The conversation with Jill H. Casid and Anna Campbell is a reconceptualization of several themes to develop an aesthetic that incorporates notions of the necropolitical and redefines the concept of the Anthropocene as the Necrocene. The Necrocene implies an era marked by death, decay, and the consequences of human impact on the environment, as well as a critical reflection on the choices individuals and societies make that contribute to the transition from the Anthropocene to the Necrocene. These reflections serve (...) as cautionary tales or reflections on the unsustainable path of the Anthropocene. An important reflection in the interview is how queer and transgender people are using art and assemblages to refuse the terms of the current tensions of the culture wars. (shrink)

Priority setting is inevitable to control expenditure on expensive medicines, but citizen support is often hampered by the workings of the ‘identified victim effect’, that is, the greater willingness to spend resources helping identified victims than helping statistical victims. In this paper we explore a possible cognitive debiasing strategy that is being employed in discussions on healthcare priority setting, which we call ‘empathy counterbalancing’ (EC). EC is the strategy of directing attention to, and eliciting empathy for, those who might be (...) harmed as a result of one-sided empathy for the very ill who needs expensive treatment. We argue that governments have good reasons to attempt EC because the identified victim effect distorts priority setting in ways that undermine procedural fairness. We briefly outline three areas of application for EC and suggest some possible mechanisms that might explain how EC might work, if at all. We then discuss four potential ethical concerns with EC. First, EC might have the counterproductive effect of reducing overall citizen support for public funding of expensive medical treatments, thereby undermining solidarity. Second, EC may give rise to a ‘competition in suffering’, which may have unintended side effects for patients who feature in attempts at EC. Third, there may be doubts about whether EC is effective. Fourth, it may be objected that EC comes down to emotional manipulation, which governments should avoid. We conclude that insofar these concerns are valid they may be adequately addressed, and that EC seems a promising strategy that merits further investigation. (shrink)

It is widely thought that sceptical arguments, if correct, would show that everyday empirical knowledge‐claims are false. Against this, I argue that the very generality of traditional sceptical arguments means that there is no direct incompatibility between everyday empirical claims and sceptical scenarios. Scepticism calls into doubt, not ordinary empirical beliefs, but philosophical attempts to give a deep ontological explanation of such beliefs. G. E. Moore's attempt to refute scepticism (and idealism) was unsuccessful, because it failed to recognise that philosophical (...) scepticism operates on a different level from that on which we make – or doubt – particular empirical claims. And, as I argue with specific reference to work by Nozick and Fogelin, Moore’s basic confusion is still widely shared in contemporary discussions of scepticism. (shrink)

Jill North offers answers to questions at the heart of the project of interpreting physics. How do we figure out the nature of the world from a mathematically formulated theory? What do we infer about the world when a physical theory can be mathematically formulated in different ways? The notion of structure is crucial to North's answers.

Ethical loneliness is the experience of being abandoned by humanity, compounded by the cruelty of wrongs not being heard. It is the result of multiple lapses on the part of human beings and political institutions that, in failing to listen well to survivors, deny them redress by negating their testimony and thwarting their claims for justice. Jill Stauffer examines the root causes of ethical loneliness and how those in power revise history to serve their own ends rather than the (...) needs of the abandoned. Out of this discussion, difficult truths about the desire and potential for political forgiveness, transitional justice, and political reconciliation emerge. Moving beyond a singular focus on truth commissions and legal trials, she considers more closely what is lost in the wake of oppression and violence, how selves and worlds are built and demolished, and who is responsible for re-creating lives after they are destroyed. Stauffer boldly argues that rebuilding worlds and just institutions after violence is a broad obligation and that those who care about justice must first confront their own assumptions about autonomy, liberty, and responsibility before an effective response to violence can take place. In building her claims, Stauffer draws on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean Améry, Eve Sedgwick, and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as concrete cases of justice and injustice across the world. (shrink)

There has been a massive advocacy movement over the last 15 years that has sought to advance the case of religion into view of decision-makers in the international development sector. This advocacy effort has been dispersed and not centrally organised, and is made up of the efforts of multiple development actors, religious institutions, researchers and others. This article shows how this advocacy approach has been highly successful in increasing acceptance of the fact that religion is relevant to development, and religious (...) communities and institutions make contributions to the development effort - and this acceptance can now be seen at the highest levels. However, the article highlights several challenges that have come with this advocacy approach. It therefore supports urgent reflection on the direction of this advocacy going forward and suggests that major and uncomfortable adaptations might now be required. (shrink)

