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)

That Kant sees the faculties of imagination and judgment as closely related is not controversial. Yet precisely how they relate to each other, especially across his Critical philosophy, is less clear. In this paper, I consider the relationship between what Kant calls the ‘power of imagination’ [Einbildungskraft] and the ‘power of judgment’ [Urteilskraft]. I argue for the following claim: insofar as the power of judgment is the faculty of thinking particulars under universals, the power of imagination is the faculty of (...) producing and providing particulars for judgment—either to reflect on or to subsume under universals. Such an account reveals that our capacity for imagination is intimately bound up with our capacity to judge. (shrink)

Education systems are full of harmful violence of types often unrecognised or misunderstood by educators, education leaders, and bureaucrats. Educational violence harms a great number of innocent persons (those who, morally speaking, may not be justifiably harmed). Accordingly, this paper rejects educational violence used to achieve educational ends. It holds that educational violence is unjustified if the condition that innocent persons are harmed is satisfied, that this condition is satisfied in current educational practice (compulsory schooling), and that, therefore, the current (...) education system (schooling) acts in an unjustifiable manner. If the means of educating cannot be justified, then that education system itself cannot be justified, since an end cannot be justifiably pursued if the means requisite to pursuing it are unjustifiable. I call this stance ‘educational pacifism’. (shrink)

I propose a revision of Cantor’s account of set size that understands comparisons of set size fundamentally in terms of surjections rather than injections. This revised account is equivalent to Cantor's account if the Axiom of Choice is true, but its consequences differ from those of Cantor’s if the Axiom of Choice is false. I argue that the revised account is an intuitive generalization of Cantor’s account, blocks paradoxes—most notably, that a set can be partitioned into a set that is (...) bigger than it—that can arise from Cantor’s account if the Axiom of Choice is false, illuminates the debate over whether the Axiom of Choice is true, is a mathematically fruitful alternative to Cantor’s account, and sheds philosophical light on one of the oldest unsolved problems in set theory. (shrink)

The question of whether it is permissible to quantify into a modal context is re-examined from an empiricist perspective. Following Wiggins, it is argued that an ontology of continuants implies essentialism, but it is also argued, against Wiggins, that the only conception of necessity that we need to start out with is that of analyticity. Essentialism, of a limited kind, can then be actually generated from this. An exceptionally fine-grained identity criterion for continuants is defended in this context. The debate (...) between Wiggins and Ayer over the legitimacy of de re modality is then examined in the light of these results, and it is argued that my position is consistent with Ayer’s minimalist assumptions. It is also argued that non-continuants will not sustain the essential/accidental distinction, thus giving some concessions to the sceptics. It is also shown that there are close connections between these issues and the more modern two-dimensionalist way of disentangling the necessary from the a posteriori, and that the latter needs to learn from the former. (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)

This book by distinguished philosopher Nicholas Rescher seeks to clarify the idea of what a conditional says by elucidating the information that is normally transmitted by its utterance. The result is a unified treatment of conditionals based on epistemological principles rather than the semantical principles in vogue over recent decades. This approach, argues Rescher, makes it easier to understand how conditionals actually function in our thought and discourse. In its concern with what language theorists call pragmatics--the study of the (...) norms and principles governing our use of language in conveying information--Conditionals steps beyond the limits of logic as traditionally understood and moves into the realm claimed by theorists of artificial intelligence as they try to simulate our actual information-processing practices.The book's treatment of counterfactuals essentially revives an epistemological approach proposed by F. P. Ramsey in the 1920s and developed by Rescher himself in the 1960s but since overshadowed by the now-dominant possible-worlds approach. Rescher argues that the increasingly evident liabilities of the possible-worlds strategy make a reappraisal of the older style of analysis both timely and desirable. As the book makes clear, an epistemological approach demonstrates that counterfactual reasoning, unlike inductive inference, is not a matter of abstract reasoning alone but one of good judgment and common sense. (shrink)

Even though medics in the present day may think that clinical pathology is derived from normal physiology, I argue here that this is not necessarily the case. Historically, physiology may have been derived from clinical pathology. After deriving physiological knowledge like this, medics can reverse the conceptual priority, to make believe that physiological knowledge is at the foundation of medical practice. This implies that supposedly objective physiological knowledge can be influenced by the evaluative judgements made to define practical concepts of (...) clinical pathology. I argue for this view using the history of the disease heart failure, drawing on an argument made by Georges Canguilhem. (shrink)

