I show, building on Warren Quinn's puzzle of the self-torturer, that destructive conduct with respect to the environment can flourish even in the absence of interpersonal conflicts. As Quinn's puzzle makes apparent, in cases where individually negligible effects are involved, an agent, whether it be an individual or a unified collective, can be led down a course of destruction simply as a result of following its informed and perfectly understandable but intransitive preferences. This is relevant with (...) respect to environmental ethics, since environmental damage is often the result of the accumulation of individually negligible effects. (shrink)

In this paper we advance a new solution to Quinn’s puzzle of the self-torturer. The solution falls directly out of an application of the principle of instrumental reasoning to what we call “vague projects”, i.e., projects whose completion does not occur at any particular or definite point or moment. The resulting treatment of the puzzle extends our understanding of instrumental rationality to projects and ends that cannot be accommodated by orthodox theories of rational choice.

The puzzle of the self-torturer raises intriguing questions concerning rationality, cyclic preferences, and resoluteness. Interestingly, what makes the case puzzling has not been clearly pinpointed. The puzzle, it seems, is that a series of rational choices foreseeably leads the self-torturer to an option that serves his preferences worse than the one with which he started. But this is a very misleading way of casting the puzzle. I pinpoint the real puzzle of the (...) self-torturer and, in the process, reveal a neglected but crucial dimension of instrumental rationality. (shrink)

Sergio Tenenbaum and Diana Raffman contend that ‘vague projects’ motivate radical revisions to orthodox, utility-maximising rational choice theory. Their argument cannot succeed if such projects merely ground instances of the paradox of the sorites, or heap. Tenenbaum and Raffman are not blind to this, and argue that Warren Quinn’s Puzzle of the Self-Torturer does not rest on the sorites. I argue that their argument both fails to generalise to most vague projects, and is ineffective in the case (...) of the Self-Torturer itself. (shrink)

This paper concerns Warren Quinn’s famous “The Puzzle of the Self-Torturer.” I argue that even if we accept his assumption that practical rationality is purely instrumental such that what he ought to do is simply a function of how the relevant options compare to each other in terms of satisfying his actual preferences that doesn’t mean that every explanation as to why he shouldn’t advance to the next level must appeal to the idea that so advancing would (...) be suboptimal in terms of the satisfaction of his actual preferences. Rather, we can admit that his advancing would always be optimal, but argue that advancing isn’t always what he ought to do given that advancing sometimes fails to meet some necessary condition for being what he ought to do. For instance, something can be what he ought to do only if it’s an option for him. What’s more, something can be what he ought to do only if it’s something that he can do without responding inappropriately to his reasons—or, so, I argue. Thus, the solution to the puzzle is, I argue, to realize that, in certain circumstances, advancing is not what the self-torturer ought to do given that he can do so only by responding inappropriately to his reasons. (shrink)

We commonly face circumstances in which the cumulative negative effects of repeatedly acting in a certain way over time will be significant, although the negative effects of any one such act, taken on its own, are insubstantial. Warren Quinn's puzzle of the self-torturer presents an especially clear example of this type of predicament. This paper considers three different approaches to understanding the rational response to such situations. The first focuses on the conditions under which it is rational (...) to revise one's prior intentions. The second raises the possibility of a fundamental disconnect between the rational assessment of an extended pattern of choices and the assessment of the individual choices that make up that pattern. I show that neither adequately addresses the underlying issues. I propose a third approach, according to which the rational assessment of the “self-torturer's” choices is guided, not by any plan or intention the he has actually adopted, but by the plan or plans it would have been reasonable for him to adopt from the outset. The larger significance of this conclusion is brought out through the identification of conditions under which one's past choices can non-derivatively constrain the rational response to one's present circumstances. (shrink)

Moral puzzles about actions which bring about very small or what are said to be imperceptible harms or benefits for each of a large number of people are well known. Less well known is an argument by Warren Quinn that standard theories of rationality can lead an agent to end up torturing himself or herself in a completely foreseeable way, and that this shows that standard theories of rationality need to be revised. We show where Quinn's argument goes wrong, and (...) apply this to the moral puzzles. (shrink)

