Samir Okasha offers a critical study of agential thinking in biology, where evolved organisms are seen as agents pursuing a goal. He examines the justification for transposing concepts from rational humans to the biological world, and considers whether agential thinking is mere anthropomorphism or plays a more intellectual role in the science.

Covering some of science's most divisive topics, such as philosophical issues in genetics and evolution, the philosophy of biology also encompasses more traditional philosophical questions, such as free will, essentialism, and nature vs nurture. Here, Samir Okasha outlines the core issues with which contemporary philosophy of biology is engaged.

This is a conversation that took place at Dr. Vladimir Safatle’s São Paulo home on 16 February, 2019, during Dr. Samir Gandesha’s time as a Visiting Professor at the Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas -FFLCH-USP. It addresses the South American roots of the authoritarian Neoliberalism that has now become a truly global phenomenon.

Abstract:This paper explores the contrast between mentalistic and behaviouristic interpretations of decision theory. The former regards credences and utilities as psychologically real, while the latter regards them as mere representations of an agent's preferences. Philosophers typically adopt the former interpretation, economists the latter. It is argued that the mentalistic interpretation is preferable if our aim is to use decision theory for descriptive purposes, but if our aim is normative then the behaviouristic interpretation cannot be dispensed with.

Biological agency has received much attention in recent philosophy of biology. But what is the motivation for introducing talk of agency into biology and what is meant by “agent”? Two distinct motivations can be discerned. The first is that thinking of organisms as agents helps to articulate what is distinctive about organisms vis-à-vis other biological entities. The second is that treating organisms as agent-like is a useful heuristic for understanding their evolved behavior. The concept of agent itself may be understood (...) in at least four different ways: minimal agent, intelligent agent, rational agent, and intentional agent. Which understanding is most appropriate depends on which of the two motivations we are concerned with. (shrink)

Kin selection and multilevel selection are alternative approaches for studying the evolution of social behaviour, the relation between which has long been a source of controversy. Many recent theorists regard the two approaches as ultimately equivalent, on the grounds that gene frequency change can be correctly expressed using either. However, this shows only that the two are formally equivalent, not that they offer equally good causal representations of the evolutionary process. This article articulates the notion of an ‘adequate causal representation’ (...) using causal graphs, and then seeks to identify circumstances under which kin and multilevel selection do and do not satisfy the test of causal adequacy. 1 Introduction2 The KS and MLS Approaches2.1 The MLS decomposition2.2 The KS decomposition3 Equivalence and Causality4 Two Problem Cases4.1 The non-social trait case4.2 Genotypic selection with meiotic drive5 Casual Adequacy: A Graphical Approach5.1 The basic idea5.2 Graphs with individual and group variables5.3 Cases where KS is causally adequate5.4 Cases where MLS is causally adequate6 Discussion6.1 Relation to previous work. (shrink)

Several authors have recently suggested that classic psychedelics might be safe and effective agents of moral enhancement. This raises the question: can we learn anything interesting about the nature of moral experience from a close examination of transformative psychedelic experiences? The interdisciplinary enterprise of philosophical psychopathology attempts to learn about the structure and function of the “ordinary” mind by studying the radically altered mind. By analogy, in this chapter we argue that we can gain knowledge about the everyday moral life (...) by studying extraordinary experiences of altered moral cognition and experience. We focus on a specific class of cases: experiences of forgiveness induced by psychedelics. We argue that close attention to such experiences reveals the importance of thought/emotion coherence and dissonance in the moral life and vindicates some heterodox ideas about moral phenomenology and psychology. (shrink)

Resilience may be referred to as the capacity for positive adaptation and to quickly recover from difficulties and significant adversity. After examining operational definitions of related concepts, the article discusses resilience building exercises for functional fitness at the individual soldier level, to include among others, self-monitoring, self-evaluation, self-reinforcement, emotional regulation exercises, mindfulness training, relaxation and grounding exercises and importance of maintaining discipline and routine in the military. Using an acronym CARRIES, the article examines efforts to enhance resilience building through empirically (...) validated cognitive, behavioural and intrapersonal skills originating from best practices learned in the military. (shrink)

Derrida and the Inheritance of Democracy provides a theoretically rich and accessible account of Derrida's political philosophy. Demonstrating the key role inheritance plays in Derrida’s thinking, Samir Haddad develops a general theory of inheritance and shows how it is essential to democratic action. He transforms Derrida’s well-known idea of "democracy to come" into active engagement with democratic traditions. Haddad focuses on issues such as hospitality, justice, normativity, violence, friendship, birth, and the nature of democracy as he reads these deeply (...) political writings. (shrink)

