This paper reports the first empirical investigation of the hypothesis that epistemic appraisals form part of the structure of concepts. To date, studies of concepts have focused on the way concepts encode properties of objects and the way those features are used in categorization and in other cognitive tasks. Philosophical considerations show the importance of also considering how a thinker assesses the epistemic value of beliefs and other cognitive resources and, in particular, concepts. We demonstrate that there are multiple, reliably (...) judged, dimensions of epistemic appraisal of concepts. Four of these dimensions are accounted for by a common underlying factor capturing how well people believe they understand a concept. Further studies show how dimensions of concept appraisal relate to other aspects of concepts. First, they relate directly to the hierarchical organization of concepts, reflecting the increase in specificity from superordinate to basic and subordinate levels. Second, they predict inductive choices in category-based induction. Our results suggest that epistemic appraisals of concepts form a psychologically important yet previously overlooked aspect of the structure of concepts. These findings will be important in understanding why individuals sometimes abandon and replace certain concepts; why social groups do so, for example, during a “scientific revolution”; and how we can facilitate such changes when we engage in deliberate “conceptual engineering” for epistemic, social, and political purposes. (shrink)

A recent study has established that thinkers reliably engage in epistemic appraisals of concepts of natural categories. Here, five studies are reported which investigated the effects of different manipulations of category learning context on appraisal of the concepts learnt. It was predicted that dimensions of concept appraisal could be affected by manipulating either procedural factors or declarative factors. While known effects of these manipulations on metacognitive judgements such as category learning judgements and confidence at test were replicated, procedural factors had (...) no reliable effects on the dimensions of concept appraisal. Effects of declarative manipulations on some forms of concept appraisal were observed. (shrink)

Liberation and Authority provides original, comparative readings of Plato’s Gorgias, the first book of the Republic, and Thucydides’ History, arguing that they share similarities not only in the oft-noted “natural justice” of Callicles, Thrasymachus, and the Melian Dialogue, but also in a development that runs through the whole of each.

It is the ambition of evolutionary psychology to explain how the basic features of human mental life came to be selected because of their contribution to biological survival. Counted among the most basic must be the subjective qualities of conscious sensory experience: the felt redness we experience on looking at a ripe tomato, the felt saltiness on tasting an anchovy, the felt pain on being pricked by a thorn. But, as many theorists acknowledge, with these qualia, the ambition of evolutionary (...) psychology may have met its match. Everyone agrees that a trait can only contribute to an organism's biological survival in so far as it operates in the public domain. Yet almost everyone also agrees that the subjective quality of sensory experience is (at least for all practical purposes) private and without external influence. Then, maybe we must either concede that the subjective quality of sensations cannot after all have been determined by selection (even if this is theoretically depressing) or else demonstrate that the quality of sensations is not as private as it seems to be (even if this is intuitively unconvincing). No. I believe neither of these solutions to the puzzle is in fact the right one. I argue instead that the truth is that the quality of sensations has indeed been shaped by selection in the past, despite the fact that it is today effectively private. And this situation has come about as a result of a remarkable evolutionary progression, whereby the primitive activity of sensing slowly became "privatized" - that is to say, removed from the domain of overt public behavior and transformed into a mental activity that is now, in humans, largely if not exclusively internal to the subject's mind. (shrink)

Julian of Norwich's Revelation of Love is an exploratory account of supernatural events she experienced in May 1373, when she was thirty years old. Lying ill in bed, apparently near death, she suddenly began to see, reflected in a crucifix being held before her face, a series of details from Christ's Passion: his blood, flowing down from under the crown of thorns ; his body, buffeted by unseen agencies ; the drying of his facial skin as he hung on the (...) cross ; and the “chawngynge of his chere” as, at the moment of death, he returned to joyous life. These “bodylye syght[s]” were gradually succeeded by other, less easily identifiable “gastelye syght[s],” and laconic “worde[s] formede in [her] vndyrstandynge” , spoken by Christ in explanation of elements of the vision, as this moved away from the Passion narrative into deeper theological waters, ending with a “gastelye syght” of Jesus sitting, God and human, in the city of Julian's soul . After first being doubtful of the validity of this experience, which was of great complexity and lasted for many hours , Julian came to view it as a single and theologically integrated revelation sent by God not only to her but to all Christians. (shrink)

At its heart, The Dialectic of Counter-Enlightenment is a plea not to take doubt at its word—a plea for the return of a vanished philosophical intelligence..