Paradox Lost covers ten of philosophy’s most fascinating paradoxes, in which seemingly compelling reasoning leads to absurd conclusions. The following paradoxes are included: The Liar Paradox, in which a sentence says of itself that it is false. Is the sentence true or false? The Sorites Paradox, in which we imagine removing grains of sand one at a time from a heap of sand. Is there a particular grain whose removal converts the heap to a non-heap? The Puzzle of the (...) Self-Torturer, in which a series of seemingly rational choices has us accepting a life of excruciating pain, in exchange for millions of dollars. Newcomb’s Problem, in which we seemingly maximize our expected profit by taking an unknown sum of money, rather than taking the same sum plus $1000. The Surprise Quiz Paradox, in which a professor finds that it is impossible to give a surprise quiz on any particular day of the week... but also that if this is so, then a surprise quiz can be given on any day. The Two Envelope Paradox, in which we are asked to choose between two indistinguishable envelopes, and it is seemingly shown that each envelope is preferable to the other. The Ravens Paradox, in which observing a purple shoe provides evidence that all ravens are black. The Shooting Room Paradox, in which a deadly game kills 90% of all who play, yet each individual’s survival turns on the flip of a fair coin. Each paradox is clearly described, common mistakes are explored, and a clear, logical solution offered. Paradox Lost will appeal to professional philosophers, students of philosophy, and all who love intellectual puzzles. (shrink)

In this paper I will present a puzzle about visual appearance. There are certain necessary constraints on how things can visually appear. The puzzle is about how to explain them. I have no satisfying solution. My main thesis is simply that the puzzle is a puzzle. I will develop the puzzle as it arises for representationalism about experience because it is currently the most popular theory of experience and I think it is along the right (...) lines. However, everyone faces a form of the puzzle, including the naïve realist. In §1 I explain representationalism about experience. In §§2-3 I develop the puzzle and criticize a response due to Ned Block and Jeff Speaks and another response based on a novel form of representationalism (“sensa representationalism”). In §4 I argue that defenders of “perceptual confidence” (Morrison, Munton, my earlier self) face an instance of the puzzle. In §5 I suggest that everyone faces a form of the puzzle. (shrink)

Climate change has made pressing the question of why we do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. By analogy to the puzzle of the self-torturer, I argue that even if interpersonal and intergenerational conflicts of interest were resolved, we may still end up in a regretful environmental state when we aim to maximize our net benefit derived from polluting activities. This is because a rational agent with transitive preferences making climate change decisions faces incentives to over-pollute. This (...) is caused by the presence of marginal costs that are uninformative of well-being in an uncertain and intertemporal decision problem. (shrink)

Most of us have had the experience of resisting our currently strongest desire, for example, resisting the desire to eat another cookie when eating another cookie is what we most want to do. The puzzle of synchronic self‐control, however, says that this is impossible: an agent cannot ever resist her currently strongest desire. The paper argues that one prominent solution to this puzzle – the solution offered by Al Mele – faces a serious ‘mismatch problem’, which ultimately (...) undermines its plausibility. It is furthermore argued that this problem can be avoided if we adopt a ‘divided mind’ solution instead. (shrink)

It is commonly accepted that people can, and regularly do, deceive themselves. Yet closer examination reveals a set of conceptual puzzles that make self-deception difficult to explain. Applying the conditions for other-deception to self-deception generates what are known as the ‘paradoxes’ of belief and intention. Simply put, the central problem is how it is possible for me to believe one thing, and yet intentionally cause myself to simultaneously believe its contradiction. There are two general approaches taken by philosophers (...) to account for these puzzles about the self-deceptive state and the process of self-deception. ‘Partitioning’ strategies try to resolve the paradoxes by proposing that the mind is divided in some way that allows self-deception to occur. ‘Reformulation’ strategies suggest that the conditions we use to define self-deception should be modified so that the paradoxes do not arise at all. Both approaches are subject to criticism about the consequences of the strategies philosophers use, but recent cross-disciplinary analyses of self-deception may help shed light on the puzzles that underlie this phenomenon. (shrink)

