the circumstances of family, community, and biography that define an emotional episode and shape its phenomenology, the way it is felt and experienced—what a violent outburst or fearful exit means in the context of a life. Take Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, who flees a scene of failure and derails his life. It requires a long narrative to unravel the implications of his jumping ship and the paralyzing shame he experiences before the judgment of society. Or consider the scene in Anna Karenina in which the dignified and self-important Karenin, apprised of Anna's adulterous liaison, agonizes over the threat to his existence. To call his response jealousy would not scratch the surface. Characteristically for Tolstoy, the emotions go unnamed. Instead, we witness Karenin's fervid deliberations (emotions involve thoughts), vacillations (emotions have action tendencies), anguished calculations of impending scandal (emotions are appraisals), and bodily changes (emotions are cognized feelings). We shudder at the brutal metaphors through which he grasps his predicament and its cure: like rooting out a bad tooth, he decides. That welter of particularities escapes the theorist who needs clear-cut, comparable units, formulaic instances of jealousy or anger. But what are you left with if you omit the details? What would remain of Karenin's existential crisis?The novelist's privileged access to subjectivity is, of course, unavailable to the scientist, but the larger context of plot and character—a history of relations that gives emotional episodes their shape and power—has its analog in the ethnographic domain. Emotions are public as well as private events, their meanings and effects depending on a fit with social reality, a clash of perspectives. In thought and feeling, we are never really alone. All of which suggests that narrative, fictional or nonfictional, can capture the ongoing moment in a way that eludes other methods. If what we are after is living emotion, it is the movie, not the snapshot, that surely matters. No point in comparing “emotions” no one ever really experienced outside of an experiment.But there's the rub. In generalization—the goal of emotion theory—an emotion's social meaning, personal significance, pragmatic function, and narrative context get stripped out. All that makes it what it is! Even in doggedly empirical anthropology, detailed emotional episodes are rare (Jean Briggs's Utku ethnography Never in Anger, published in 1970, is still unsurpassed). Instead we get recollections and summary examples, lacking the constitutive detail, real-time evolutions, and consequences of the real thing. Yet these must serve for comparison, fodder for countless theoretical speculations. Are we at risk of analyzing faux emotions and building theories on cardboard constructions?An empty Arctic stage, a handful of characters, life simplified to survival: Briggs is a hard act to follow. Bare life does not make for basic emotions. On the white set, emotions prove hard to parse. That gruff hesitation, that flashing glint—are they tokens of anger? Empathy will not suffice. As Briggs shows, narrative context is all. And in our more cluttered emotional worlds, the value of backstory, interwoven biographies, and emotional plots is all the greater. Flanagan is right; we must do emotions better. (shrink)

It is increasingly common in natural and social sciences to rely on network visualizations to explore relational datasets and illustrate findings. Such practices have been around long enough to prove that scholars find it useful to project networks in a two-dimensional space and to use their visual qualities as proxies for their topological features. Yet these practices remain based on intuition, and the foundations and limits of this type of exploration are still implicit. To fill this lack of (...) formalization, this paper offers explicit documentation for the kind of visual network analysis encouraged by force-directed layouts. Using the example of a network of Jazz performers, band and record labels extracted from Wikipedia, the paper provides guidelines on how to make networks readable and how to interpret their visual features. It discusses how the inherent ambiguity of network visualizations can be exploited for exploratory data analysis. Acknowledging that vagueness is a feature of many relational datasets in the humanities and social sciences, the paper contends that visual ambiguity, if properly interpreted, can be an asset for the analysis. Finally, we propose two attempts to distinguish the ambiguity inherited from the represented phenomenon from the distortions coming from fitting a multidimensional object in a two-dimensional space. We discuss why these attempts are only partially successful, and we propose further steps towards a metric of spatialization quality. (shrink)

How does place structure the gendered division of household labor? Because people’s living spaces and lifestyles differ dramatically across urban, suburban, and rural areas, it follows that time spent on household chores may vary across places. In cities, for example, many households do not have vehicles or lawns, and housing units tend to be relatively small. Urban men’s and women’s time use therefore provides insight into how partners contribute to household chores when there is less structural demand for the (...) types of tasks they typically do. We examine these dynamics using data on heterosexual married individuals from the American Time Use Survey combined with the Current Population Survey. We find that urban men spend relatively little time on male-typed chores, but they spend the same amount of time on female-typed chores as their suburban and rural counterparts. This pattern suggests that urban men do not “step up” their involvement in female-typed tasks even though they contribute little in the way of other housework. In contrast, urbanicity rarely predicts women’s time use, implying that women spend considerable time on household chores regardless of where they live. Implications for research on gender and housework are discussed. (shrink)

The new prominence of alternate history in Western popular culture has increasingly prompted scholars to historicize it as a broader phenomenon. What has largely escaped notice until now, however, has been the question of the underlying function of alternate history as a genre of speculative narrative representation. In this essay, I argue that writers and scholars have long produced “allohistorical narratives” out of fundamentally presentist motives. Allohistorical tales have assumed different typological forms depending upon how their authors (...) have viewed the present. Nightmare scenarios, for example, have depicted the alternate past as worse than the real historical record in order to vindicate the present, while fantasy scenarios have portrayed the alternate past as superior to the real historical record in order to express dissatisfaction with the present. The presentist character of alternate histories allows them to shed light upon the evolving place of various historical events in the collective memory of a given society. In this essay, I examine American alternate histories of three popular themes—the Nazis winning World War II, the South winning the Civil War, and the American Revolution failing to occur—in order to show how present-day concerns have influenced how these events have been remembered. In the process, I hope to demonstrate that alternate histories lend themselves quite well to being studied as documents of memory. By examining accounts of what never happened, we can better understand the memory of what did. (shrink)

