I discuss "Poetic Naturalism" -- there is only one world, the natural world, but there are many ways of talking about it -- both as a general concept, and how it accounts for our actual world. I talk about emergence, fundamental physics, entropy and complexity, the origins of life and consciousness, and moral constructivism.

It is commonplace in discussions of modern cosmology to assert that the early universe began in a special state. Conventionally, cosmologists characterize this fine-tuning in terms of the horizon and flatness problems. I argue that the fine-tuning is real, but these problems aren't the best way to think about it: causal disconnection of separated regions isn't the real problem, and flatness isn't a problem at all. Fine-tuning is better understood in terms of a measure on the space of trajectories: given (...) reasonable conditions in the late universe, the fraction of cosmological histories that were smooth at early times is incredibly tiny. This discussion helps clarify what is required by a complete theory of cosmological initial conditions. (shrink)

On one popular view, the general covariance of gravity implies that change is relational in a strong sense, such that all it is for a physical degree of freedom to change is for it to vary with regard to a second physical degree of freedom. At a quantum level, this view of change as relative variation leads to a fundamentally timeless formalism for quantum gravity. Here, we will show how one may avoid this acute ‘problem of time’. Under our view, (...) duration is still regarded as relative, but temporal succession is taken to be absolute. Following our approach, which is presented in more formal terms in, it is possible to conceive of a genuinely dynamical theory of quantum gravity within which time, in a substantive sense, remains. 1 Introduction1.1 The problem of time1.2 Our solution2 Understanding Symmetry2.1 Mechanics and representation2.2 Freedom by degrees2.3 Voluntary redundancy3 Understanding Time3.1 Change and order3.2 Quantization and succession4 Time and Gravitation4.1 The two faces of classical gravity4.2 Retaining succession in quantum gravity5 Discussion5.1 Related arguments5.2 Concluding remarks. (shrink)

This study assesses the relationships among unethical corporate values, bullying experiences, psychopathy, and selling professionals’ ethical evaluations of bullying. Information was collected from national/regional samples of selling professionals. Results indicated that unethical values, bullying, and psychopathy were positively interrelated. Psychopathy and unethical values were negatively associated with moral intensity, while moral intensity was positively related to ethical issue importance. Psychopathy and unethical values were negatively related to issue importance, and issue importance and moral intensity were positively related to ethical judgment. (...) Finally, ethical judgment and moral intensity were positively linked to ethical intention; psychopathy was negatively associated with ethical intention. (shrink)

This study explored several proposed relationships among professional ethical standards, corporate social responsibility, and the perceived role of ethics and social responsibility. Data were collected from 313 business managers registered with a large professional research association with a mailed self-report questionnaire. Mediated regression analysis indicated that perceptions of corporate social responsibility partially mediated the positive relationship between perceived professional ethical standards and the believed importance of ethics and social responsibility. Perceptions of corporate social responsibility also fully mediated the negative relationship (...) between perceived professional ethical standards and the subordination of ethics and social responsibility. The results suggested that professions should develop ethical standards to encourage social responsibility, since these actions are associated with enhanced employee ethical attitudes. (shrink)

We provide a derivation of the Born Rule in the context of the Everett (Many-Worlds) approach to quantum mechanics. Our argument is based on the idea of self-locating uncertainty: in the period between the wave function branching via decoherence and an observer registering the outcome of the measurement, that observer can know the state of the universe precisely without knowing which branch they are on. We show that there is a uniquely rational way to apportion credence in such cases, which (...) leads directly to the Born Rule. Our analysis generalizes straightforwardly to cases of combined classical and quantum self-locating uncertainty, as in the cosmological multiverse. (shrink)

I ask whether what we know about the universe from modern physics and cosmology, including fine-tuning, provides compelling evidence for the existence of God, and answer largely in the negative.

Is free will just an illusion? What is it in the brain that allows us to pursue our own actions and objectives? What is it about this organ that permits seemingly purposeful behaviour, giving us the impression we are free? This book takes a journey into the brain to examine what is about known voluntary behaviour, and why it can go wrong.

Foucault’s disciplinary society and his notion of panopticism are often invoked in discussions regarding electronic surveillance. Against this use of Foucault, I argue that contemporary trends in surveillance technology abstract human bodies from their territorial settings, separating them into a series of discrete flows through what Deleuze will term, the surveillant assemblage. The surveillant assemblage and its product, the socially sorted body, aim less at molding, punishing and controlling the body and more at triggering events of in- and ex-clusion from (...) life opportunities. The meaning of the body as monitored by latest generation vision technologies formed from machine only surveillance has been transformed. Such a body is no longer disciplinary in the Foucauldian sense. It is a virtual/flesh interface broken into discrete data flows whose comparison and breakage generate bodies as both legible and eligible (or illegible). (shrink)

Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake) Introduction In this book I deal with some of the central ...