In mainstream analytic epistemology, Reformed theology has made its presence prominently felt in Reformed epistemology, the view of religious belief according to which religious beliefs can be properly basic and warranted when formed by the proper functioning of the sensus divinitatis, an inborn capacity or faculty for belief in God that can be prompted to generate certain religious beliefs when presented with things (e.g., certain majestic aspects of creation). A major competitor to Reformed epistemology is Wittgensteinian quasi-fideism, a position drawn (...) from the epistemology of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, according to which some foundational religious commitments are not properly basic beliefs but some kind of apodictic, unshakeable certainties that form part of the structure of one’s rationality and worldview. I argue that the Reformed tradition has contained elements of quasi-fideism at least as far back as Calvin’s account of faith from the Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 3, chapter 2. (shrink)

How can we think about things in the outside world? There is still no widely accepted theory of how mental representations get their meaning. In light of pioneering research, Nicholas Shea develops a naturalistic account of the nature of mental representation with a firm focus on the subpersonal representations that pervade the cognitive sciences.

A clearly written, authoritative introduction to Taylor's work.

This is a book about the meanings of words and how they can combine to form larger meaningful units, as well as how they can fail to combine when the ...

The increasingly lively controversy over scientific realism has become one of the principal themes of recent philosophy. 1 In watching this controversy unfold in the rather technical way currently in vogue, it has seemed to me that it would be useful to view these contemporary disputes against the background of such older epistemological issues as fallibilism, scepticism, relativism, and the traditional realism/idealism debate. This, then, is the object of the present book, which will recon sider the newer concerns about scientific (...) realism in the context of these older philosophical themes. Historically, realism concerns itself with the real existence of things that do not "meet the eye" - with suprasensible entities that lie beyond the reach of human perception. In medieval times, discussions about realism focused upon universals. Recognizing that there are physical objects such as cats and triangular objects and red tomatoes, the medievels debated whether such "abstract objects" as cathood and triangularity and redness also exist by way of having a reality indepen dent of the concretely real things that exhibit them. Three fundamen tally different positions were defended: (1) Nominalism. Abstracta have no independent existence as such: they only "exist" in and through the objects that exhibit them. Only particulars (individual substances) exist. Abstract "objects" are existents in name only, mere thought fictions by whose means we address concrete particular things. (2) Realism. Abstracta have an independent existence as such. (shrink)

How is consciousness possible? What biological purpose does it serve? And why do we value it so highly? In Soul Dust, the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, a leading figure in consciousness research, proposes a startling new theory. Consciousness, he argues, is nothing less than a magical-mystery show that we stage for ourselves inside our own heads. This self-made show lights up the world for us and makes us feel special and transcendent. Thus consciousness paves the way for spirituality, and allows (...) us, as human beings, to reap the rewards, and anxieties, of living in what Humphrey calls the "soul niche." Tightly argued, intellectually gripping, and a joy to read, Soul Dust provides answers to the deepest questions. It shows how the problem of consciousness merges with questions that obsess us all--how life should be lived and the fear of death. Resting firmly on neuroscience and evolutionary theory, and drawing a wealth of insights from philosophy and literature..."--Jacket. (shrink)

This essay presents a careful interpretation of Adorno’s classical text The Essay as Form, published in 1958 as the introduction to his Notes on Literature. Since it thickly condenses many of Adorno’s general views, the Essay poses great hermeneutic challenges to readers. The paper, first, elaborates on the essay more broadly as a genre and identifies a spectrum between science and art each individual essay draws from to forge its particular hybridity. Second, the example is discussed as an epistemologically potent (...) trope oscillating between subsumption and singularity. This internal tension renders the example particularly qualified to serve as the conceptual basis on which interpretative themes in the essay can be discovered. Three lines of interpretation are suggested: poetological for the essay/ Essay’s definition, goal, and method; critical/dialectical for its treatment of concepts and in relation to content; and epistemic for the modern separation of art and science. The conclusion comes back to the issue of exemplarity. (shrink)

Recent ideological positioning on the world stage has born a startling resemblance to a form of positioning within nursing theory – that of taking complex ideas, reducing them to a simplistic binary form, and uncritically adopting one half of that form. In some cases, this adoption of a binary position has led to a passionately held form of ‘othering’ that prohibits a healthy and critical engagement with ideas. As alluring as settling for the binary form may be – we argue (...) for holding binaries in tension as a catalyst for stimulating dialogue – reasoning and exploration of new ways of wrestling with the social and moral complexity of nursing. (shrink)