This paper investigates the working-method of three important philosophers of explanation: Carl Hempel, Philip Kitcher, and Wesley Salmon. We argue that they do three things: construct an explication in the sense of Carnap, which then is used as a tool to make descriptive and normative claims about the explanatory practice of scientists. We also show that they did well with respect to, but that they failed to give arguments for their descriptive and normative claims. We think it is the responsibility (...) of current philosophers of explanation to go on where Hempel, Kitcher, and Salmon failed. However, we should go on in a clever way. We call this clever way the “pragmatic approach to scientific explanation.‘ We clarify what this approach consists in and defend it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Have We Been Careless with Socrates' Last Words?:A Rereading of the PhaedoLaurel A. Madison (bio)In section 340 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche offers what he believes will be received as a scandalous interpretation of Socrates' last words. "Whether it was death or the poison or piety or malice—something loosened his tongue at that moment and he said: 'O Crito, I owe Asclepius a rooster.' This ridiculous and terrible (...) 'last word' means for those who have ears: 'O Crito, life is a disease.'"1 Nietzsche might be surprised, however, to discover just how many readers "have ears" to hear the pessimism and resentment in Socrates' voice as he bids farewell to his life. Indeed, this interpretation has become standard among both Plato scholars and non-scholars, taking on the air of orthodoxy.2Not only is this "Nietzschean" reading widespread, it also has a significant impact on how we understand Plato's project in general and, ultimately, whether or [End Page 421] not we believe that Plato still has something to teach us. This commonly accepted interpretation reinforces the view that Socrates and Plato were ascetics of the worst kind, hostile to life and the body in particular. As a consequence, significant portions of Plato's thought are treated as woefully unenlightened. Indeed, how can we take seriously the views of such a dualist who denigrates our earthly existence and urges us to deny and repress our passions, instincts, desires, and drives—i.e., to live for death?It is assumed correctly, I think, that Socrates' last words speak volumes about both his and Plato's view of the nature and task of human existence. However, the meaning of these words, I will argue, has been seriously misinterpreted and their intended significance fundamentally obscured. Thus it is time to take another, closer look at what is arguably Socrates' most important statement—a statement uttered with his last breath:Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius; make this offering to him and do not forget.3How are we, as readers of this dialogue, to interpret Socrates' last words? What is the meaning of his final thought, his dying wish and command? According to the standard reading of this passage, Socrates awaits the termination of his life with gratitude and relief. As death closes in on him, he asks Crito to make an offering to Asclepius, the god of healing. By invoking this god, Socrates appears to be calling attention to the recovery from an illness. But what is the illness and what is the cure? At the moment these words are uttered, Socrates is on the brink of death and it is assumed that he views his death as the cure to the illness of life. This reading is substantiated by an earlier passage where Socrates argues that "the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death" (64a3-4). The body, Socrates argues, obscures our pursuit of the truth and the sooner we can separate our soul from this hindrance (i.e., in death) the better off we will be, for "as long as we have a body and our soul is fused with such an evil we shall never adequately attain what we desire, which we affirm to be the truth" (66b3-5). From the philosopher's perspective, then, the body is something to "disdain" (, 65d1) and "despise" (, 68c11)—indeed, to "flee" from (, 65d1). Thus given the disparagement of our bodily existence in this earlier passage, how else can we interpret Socrates' final statement?4Because this "Nietzschean" reading of Socrates' last words appears to be based in large part upon the discussion of philosophy as preparation for death, any examination of it must include an analysis of the earlier passage as well.5 However, [End Page 422] to adequately interpret the discussion of philosophy as preparation for death (or any passage in the dialogues, for that matter), we must first place it in its context within the drama of the dialogue, the philosophical significance of which has been argued at length elsewhere.6 Let us then turn to the opening scene of the dialogue, for... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Have We Been Careless with Socrates' Last Words?:A Rereading of the PhaedoLaurel A. Madison (bio)In section 340 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche offers what he believes will be received as a scandalous interpretation of Socrates' last words. "Whether it was death or the poison or piety or malice—something loosened his tongue at that moment and he said: 'O Crito, I owe Asclepius a rooster.' This ridiculous and terrible (...) 'last word' means for those who have ears: 'O Crito, life is a disease.'"1 Nietzsche might be surprised, however, to discover just how many readers "have ears" to hear the pessimism and resentment in Socrates' voice as he bids farewell to his life. Indeed, this interpretation has become standard among both Plato scholars and non-scholars, taking on the air of orthodoxy.2Not only is this "Nietzschean" reading widespread, it also has a significant impact on how we understand Plato's project in general and, ultimately, whether or [End Page 421] not we believe that Plato still has something to teach us. This commonly accepted interpretation reinforces the view that Socrates and Plato were ascetics of the worst kind, hostile to life and the body in particular. As a consequence, significant portions of Plato's thought are treated as woefully unenlightened. Indeed, how can we take seriously the views of such a dualist who denigrates our earthly existence and urges us to deny and repress our passions, instincts, desires, and drives—i.e., to live for death?It is assumed correctly, I think, that Socrates' last words speak volumes about both his and Plato's view of the nature and task of human existence. However, the meaning of these words, I will argue, has been seriously misinterpreted and their intended significance fundamentally obscured. Thus it is time to take another, closer look at what is arguably Socrates' most important statement—a statement uttered with his last breath:Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius; make this offering to him and do not forget.3How are we, as readers of this dialogue, to interpret Socrates' last words? What is the meaning of his final thought, his dying wish and command? According to the standard reading of this passage, Socrates awaits the termination of his life with gratitude and relief. As death closes in on him, he asks Crito to make an offering to Asclepius, the god of healing. By invoking this god, Socrates appears to be calling attention to the recovery from an illness. But what is the illness and what is the cure? At the moment these words are uttered, Socrates is on the brink of death and it is assumed that he views his death as the cure to the illness of life. This reading is substantiated by an earlier passage where Socrates argues that "the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death" (64a3-4). The body, Socrates argues, obscures our pursuit of the truth and the sooner we can separate our soul from this hindrance (i.e., in death) the better off we will be, for "as long as we have a body and our soul is fused with such an evil we shall never adequately attain what we desire, which we affirm to be the truth" (66b3-5). From the philosopher's perspective, then, the body is something to "disdain" (, 65d1) and "despise" (, 68c11)—indeed, to "flee" from (, 65d1). Thus given the disparagement of our bodily existence in this earlier passage, how else can we interpret Socrates' final statement?4Because this "Nietzschean" reading of Socrates' last words appears to be based in large part upon the discussion of philosophy as preparation for death, any examination of it must include an analysis of the earlier passage as well.5 However, [End Page 422] to adequately interpret the discussion of philosophy as preparation for death (or any passage in the dialogues, for that matter), we must first place it in its context within the drama of the dialogue, the philosophical significance of which has been argued at length elsewhere.6 Let us then turn to the opening scene of the dialogue, for... (shrink)

There is more evidence for Empedocles than for any early Greek philosopher before Democritus, yet the details of his philosophy remain controversial and often hopelessly obscure. Jaeger called Empedocles a ‘philosophical centaur’, which aptly sums up the seeming disparity between the and the There is no agreement about the famous simile to illustrate respiration, generally known as the Clepsydra, and the stages and nature of the cosmic cycle continue to be disputed. Perhaps we can never be certain about these aspects (...) of Empedocles' thought, for the evidence fails at every crucial point and the imaginative reconstructions which have to serve are unlikely to win universal acceptance. It may then appear hazardous to discuss the fragments concerned with thinking and sense-perception, for these too are riddled with problems. I do so prompted partly by the timely reprint of J. I. Beare's book, Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition, and also because this feature of Empedocles has been touched on by modern scholars but not studied in any detail. At the same time the significance of the is greatly affected by how we interpret the theory of sense-perception and thinking. (shrink)