The concept of meaningful work has recently received increased attention in philosophy and other disciplines. However, the impact of the increasing robotization of the workplace on meaningful work has received very little attention so far. Doing work that is meaningful leads to higher job satisfaction and increased worker well-being, and some argue for a right to access to meaningful work. In this paper, we therefore address the impact of robotization on meaningful work. We do so by identifying five key aspects (...) of meaningful work: pursuing a purpose, social relationships, exercising skills and self-development, self-esteem and recognition, and autonomy. For each aspect, we analyze how the introduction of robots into the workplace may diminish or enhance the meaningfulness of work. We also identify a few ethical issues that emerge from our analysis. We conclude that robotization of the workplace can have both significant negative and positive effects on meaningful work. Our findings about ways in which robotization of the workplace can be a threat or opportunity for meaningful work can serve as the basis for ethical arguments for how to—and how not to—implement robots into workplaces. (shrink)

Inspired by Jill Kraye's many contributions to European intellectual history, this volume presents a diverse collection of studies in Renaissance philosophy and humanism by leading experts in the field.

Summary The twofold objective of this study is (1) to identify and give a brief review of the historical development of the various designs of early (pre-1850) telescope eyepieces, and (2) to determine by measurements and calculations the axial and lateral chromatic aberrations of a number of extant eyepieces from that period in order to provide basic data on which to judge the relative quality of different eyepiece forms. Eight distinct types of eyepieces containing one to five lens elements are (...) discussed and illustrated. The second objective was addressed by measuring the focal lengths of the individual lens elements and the lens spacings in each eyepiece. The data were processed by a ray-tracing program that yields the chromatic aberration (CA) and focal length of each of the eyepieces. Twenty-one telescopes from that period were studied in this way. Similar calculations were also made using data available in the literature on several additional historic telescopes. The conclusions drawn from the data are: (1) Telescopes with Galilean eyepieces have a smaller CA than those with Keplerian or Huygens eyepieces. (2) The two-lens Keplerian terrestrial eyepieces are demonstrated to have larger axial and lateral CA than any of the other eyepiece types. (3) Calculations from examples of telescopes by Divini and Campani for which data were available indicate that while the axial CAs of the two were the same, Campani's instrument had a much smaller lateral CA. (4) Five element eyepieces were found to be better corrected for CA than the early four-lens systems that replaced them. (5) This study tends to confirm the speculation that the reason makers of early achromatic telescopes overcorrected the objective lenses was to compensate for the CA of the eyepieces. (shrink)

Anthony Rudd presents a striking new account of the self as an ethical, evaluative being.

Altered Reading will interest philosophers, literary critics, scholars of religion, and others drawn to Levinas's work.

We investigate whether the disclosure of a firm’s decision to organize as a benefit corporation (BC) rather than a traditional C corporation (CC) influences investors. We survey 136 investors and 57 MBA students and find that they expect BCs to attain higher future corporate social responsibility (CSR) than CCs even when both have equal CSR ratings. Approximately one third of our sample prefers to invest in BCs when CCs have greater financial returns, indicating a willingness by some investors to sacrifice (...) personal financial gain for social good. Our results suggest that investors weight the information contained in BC disclosures as reliable and value-relevant in their investment decisions. We extend the CSR disclosure literature by indicating how investors weight this new type of CSR information, which may affect how BCs fare as publicly traded companies. (shrink)

We are used to talking about the “structure” posited by a given theory of physics, such as the spacetime structure of relativity. What is “structure”? What does the mathematical structure used to formulate a theory tell us about the physical world according to the theory? What if there are different mathematical formulations of a given theory? Do different formulations posit different structures, or are they merely notational variants? I consider the case of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian classical mechanics. I argue that, (...) contrary to standard wisdom, these are not genuinely equivalent theories: they differ in statespace structure. I suggest that we should be realists about statespace structure. (shrink)

I argue that the fundamental space of a quantum mechanical world is the wavefunction's space. I argue for this using some very general principles that guide our inferences to the fundamental nature of a world, for any fundamental physical theory. I suggest that ordinary three-dimensional space exists in such a world, but is non-fundamental; it emerges from the fundamental space of the wavefunction.