Computational models will play an important role in our understanding of human higher‐order cognition. How can a model's contribution to this goal be evaluated? This article argues that three important aspects of a model of higher‐order cognition to evaluate are (a) its ability to reason, solve problems, converse, and learn as well as people do; (b) the breadth of situations in which it can do so; and (c) the parsimony of the mechanisms it posits. This article argues that fits of (...) models to quantitative experimental data, although valuable for other reasons, do not address these criteria. Further, using analogies with other sciences, the history of cognitive science, and examples from modern‐day research programs, this article identifies five activities that have been demonstrated to play an important role in our understanding of human higher‐order cognition. These include modeling within a cognitive architecture, conducting artificial intelligence research, measuring and expanding a model's ability, finding mappings between the structure of different domains, and attempting to explain multiple phenomena within a single model. (shrink)

Anna Smajdor and Joona Räsänen argue that we have good reason to classify pregnancy as a disease. They discuss five accounts of disease and argue that each account either implies that pregnancy is a disease or, if it does not, it faces problems. This strategy allows Smajdor and Räsänen to avoid articulating their own account of disease. Consequently, they cannot establish that pregnancy is a disease, only that plausible accounts of disease suggest this. Some readers will dismiss Smajdor and Räsänen’s (...) claims as counterintuitive. By analogy, if a mathematical proof concludes ‘2+2=5’, readers will know—without investigation—that an error occurred. Rather than dismiss Smajdor and Räsänen’s work, however, the easiest way to undermine their argument is to describe at least one plausible account of disease that (i) excludes pregnancy and (ii) avoids the problems they raise for it. This is our strategy. We focus on dysfunction accounts of disease. After outlining Smajdor and Räsänen’s main arguments against dysfunction accounts, we explain why pregnancy is not a disease on these accounts. Next, we defend dysfunction accounts against the three problems that Smajdor and Räsänen raise. If successful, then contra Smajdor and Räsänen, at least one plausible account of disease does not imply that pregnancy is a disease. We suspect that defenders of other accounts can respond similarly. Yet, we note that insofar as dysfunction accounts align with the commonsense intuition that pregnancy is not a disease, this, all else being equal, seems like a point in their favour. (shrink)

Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean states that each moral virtue stands opposed to two types of vice: one of excess and one of deficiency, respectively. Critics claim that some virtues—like honesty, fair-mindedness, and patience—are counterexamples to Aristotle’s doctrine. Here, I develop a generalizable strategy to defend the doctrine of the mean against such counterexamples. I argue that not only is the doctrine of the mean defensible, but taking it seriously also allows us to gain substantial insight into particular virtues. Failure (...) to take the doctrine seriously, moreover, exposes us to the risk of mistaking certain vices for virtues. (shrink)