This paper offers practical advice about how to interact with machines that we have reason to believe could have minds. I argue that we should approach these interactions by assigning credences to judgements about whether the machines in question can think. We should treat the premises of philosophical arguments about whether these machines can think as offering evidence that may increase or reduce these credences. I describe two cases in which you should refrain from doing as your favored (...) philosophical view about thinking machines suggests. Even if you believe that machines are mindless, you should acknowledge that treating them as if they are mindless risks wronging them. Suppose your considered philosophical view that a machine has a mind leads you to consider dating it. You may have reason to regret that decision should these dates lead on to a life-long relationship with a mindless machine. In the paper’s final section, I suggest that building a machine that is capable of performing all intelligent human behavior should produce a general increase in confidence that machines can think. Any reasonable judge should count this feat as evidence in favor of machines having minds. This rational nudge could lead to broad acceptance of the idea that machines can think. (shrink)

People are known for good predictions in domains they have rich experience with, such as everyday statistics and intuitive physics. But how well can they predict for problems they lack experience with, such as the duration of an ongoing epidemic caused by a new virus? Amid the first wave of COVID-19 in China, we conducted an online diary study, asking each of over 400 participants to predict the remaining duration of the epidemic, once per day for 14 days. Participants’ (...) predictions reflected a reasonable use of publicly available information but were meanwhile biased, subject to the influence of negative affect and future time perspectives. Computational modeling revealed that participants neither relied on prior distributions of epidemic durations as in inferring everyday statistics, nor on mechanistic simulations of epidemic dynamics as in computing intuitive physics. Instead, with minimal experience, participants’ predictions were best explained by similarity-based generalization of the temporal pattern of epidemic statistics. In two control experiments, we further confirmed that such cognitive algorithm is not specific to the epidemic scenario and that minimal and rich experience do lead to different prediction behaviors for the same observations. We conclude that people generalize patterns in recent history to predict the future under minimal experience. (shrink)

There is more evidence for Empedocles than for any early Greek philosopher before Democritus, yet the details of his philosophy remain controversial and often hopelessly obscure. Jaeger called Empedocles a ‘philosophical centaur’, which aptly sums up the seeming disparity between the and the There is no agreement about the famous simile to illustrate respiration, generally known as the Clepsydra, and the stages and nature of the cosmic cycle continue to be disputed. Perhaps we can never be certain about these aspects (...) of Empedocles' thought, for the evidence fails at every crucial point and the imaginative reconstructions which have to serve are unlikely to win universal acceptance. It may then appear hazardous to discuss the fragments concerned with thinking and sense-perception, for these too are riddled with problems. I do so prompted partly by the timely reprint of J. I. Beare's book, Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition, and also because this feature of Empedocles has been touched on by modern scholars but not studied in any detail. At the same time the significance of the is greatly affected by how we interpret the theory of sense-perception and thinking. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 411-412 [Access article in PDF] Deborah Achtenberg. Cognition of Value in Aristotle's Ethics: Promise of Enrichment, Threat of Destruction. Albany: The State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. xiii + 218. Paper, $20.95.Deborah Achtenberg argues that, for Aristotle, virtue is a disposition to respond to situations with the appropriate emotions, where emotions are understood as perceptions of the value of (...) particulars. To perceive the value of a particular is to perceive that particular as a limit; some limits enable what they limit to be more fully what it is, while other limits do the opposite. My activity in writing this review, for example, is "limited" both by the rules of grammar and by my computer's tendency to crash frequently; one kind of limit enriches my activity, while the other hinders and threatens it (hence Achtenberg's subtitle). An enabling limit is a telos or end; something is a telos of yours if it connects you to a larger context that in some way fulfills or completes you.Achtenberg's interpretation enables her to steer Aristotle clear of a number of persistent false dichotomies. For example: is the doctrine of the mean an uninspiring counsel to do the middling thing, or a vacuous counsel to do whatever one ought to do? Neither, says Achtenberg; rather, it is Aristotle's way of insisting on the flexibility of the virtuous person's [End Page 411] responses. Is Aristotle siding, then, with Odysseus, who suppressed his emotions in order to suit his actions to the demands of the occasion, as against Achilles, who stubbornly followed his emotions regardless of circumstance? No, that dichotomy falls as well: the virtuous person has flexible emotional (not just behavioral) responses, and so can be as adaptable as Odysseus yet as sincere as Achilles.Does Aristotle's ethics have a metaphysical foundation, or is it autonomous? Achtenberg dissolves that dichotomy by distinguishing two different ways in which Aristotle takes ethics to be an "imprecise" science. First, ethics and metaphysics are both imprecise, because they share a common subject-matter (final causation) that is an analogical equivocal and so indefinable. Second, ethics is less precise than metaphysics because ethics can establish that, but not explain why, its claims are true. Metaphysics can explain the why of ethics, but for practical purposes the why is not necessary; so metaphysics is explanatorily but not epistemically prior to ethics.How can Aristotle's particularist-sounding denial that the virtuous person needs rules be reconciled with his insistence that the virtuous person follows a logos? Must we play down the logos passage, or instead conclude that Aristotle is a rule-theorist after all? Once again, neither: in this context, Achtenberg suggests, logos means "analogy," not "rule." Since goodness is an analogical equivocal, perceiving goodness means perceiving analogies. Being transcategorial, these analogies are not definable or codifiable, so the rule-theorists are wrong; but we are grasping something common to all good things, so the particularists are wrong too.Let me close with a couple of criticisms. Once the notion of an enabling limit has been established, Achtenberg seems to accept as unproblematic the inference to the legitimacy of paternalistic legislation: citizens are more free, not less, for being subjected to such coercion. Now on a view that regarded persons primarily as moral patients or recipients, it might be reasonable enough to elide in this way the difference between imposing limits on oneself and having them imposed by external compulsion; but it is harder to see how forcibly imposed limits could be constitutive of a life's being happier when happiness is defined, with Aristotle, as a self-generated activity.I think Achtenberg also fails to catch one false dichotomy. She contrasts Aristotle's theory, which seeks to increase and enhance emotional awareness, with the Stoic theory (as represented by Marcus Aurelius), which seeks to decrease or suppress such awareness. The contrast seems to me misleading. Both Aristotle and the Stoics agree that moral maturation involves... (shrink)