This work discusses philosophical problems of perceptual content, the content of deomonstrative thoughts, and the unity of proposition. By demonstrating a connection between phenomenology and analysis, Kelly suggests ways in which they can be fruitfully pursued.

The concepts of identity and community have recently been the subject of a good deal of debate in social philosophy, much of it focused on the ideas of writers like MacIntyre, Taylor, Walzer. These philosophers are often referred to as `communitarians', though they do not constitute a united school and none of them identifies himself as such. Nevertheless, there are good reasons 1 for grouping them together, for they share some important elements of common ground. In their different ways, each (...) develops a critique of liberal and individualist social theory and formulates a philosophy which recognises the reality and value of community. (shrink)

When conversing and collaborating in everyday situations, people naturally and interactively align their behaviors with each other across various communication channels, including speech, gesture, posture, and gaze. Having access to a partner's referential gaze behavior has been shown to be particularly important in achieving collaborative outcomes, but the process in which people's gaze behaviors unfold over the course of an interaction and become tightly coordinated is not well understood. In this paper, we present work to develop a deeper and more (...) nuanced understanding of coordinated referential gaze in collaborating dyads. We recruited 13 dyads to participate in a collaborative sandwich-making task and used dual mobile eye tracking to synchronously record each participant's gaze behavior. We used a relatively new analysis technique—epistemic network analysis—to jointly model the gaze behaviors of both conversational participants. In this analysis, network nodes represent gaze targets for each participant, and edge strengths convey the likelihood of simultaneous gaze to the connected target nodes during a given time-slice. We divided collaborative task sequences into discrete phases to examine how the networks of shared gaze evolved over longer time windows. We conducted three separate analyses of the data to reveal (1) properties and patterns of how gaze coordination unfolds throughout an interaction sequence, (2) optimal time lags of gaze alignment within a dyad at different phases of the interaction, and (3) differences in gaze coordination patterns for interaction sequences that lead to breakdowns and repairs. In addition to contributing to the growing body of knowledge on the coordination of gaze behaviors in joint activities, this work has implications for the design of future technologies that engage in situated interactions with human users. (shrink)

The ideology of evidence-base medicine (EBM) has dramatically altered the way we think, conceptualize, philosophize and practice medicine. One of its major pillars is the appraisal and classification of evidence. Although important and beneficial, this process currently lacks detail and is in need of reform. In particular, it largely focuses on three key dimensions (design, [type I] alpha error and beta [type II] error) to grade the quality of evidence and often omits other crucial aspects of evidence such as biological (...) plausibility, reproducibility, generalizability, temporality, consistency and coherence. It also over-values the randomized trial and meta-analytical techniques, discounts the biasing effect of single centre execution and gives insufficient weight to large and detailed observational studies. Unless these aspects are progressively included into systems for grading, evaluating and classifying evidence and duly empirically assessed (according to the EBM paradigm), the EBM process and movement will remain open to criticism of being more evidence-biased than evidence-based. (shrink)

Something about my book, Marxism and Human Nature,1 seems to have provoked Eagleton's hostility and clouded his mind, but it is difficult to figure out what. All that is evident from his review is that he has not read the book carefully or taken the trouble to understand it properly.

This is a thesis in three parts. It concerns the normative capacity of attributive goodness. Specifically, it critically evaluates Attributivism, the theory that attributive goodness is fundamentally normative, or that the distribution of that property determines when, whether, and in what way agents ought to act. The first third develops, refines and defends Attributivism. Doing so is, in part, a ground-clearing exercise. I distil that theory from the arguments of many other philosophers. In doing so I isolate and precisify its (...) core commitments. I defend it from a number of objections. The second third analyses fundamental normativity. I stipulate that a standard or property is fundamentally normative if its distribution alone can ground normativity. I argue that for anything to be so fundamentally normative, it must minimally meet two criteria. It must be both authoritative and regulatory. The final third evaluates whether or not attributive goodness satisfies the established criteria, and so whether or not Attributivism is correct. I argue that in its canonical form it isn’t. I then develop a revised view of Attributivism that can satisfy the criteria. I argue, however, that the revised view is unsatisfying in almost every respect. Attributivism, revised or otherwise, should be rejected. (shrink)

Does the status of certain temporal experiences as illusory depend on one’s conception of time? Our concept of time in part determines our concept of what we hold to be real and unreal; what we hold to be real and unreal partially determines what we hold to be illusory; thus, our concept of time in part determines what we hold to be illusory. This paper argues that this dependency of illusions on the concept of time is applicable to illusions of (...) time. Two possible temporal illusions given the evidence are examined, simultaneity and the experience of the past; it is argued that the evidence points at temporal illusions depending on which conception of time is true. (shrink)