My goal in this paper is to account for the value of species in terms of the value of individual organisms that make them up. Many authors have pointed to an apparent conflict between a species preservationist ethic and moral theories that place value on individuals. I argue for an account of the worth of individual organisms grounded in the representational goals of those organisms. I claim thatthis account leads to an acceptably extensive species preservationist ethic.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:On the Inconvenience of Other People by Lauren BerlantNicholas AdlerBerlant, Lauren. On the Inconvenience of Other People. Duke University Press, 2022. 256pp.An Ambivalent TriumphAttachment is a double-edged sword. This idea is the scaffolding of the late Lauren Berlant's pivotal work, Cruel Optimism (2011), which explores the idea that attachment to a collectively invested fantasy of "the good life" acts in disservice of personal growth and lasting fulfillment. The (...) Inconvenience of Other People ostensibly repeats this structure while reattributing the role of fantasy. The premise here is that attachments to other people act in disservice to the fantasy of personal sovereignty. Of course, both texts argue for collectivity and for a recasting of the ordinary that structures current fantasies. But while Cruel Optimism builds around the unavoidable condition of fantasy, Inconvenience takes relations within the present as its fundamentally unavoidable condition, specifically the drive to be in relation even though such relations are inconvenient. "People" in the work's title stands for any attachment, any person or thing to which we exist in relation. To be part of the world is to be constantly taking in and living with the objects around us. This constant process of adjustment generates constant friction with our fantasy of sovereignty, or control, over ourselves. In Berlant's words, "inconvenience is another way of pointing to the experience of nonsovereign relationality," making our inconvenience drive the urge to maintain and explore those nonsovereign relations despite the uncomfortable friction they produce (18). Berlant's final monograph investigates the complexities of living with that inconvenience as well the potential for "loosening [those inconvenient objects] and becoming loose with them" in order to make that inconvenience generative of new perspectives and approaches (150).The prospect of overhauling our relationship with inconvenience takes place on multiple registers, both in terms of the affective states that guide the experience of inconvenience and the frameworks that determine its expression in the world. Refiguring ambivalence and dissociation, [End Page 123] the traditional affective responses to inconvenience, as well as offering a more dynamic structure for engaging with inconvenience than that of the institution, Berlant demonstrates—in a contained and structured way—the very object-loosening for which the text advocates. Although the book is presented as a collection of "assays...clusters of actions that become forms of life that shift the pressures of being in relation," it is nonetheless broken into three distinct chapters that focus on the role of the inconvenient in political relations, sexual relations, and relations with the self (11). These chapters, respectively, take up the inconvenient with regard to infrastructure, ambivalence, and dissociation.To productively engage with inconvenience, it must be accommodated within a social infrastructure. The term infrastructure positions the material of lived relationality as more flexible than that of institutions and more legible than that of expressive causality. For Berlant, "infrastructures are productive, durationally extensive spaces for the pliable forms of life that people use to make rules and norms and other means of extending the world" (23). In Chapter 2, they invoke the concept of the commons, "an orientation toward life and value unbound by concepts of property as constituted by division and ownership," using it as a way to illustrate infrastructuralism in effect (82). The commons can refer to as concrete a physical space as the Boston Common, as explored through Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Nature," or as abstract an inheritance as shared language, as explored through Juliana Spahr's lyrical autobiography, The Transformation (2007).The commons of both Emerson and Spahr make use of the concept of analogy. For Emerson, it stands for "the separation within the nonsovereign relation [of the commons] that makes linking possible" (Berlant 94). Spahr takes a more critical approach, continuing Emerson's use of the term while shining light on the glitches that emerge when any analogy is examined too closely. Acknowledging the rhetorical gymnastics required to "figure equally valued social being" within "imperialist capitalist infrastructures" reveals every possible analogy as both grossly oversimplifying and only temporarily comprehensible (105). Objects within these commons are constantly adjusting and generating new relations. The sense of an ongoing dynamic is what Berlant hopes this... (shrink)

In this paper we explore how compositional semantics, discourse structure, and the cognitive states of participants all contribute to pragmatic constraints on answers to questions in dialogue. We synthesise formal semantic theories on questions and answers with techniques for discourse interpretation familiar from computational linguistics, and show how this provides richer constraints on responses in dialogue than either component can achieve alone.

Education – typically and rightly held to be an incontrovertible good – has for some time now been dominated by mass formal schooling systems. These systems routinely harm and oppress many students. I argue that they do so impermissibly, and I call this stance “educational pacifism”. I propose that Maria Montessori’s views on mass formal schooling systems broadly align with educational pacifism and that, therefore, she can be considered an educational pacifist. Finally, I claim that contemporary Montessorians ought to be (...) educational pacifists, firstly because educational pacifism makes a compelling moral argument and secondly because Montessori herself agrees with it. (shrink)

My account is subject to two important limitations. First, I shall be discussing whether or not Aristotle holds to an essentialistic doctrine with regard to sensible particulars, and shall neglect entirely his views about such things as species, genera, universals, and the like. Secondly, I shall be leaving out of account such chronologically late productions as Metaphysics VI-X and IV. Thus I shall be concentrating on the Categories, the Topics, the Physics, and the De Generatione et Corruptione. I am not (...) convinced that later works show substantial change over the works which I shall be discussing, but the later works do present severe exegetical difficulties which could not be adequately met within the scope of this essay. (shrink)

Although most scholars agree that the lexicon of Sophist 232b1-236d4 is similar to that of Republic X, they leave undetermined whether they are theoretically compatible. Notably, both dialogues elucidate the art of imitation through the metaphor of the painter who deceives his pupils through φαντάσματα. I argue that Plato’s conception of imitation of the Republic is not only consistent with that presented in the Sophist, but also importantly integrates it.