I have taken an experimental approach to this question. Freely voluntary acts are preceded by a specific electrical change in the brain that begins 550 ms before the act. Human subjects became aware of intention to act 350-400 ms after RP starts, but 200 ms. before the motor act. The volitional process is therefore initiated unconsciously. But the conscious function could still control the outcome; it can veto the act. Free will is therefore not excluded. These findings put constraints (...) on views of how free will may operate; it would not initiate a voluntary act but it could control performance of the act. The findings also affect views of guilt and responsibility. But the deeper question still remains: Are freely voluntary acts subject to macro-deterministic laws or can they appear without such constraints, non-determined by natural laws and ‘truly free'? I shall present an experimentalist view about these fundamental philosophical opposites. (shrink)

Researchers from the 1940's through the present have found that normal, sighted people can echolocate - that is, detect properties of silent objects by attending to sound reflected from them. We argue that echolocation is a normal part of our perceptual experience and that there is something 'it is like' to echolocate. Furthermore, we argue that people are often grossly mistaken about their experience of echolocation. If so, echolocation provides a counterexample to the view that we cannot be mistaken (...) about our own current phenomenology. (shrink)

In order to build a better world we need to learn how to do it. That in turn requires that our institutions of learning, our schools and universities, are rationally organized for, and devoted to, the task. At present, devoted as they are to the pursuit of knowledge, they are not. We need urgently to bring about a revolution in academia so that the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, construed to be the capacity to realize what is (...) of value in life for oneself and others, wisdom including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. Priority needs to be given to tackling problems of living, above all our grave global problems. The basic intellectual aim needs to be to help people achieve what is of value in their lives, the scientific pursuit of knowledge and understanding being undertaken as an aspect of that endeavour. A basic task needs to be to help people around the world acquire a good understanding of what our global problem are and what we need to do about them. It needs to be recognized much more widely that the kind of academic inquiry we have inherited from the past, devoted primarily to the pursuit of knowledge, is damagingly irrational, in a wholesale, structural way, when judged from this standpoint. The long-standing, successful pursuit of scientific knowledge and technological know-how dissociated from a more fundamental concern with problems of living is a key factor in the creation of our current global problems, and our current incapacity to resolve them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 411-412 [Access article in PDF] Deborah Achtenberg. Cognition of Value in Aristotle's Ethics: Promise of Enrichment, Threat of Destruction. Albany: The State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. xiii + 218. Paper, $20.95.Deborah Achtenberg argues that, for Aristotle, virtue is a disposition to respond to situations with the appropriate emotions, where emotions are understood as perceptions of the value of (...) particulars. To perceive the value of a particular is to perceive that particular as a limit; some limits enable what they limit to be more fully what it is, while other limits do the opposite. My activity in writing this review, for example, is "limited" both by the rules of grammar and by my computer's tendency to crash frequently; one kind of limit enriches my activity, while the other hinders and threatens it (hence Achtenberg's subtitle). An enabling limit is a telos or end; something is a telos of yours if it connects you to a larger context that in some way fulfills or completes you.Achtenberg's interpretation enables her to steer Aristotle clear of a number of persistent false dichotomies. For example: is the doctrine of the mean an uninspiring counsel to do the middling thing, or a vacuous counsel to do whatever one ought to do? Neither, says Achtenberg; rather, it is Aristotle's way of insisting on the flexibility of the virtuous person's [End Page 411] responses. Is Aristotle siding, then, with Odysseus, who suppressed his emotions in order to suit his actions to the demands of the occasion, as against Achilles, who stubbornly followed his emotions regardless of circumstance? No, that dichotomy falls as well: the virtuous person has flexible emotional (not just behavioral) responses, and so can be as adaptable as Odysseus yet as sincere as Achilles.Does Aristotle's ethics have a metaphysical foundation, or is it autonomous? Achtenberg dissolves that dichotomy by distinguishing two different ways in which Aristotle takes ethics to be an "imprecise" science. First, ethics and metaphysics are both imprecise, because they share a common subject-matter (final causation) that is an analogical equivocal and so indefinable. Second, ethics is less precise than metaphysics because ethics can establish that, but not explain why, its claims are true. Metaphysics can explain the why of ethics, but for practical purposes the why is not necessary; so metaphysics is explanatorily but not epistemically prior to ethics.How can Aristotle's particularist-sounding denial that the virtuous person needs rules be reconciled with his insistence that the virtuous person follows a logos? Must we play down the logos passage, or instead conclude that Aristotle is a rule-theorist after all? Once again, neither: in this context, Achtenberg suggests, logos means "analogy," not "rule." Since goodness is an analogical equivocal, perceiving goodness means perceiving analogies. Being transcategorial, these analogies are not definable or codifiable, so the rule-theorists are wrong; but we are grasping something common to all good things, so the particularists are wrong too.Let me close with a couple of criticisms. Once the notion of an enabling limit has been established, Achtenberg seems to accept as unproblematic the inference to the legitimacy of paternalistic legislation: citizens are more free, not less, for being subjected to such coercion. Now on a view that regarded persons primarily as moral patients or recipients, it might be reasonable enough to elide in this way the difference between imposing limits on oneself and having them imposed by external compulsion; but it is harder to see how forcibly imposed limits could be constitutive of a life's being happier when happiness is defined, with Aristotle, as a self-generated activity.I think Achtenberg also fails to catch one false dichotomy. She contrasts Aristotle's theory, which seeks to increase and enhance emotional awareness, with the Stoic theory (as represented by Marcus Aurelius), which seeks to decrease or suppress such awareness. The contrast seems to me misleading. Both Aristotle and the Stoics agree that moral maturation involves... (shrink)

I have taken an experimental approach to this question. Freely voluntary acts are preceded by a specific electrical change in the brain that begins 550 ms before the act. Human subjects became aware of intention to act 350-400 ms after RP starts, but 200 ms. before the motor act. The volitional process is therefore initiated unconsciously. But the conscious function could still control the outcome; it can veto the act. Free will is therefore not excluded. These findings put constraints (...) on views of how free will may operate; it would not initiate a voluntary act but it could control performance of the act. The findings also affect views of guilt and responsibility. But the deeper question still remains: Are freely voluntary acts subject to macro-deterministic laws or can they appear without such constraints, non-determined by natural laws and ‘truly free'? I shall present an experimentalist view about these fundamental philosophical opposites. (shrink)