It is commonly accepted that people can, and regularly do, deceive themselves. Yet closer examination reveals a set of conceptual puzzles that make self‐deception difficult to explain. Applying the conditions for other‐deception to self‐deception generates what are known as the ‘paradoxes’ of belief and intention. Simply put, the central problem is how it is possible for me to believe one thing, and yet intentionally cause myself to simultaneously believe its contradiction. There are two general approaches taken by philosophers (...) to account for these puzzles about the self‐deceptive state and the process of self‐deception. ‘Partitioning’ strategies try to resolve the paradoxes by proposing that the mind is divided in some way that allows self‐deception to occur. ‘Reformulation’ strategies suggest that the conditions we use to define self‐deception should be modified so that the paradoxes do not arise at all. Both approaches are subject to criticism about the consequences of the strategies philosophers use, but recent cross‐disciplinary analyses of self‐deception may help shed light on the puzzles that underlie this phenomenon. (shrink)

As soon as we attend to the subject, either by asking questions or by making statements about it, we ipso facto make the subject the object of our attention. The question then is whether we can get behind the subject as object and attain the subject as subject. Is the project not self-refuting? For an answer I invoke the parallel case of insight into insight. We cannot imagine the act of insight and so cannot understand it directly, but we (...) can construct symbols of insight, understand them, and thus indirectly achieve some understanding of it. Lonergan made five attempts to achieve insight into insight; the article examines them one by one and applies them to our parallel case in order to conclude that there is a meaningful sense in which we may attain and speak of the subject as subject. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that cases of radical selftransformation (cases in which an agent willfully changes a foundational element of their motivational structure) constitute an important philosophical puzzle. Though our inclination to hold people responsible for such changes suggests that we regard radical transformation as (in some sense) self-determined, it is difficult to conceive how a transformation that extends to the heart of an agent’s practical life can be attributed to the agent at all. While I contend (...) that the best way to solve this puzzle is to deny that radical transformations are in fact self-determined, many maintain the opposite. The defense of my thesis involves showing how the conditions that must be met in order to coherently attribute transformation to an agent are not satisfied in cases of radical transformation. Radical transformation is, thus, something that happens to an agent, not something that is done by her. (shrink)

I tease out two early Christian puzzles about agency: (a) agential control: how can agents self-constitute if their primary experience of themselves is not one of control, as in Greek antiquity, but of relative powerlessness? And (b) ethical expertise: how can agents constitute themselves as ethical agents if they cannot trust themselves to recognize, and act in the light of, the good? I argue, first, that Foucault saw the importance of these puzzles and focused on extreme obedience as affording (...) a possible resolution; second, that he failed to resolve the puzzles because of his reliance on an overly voluntarist and reflective understanding of obedience as an exercise of will; and finally, that turning to Cassian’s own thoughts on the relation between extreme obedience and humility as kenosis affords us a way out of the puzzles. (shrink)

I tease out two early Christian puzzles about agency: (a) agential control: how can agents self-constitute if their primary experience of themselves is not one of control, as in Greek antiquity, but of relative powerlessness? And (b) ethical expertise: how can agents constitute themselves as ethical agents if they cannot trust themselves to recognize, and act in the light of, the good? I argue, first, that Foucault saw the importance of these puzzles and focused on extreme obedience as affording (...) a possible resolution; second, that he failed to resolve the puzzles because of his reliance on an overly voluntarist and reflective understanding of obedience as an exercise of will; and finally, that turning to Cassian’s own thoughts on the relation between extreme obedience and humility as kenosis affords us a way out of the puzzles. (shrink)