This issue of Christian Bioethics explores theological, metaphysical, and ethical questions surrounding emerging reproductive technologies. Narratives concerning such technologies are often manipulated via “language games.” Language games involve toying with language to ensure that one’s vision of the good gains or retains political prominence. Such games are common in academic discussions of “artificial womb” technologies. Abortion proponents, for example, are already using language to dehumanize subjects within “artificial wombs.” This is unsurprising. Were relevant subjects considered persons, then abortion access (and (...) other forms of “reproductive autonomy”) might be curtailed. Here, I show that abortion proponents’ language games often depend on dubious metaphysical claims. Second, I argue that Christians should oppose dehumanizing language games, since those games undermine “neighbor-love,” which Christians are commanded to show others. I also highlight how discussions of other technologies—such as medication abortion—are affected by confused (or manipulative) language. Ultimately, the language games I critique aim to preserve and expand the “rights” of the powerful to dehumanize, control, and kill vulnerable human beings. Since neighbor-love commands Christians to provide for “the least of these,” however, Christians must expose these manipulative language games, refute them, and resist the corrupt ideologies from which they flow. (shrink)

An ongoing project in the philosophy of science and medicine is the effort to articulate a form of relativism about science that can find a path between strongly realist and pernicious relativist poles. Recent scholarship on relativism has described the characteristics a philosophy must have in order to be considered a thoroughgoing relativism. These include non-absolutism, multiplicity, dependence, incompatibility, equal validity and non-neutrality. Critics of relativism maintain that these requirements cannot be met without collapsing into a pernicious form of relativism (...) and that attempts to do so have failed. Against this view, I argue that the early twentieth century philosophy of Ludwik Fleck satisfies these requirements. Paying attention to the scientific details of Fleck’s account of active and passive elements of knowledge, and the resistance generated by them, reveals a thoroughgoing and yet reasonable relativism about science. (shrink)

In a clear account of the mature theology of Thomas Aquinas the author, a theologian himself, reveals the evangelical, pastoral and theocentric character of Aquinas's pre-modern theology.

Three thoughts strongly influence recent work on sensory imagination, often without explicit articulation. The image thought says that all mental states involving a mental image are imaginative. The attitude thought says that, if there is a distinctive imaginative attitude, it is a single, monolithic attitude. The function thought says that the functions of sensory imagination are identical or akin to functions of other mental states such as judgment or belief. Taken together, these thoughts create a theoretical context within which eliminativism (...) appears attractive. Eliminativism is the idea that we needn’t refer to a distinctive attitude in order to characterize sensory imagination: the attitudes involved in other states provide all the resources we need. Peter Langland-Hassan’s account of sensory imagination provides an example of such eliminativism. Via close examination of this account, I make manifest the three thoughts and their collective tendency to support eliminativism. I argue that all three are dubious, and that we should reject eliminativism; we need a distinctive imaginative attitude if we are to adequately explicate sensory imagination. (shrink)

This is a response given at the book launch for Christopher Insole’s Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law, hosted jointly, in November 2020, by the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, and the Australian Catholic University. The response considers the gap between the textual Kant, and the received Kant, and reflects on how theologians have been too quick either to condemn and dismiss Kant, or to rehabilitate Kant for theological projects, which Kant would have been opposed (...) to, given his deepest philosophical commitments. (shrink)

It is well-known that Karl Rahner studied with Heidegger, but although there has been some recent interest in Rahner’s eschatology, it is rarely recognised how substantially Rahner’s discussion of the future draws on Heidegger’s earlier writings on time. At the same time, it is increasingly desirable to show how technical issues in theology bear upon concrete political practice in the public sphere. This article shows the extent of Rahner’s use of Heidegger and explains how Rahner’s understanding of the future relates (...) to concrete questions of ethics and Christian self-understanding. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of socialization on work-related norms (WORKNORM).We tested the hypothesis that organizational (ORGSOC) and professional socialization (PROFSOC) are antecedent influences on WORKNORM, employing a sample of 339 marketing practitioners. The results of covariance structural analysis indicate that ORGSOC and PROFSOC and WORKNORM are discriminant constructs within the tested model. The study also reveals that the influence of ORGSOC on WORKNORM is stronger than the influence of PROFSOC on these same norms.Because this social learning occurs in work-related (...) activities, in organizations, and in professional life, it is important that managers appreciate that these three separate domains influence decision making under ethical conditions. The limitations of the study and future research directions are discussed. (shrink)

This chapter outlines a novel solution to the problem of the many, according to which objects can be simultaneously constituted by many collections of particles. To support this proposal, it develops a conception of objects that implies it. On this view, objects are fundamentally subjects of change: the changes an object can survive are explanatorily prior to its constitution. From this perspective, PM arises, and objects are multiply constituted because the changes that objects survive are too coarse-grained to distinguish among (...) the many different collections of particles that are candidates for constituting the relevant object. (shrink)