Perhaps you have heard the story of the philosopher who fell off the edge of a cliff and was hanging by the limb of a tree. After calling for help for some time he heard a voice from the heavens saying, ‘I am here’. The philosopher explained his dilemma and then asked, ‘Can you help me?’ The voice replied, ‘Do you believe in me?’, to which the philosopher without hesitation, given the circumstances, said, ‘Yes, of course’. The voice came (...) back, ‘Then, let go.’ There was silence and some moments passed before the philosopher somewhat meekly replied, ‘Lord, I know that this is not the best time and place for a discussion but you know how philosophers are, and you do seem to be asking a good bit of me. I know that many of your followers in recent times would agree that I should let go, but I have this feeling that they may be confusing the doctrine of salvation by faith alone with an epistemological doctrine that faith is a commitment that requires no justification. Could we talk about this? And, in the meantime, I hope you will not be offended if I ask, Is there anyone else up there?’. (shrink)

‘Normative powers’ are capacities to create normative reasons by our willing or say-so. They are significant, because if we have them and exercise them, then sometimes the reasons we have are ‘up to us’. But such powers seem mysterious. How can we, by willing, create reasons? In this paper, I examine whether normative powers can be adequately explained normatively, by appeal to norms of a practice, normative principles, human interests, or values. Can normative explanations of normative powers explain (...) how an exercise of the will can afford us special freedom in determining our reasons? I argue that normative approaches to answering this question prove to be inadequate. To vindicate the thought that normative powers can make our reasons ‘up to us’, we need an altogether different approach to understanding them, one that is located not in the normative but in the metaphysical. I end the paper by sketching a metaphysical explanation of normative powers. This metaphysical defence of normative powers provides a window into a different, more agent-centered way of thinking about rational agency. (shrink)

Courts have determined that adaptive management does not satisfy the Endangered Species Act's requirement to use the 'best available science'. This is due, in part, to the failure to recognise the role of non-epistemic values in science. We examine the role of values in the legal controversy over the scientific reports and adaptive management plans for endangered salmon in the Columbia River Basin. To do this, we employ philosophical concepts related to risk and uncertainty that demonstrate how non-epistemic values (...) are internal to science. We describe how, because adaptive management is a method for dealing with inductive risk, by remaining flexible, responsive and adaptive in those circumstances where the costs of making a mistake are very high, it requires special attention to ensure that it remains useful. We conclude that, because non-epistemic values will inevitably influence the 'best available science', it is critical that they are clarified in any adaptive management planning so that we can ensure the salmon conservation that the ESA mandates. Fortunately, because adaptive management is iterative in nature and includes opportunities for engagement between policymakers and scientists, it enables clarification of non-epistemic values through making standards of evidence transparent, acknowledging aims and goals and dealing with uncertainty at the institutional level. (shrink)

Philosophers tend to assume that we have excellent knowledge of our own current conscious experience or 'phenomenology'. I argue that our knowledge of one aspect of our experience, the experience of visual imagery, is actually rather poor. Precedent for this position is found among the introspective psychologists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Two main arguments are advanced toward the conclusion that our knowledge of our own imagery is poor. First, the reader is asked to form a (...) visual image, and it is expected that answering questions about certain basic features of that experience will be difficult. If so, it seems reasonable to suppose that people could be mistaken about those basic features of their own imagery. Second, it is observed that although people give widely variable reports about their own experiences of visual imagery, differences in report do not systematically correlate with differences on tests of skills that psychologists have often supposed to require visual imagery, such as mental rotation, visual creativity, and visual memory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 411-412 [Access article in PDF] Deborah Achtenberg. Cognition of Value in Aristotle's Ethics: Promise of Enrichment, Threat of Destruction. Albany: The State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp. xiii + 218. Paper, $20.95.Deborah Achtenberg argues that, for Aristotle, virtue is a disposition to respond to situations with the appropriate emotions, where emotions are understood as perceptions of the value of (...) particulars. To perceive the value of a particular is to perceive that particular as a limit; some limits enable what they limit to be more fully what it is, while other limits do the opposite. My activity in writing this review, for example, is "limited" both by the rules of grammar and by my computer's tendency to crash frequently; one kind of limit enriches my activity, while the other hinders and threatens it (hence Achtenberg's subtitle). An enabling limit is a telos or end; something is a telos of yours if it connects you to a larger context that in some way fulfills or completes you.Achtenberg's interpretation enables her to steer Aristotle clear of a number of persistent false dichotomies. For example: is the doctrine of the mean an uninspiring counsel to do the middling thing, or a vacuous counsel to do whatever one ought to do? Neither, says Achtenberg; rather, it is Aristotle's way of insisting on the flexibility of the virtuous person's [End Page 411] responses. Is Aristotle siding, then, with Odysseus, who suppressed his emotions in order to suit his actions to the demands of the occasion, as against Achilles, who stubbornly followed his emotions regardless of circumstance? No, that dichotomy falls as well: the virtuous person has flexible emotional (not just behavioral) responses, and so can be as adaptable as Odysseus yet as sincere as Achilles.Does Aristotle's ethics have a metaphysical foundation, or is it autonomous? Achtenberg dissolves that dichotomy by distinguishing two different ways in which Aristotle takes ethics to be an "imprecise" science. First, ethics and metaphysics are both imprecise, because they share a common subject-matter (final causation) that is an analogical equivocal and so indefinable. Second, ethics is less precise than metaphysics because ethics can establish that, but not explain why, its claims are true. Metaphysics can explain the why of ethics, but for practical purposes the why is not necessary; so metaphysics is explanatorily but not epistemically prior to ethics.How can Aristotle's particularist-sounding denial that the virtuous person needs rules be reconciled with his insistence that the virtuous person follows a logos? Must we play down the logos passage, or instead conclude that Aristotle is a rule-theorist after all? Once again, neither: in this context, Achtenberg suggests, logos means "analogy," not "rule." Since goodness is an analogical equivocal, perceiving goodness means perceiving analogies. Being transcategorial, these analogies are not definable or codifiable, so the rule-theorists are wrong; but we are grasping something common to all good things, so the particularists are wrong too.Let me close with a couple of criticisms. Once the notion of an enabling limit has been established, Achtenberg seems to accept as unproblematic the inference to the legitimacy of paternalistic legislation: citizens are more free, not less, for being subjected to such coercion. Now on a view that regarded persons primarily as moral patients or recipients, it might be reasonable enough to elide in this way the difference between imposing limits on oneself and having them imposed by external compulsion; but it is harder to see how forcibly imposed limits could be constitutive of a life's being happier when happiness is defined, with Aristotle, as a self-generated activity.I think Achtenberg also fails to catch one false dichotomy. She contrasts Aristotle's theory, which seeks to increase and enhance emotional awareness, with the Stoic theory (as represented by Marcus Aurelius), which seeks to decrease or suppress such awareness. The contrast seems to me misleading. Both Aristotle and the Stoics agree that moral maturation involves... (shrink)