We describe a set of two computer‐implemented models that solve physics problems in ways characteristic of more and less competent human solvers. The main features accounting for different competences are differences in strategy for selecting physics principles, and differences in the degree of automation in the process of applying a single principle. The models provide a good account of the order in which principles are applied by human solvers working problems in kinematics and dynamics. They also are sufficiently flexible to (...) allow easy extension to several related domains of physics problems. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Malament (2004) employs a time reversal transformation that differs from the standard one, without explicitly arguing for it. This is a new and important understanding of time reversal that deserves arguing for in its own right. I argue that it improves upon the standard one. Recent discussion has focused on whether velocities should undergo a time reversal operation. I address a prior question: What is the proper notion of time reversal? This is important, for it will (...) affect our conclusion as to whether our best theories are time-reversal symmetric, and hence whether our spacetime is temporally oriented. *Received February 2007; revised March 2008. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, Yale University, P.O. Box 208306, New Haven, CT 06520-8306; e-mail: jill[email protected]. (shrink)

The essays that Jill Stauffer and Bettina Bergo collect in this volume locate multiple affinities between the philosophies of Nietzsche and Levinas. Both philosophers question the nature of subjectivity and the meaning of responsibility after the "death of God." While Nietzsche poses the dilemmas of a self without a ground and of ethics at a time of cultural upheaval and demystification, Levinas wrestles with subjectivity and the sheer possibility of ethics after the Shoah. Both argue that goodness exists independently (...) of calculative reason—for Nietzsche, goodness arises in a creative act moving beyond reaction and ressentiment; Levinas argues that goodness occurs in a spontaneous response to another person. In a world at once without God and haunted by multiple divinities, Nietzsche and Levinas reject transcendental foundations for politics and work toward an alternative vision encompassing a positive sense of creation, a complex fraternity or friendship, and rival notions of responsibility. Stauffer and Bergo group arguments around the following debates, which are far from settled: What is the reevaluation of ethics (and life) that Nietzsche and Levinas propose, and what does this imply for politics and sociality? What is a human subject—and what are substance, permanence, causality, and identity, whether social or ethical—in the wake of the demise of God as the highest being and the foundation of what is stable in existence? Finally, how can a "God" still inhabit philosophy, and what sort of name is this in the thought of Nietzsche and Levinas? (shrink)

Over the last few decades, a number of influential philosophers, psychologists and others have invoked the notion of narrative as having a central role to play in our thinking about ethics and personal identity. More recently, a backlash against these narrative theories has developed, exemplified in work by, for instance, Galen Strawson, Peter Lamarque and John Christman. This paper defends an approach to personal identity and ethics, influenced mainly by Alasdair MacIntyre and Charles Taylor, in which narrative plays a central (...) (though not a foundational) role. In sec I, I elucidate the concept of narrative that MacIntyre introduced in After Virtue and show why this is central to thinking about the identity of persons across time. In sec II, I consider and reject various objections to this narrative account of personal identity. I hope to show that some of the prominent criticisms of narrative theory simply don’t apply to this conception, properly understood. However, I don’t want to claim that the dispute over narrative is based purely on misunderstanding, One centrally important aspect of the dispute is a first-order ethical one about the extent to which we should seek for a unity based on narrative coherence in our lives, and in secs III and IV, I will offer a defence of Taylor’s claim that an ethical life must aspire to, and to some extent achieve, narrative unity. (shrink)

We should see the debate over the existence of spacetime as a debate about the fundamentality of spatiotemporal structure to the physical world. This is a non-traditional conception of the debate, which captures the spirit of the traditional one. At the same time, it clarifies the point of contention between opposing views and offsets worries that the dispute is stagnant or non-substantive. It also unearths a novel argument for substantivalism, given current physics. Even so, that conclusion can be overridden by (...) future physics. I conclude that this debate is a substantive one, which the substantivalist is currently winning. (shrink)

Or better: time asymmetry in thermodynamics. Better still: time asymmetry in thermodynamic phenomena. “Time in thermodynamics” misleadingly suggests that thermodynamics will tell us about the fundamental nature of time. But we don’t think that thermodynamics is a fundamental theory. It is a theory of macroscopic behavior, often called a “phenomenological science.” And to the extent that physics can tell us about the fundamental features of the world, including such things as the nature of time, we generally think that only fundamental (...) physics can. On its own, a science like thermodynamics won’t be able to tell us about time per se. But the theory will have much to say about everyday processes that occur in time; and in particular, the apparent asymmetry of those processes. The pressing question of time in the context of thermodynamics is about the asymmetry of things in time, not the asymmetry of time, to paraphrase Price ( , ). I use the title anyway, to underscore what is, to my mind, the centrality of thermodynamics to any discussion of the nature of time and our experience in it. The two issues—the temporal features of processes in time, and the intrinsic structure of time itself—are related. Indeed, it is in part this relation that makes the question of time asymmetry in thermodynamics so interesting. This, plus the fact that thermodynamics describes a surprisingly wide range of our ordinary experience. We’ll return to this. First, we need to get the question of time asymmetry in thermodynamics out on the table. (shrink)