The utilization of Western canonical thinkers to inform and understand thinkers from India and China is nothing new. More specifically, it is very tempting for a Western-trained philosopher to explain the Buddhist conception of the self by reference to David Hume; both seem to be bundle theories. Moreover, in making such a comparison we seem to get a solution to the puzzle that Hume leaves at the end of A Treatise of Human Nature concerning personal identity. Briefly, Hume (...) holds that we are simply bundles of perceptions. He then admits that he has nothing to hold the perceptions together. The Buddhist conception of the self is as a bundle of five aggregates (skandhas) that are continually changing. In the Buddhist .. (shrink)

As soon as we attend to the subject, either by asking questions or by making statements about it, we ipso facto make the subject the object of our attention. The question then is whether we can get behind the subject as object and attain the subject as subject. Is the project not self-refuting? For an answer I invoke the parallel case of insight into insight. We cannot imagine the act of insight and so cannot understand it directly, but we (...) can construct symbols of insight, understand them, and thus indirectly achieve some understanding of it. Lonergan made five attempts to achieve insight into insight; the article examines them one by one and applies them to our parallel case in order to conclude that there is a meaningful sense in which we may attain and speak of the subject as subject. (shrink)

The relation between the concepts of the subject of apperception, the phenomenal self, and the noumenal self has long puzzled commentators on Kant’s theoretical account of the self. This paper argues that many of the puzzles surrounding Kant’s account can be resolved by treating the subject of apperception and other transcendental predicates of thinking as a dimension of the noumenal self. Yet this interpretation requires a clarification of how the transcendental predicates of thinking can be attributed (...) to the noumenal self without violating the thesis of noumenal ignorance. The clarification is achieved through a careful analysis of the meaning of the latter thesis. The paper’s interpretation is then shown to be consistent with Kant’s rejection of traditional ontology and with the dual-aspect view. The paper’s final section argues that transcendental predicates are properly construed as logical predicates but must be distinguished from ordinary examples of the latter. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the self-abasement account of humility is misguided and present Thomas Aquinas’s approach as a more adequate alternative. Starting out from the recent debate, I delineate and criticize three strategies to model humility. Contrasting these strategies, I argue that humility is best understood as a form of realistic self-insight. Following Aquinas’s ‘secunda secundae,’ I finally discuss why the proposed account is fragmentary, and should be supplemented by the concept of magnanimity.

The Self and its Disorders develops a philosophical and interdisciplinary approach to the formulation of an “integrative” perspective in psychiatry. In contrast to some integrative approaches that focus on narrow brain-based conceptions, or strictly on symptomology, this book takes its bearings from embodied and enactive conceptions of human experience and builds on a perspective that understands self as a self-pattern—a pattern of processes that include bodily, experiential, affective, cognitive-psychological, reflective, narrative, intersubjective, ecological, and normative factors. It provides (...) a philosophical analysis of the notion of self-pattern, framed in terms of dynamical organization. It then draws on phenomenological, developmental, clinical, and experimental evidence to propose a method for studying the effects of psychopathologies on the self-pattern, and includes discussions of network theory, predictive processing models, and the role of narrative. This book explores the hypothesis that psychiatric disorders are self-disorders, and includes specific discussions of schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, depression, borderline personality disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and autism spectrum disorder, as well as traumatic effects of torture and solitary confinement. Other topics include diagnostic classification, symptom overlap, and transdiagnostic complexity. Several chapters explore a variety of philosophical issues that relate to therapeutic approaches, including deep brain stimulation, meditation-based interventions, and the use of artificial intelligence and virtual reality. (shrink)

The mainstream approach to the understanding of pain continues to be governed by the biomedical paradigm and the dualistic Cartesian ontology. This Volume brings together essays of scholars of literature, philosophy and history on the many enigmatic shades of pain-experience, mostly from an anti-Cartesian perspective of cultural ontology by scholars of literature, philosophy and history. A section of the essays is devoted to the socio-political dimensions of pain in the Indian context. The book offers a critical perspective on the reductive (...) conceptions of pain and argue that non-substance ontology or cultural ontology supports a more humane and authentic understanding of pain. The general ontological features of the self in pain and culturally imbued dimensions of pain-experience are, thus, brought together in a rare blend in this Volume. The essays dwell on the importance of understanding what cultural, social and political forces outside our control do to our pain-experience. They show why such understanding is necessary, both to humanely deal with pain, and to rectify erroneous approaches to pain-experience. They also explore the thoroughly ambivalent spaces between pain and pleasure, and the cathartic and productive dimensions of pain. The essays in this Volume investigate pain-experiences through the fresh lenses of history, gender, ethics, politics, death, illness, self-loss, torture, shame, dispossession and denial. (shrink)