"The importance of the justification of our beliefs is a long-debated question. The question of how our memory beliefs are justified, however, is a question we have usually neglected as our memory does not seem to draw much attention to itself. As long as it works, we do not even notice that we use it most of the time. In my opinion, the question of how our memory beliefs are justified, however, should play a bigger role in (...) the philosophical debate. The reason for this claim is that most of our beliefs are memory beliefs. A position I will argue for in this paper. Based on empirical findings in Cognitive Science, I will explain that our memory is not only involved in forming beliefs about the past but more controversially in forming beliefs about the present, in reasoning processes and even more controversially in forming beliefs about the future. If beliefs about what has been, about what is the case in the present and even about what will have been the case in the future are memory beliefs, reconsidering our strict focus on the justification of mere beliefs seems to be a change in debate worth considering. Keywords: Memory, Philosophy of Memory, Belief, Cognitive Science, Epistemology of Memory, Philosophy of Cognitive Science". (shrink)

Researchers from the 1940's through the present have found that normal, sighted people can echolocate - that is, detect properties of silent objects by attending to sound reflected from them. We argue that echolocation is a normal part of our conscious, perceptual experience. Despite this, we argue that people are often grossly mistaken about their experience of echolocation. If so, echolocation provides a counterexample to the view that we cannot be seriously mistaken about our own current conscious experience.

Expert probability forecasts can be useful for decision making . But levels of uncertainty escalate: however the forecaster expresses the uncertainty that attaches to a forecast, there are good reasons for her to express a further level of uncertainty, in the shape of either imprecision or higher order uncertainty . Bayesian epistemology provides the means to halt this escalator, by tying expressions of uncertainty to the propositions expressible in an agent’s language . But Bayesian epistemology comes in three main varieties. (...) Strictly subjective Bayesianism and empirically-based subjective Bayesianism have difficulty in justifying the use of a forecaster’s probabilities for decision making . On the other hand, objective Bayesianism can justify the use of these probabilities, at least when the probabilities are consistent with the agent’s evidence . Hence objective Bayesianism offers the most promise overall for explaining how testimony of uncertainty can be useful for decision making. Interestingly, the objective Bayesian analysis provided in Sect. 5 can also be used to justify a version of the Principle of Reflection. (shrink)

Recent societal changes, including a global pandemic, have exacerbated experiences of and attention to burnout related to work and parenting. In the present study, we investigated how several social forces can act as demands and resources to impact work-related and parental burnout. We tested two primary hypotheses in a sample of women who responded to an online survey. We found that social comparisons, social media use, negative emotions when comparing oneself to others on social media, and a high do (...) it all discrepancy were correlated with higher reports of work-related and parental burnout. Alternatively, positive emotions when comparing oneself to others and social support were related to lower reports of work-related and parental burnout. The influence of social media use on burnout was mediated by the emotions experienced when comparing oneself to others on social media. Tests of moderation indicated that social comparisons had stronger relationships with burnout for those with higher expectations that they should be able to do it all verses can do it all. Tests of social support as a moderator of the relationships between social demands and burnout were largely non-significant. Based on these findings, we make practical suggestions for interventions to increase positive emotions experienced from social media use, and to mediate the do it all discrepancy by redefining expectations around “doing it all.”. (shrink)

The essay explores the question of whether people can have a right to common goods, such as the flourishing of their culture or national heritage. It first explains the concept of a common good and its distinction from other similar concepts, such as collective and public goods. Second, it argues that individuals ought not to have a right to common goods, unless a particular distributive principle applies to the good in question, and then the individual's right is the (...) right to a certain share in that common good. Finally, the essay explores the question of how this analysis applies to group-rights, with respect to other groups and to members of the group itself. (shrink)

In his early writings, Kant regarded the autonomy of the will as the supreme principle of morality, as well as the sole principle of all moral laws and of the duties conforming to them. Nevertheless, this impressively sounding principle gradually disappeared from the later Kant’s texts, and there is not much in the literature to explain why. Pauline Kleingeld’s purpose, in the two articles I consider here, is to address this lacuna and to show that there are good philosophical reasons (...) for this principle’s gradual disappearance from the Kantian framework. One of my aims, in this paper, is to formulate and argue for several reservations about Kleingeld’s argument; however, even if these reservations turn out to be apposite, my claim is not that Kant did not actually abandon the Principle of Autonomy; instead, I argue that, even if Kleingeld were right and Kant had abandoned the Principle of Autonomy, he would still not have needed to. (shrink)

Between 1909 and 1913, Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde unearthed more than 225 tons of fossils in former German East Africa and transported them to Berlin. Among them were the bones of Brachiosaurus brancai, which would eventually become the biggest mounted dinosaur in the world. By analyzing the social and communicative strategies that made this expedition possible, this paper aims to reveal several aspects of natural history knowledge production at the end of the long nineteenth century. Using rhetoric, the director (...) of the Geological–Paleontological Museum in Berlin, Wilhelm von Branca, conducted a highly successful campaign to market the dinosaurs in Prussia and to convince public opinion and the Prussian central state of the value of paleontology. He fired the Prussian imagination and took advantage of the competitive urge to emulate American paleontology and industry. This work examines how his public relations strategies shaped the German biological “landscape” of the first decades of the twentieth century. It asks: when and under what conditions did paleontology successfully appeal to the public? How does communication dictate, shape, and constrain the development of a specific epistemic agenda? And what kind of power do the public and money have? (shrink)

The history of Credit Rating Agencies [CRAs], commonly called Rating Agencies, has a long and distinguished trajectory marked by influence, reputation and power. Due to the ability of this field to instigate significant changes in market regulations and actions of economic actors, this subject is extensively debated within the literature. In economic sociology, while some studies have focused on perceptions of performativity and market devices to understand how the calculability of its methods influences the economy, others, along relational (...) lines of sociology, aim to understand them through a more complex constructive process. In this study, we attempt to fill a gap by exploring the complementarity between two theoretical approaches to sociology: theory of fields and performativity. Thus, we mobilize theory of fields to understand the inter-field relationship between the State and CRAs. Specifically, this paper sets out to i) analyze the co-constitution of the state and market fields with the field of CRAs; ii) describe the existing regulation and situate the CRAs and their classification devices in the broader history of the State and the market; iii) analyze how the legitimation of the CRAs by the State generates broader social contexts that assist in the performative work of the CRAs. Based on historical documentary research, we analyze some of the main milestones and regulatory events in the field of CRAs. This research reaffirms the assumption that even after credibility crises, the State is the most significant predictor of legitimacy, power, and influence that CRAs hold to date. The legitimacy of this power and influence has yet to be exhausted because the reputation of CRAs is rooted in the reputation of the State itself. This happens because the State provides essential actions (such as regulations) for the existence of the financial market. Thus, results suggest that the State, through regulatory measures, can engage several other fields to promote the legitimacy of performative work of the CRAs, whose purpose is to provide calculation tools to shape markets. (shrink)