Sceptical arguments in epistemology typically employ sceptical hypotheses, which are rivals to our everyday beliefs so constructed that they fit exactly the evidence on which those beliefs are based. There are two ways of using a sceptical hypothesis to undermine an everyday belief, giving rise to two distinct sorts of sceptical argument: underdetermination‐based and closure‐based. However, both sorts of argument, as usually formulated in the literature, fall foul of evidential holism, for they ignore the crucial role of background beliefs. An (...) analogy with the philosophy of science makes this point explicit. There is no simple way to “holism proof” the two sceptical arguments. (shrink)

Does natural selection act primarily on individual organisms, on groups, on genes, or on whole species? The question of levels of selection - on which biologists and philosophers have long disagreed - is central to evolutionary theory and to the philosophy of biology. Samir Okasha's comprehensive analysis gives a clear account of the philosophical issues at stake in the current debate.

Architectural theory arises from building, when the mind considers its symbolic relations to its own constructions. The intent of this essay is to discuss the intellectual causes that precede building and precede theory. It considers certain fundamental dualities in our thinking about architecture—such as image and word; type and model; imitation and invention—and the role they play in its making, its perfection as an art, and the eventual elaboration of its tenets into a theory. At a time when theories of (...) architecture proliferate as expressions of ‘personal philosophies,’ a careful and incisive philosophical approach to if, how, and when does theory become formative of building, may ensure that architecture remain faithful to its intrinsic purposes. (shrink)

This essay assesses the opposition of pluralism and monism with respect to politics and architecture, developing the argument within three general areas: the spurious association between political intentions and architectural character, the distinctions and commonalties between political freedom and artistic freedom, and the adverse effect of inappropriate associations between political content and artistic form in general and, in particular, the perceptual impairment of the processes by which buildings come to be endowed with their suitable character.

This book explores the tradition, impact, and contemporary relevance of two key ideas from Western Marxism: Georg Lukács's concept of reification, in which social aspects of humanity are viewed in objectified terms, and Guy Debord's concept of the spectacle, where the world is packaged and presented to consumers in uniquely mediated ways. Bringing the original, yet now often forgotten, theoretical contexts for these terms back to the fore, Johan Hartle and Samir Gandesha offer a new look at the importance (...) of Western Marxism from its early days to the present moment-and reveal why Marxist cultural critique must continue to play a vital role in any serious sociological analysis of contemporary society. (shrink)

Evolutionary biology is striking for its ability to explain a large and diverse range of empirical phenomena on the basis of a few general theoretical principles. This article offers a philosophical perspective on the way that evolutionary biology has come to achieve such impressive generality, by focusing on “the strategy of endogenization”. This strategy involves devising evolutionary explanations for biological features that were originally part of the background conditions, or scaffolding, against which such explanations take place. Where successful, the strategy (...) moves biology a step closer to the ideal of explaining as much as possible from evolutionary first principles. The strategy of endogenization is illustrated through a series of biological examples, historical and recent, and its philosophical implications are explored. (shrink)

Hamilton’s theory of inclusive fitness is a widely used framework for studying the evolution of social behavior, but controversy surrounds its status. Hamilton originally derived his famous rb > c rule for the spread of a social gene by assuming additivity of costs and benefits. However, it has recently been argued that the additivity assumption can be dispensed with, so long as the −c and b terms are suitably defined, as partial regression coefficients. I argue that this way of generalizing (...) Hamilton’s rule to the nonadditive case, while formally correct, faces conceptual problems. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that Hume's description of human inductive reasoning is inadequate. But many philosophers think that this inadequacy in no way affects the force of Hume's argument for the unjustifiability of inductive reasoning. I argue that this constellation of opinions contains a serious tension, given that Hume was not merely pointing out that induction is fallible. I then explore a recent diagnosis of where Hume's sceptical argument goes wrong, due to Elliott Sober. Sober argues that Hume committed a (...) quantifier-shift fallacy, i.e. inferred a statement of ?? form from one of ?? form. The implications of this diagnosis for the traditional problem of induction are briefly examined. (shrink)

A number of recent philosophers, including Michael Williams, Barry Stroud and Donald Davidson, have argued that scepticism about the external world stems from the founda‐tionalist assumption that sensory experience supplies the data for our beliefs about the world. In order to assess this thesis, I offer a brief characterisation of the logical form of sceptical arguments. I suggest that sceptical arguments rely on the idea that many of our beliefs about the world are‘underdetermined’by the evidence on which they are based. (...) Drawing on this characterisation of scepticism, I argue that Williams, Stroud and Davidson are right to see the foundationalist assumption as essential to the sceptic's argument, but wrong to think that scepticism is inevitable once that assumption is in place. By pursuing an analogy with some recent debates in the philosophy of science, I try to locate the additional assumptions which the sceptic must make, in order to derive her conclusion. (shrink)