This volume is about abstract objects and the ways we refer to them in natural language. Asher develops a semantical and metaphysical analysis of these entities in two stages. The first reflects the rich ontology of abstract objects necessitated by the forms of language in which we think and speak. A second level of analysis maps the ontology of natural language metaphysics onto a sparser domain--a more systematic realm of abstract objects that are fully analyzed. This second level reflects the (...) commitments of real metaphysics. The models for these commitments assign truth conditions to natural language discourse. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

In this entertaining and provocative introduction, Royle offers lucid explanations of various key ideas, including deconstruction, undecidability, iterability, differance, aporia, the pharmakon, the supplement, a new enlightenment, and the democracy to come. He also gives attention, however, to a range of less obvious key ideas of Derrida, such as earthquakes, animals and animality, ghosts, monstrosity, the poematic, drugs, gifts, secrets, war, and mourning. Derrida is seen as an extraordinarily inventive thinker, as well as a brilliantly imaginative and often very funny (...) writer. Other critical introductions tend to highlight the specifically philosophical nature and genealogy of his work. Royle's book proceeds in a new and different way, in particular by focusing on the crucial but strange place of literature in Derrida's writings. He thus provides an appreciation and understanding based on detailed reference to Derrida's texts, interwoven with close readings of such writers as Shakespeare, Coleridge, P.B. Shelley, Poe, Emily Brontë, Franz Kafka and Elizabeth Bowen. In doing so, he explores Derrida's consistent view that deconstruction is "a coming-to-terms with literature". He emphasizes the ways in which "literature", for Derrida, is indissociably bound up with other concerns, such as philosophy and psychoanalysis, politics and ethics, responsibility and justice, law and democracy. (shrink)

We discuss the rational role of highly inattentive experiences, and argue that they can provide rational support for beliefs.

Identifying arguments -- Formal analysis of arguments -- Presenting your case -- Attacking an argument -- Defending your case -- Cause-and-effect reasoning.

This volume sets out to reverse the neglect.

The authors explore the history of experiments in economics, provide examples of different types of experiments and show that the growing use of experimental methods is transforming economics into an empirical science.

Why does the language of art commentary often seem so theoretically sophisticated while jargonistically empty? Introducing the puzzle of a computer generated artistic biography, this essay uses the sociological aesthetics of German theorist Arnold Gehlen to answer this question and account for the ‘algorithmic example.’ Since art commentary deals with the translation of images into words, the first section discusses the tradition of ekphrasis and isolates three developments – professionalization, marketization, abstraction – in its conditions of production. Emphasizing the ‘crisis (...) of ekphrasis,’ set off by non-representational art, the essay continues with its key witness Arnold Gehlen. Adumbrating his approach of ‘philosophical anthropology,’ the article connects (t)his wider circle of thought to his aesthetic theory with the idea of modern and contemporary art’s “Kommentarbedürftigkeit” (need of commentary) in the center. The conclusion uses this concept, combines it with a linguistic argument concerning International Art English, and thus offers a critical explanation for and a pessimistic diagnosis of the language of art commentary today. (shrink)

Block’s well-known distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness has generated a large philosophical literature about putative conceptual connections between the two. The scientific literature about whether they come apart in any actual cases is rather smaller. Empirical evidence gathered to date has not settled the issue. Some put this down to a fundamental methodological obstacle to the empirical study of the relation between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness. Block (2007) has drawn attention to the methodological puzzle and attempted to (...) answer it. While the evidence Block points to is relevant and important, this paper puts forward a more systematic framework for addressing the puzzle. To give it a label, the approach is to study phenomenal consciousness as a natural kind. The approach allows consciousness studies to move beyond the initial means of identifying instances of the kind, like verbal report, and to find its underlying nature. It is wellrecognised that facts about an underlying kind may allow identification of instances of the kind that do not match the initial means of identification (cp. non-liquid samples of water). This paper shows that the same method can be deployed to investigate phenomenal consciousness independently of access consciousness. (shrink)