In The Entanglement, philosopher Alva Noë explores the inseparability of life, art, and philosophy, and argues that we have radically underestimated the significance of this long recognized but underappreciated reality, what he refers to as the "entanglement." The core of The Entanglement is the idea that human existence is inextricably aesthetic and philosophical. In the first half of the book, Noë offers a detailed examination of pictures and seeing, writing and speech, and choreography and dancing, which serve as (...) case studies and the base in which the phenomenon of entanglement is set. In later chapters, Noë deepens this analysis by exploring the nature of the aesthetic itself, and its place in our lives, examining what the entanglement can teach us about science, and, in particular, the project of applying science in the domain of the human. In these later chapters he covers a range of topics, including sex, gender, and the body, psychology and AI, the problem of style, and the nature of 'nature.' Drawing on his work in perception, consciousness, and the philosophy of art, Noë offers a new model for thinking about the nature of the human, the limits to what a natural science of the human can do on its own, and the irreplaceable importance of art and philosophy for the larger project of studying and understanding ourselves. (shrink)

I believe that the data is both fascinating and instructive, but in this paper I will resist the conclusion that we must give up Invariantism, or, as I prefer to call it, Unificationism. In the process of examining the challenging data and responding to it, I will try to draw some larger lessons about how to use the kind of data being collected. First, I will provide a brief description of some influential theories of responsibility, and then explain the threat (...) to them from the experimental results. Finally, I will set out my general approach to the data, as well as some specific suggestions about how to think about each set of experiments. I will conclude that philosophers searching for a unified theory need not give up, but that at the same time they can learn a great deal from the new data. (shrink)

To deal with the upcoming challenges and complexity of the nursing profession, it is deemed important to reflect on our current organization of care. However, before starting to rethink the organization of nursing care, an overview of important elements concerning nursing care organization, more specifically nursing models, is necessary. The aim of this study was to conduct a mapping review, accompanied by an evidence map to map the existing literature, to map the field of knowledge on a meta‐level and to (...) identify current research gaps concerning nursing models in a hospital setting. Next to nursing models, two other organizational correlates seem to be of importance when looking at the organization of nursing care: nurse staffing and skill mix. Although it seems that in recent research, the theoretical focus on the organization of nursing care has been left behind, the increasingly complex healthcare environment might gain from the use of nursing theory, or in this case, care delivery models. As almost no fundamental studies have been done toward the combination of care delivery models, nurse staffing, and skill mix, those elements should be taken into account to fully capture the organization of nursing care in future research. (shrink)

This paper studies long-term norms concerning actions. In Meyer's Propositional Deontic Logic (PDₑL), only immediate duties can be expressed, however, often one has duties of longer durations such as: "Never do that", or "Do this someday". In this paper, we will investigate how to amend (PDₑL) so that such long-term duties can be expressed. This leads to the interesting and suprising consequence that the long-term prohibition and obligation are not interdefinable in our semantics, while there is a (...) duality between these two notions. As a consequence, we have provided a new analysis of the long-term obligation by introducing a new atomic proposition I (indebtedness) to represent the condition that an agent has some unfulfilled obligation. (shrink)

This paper argues, against the prevailing view, that consent to privacy policies that regular internet users usually give is largely unproblematic from the moral point of view. To substantiate this claim, we rely on the idea of the right not to know (RNTK), as developed by bioethicists. Defenders of the RNTK in bioethical literature on informed consent claim that patients generally have the right to refuse medically relevant information. In this article we extend the application of the RNTK to (...) online privacy. We then argue that if internet users can be thought of as exercising their RNTK before consenting to privacy policies, their consent ought to be considered free of the standard charges leveled against it by critics. (shrink)

Synthetic biology can be understood as expanding the abilities and aspirations of genetic engineering. Nonetheless, whereas genetic engineering has been subject to criticism due to its endangering biodiversity, synthetic biology may actually appear to prove advantageous for biodiversity. After all, one might claim, synthesizing novel forms of life increases the numbers of species present in nature and thus ought to be ethically recommended. Two perspectives on how to spell out the conception of intrinsic value of biodiversity are examined in order (...) to assess this line of thought. At the cost of introducing two separate capacities of human knowledge acquisition, the ‘admiration stance’ turns out to reject outright the assumption of a synthetic species' intrinsic value and of an imperative to create novel species. The ‘kinship stance’ by contrast does ascribe value to both synthetic and natural species and organisms. Nonetheless, while from this perspective creating novel species may become an ethical demand under certain conditions, it favours changing organisms by getting in contact with them rather than synthesizing them. It is concluded that neither the admiration nor the kinship stance warrants a supposed general moral obligation to create novel species to increase biodiversity. (shrink)

Comment on Beeghly, Erin. 2021. “Stereotyping as Discrimination: Why Thoughts Can Be Discriminatory.” Social Epistemology 35 (6): 547–63. -/- Beeghly’s “Stereotyping as Discrimination” is—characteristically—clear, thorough, and persuasive, rich with incisive arguments and thought-provoking case studies. In defending the view that stereotyping often constitutes discrimination, she makes a powerful case that, “Living ethically means cultivating a certain kind of ‘inner’ life and avoiding pernicious habits of thought, no matter how culturally pervasive” (Beeghly 2021b, 13). Support for such claims is traced back (...) not just to Aristotle and the Ten Commandments (Beeghly 2021b, 10), but also to critical social traditions. “As feminists and theorists of race have long noted, the most intimate aspects of our selves, including our ways of thinking, agency, and modes of embodiment, are among the mechanisms of group oppression” (Beeghly 2021b, 13). I offer, first, a tiny friendly amendment to one brief passage, followed by invitations to explore some of the further potential implications of Beeghly’s central theses. (shrink)