In this paper, we draw inferences from the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s book, The Idea of Justice to inform the organisational justice literature. The extant societal-level theories of justice tend to emphasise aspects that are analogous to either the procedural or distributive dimensions of organisational justice. The Senian idea of comprehensive justice is different in that it synthesises the procedural- and distributive-related dimensions at the societal-level. We theorise that the Senian notion could be applied at the organisational-level to facilitate outcomes (...) that are actually valued by the workforce. Further, we contend that the emphasis on non-parochialism in the Senian notion of justice makes it particularly relevant to the ethics of multi-national corporations operating in alien cultures. To support our contention, we analyse the lean manufacturing practices of a Japanese MNC operating in India. Our case analysis demonstrates how Senian thinking helps one surface unjust outcomes that would otherwise go unacknowledged. Our analysis also offers tentative support to Senian claims about the capacity of human behaviour to undermine well-designed institutions. Concurring with the Senian view, which favours combating manifest injustice rather than fixating over designing perfectly just institutions, we derive some normative implications to advance the cause of striving for outcomes that are actually valued by the workforce. (shrink)

This volume explores from multiple perspectives the subtle and interesting relationship between the theory of rational choice and Darwinian evolution. In rational choice theory, agents are assumed to make choices that maximize their utility; in evolution, natural selection 'chooses' between phenotypes according to the criterion of fitness maximization. So there is a parallel between utility in rational choice theory and fitness in Darwinian theory. This conceptual link between fitness and utility is mirrored by the interesting parallels between formal models of (...) evolution and rational choice. The essays in this volume, by leading philosophers, economists, biologists and psychologists, explore the connection between evolution and rational choice in a number of different contexts, including choice under uncertainty, strategic decision making and pro-social behaviour. They will be of interest to students and researchers in philosophy of science, evolutionary biology, economics and psychology. (shrink)

Today, anxiety is usually thought of as a pathology, the most diagnosed and medicated of all psychological disorders. But anxiety isn't always or only a medical condition. Indeed, many philosophers argue that anxiety is a normal, even essential, part of being human, and that coming to terms with this fact is potentially transformative, allowing us to live more meaningful lives by giving us a richer understanding of ourselves. In Anxiety, Samir Chopra explores valuable insights about anxiety offered by ancient (...) and modern philosophies-Buddhism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. Blending memoir and philosophy, he also tells how serious anxiety has affected his own life-and how philosophy has helped him cope with it. Chopra shows that many philosophers-including the Buddha, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger-view anxiety as an inevitable human response to existence: to be is to be anxious. Drawing on Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse, Chopra examines how poverty and other material conditions can make anxiety worse, but he emphasizes that not even the rich can escape it. Nor can the medicated. Inseparable from the human condition, anxiety is indispensable for grasping it. Philosophy may not be able to cure anxiety but, by leading us to greater self-knowledge and self-acceptance, it may be able to make us less anxious about being anxious. Personal, poignant, and hopeful, Anxiety is a book for anyone who is curious about rethinking anxiety and learning why it might be a source not only of suffering but of insight. (shrink)

Today, anxiety is usually thought of as a pathology, the most diagnosed and medicated of all psychological disorders. But anxiety isn't always or only a medical condition. Indeed, many philosophers argue that anxiety is a normal, even essential, part of being human, and that coming to terms with this fact is potentially transformative, allowing us to live more meaningful lives by giving us a richer understanding of ourselves. In Anxiety, Samir Chopra explores valuable insights about anxiety offered by ancient (...) and modern philosophies-Buddhism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. Blending memoir and philosophy, he also tells how serious anxiety has affected his own life-and how philosophy has helped him cope with it. Chopra shows that many philosophers-including the Buddha, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger-view anxiety as an inevitable human response to existence: to be is to be anxious. Drawing on Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse, Chopra examines how poverty and other material conditions can make anxiety worse, but he emphasizes that not even the rich can escape it. Nor can the medicated. Inseparable from the human condition, anxiety is indispensable for grasping it. Philosophy may not be able to cure anxiety but, by leading us to greater self-knowledge and self-acceptance, it may be able to make us less anxious about being anxious. Personal, poignant, and hopeful, Anxiety is a book for anyone who is curious about rethinking anxiety and learning why it might be a source not only of suffering but of insight. (shrink)

Such obvious truth must be made even more obvious, and this is exactly what Samir Selmanovic is doing for all of us and for the future of humanity.