Structured directly around the specification of the AQA, this is the definitive textbook for students of Advanced Subsidiary or Advanced Level courses. It covers all the necessary topics for Religious Ethics in an enjoyable student-friendly fashion. Each chapter includes: a list of key issues AQA specification checklist explanations of key terminology helpful summaries self-test review questions exam practice questions. To maximise students' chances of exam success, the book contains a section dedicated to answering examination questions. It comes complete with lively (...) illustrations, a comprehensive glossary, full bibliography and a companion website. (shrink)

OCR Religious Ethics for AS and A2 is a textbook for students of Advanced Subsidiary or Advanced Level courses, endorsed by OCR for use with the OCR GCE Religious Studies specification. The book covers all the topics of the Religious Ethics component of the A Level specification in an enjoyable and student-friendly fashion. This second edition has been restructured for the revised specification and now includes a section on business ethics. Each chapter includes: a list of key issues, to introduce (...) students to the topic OCR specification checklist, to allow students to see which topics from the specification are covered in each chapter explanations of key terminology exam-style practice questions self-test review questions helpful summaries annotated further reading suggestions. To maximize students' chances of exam success, the book includes a chapter dedicated to answering examination questions. The book comes complete with lively illustrations, a comprehensive glossary, a full bibliography and a companion website at www.routledge.com/textbooks/9780415468251. (shrink)

Structured directly around the OCR specification, this book covers all necessary topics of the Religious Ethics A-level course in an enjoyable student-friendly fashion. Split into four parts – What is Ethics?; AS Ethics; A2 Ethics; and Connections in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics – each chapter includes: a list of key issues, to introduce students to the topic OCR syllabus checklist explanations of key terminology exam practice questions using actual examples from previous years self-test review questions helpful summaries annotated further (...) reading suggestions. To maximize students' chances of exam success, the book includes a chapter dedicated to answering examination questions, and extra help on how to approach the synoptic paper. The book comes complete with lively illustrations, a comprehensive glossary and full bibliography. (shrink)

This book contains a vigorous argument, constructed with the help of Kierkegaard, that the Kantian ideal of autonomy in ethics is misplaced, and that the most adequate forms of the ethical life see ethics as requiring a religious foundation. The ideal of an ethic that is grounded in "pure, impartial reason" is a chimera; no justification for ethical living can be given that does not see ethical knowledge as stemming from a "committed" or "situated" perspective that eschews the disengaged "view (...) from nowhere." The ideal of disengagement, when universalized, produces skepticism in epistemology and amoralism in ethics. Since this ideal is itself a type of ethical stance, Rudd agrees with Kierkegaard that it cannot be "objectively" refuted, but can and must be rejected. In exploring Kierkegaard’s epistemology, Rudd correctly sees that this Kierkegaardian emphasis on "subjectivity" as necessary for knowledge by no means implies any kind of relativism or subjectivism about truth. (shrink)

This thoughtful book argues that skepticism -- the view that reliable knowledge is beyond our grasp -- is unavoidable unless knowledge is thought of not as merely an intellectual matter but as crucial to practical activity and emotional life. Author Anthony Rudd ties this idea to the work of Wittgenstein and Heidegger, exploring important similarities between the former's reminders of the "expressive" character of human experience and the latter's account of ways to experience the physical world "expressively.".

In this introductory textbook to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Jill Vance Buroker explains the role of this first Critique in Kant's Critical project and offers a line-by-line reading of the major arguments in the text. She situates Kant's views in relation both to his predecessors and to contemporary debates, explaining his Critical philosophy as a response to the failure of rationalism and the challenge of skepticism. Paying special attention to Kant's notoriously difficult vocabulary, she explains the strengths and (...) weaknesses of his arguments, while leaving the final assessment up to the reader. Intended to be read alongside the Critique, this guide is accessible to readers with little background in the history of philosophy, but should also be a valuable resource for more advanced students. (shrink)

This book analyzes contemporary visual art produced in the context of conflict and trauma from a range of countries, including Colombia, Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Australia. It focuses on what makes visual language unique, arguing that the "affective" quality of art contributes to a new understanding of the experience of trauma and loss. By extending the concept of empathy, it also demonstrates how we might, through art, make connections with people in different parts of the world whose experiences differ (...) from our own. The book makes a distinct contribution to trauma studies, which has tended to concentrate on literary forms of expression. It also offers a sophisticated theoretical analysis of the operations of art, drawing on philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze, but setting this within a postcolonial framework. _Empathic Vision_ will appeal to anyone interested in the role of culture in post-September 11 global politics. (shrink)

In the twenty interviews collected in this volume, seventeen of which appear in English for the first time, Levinas sets forth the central features of his ethical philosophy and discusses biographical matters not available elsewhere.