Proposals to make us smarter than the greatest geniuses or to add thousands of years to our life spans seem fit only for the spam folder or trash can. And yet this is what contemporary advocates of radical enhancement offer in all seriousness. They present a variety of technologies and therapies that will expand our capacities far beyond what is currently possible for human beings. In _Humanity's End,_ Nicholas Agar argues against radical enhancement, describing its destructive consequences. Agar examines (...) the proposals of four prominent radical enhancers: Ray Kurzweil, who argues that technology will enable our escape from human biology; Aubrey de Grey, who calls for anti-aging therapies that will achieve "longevity escape velocity"; Nick Bostrom, who defends the morality and rationality of enhancement; and James Hughes, who envisions a harmonious democracy of the enhanced and the unenhanced. Agar argues that the outcomes of radical enhancement could be darker than the rosy futures described by these thinkers. The most dramatic means of enhancing our cognitive powers could in fact kill us; the radical extension of our life span could eliminate experiences of great value from our lives; and a situation in which some humans are radically enhanced and others are not could lead to tyranny of posthumans over humans. (shrink)

The present essay discusses a notorious rhetoric means familiar to all scholars in the social sciences and humanities including philosophy: name-dropping. Defined as the excessive over-use of authoritative names, I argue that it is a pernicious practice leading to collective disorientation in spoken discourse. First, I discuss name-dropping in terms of informal logic as an ad verecundiam-type fallacy. Insofar this perspective proves to lack contextual sensitivity, name-dropping is portrayed in Goffman’s terms as a more general social practice. By narrowing down (...) the focus to social science and the humanities, the essay emphasizes its function of discursive legitimation. This view, I argue, is incomplete because it overlooks the basic mechanism beneath. Names not only provide legitimation of but also orientation in discourse. Consequently, two tipping points—detour and disorientation—are proposed as benchmarks for it to become problematic. The conclusion re-widens the argument’s scope by suggesting questions for future inquiries. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook Jahrgang: 2013 Heft: 1 Seiten: 71-106.

In this provocative book, philosopher Nicholas Agar defends the idea that parents should be allowed to enhance their children’s characteristics. Gets away from fears of a Huxleyan ‘Brave New World’ or a return to the fascist eugenics of the past Written from a philosophically and scientifically informed point of view Considers real contemporary cases of parents choosing what kind of child to have Uses ‘moral images’ as a way to get readers with no background in philosophy to think about (...) moral dilemmas Provides an authoritative account of the science involved, making the book suitable for readers with no knowledge of genetics Creates a moral framework for assessing all new technologies. (shrink)

In this provocative book, philosopher Nicholas Agar defends the idea that parents should be allowed to enhance their children’s characteristics. Gets away from fears of a Huxleyan ‘Brave New World’ or a return to the fascist eugenics of the past Written from a philosophically and scientifically informed point of view Considers real contemporary cases of parents choosing what kind of child to have Uses ‘moral images’ as a way to get readers with no background in philosophy to think about (...) moral dilemmas Provides an authoritative account of the science involved, making the book suitable for readers with no knowledge of genetics Creates a moral framework for assessing all new technologies. (shrink)

During 2007/2008 Nicholas Rescher continued his longstanding practice of writing occasional studies on philosophical topics, both for formal presentation and for informal discussion with colleagues. While his forays of this kind have usually been issued in journal publications, this has not been so in the present case so that the studies offered here encompass substantially new material. Notwithstanding their thematic variation, these exemplify a problem-oriented method in the treatment of philosophical issues that is characteristic of Rescher's philosophical modus operandi (...) and inherent in its endeavors to treat classical issues from novel points of view. For Rescher usually more concerned with what should be said about a philosophical question than with what X, Y, and Z have said about it, and he inclined to address issues of the latter sort primarily as a means for addressing the former."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

In Republican Guard , Nicholas Xenos describes the Straussian network and its nature, focusing upon delineating what in Leo Strauss’ writings has influenced and can tell us about the ‘character of American power today and the rhetoric through which it is enhanced and sustained.’ In the end he argues and demonstrates that Strauss’ political theory provides the means by which an imperial project can be camouflaged under the cloak of an appeal to liberal democracy. This book will be of (...) interest to students and scholars of politics and international relations. (shrink)