This paper presses the programmatic idea that it is fruitful to think of genders as constituted by aesthetic rational social practices; in particular, that doing so can illuminate the relation between social role and self-identity. The first part of the paper describes rational social practices, and then interprets two social-role approaches to genders in light of that description. The interpretation places the two approaches in different domains of reason, one epistemic, one practical; this makes apparent the conceptual space for a (...) model of gender roles inhabiting the aesthetic domain. The second part of the paper articulates such a model, according to which the feminine and masculine roles in a social context consist in aesthetic constraints, enablements and norms. These depend on rational, social, human-centred aesthetic practices in which gender differentiation is essential. The third part of the paper demonstrates the utility of this model by using it to explore the relation between social role and self-identity; it argues that one identifies with a gender by actively participating in the very aesthetic practices that constitute it, and so generating reasons for self-valuation. Throughout, the point is not so much to defend the specific details of the suggested views, but more to show that the idea that aesthetic practices play a significant role in constituting gender merits serious consideration. (shrink)

John Kinsella’s fiction emphasizes similar themes of environmental activism, political protest, and critique of Australian society, as does his widely acclaimed poetry. As in his verse, his orientation as a fiction writer is both local and global, regional and cosmopolitan. But in his fiction Kinsella engages in a double interrogation of both mainstream society and his own posture in opposition to it. In the novella Pink Lake a film director is interviewed by an uncomprehending journalist and driven to desperation by (...) the philistinism of Australian society. But his own arrogance, unexamined white and male privilege, and illusion that just because he practices what he calls cinema vérité he has in fact attained the truth mean that he is part of the problem as well. Kinsella examines the problematics of social critique in a neoliberal world, noting their ironies while still believing in their possibility and necessity. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Overview Ralph Waldo Emerson John Dewey Richard Rorty Martha Nussbaum Conclusion.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) concerns the realm of business behavior in which the firm tries to effectively manage its business and non-market environment interface. Coerced CSR refers to taking socially responsible action in response to or in anticipation of retaliation in some form (boycott, adverse publicity, introduction of regulatory laws, etc.) from interest groups who are not directly part of the market to which the firm caters. In contrast, strategic CSR or altruistic CSR refers to socially responsible activities undertaken out (...) of enlightened self-interest. The focus of this paper is to understand whether the impact of coercion is different for government-owned organizations and privately owned firms in developing countries. Activities that are in response to or in anticipationof threats by interest groups are identified and compared across publicly and privately owned firms, against the backdrop of weak enforcement of fairly stringent environmental regulation. We then generalize our observations and attempt to distinguish the intensity of pressures felt by public and privately owned firms and their speed of response. As a result of this understanding, we attempt to suggest specific policy mixes for various types of industry, depending on whether they are dominated by the public sector or private sector. (shrink)

In this essay, I sketch a preliminary, phenomenological definition of black horror cinema. I argue that black horror films are films in which blackness and antiblackness are depicted as unintelligible. I build this definition first by arguing that horror films generally evoke a mood of Heideggerian uncanniness, by which I mean that they create a global affective state in which the world is experienced as unintelligible. I then turn to the Afropessimist theorizing of Frank B. Wilderson, who proposes both that (...) blackness and antiblackness are phenomenologically graspable as unintelligible, and that cinema resists this unintelligibility by warping blackness and antiblackness. However, I thus contend that black horror is an exception to this rule. Black horror films take advantage of horror’s uncanny mood to craft a filmic world in which blackness and anti blackness are unintelligible. (shrink)

The distinction between literal and figurative use is well-known and embedded in ‘folk linguistics’. According to folk linguistics, figurative uses deviate from literal ones. But recent work on lexical modulation and polysemy shows that meaning deviation is ubiquitous, even in cases of literal use. Hence, it has been argued, the literal/figurative distinction has no value for theorising about communication. In this paper, we focus on metaphor and argue that here the literal–figurative distinction has theoretical importance. The distinction between literal and (...) metaphorical needs to be captured by our account of communication because literal uses transmit information in a way that metaphorical ones do not. We argue that there is a way to explain the literal/metaphorical distinction that preserves the core of the folk-linguistic idea and gives the distinction theoretical relevance. We propose that literal uses of a word are made with the intention to conform to an established practice of use, while metaphorical uses do not so conform, but depend on this pre-existing practice. Our account can deal with data that are problematic for other theories. A further advantage is that it extends naturally to other non-literal uses of words, including metonymy. (shrink)