According to the transparency approach, achievement of self-knowledge is a two-stage process: first, the subject arrives at the judgment ‘p’; second, the subject proceeds to the judgment ‘I believe that p.’ The puzzle of transparency is to understand why the transition from the first to the second judgment is rationally permissible. After revisiting the debate between Byrne and Boyle on this matter, I present a novel solution according to which the transition is rationally permissible in virtue of a (...) justifying argument that begins from a premise referring to the mental utterance that is emitted in the course of judging ‘p.’. (shrink)

What is a self? I will try to answer this question by developing an analogy with something much simpler, something which is nowhere near as puzzling as a self, but has some properties in common with selves. What I have in mind is the center of gravity of an object. This is a well-behaved concept in Newtonian physics. But a center of gravity is not an atom or a subatomic particle or any other physical item in the world. (...) It has no mass; it has no color; it has no physical properties at all, except for spatio-temporal location. It is a fine example of what Hans Reichenbach would call an abstractum. It is a purely abstract object. It is, if you like , a theorist's fiction. It is not one of the real things in the universe in addition to the atoms. But it is a fiction that has nicely defined, well delineated and well behaved role within physics. (shrink)

Sunohara Yuuri and Akita Masami’s series of six seppuku films (1990) are solely constituted by images of fictionalized death, revolving around the prolonged self-torture of a lone figure committing harakiri. I contend that the protagonist’s auto-immolation mirrors a formal death, each frame ‘killing’ the moment it represents. My analysis aims to explore how the solipsistic nature of selfhood is appositely symbolized by the isolation of the on-screen figures and the insistence with which the six films repeat the same scenario (...) of protracted agony across the cycle. The centralization of suffering, I argue, parallels the distance between viewer and image with the isolating nature of embodied existence. Thus, this article seeks to probe the relationship between form and content, asking what the image of death reveals about the death of the image. -/- . (shrink)

The work of the French Lithuanian Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, describes a perceptive rethinking of the possibility of concrete acts of goodness in the world, a rethinking never more necessary than now, in the wake of the cruel realities of the twentieth century—ten million dead in the First World War, forty million dead in the Second World War, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Soviet gulags, the grand slaughter of Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” the pointless and gory Vietnam War, the Cambodian self-genocide (...) and many an attempted extermination from the face of the earth of entire nations of indigenous peoples. The list of horrors goes on and on—daily holocausts that do not distinguish between the civilian and the soldier, the guilty and the innocent, those deserving of life and those less deserving. (shrink)

An ideography is a general-purpose code made of pictures that do not encode language, which can be used autonomously – not just as a mnemonic prop – to encode information on a broad range of topics. Why are viable ideographies so hard to find? I contend that self-sufficient graphic codes need to be narrowly specialized. Writing systems are only an apparent exception: At their core, they are notations of a spoken language. Even if they also encode nonlinguistic information, they (...) are useless to someone who lacks linguistic competence in the encoded language or a related one. The versatility of writing is thus vicarious: Writing borrows it from spoken language. Why is it so difficult to build a fully generalist graphic code? The most widespread answer points to a learnability problem. We possess specialized cognitive resources for learning spoken language, but lack them for graphic codes. I argue in favor of a different account: What is difficult about graphic codes is not so much learning or teaching them as getting every user to learn and teach the same code. This standardization problem does not affect spoken or signed languages as much. Those are based on cheap and transient signals, allowing for easy online repairing of miscommunication, and require face-to-face interactions where the advantages of common ground are maximized. Graphic codes lack these advantages, which makes them smaller in size and more specialized. (shrink)