The axiom of recovery, while capturing a central intuition regarding belief change, has been the source of much controversy. We argue briefly against putative counterexamples to the axiom—while agreeing that some of their insight deserves to be preserved—and present additional recovery-like axioms in a framework that uses epistemic states, which encode preferences, as the object of revisions. This makes iterated revision possible and renders explicit the connection between iterated belief change and the axiom of recovery. We provide a representation theorem (...) that connects the semantic conditions we impose on iterated revision and our additional syntactical properties. We show interesting similarities between our framework and that of Darwiche–Pearl (Artificial Intelligence 89:1–29 1997). In particular, we show that intuitions underlying the controversial (C2) postulate are captured by the recovery axiom and our recovery-like postulates (the latter can be seen as weakenings of (C2)). We present postulates for contraction, in the same spirit as the Darwiche–Pearl postulates for revision, and provide a theorem that connects our syntactic postulates with a set of semantic conditions. Lastly, we show a connection between the contraction postulates and a generalisation of the recovery axiom. (shrink)

Défini comme l’une des parties du discours traditionnelles, l’article, « l’un des instruments odieux de notre grammaire » (Alexis François, La grammaire du purisme et l’académie française au 18ème siècle, Paris, Société Nouvelle de Librairie et d’Édition, p. 70) crée une véritable ligne de démarcation pour le phénomène langagier en tant qu’il divise les langues en deux catégories distinctes : langues avec article et langues sans article. Au-delà de la technicité grammaticale que créent le système d’article et l’absence d’article au (...) sein du groupe nominal, cette étude permet de repenser la nécessité noologique et phénoménologique de cette classe de mot bien particulière. Il convient donc de s’interroger sur l’absence d’article dans des langues avec article (français, allemand, anglais, italien, macédonien, etc.) et sur l’« absence de tout » dans des langues sans article (croate, serbe, russe, turc, etc.). Au sein des langues dépourvues de tout système d’articles, un déterminant d'origine numérale s'apparente à l'article et, ce faisant, s'approprie une valeur d'adjectif indéfini : « (un) certain ». Les deux cas de figure ou, mieux encore, les deux voies qu'empruntent les langues concernées permettent d'enrichir le tenseur binaire en psychomécanique du langage, notamment en y ajoutant des extensités médianes, non réductibles à la traditionnelle échelle « article défini » - « article indéfini » – « article zéro ». (shrink)

During the past three decades, two terms, “postmodernism” and “globalization” have entered not only academic discourse, but everyday discussions outside the groves of academia. This book contains essays assembled with a conviction that both postmodernism and globalization have the potential to be valuable tools for social analysts, this despite the uncertainties and ambiguities that persist. The editors and the contributors make no claim to have found a solution that would overcome the uncertainties and ambiguities. Rather, it is assumed that at (...) some level both the concepts will remain contested. All the essays are expressions of efforts to employ one or both of the concepts in terms of empirically grounded topics. They also add further precision or clarity to the concepts themselves in order to enhance their utility in making sense of the dynamics of social change. (shrink)

The whole of Marx's project confronts the narrow concerns of political philosophy by embedding it in social philosophy and a certain understanding of the aesthetic. From those of aesthetic production to the "poetry of the future" (as Marx writes in the Eighteenth Brumaire), from the radical modernism of bourgeois development to the very idea of association (which defined one of the main lines of tradition in the history of aesthetics), steady references to Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe, and the idea that (...) bourgeois politics is nothing but a theatrical stage: the aesthetic has a prominent place in the constellation of Marx's thought. This book offers an original and challenging study of both Marx in the aesthetic, and the aesthetic in Marx. It differs from previous discussions of Marxist aesthetic theory as it understands the works of Marx themselves as contributions to thinking the aesthetic. This is an engagement with Marx's aesthetic that takes into account Marx's broader sense of the aesthetic, as identified by Eagleton and Buck-Morss - as a question of sense perception and the body. (shrink)

Contrairement à l’ironie polémique et insidieuse des Sophistes, celle de Socrate est plutôt interrogeante, désirante et ex-centrique, toujours en quête de connaissance vraie. Le fameux «je sais que je ne sais rien» devient chez lui un outil de défigement de la pensée prisonnière des «systèmes compacts», mais, aussi le meilleur remède contre les pseudo-vérités religieuses et idéologiques.

Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction, by Olivia Custer, Penelope Deutscher, and Samir Haddad -- Part I: Openings -- 1. The Foucault-Derrida Debate on the Argument Concerning Madness and Dreams, by Pierre Macherey -- 2. Looking Back at History of Madness, by Lynne Huffer -- 3. Violence and Hyperbole: From "Cogito and the History of Madness" to The Death Penalty, by Michael Naas -- Part II: Surviving the Philosophical Problem: History Crosses Transcendental Analysis.