Dominant food systems, based on industrial methods and corporate control, are in a state of flux. To enable the transition towards more sustainable and just food systems, food movements are claiming new roles in governance. These movements, and the initiatives they spearhead, are associated with a range of labels (e.g., food sovereignty, food justice, and community food security) and use a variety of strategies to enact change. In this paper, we use the concept of relational fields to conduct a post-hoc (...) analysis of nine cases, examining how social movement organizations and other actors actively create new deliberative governance spaces. We argue that successes are related to the “power to convene,” a process-oriented approach that increases movements’ capacity to mobilize; leverage different types of power; and integrate, coordinate, and build a systems-oriented vision. The power to convene and create deliberative spaces is demonstrated in a variety of contexts and often results in outcomes that further movement aims, including policy change and repositioning food movement actors vis-à-vis others in the field. Our findings suggest that success is not only measured as policy outcomes, but as an advantageous repositioning of social movement actors that enables them to be part of governance processes beyond simple policy advocacy. (shrink)

This book is a discussion of some of Kierkegaard's central ideas, showing their relevance to contemporary debates in epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of religion. Anthony Rudd's aim is not simply to expound Kierkegaard's ideas but to draw on them creatively in order to illuminate questions about the foundations of morality and the nature of personal identity, as discussed by analytical philosophers such as MacIntyre, Parfit, Williams, and Foot. Rudd seeks a way forward from the sterile conflict between (...) the view that morality and religion are based on objective reasoning and the view that they are merely expressions of subjective emotions. He argues that morality and religion must be understood in terms of the individual's search for a sense of meaning in his or her own life, but emphasizes that this does not imply that values are arbitrary or merely subjective. (shrink)

Thirty years after the publication of Unity of the Churches: An Actual Possibility by Karl Rahner and Heinrich Fries, our panel was asked whether we consider the unity of the churches an actual possibility today. I sketch an answer to this question with the help of Michael Kinnamon, past Executive Secretary of the World Council of Churches and from 2007–2011 the General Secretary of the National Council of Churches in the USA, and Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council (...) for Promoting Christian Unity from March 2001 through June 2010. In response to Cardinal Kasper’s caveats, I address three points: 1) the word of God and the Eucharist, 2) transubstantiation, and 3) the sacrifice of the Mass, The fourth point is my concluding answer to the question of Christian unity. (shrink)

We often use symmetries to infer outcomes’ probabilities, as when we infer that each side of a fair coin is equally likely to come up on a given toss. Why are these inferences successful? I argue against answering this with an a priori indifference principle. Reasons to reject that principle are familiar, yet instructive. They point to a new, empirical explanation for the success of our probabilistic predictions. This has implications for indifference reasoning in general. I argue that a priori (...) symmetries need never constrain our probability attributions, even when it comes to our initial credences. (shrink)