This paper presents a new cognitivist account for the old puzzle of self-consciousness or knowing self-reference. Knowing self-reference does not rely on reflection on some putative pre-existent pre-reflexive self-consciousness, nor is it the result of a process of identification of oneself as the employer of the relevant token of “I” according to the token-reflexive rule of the first-person pronoun. Rather, it relies on the architecture of the cognitive system. By exploiting the acquaintance relation that every (...) brain has to one’s own body, a “mental file” is opened in a subliminal way to house information about oneself gained through the appropriate proprioceptors. Knowing self-reference based on self-files dispenses with self-identification because the opening of the file in the same brain/body is not a deed of the cognitive system but rather something that takes place sub-personally. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Self of Book 1 and the Selves of Book 2 Terence Penelhum One ofthe more familiar problems ofinterpretationin Hume's Treatise is that of reducing the sense of shock that arises from the apparent differences between what he says about the selfin book 1 and what he says about it in book 2. One way in which scholars have attempted to reduce it is to take him very (...) seriously when he distinguishes, in the book 1 discussion, "betwixt personal identity, as itregards our thought or imagination, and as it regards our passions or the concern we take in ourselves."1 If one does this, it becomes possible to see that what might seem to be inconsistent positions are compatible, and merely represent complementary aspects of an extended account of how human beings represent their natures and identities to themselves in thought and feeling and choice. This, at least, is now widely believed. The belief has led to very illuminating accounts of Hume's analysis of the emotional life and ita relationship to his more famous theories in epistemology.2 In spite of these, I think there is an egregious gap in Hume's psychology which we should not be tempted to suppose he has filled. Unless I have misread them, two recent authors have yielded to this very temptation. Since I have said Hume's psychology has an important gap in it, I should begin by making clear what the gap is, and emphasize that I do not think I have uncovered an inconsistency in Hume's theories of the self. He has, of course, been accused of such inconsistencies.3 His account in book 1 has itself been said to be inconsistent because he ascribes to the self there a tendency to confuse invariance and succession in telling us how we come to generate the fiction of continuing identity; such a story seems to ascribe a continuing reality to the mind in the very process ofshowing how the beliefin it can come toexistwhen there are onlysuccessive perceptions toconstitute it. This is a special application of a wider charge sometimes levelled against him, thatalthoughhisassociationism appearstoreduce allexplanation to relationships between perceptions, he is bound to depart from this restriction in ascribing tendencies and mistakes to the mind. Given the nature ofthe beliefhe is explainingwhen he discusses self-identity, the special application is troubling.4 He has also been accused of Volume XVIII Number 2 281 TERENCE PENELHUM inconsistencyin assumingat the outset ofhis discussion oftheindirect passions in book 2 that we have an idea, or even an impression, ofthe self, when in book 1 he has appeared to deny this. Many have argued (and I have been among them) that Hume can be acquitted of these charges. Mercer, for example, has made short workofthe last one.5 When Hume introduces the selfin book 2, he says clearly that he is referring to "self, or that succession of related ideas and impressions, of which we have an intimate memory and consciousness" (T 277), not to the idea of the pure ego constructed by rationalist philosophers. The charge of confusion in the argument of Treatise 1.4.6 has been rebutted by several writers, beginning with Nelson Pike.6 In the briefest summary: since the mind is nothing but a series of perceptions, Hume's question in book 1 is not a question about how it is that a mind he tacitly assumes to be more than this comes to think it is more than this, but a question about how the series that the mind actually is, comes to include within it from time to time perceptions ofthe series that represent it as having an identity that it (strictly) lacks. The actual relationship of the mind to its perceptions is one ofinclusion, and Hume's puzzle is how certain perceptionsofthe mind come to be in the mind. This reading ofHume may well leave him with some unattractive problems, but it does not convict him of contradicting himself. If something like this is accepted, we can see Hume in book 1 as combining scepticism about philosophical defences of a natural belief with the assumption of an obUgation to give an account of how... (shrink)