As working arrangements become more flexible and many people work remotely, the risk of social isolation rises. Coworking spaces try to prevent this by offering not only a workplace, but also a community. Adopting a person-environment fit perspective, we examined how the congruence between workers' needs and supplies by coworking spaces relate to job satisfaction and intent to leave. We identified five needs, of which community was expected to be the central need. An online questionnaire was distributed among coworkers in (...) Germany and Austria, resulting in a sample of 181 coworkers. Results showed that needs-supplies fit regarding community was related to job satisfaction and intent to leave in coworking spaces. Findings for the other needs, however, did not show that congruence is associated with outcomes. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of community fit in coworking and offer insights for workers and entrepreneurs in this area. (shrink)

Popular posthumanist theories are revealing a lot about their origin from enlightenment humanism. In this paper I will firstly have a closer look on the history of the enlightenment-humanistic concept of human nature and its roots in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh. Afterwards I will show how this notion of human nature will be broadened in transhumanist thinking, turned upside down as a modern enlightenment humanism, or even deformed and perverted in the popular posthumanist vision of the immortal and (...) from its body completely abstracted mind in the Singularity of a computer interface. (shrink)

Do people have free will, or this universal belief an illusion? If free will is more than an illusion, what kind of free will do people have? How can free will influence behavior? Can free will be studied, verified, and understood scientifically? How and why might a sense of free will have evolved? These are a few of the questions this book attempts to answer. People generally act as though they believe in their own free will: they (...) don't feel like automatons, and they don't treat one another as they might treat robots. While acknowledging many constraints and influences on behavior, people nonetheless act as if they (and their neighbors) are largely in control of many if not most of the decisions they make. Belief in free will also underpins the sense that people are responsible for their actions. Psychological explanations of behavior rarely mention free will as a factor, however. Can psychological science find room for free will? How do leading psychologists conceptualize free will, and what role do they believe free will plays in shaping behavior? In recent years a number of psychologists have tried to solve one or more of the puzzles surrounding free will. This book looks both at recent experimental and theoretical work directly related to free will and at ways leading psychologists from all branches of psychology deal with the philosophical problems long associated with the question of free will, such as the relationship between determinism and free will and the importance of consciousness in free will. It also includes commentaries by leading philosophers on what psychologists can contribute to long-running philosophical struggles with this most distinctly human belief. These essays should be of interest not only to social scientists, but to intelligent and thoughtful readers everywhere. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:How We Write Plagues JAMES UDEN One advantage of writing about historical pandemics is that they have already occurred. From where I sit, as I listen to the loudspeaker on the council truck telling me to stay indoors, it is impossible to know what direction the covid-19 crisis will take. Certainly, aspects of the virus’s social impact have mirrored the trajectory of previous pandemics. Back in February, (...) people in France began circulating the phrase Je ne suis pas un virus, protesting acts of violence against Asian communities and resisting the well-documented tendency for societies to target ethnic minorities as scapegoats for epidemic disease. The President’s labeling of covid-19 as the “Chinese virus” aroused similar protest in the United States.1 At an armed rally at the state house in Lansing, MI, armed protesters demanded the reopening of businesses despite public health advice to the contrary, an act that raised familiar questions about the freedom of the individual versus the health of the collective in times of health crisis. Here in Boston, anti-lockdown protesters assembled at the Massachusetts State House on May 4, chanting “no more dictatorship”—language congenial to Boston’s history of colonial rebellion, though not especially fitting to the crisis at hand. Just one day earlier, a banner had flown over the buildings of Manhattan with the words CAPITALISM IS THE PANDEMIC. Whether the virus will redistribute power and become, in Walter Scheidel’s words, a “great leveler,” remains to be seen.2 arion 28.1 spring/summer 2020 Hunter H. Gardner, Pestilence and the Body Politic in Latin Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. x + 303 pages. $90.00. Brian Walters, The Deaths of the Republic: Imagery of the Body Politic in Ciceronian Rome, 2020. xv + 158 pages. $80.00. 132 how we write plagues Given that we have frequently been reminded that we are facing a pandemic of historic proportions, it is natural that people have turned to history for perspective. Daniel Defoe’s journalistic account of plague in London in 1665, A Journal of the Plague Year (1722), has catapulted to an unlikely relevance, promoted on the publisher’s website as the “surprise ‘must-read’ for people facing the covid-19 epidemic.” Thucydides ’ description of Athens’s experience of the plague in 430 bc has made news in The Economist, The Washington Post and The Guardian. Historical accounts of plagues are regularly being called upon to offer advice to the present. Yet not all plagues are alike. Historians have rightly protested about parallels being made between covid-19 and the aids crisis, since the current emergency response contrasts damningly with the Reagan government’s protracted silence and willful ignorance throughout the 1980s.3 One problem is the word “plague” itself, a term too suggestive of sin to represent the devastating impartiality of viral disease. “Plagues,” Susan Sontag wrote in aids and its Metaphors (1988), are “inflicted, not just endured.” She argued that the term imposed additional burdens on patients, who were portrayed as suffering some punishment, and could not simply be ill.4 To speak of “plagues” in the plural also suggests a common experience across time, a regular and shared event. Literary accounts of the plague do indeed share many common tropes. Yet there are important differences in the way communities have responded to outbreaks in different eras, and significant divergences in the meaning of disease. Accounts of plagues understandably arouse interest during a pandemic, but they are apt to mislead us, because the plagues so often look the same. One unshakable constant is the analogy between the body and the state, the “body politic.” As has long been recognized, the symbol surfaces across many, unrelated world cultures.5 In seeking to explain a unity composed of many parts, human beings have tended to look to the most immediate parallel— themselves. Although it has been invoked famously to justify James Uden 133 hierarchies within the state (Livy, Shakespeare, Hobbes), the image seems to resonate most intuitively when it conceptualizes danger, when the “health” of the state is threatened by “infection” or “disease.” In 2009, psychologists asked sixty -nine undergraduates at the University of Arizona to read a popular... (shrink)

In Theory Z-style management everybody participates in corporate decision making. This more open process should give us fewer Pintos, Love Canals, and massive international payoffs as executives are forced to expose their reasoning to the moral sensibilities of the whole corporation. So far everything looks good. But we are a long way from showing that only corporations so managed can be fully moral. Yet Dwiggins seems to believe this, putting his faith in the basic goodness of the many while (...) virtually dismissing the managers as mere technicians. This is too slick; even if it describes our average corporation today, there are plenty of less radical changes which can also produce the desired moral corporation. Good leadership which acts on their commitment to improve the company is surely one historically respectable alternative; cynicism about the present crop of leaders should not distract us from investigating this route. Finally, I wonder if Dwiggins can consistently urge us to embrace a full-scale Theory Z organizational structure, given his position on the place of ethics and profitability. (shrink)