Over the last few decades, a number of influential philosophers, psychologists and others have invoked the notion of narrative as having a central role to play in our thinking about ethics and personal identity.1 It has been argued that our sense of self is bound up with our capacity to tell a coherent story about ourselves, and that the mainstream analytic debate on personal identity has reached an impasse because the parties to it abstract the notion of a person from (...) the narratives in which persons figure as characters. It has also been argued, ethically, that we should strive to achieve the kind of unity characteristic of a narrative in our lives. However, something of a backlash against these narrative theories now seems to be developing, exemplified in recent work by, for instance, Galen Strawson, Peter Lamarque and John Christman.2 My intention here is to defend the value of the narrative approach from some of the most common recent criticisms. It would perhaps be better, though, to say ”a’, rather than ”the’, narrative approach; thinkers as different as Dennett and MacIntyre have both insisted on the importance of narrative, but the substantive claims that they make for it are very different.3 What I shall be defending is an approach to personal identity and ethics, drawn mainly from MacIntyre and Taylor, in which narrative plays a central role. In §1, I will elucidate the concept of narrative that MacIntyre introduced in After Virtue and show why this is central to thinking about the identity of persons across time. In §2, I shall consider and reject various objections to this narrative account of personal identity. I hope to show that some of the prominent criticisms of narrative theory simply don’t apply to this conception, properly understood. However, I don’t want to claim that the dispute over narrative is based purely on misunderstanding. One centrally important aspect of the dispute is a first-order ethical one about the extent to which we should seek for a unity based on narrative coherence in our lives, and in §§3 and 4, I will offer a defence of Taylor’s claim that an ethical life must aspire to, and to some extent achieve, narrative unity. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, John Lippitt mounts a forceful argument against narrativist approaches to issues in personal identity and practical deliberation, with specific reference to the application of such approaches in the interpretation of Kierkegaard's writings. The present critical discussion piece addresses two points in Lippitt's argument. First, it seeks to meet Lippitt's challenge to clarify the notion of "a whole life" as this figures in narrativist positions. Second, it clarifies the sense in which narrative unity, and (...) even selfhood, may be a matter of degree. It then uses this latter insight to sketch a defense of the claim that narrativity may indeed play a crucial role in Kierkegaard's distinction between ethical and aesthetic ways of life. (shrink)

The 1990s saw a revival of interest in Kierkegaard's thought, affecting the fields of theology, social theory, and literary and cultural criticism. The resulting discussions have done much to discredit the earlier misreadings of Kierkegaard's works.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (Article 1, Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948) This resounding statement encapsulates a number of problematic themes for lawyers with respect to personality disorder, and acutely so for the extremes of personality disorder embraced by designations such as psychopathy or dangerous and severe personality disorder (DSPD). These designations are in themselves (...) contentious; they do not have commonly agreed definitions either across disciplines or across jurisdictions. Morse (2008), for example, argues in a fascinating account that .. (shrink)

Recent debates within Continental philosophy have decisively renewed the question of the ethical, with the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas as its center. Coming from yet in contestation with the phenomenological traditions of Husserl and Heidegger, Levinas defines ethics as an originary response to the face of the other. For him, language is an exception to a habitual economy that represses alterity and maintains the asymmetry and distance constitutive of the nontotalizing relation to the other. Ethics occurs in the interlocutionary relation (...) to the other, and interpellation--a kind of interruption by speaking--is the essential feature of ethical language. Between 1982 and 1992, Levinas gave numerous interviews, closing a distinguished sixty-year career. Of the twenty interviews collected in this volume, seventeen appear in English for the first time. In the interviews Levinas sets forth the central features of his ethical philosophy, previously enunciated in Totality and Infinity, in a language that bridges to the idiom of his later work. He underlines his dedication to the phenomenological search for the concrete and the nonformal signification of alterity. He also elaborates issues that do not receive extensive treatment in his formal philosophical works, including the question of prephilosophical experiences and the ethical signification of money, justice, and the State. The informality of the interviews prompts Levinas to address matters about which he is reticent in his published works, notably the relation of his ethical philosophy to theological questions, the intrication of the Hebrew Bible in Greek philosophy, his substantial corpus of "nonphilosophical" or "confessional" writings on the Talmud, and recollections of his extraordinary talmudic teacher, Shoshani. The centerpiece of the volume is a previously untranslated 1986 interview with François Poirié. Containing Levinas's sole extended discussion of biographical matters with an interviewer, this text helps to situate Levinas in his contemporary intellectual world and to clarify his place in French thought. (shrink)

This paper critically assesses John Danaher’s ‘ethical behaviourism’, a theory on how the moral status of robots should be determined. The basic idea of this theory is that a robot’s moral status is determined decisively on the basis of its observable behaviour. If it behaves sufficiently similar to some entity that has moral status, such as a human or an animal, then we should ascribe the same moral status to the robot as we do to this human or animal. The (...) paper argues against ethical behaviourism by making four main points. First, it is argued that the strongest version of ethical behaviourism understands the theory as relying on inferences to the best explanation when inferring moral status. Second, as a consequence, ethical behaviourism cannot stick with merely looking at the robot’s behaviour, while remaining neutral with regard to the difficult question of which property grounds moral status. Third, not only behavioural evidence ought to play a role in inferring a robot’s moral status, but knowledge of the design process of the robot and of its designer’s intention ought to be taken into account as well. Fourth, knowledge of a robot’s ontology and how that relates to human biology often is epistemically relevant for inferring moral status as well. The paper closes with some concluding observations. (shrink)