Conventional accounts of liberal democracy tend to obscure a basic fact: the phenomenon of administration. The American reception of the administrative state was self-consciously imitative of Continental models of state bureaucracy, as a remedy for the ills of democratic politics, but construed as a means of saving democracy from itself, and from lawyers and legalism, in the name of efficiency. The means was discretionary power, unaccountable to the courts and to voters. Reconciling this to democracy proved a challenge, and (...) continues to be one. (shrink)

There is a great deal of plausibility to the standard view that if one is rational and it is clear at the time of action that a certain move, say M1, would serve one’s concerns better than any other available move, then one will, as a rational agent, opt for move M1. Still, this view concerning rationality has been challenged at least in part because it seems to conflict with our considered judgments about what it is rational to do in (...) cases of temptation that share the structure of Warren Quinn’s self-torturer case. I argue that there is a way to accomodate our considered judgments about the relevant cases of temptation without giving up the standard view or dismissing, as in some way rationally defective, the concerns of the agents in the relevant cases. My reasoning relies on the idea that, at least in some cases, whether an action serves one’s concerns well depends on what action(s) or course(s) of action it is part of. In the final section of the paper, I explain how this idea sheds light on an important source of frustration in collective decision-making. (shrink)

This article compares three models for conceptualizing the political and ethical challenges of contemporary genetics, genomics, and postgenomics. The three analytical approaches are referred to as the state-politics model, the biopolitical model, and the infopolitical model. Each of these models is valuable for different purposes. But comparing these models in terms of their influence in contemporary discussions, the first is by far the dominant approach, the second is gaining in importance, and the third is almost entirely neglected. The widespread neglect (...) of the infopolitical dimensions of genetic sciences focused by the third model is puzzling in light of the fact that genetics, genomics, and postgenomics are all pre-eminent information sciences. The infopolitical model thus aims to bring into clearer view the specific political and ethical problems engendered by this informational nature of the genetic sciences. This model offers a way of understanding how ethically-salient and politically-fraught conceptual assumptions can be embedded in informational architectures such as algorithms and the formats (or data structures) upon which they rely. (shrink)

A largely overlooked and puzzling feature of morality is Moral Memory: apparent cases of directly memorising, remembering, and forgetting first-order moral propositions seem odd. To illustrate: consider someone apparently memorising that capital punishment is wrong, or acting as if they are remembering that euthanasia is permissible, or reporting that they have forgotten that torture is wrong. I here clarify Moral Memory and identify desiderata of good explanations. I then proceed to amend the only extant account, Bugeja’s Non-Cognitivist explanation, but show (...) that it isn’t superior to a similar Cognitivist-friendly view, and that both explanations face a counterexample. Following this, I consider and reject a series of alternative Cognitivist-friendly explanations, suggesting that a Practicality-Character explanation that appeals to the connection between the practicality of moral attitude and character is superior. However, I conclude that support for this explanation should remain conditional and tentative. (shrink)

Sometimes a series of choices do not serve one's concerns well even though each choice in the series seems perfectly well suited to serving one's concerns. In such cases, one has a dynamic choice problem. Otherwise put, one has a problem related to the fact that one's choices are spread out over time. This survey reviews some of the challenging choice situations and problematic preference structures that can prompt dynamic choice problems. It also reviews some proposed solutions, and explains how (...) some familiar but potentially puzzling phenomena — including, for example, self-destructive addictive behavior and dangerous environmental destruction — have been illuminated by dynamic choice theory. (shrink)

The relation between the concepts of the subject of apperception, the phenomenal self, and the noumenal self has long puzzled commentators on Kant’s theoretical account of the self. This paper argues that many of the puzzles surrounding Kant’s account can be resolved by treating the subject of apperception and other transcendental predicates of thinking as a dimension of the noumenal self. Yet this interpretation requires a clarification of how the transcendental predicates of thinking can be attributed (...) to the noumenal self without violating the thesis of noumenal ignorance. The clarification is achieved through a careful analysis of the meaning of the latter thesis. The paper’s interpretation is then shown to be consistent with Kant’s rejection of traditional ontology and with the dual-aspect view. The paper’s final section argues that transcendental predicates are properly construed as logical predicates but must be distinguished from ordinary examples of the latter. (shrink)