Proposals to make us smarter than the greatest geniuses or to add thousands of years to our life spans seem fit only for the spam folder or trash can. And yet this is what contemporary advocates of radical enhancement offer in all seriousness. They present a variety of technologies and therapies that will expand our capacities far beyond what is currently possible for human beings. In _Humanity's End,_ Nicholas Agar argues against radical enhancement, describing its destructive consequences. Agar examines (...) the proposals of four prominent radical enhancers: Ray Kurzweil, who argues that technology will enable our escape from human biology; Aubrey de Grey, who calls for anti-aging therapies that will achieve "longevity escape velocity"; Nick Bostrom, who defends the morality and rationality of enhancement; and James Hughes, who envisions a harmonious democracy of the enhanced and the unenhanced. Agar argues that the outcomes of radical enhancement could be darker than the rosy futures described by these thinkers. The most dramatic means of enhancing our cognitive powers could in fact kill us; the radical extension of our life span could eliminate experiences of great value from our lives; and a situation in which some humans are radically enhanced and others are not could lead to tyranny of posthumans over humans. (shrink)

. This paper examines the association between long-term compensation and corporate social responsibility for 90 publicly traded Canadian firms. Social responsibility is considered to include concerns for social factors and the environment, 564-578; Kane, E. J., 341-359). Long-term compensation attempts to focus executives efforts on optimizing the longer term, which should direct their attention to factors traditionally associated with socially responsible executives. As hypothesized, we found a significant relationship between the long-term compensation and total CSR weakness as well as the (...) product/environmental weakness dimension of CSR. In addition, we found a marginally significant relationship between long-term compensation and total corporate responsibility. Our findings are that executives long-term compensation is associated with a firms environmental actions, and that firms that utilize long-term compensation are more likely to mitigate product/environment weaknesses than those that do not. Implications for practice and research are discussed. (shrink)

Are bacteriophage T4 and the long-nosed elephant fish valuable in their own right? Nicholas Agar defends an affirmative answer to this question by arguing that anything living is intrinsically valuable. This claim challenges received ethical wisdom according to which only human beings are valuable in themselves. The resulting biocentric or life-centered morality forms the platform for an ethic of the environment. -/- Agar builds a bridge between the biological sciences and what he calls "folk" morality to arrive at a (...) workable environmental ethic and a new spectrum--a new hierarchy--of living organisms. The book overturns common-sense moral belief as well as centuries of philosophical speculation on the exclusive moral significance of humans. Spanning several fields, including philosophy of psychology, philosophy of science, and other areas of contemporary analytic philosophy, Agar analyzes and speaks to a wide array of historic and contemporary views, from Aristotle and Kant, to E. O. Wilson, Holmes Rolston II, and Baird Callicot. The result is a challenge to prevailing definitions of value and a call for a scientifically-informed appreciation of nature. (shrink)

Nicholas Agar offers a more nuanced view of the transformative potential of genetic and cybernetic technologies, making a case for moderate human enhancement—improvements to attributes and abilities that do not significantly exceed what ...

Time and Fantasy in Narratives of Jihad: The Case of the Islami Jamiat-I-Tuleba in Karachi This article proposes an analytical framework for thinking about violence in the Islami Jamiat-i-Tuleba (IJT), the student organization of Jamaat e Islami (JI), Pakistan's longstanding Islamist party. It prioritises the intersection of the psychic and the social, and the role of politics, history and biography in mediating the modalities, narration and praxis of violence in the city of Karachi. The dominant explanations tend to emphasise political (...) instrumentalism, and structural and ideological factors, and to "Islamicise" the violence, collapsing Islamic rhetoric into an extemporization of conditions, ignoring the deep affective appeal of violence to individuals, and leaving unelaborated the role of intersecting national, local and individual contexts and temporalities in structuring political subjectivity and violent action. (shrink)

In a warm and enjoyable dialogue the meaning of health, in its fullest sense, becomes a philosophical issue as much as a biological. For isn't the essence of health a general sense of well-being? Health can be seen as reflecting satisfaction with our quality of life; but how do we achieve that? Here, a character who is heading off for a job teaching health has an extended conversation with a trusted mentor, and they test various definitions, various visions, and some (...) of the infinite possibilities of the idea of health, in the process coming to a deeper and more invigorating understanding of life itself. They arrive at the notion of symbiosis - a living together to the advantage of each. And isn't a good conversation a sort of living together to the advantage of each? In such dialogue, we engage with our hearts and minds. When are we more alive than that? What is the peak of health if not this life, this engagement? The two friends want to know what health is. But they want more: They want to be healthy. They see three basic types of health - bodily, mental, and societal. These three types affect one another. How they affect one another matters in a critical way. But there is more. A friendly conversation allows special access to what is critical. Our guard is down in such a conversation. We are less likely to be defensive. We are more likely to keep our minds open and clear. We are likely to feel the confidence it takes to learn. (shrink)