What is a self? What does it mean to have selfhood? What is the relationship between selfhood and identity? These are puzzling questions that philosophers, psychologists, social scientists, and many other researchers often grapple with. -/- Self and Identity is a book that explores and brings together relevant ideas on selfhood and identity, while also helping to clarify some important and long standing scientific and philosophical debates. It will enable readers to understand the difference between selves in humans (...) and other animals, and the different selves that we come to possess from when we are born to when we become old. It also explains how and why the self might break down due to mental illness, thereby providing insight into how we might treat illnesses such as dementia and depression, both of which are conditions that fundamentally affect our selfhood. -/- Taking an important step towards clarifying our understanding of human selfhood and applying it to mental illness, this book will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduate students exploring philosophical questions of selfhood, as well as those examining the connection to clinical disorders. (shrink)

We agree with MacNeilage's claim that speech stems from a volitional vocalization pathway between the cingulate and the supplementary motor area (SMA). We add the vocal self- monitoring system as the first recruitment of the Broca-Wernicke circuit. SMA control for “frames” is supported by wrong consonant-vowel recurring utterance aphasia and an imaging study of quasi-reiterant speech. The role of Broca's area is questioned in the emergence of “content,” because a primary motor mapping, embodying peripheral constraints, seems sufficient. Finally, we (...) reject a uniquely peripheral account of speech emergence. (shrink)

Mental content and the problem of De Se belief -- Cognitive attitudes and content -- The doctrine of propositions -- The problem of De Se belief -- The property theory of content -- In favor of the property theory -- Perry's messy shopper and the argument from explanation -- Lewis's case of the two Gods -- Arguments from internalism and physicalism -- An inference to the best explanation -- Alternatives to the property theory -- The triadic view of belief -- (...) How the property theory and the triadic view are rivals -- Dyadic propositionalism reconsidered -- Arguments against the property theory -- Self-ascription and self-awareness -- Nonexistence and impossible contents -- Stalnaker's argument -- Propositionalist arguments from inference -- The property theory and De Re belief -- Lewis's account of De Re belief -- McKay's objection to Lewis -- Mistaken identity and the case of the shy secret admirer -- Some other worries and concluding remarks -- The property theory, rationality, and Kripke's puzzle about belief -- Kripke's puzzle about belief -- The puzzle argument -- A solution to the puzzle -- Puzzles with empty names and kind terms -- The property theory, twin earth, and belief about kinds -- Twin earth and two kinds of internalism -- The twin earth argument -- An internalist response (stage one) -- An internalist response (stage two) -- Self-ascription and belief about kinds. (shrink)

This paper explores the theme of torture in the Colombian Truth Commission’s Final Report, focusing on its characterization of torture as a way of annulling a person’s identity. Drawing on Jean Améry’s approach, I argue that torture destroys the victim’s world and explore the further implications of this assertion. I begin by highlighting how the history of torture distorts legal and medical practices, masquerading as a quest for truth while exercising a farce of power, disintegrating the victim’s lived body. By (...) delving into Merleau-Ponty’s notion of “flesh,” I also explain how torture erodes the carnal trust that connects us to the world and enables proper communication. Consequently, torture results in an utter negation of the self and the world. In conclusion, I suggest that torture as understood as the destitution of a person’s world, can serve as a paradigm for comprehending the experiences of violence faced by victims in Colombia. (shrink)

This book is an original philosophic exploration of the meaning of Kierkegaard's life, his thought, and his works. It makes a bold case for Kierkegaard's recognition of the concrete existence of the individual, including Kierkegaard himself, as crucial to the spiritual life. Written with delicate insight, and beautifully translated from Hebrew, this work offers valuable new turns to understanding the puzzling life-work of a modern giant of spiritual reflection.