Riemer’s recent paper on the perception of time discusses a neglected yet important topic in the psychological literature: the consequences for psychology (and psychophysics) from the ‘anisotropy’ of time. The paper presents an argument that there are unique kinds of challenges for psychophysics from such temporal anisotropy: (a) Challenges because the psychological experience of time has temporal anisotropy and the physical concept of time does not have temporal anisotropy. (b) Challenges for experimental research which are unique to temporal anisotropy. -/- (...) Although it is important to consider temporal anisotropy, I think there are reasons to deny the force of both kinds of challenges. (shrink)

For those familiar with Machiavelli’s texts, Foucault’s interpretation of Macchiavelli in his 1978 lecture series Sécurité, Territoire, Population1 is surprising. Although Machiavelli figures prominently in five of the thirteen lectures,2 Foucault treats Machiavelli as if he were the author of only one book—The Prince—and his reading treats this complex text as if it covered only one topic: how to guarantee the security of the Prince. Clearly Foucault did not intend his interpretation of Machiavelli as a close exegesis. Other discussions of (...) Foucault’s treatment of Machiavelli have acknowledged the role Machiavelli plays in these lectures and even note the inadequacy of the interpretation given by Foucault, but most commentators do not pursue Foucault’s reading further.3 This investigation is not concerned with whether Foucault got Machiavelli right. Rather, Foucault’s reading of Machiavelli is noteworthy because it is partial and incomplete in a way reminiscent of Foucault’s reading of Hobbes in, Il faut défendre la société. This fragmentary character of Foucault’s inscription of Machiavelli as a forerunner of the history of biopolitique allows an innovative reading of the Florentine that connects Machiavelli’s thinking, however indirectly, on a trajectory that encounters, for instance, Foucault’s analysis of populations, the police state, and even his reading of liberalism during the 1978-­‐ 1979 lectures. My argument here is that the specific way Foucault’s inscribes Machiavelli in the history of gouvernementalité, while seeming to reject him, in fact acts to resuscitate, and thereby relay, a reading of Machiavelli as a thinker who articulates encounters among political practices engaged within a horizon of radical immanence. (shrink)

In this introduction to contemporary conceptions of time and change, I investigate what our experience of time, that is, our experience of change, seems to be and ask whether or not we can say that how it seems could match the reality. My conclusion is that more recent contemporary conceptions of time can do this but that more intuitive or traditional conceptions cannot. Thus, the more contemporary conceptions are preferable for research into time consciousness.

Although much has been written about Nietzsche’s views on education over the years, and much has also been written about Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy, very little attention has been given to the meaning of, and need for, a Dionysian education. This two-part article is an attempt to begin that project. In Part One, drawing Nietzsche’s articulation of the Dionysian, Apollonian, and anti-Dionysian into the orbit of broader scholarship on Dionysus, the author invited readers to think about what (...) a Dionysian education might look like in a modern-day school setting, why such an education would be valuable, as well as some of the barriers to implementing such an education and the enjoyment of its fruits. Here in Part Two, the author considers some of the ideas current among philosophy of music scholars concerning “the Dionysian” in rock music. By analyzing and clarifying these views with reference to research conducted in Part One, the author proceeds in Part Two to investigate what combined role rock music and philosophy might play in the high school classroom where a Dionysian education is fostered. (shrink)

Organizational ethics involves the institutionalized principles, guidelines, and norms that influence how a company and its employees function in an ethical manner. Seeks to explore these important topics and present a more comprehensive overview of organizational ethics and stakeholder well-being in the business environment.

This paper examines the notion of the biopolitical body from the standpoint of Foucault’s logic of the security mechanism and the history he tells of vaccine technology. It then investigates how the increasing importance of the genetic code for determining the meaning and limits of the human in the field of 20th century cell biology has been a cause for ongoing transformation in the practices that currently extend vaccine research and development. I argue that these transformations mark the emergence of (...) a new kind of medical subject – the stabilized and infinitely reproducible human cell line – and that the practices and markets exploiting this new form of organism have had a destabilizing effect on the very biopolitical structures that engendered them and, in fact, mark a new way of conceiving the possibilities of cellular life. I call these new ways of organizing power that intervene in the logic of the security measure by mediating the relationship between populations and persons the microbiopolitical. (shrink)

A number of traditional roles that propositions are supposed to play are outlined. Philosophical theories of the nature of propositions are then surveyed, together with considerations for and against, with an eye on the question whether any single notion of a proposition is suited to play all or any of these roles. Approaches discussed include: (1) the structureless possible-worlds theory; (2) the structured Russellian theory; and (3) the structured Fregean theory. It is noted that it is often unclear whether these (...) are accounts of what propositions are, ontologically speaking, or whether they are accounts of how propositions are best represented in a formal semantic theory. (shrink)

In “Doing Without Morality” Richard Kraut argues that Aristotle does not work with moral concepts such as moral rightness and duty. One of his arguments is that Aristotle treats wit as a virtue of character but not a moral virtue in Nicomachean Ethics IV.8 and that this treatment should be extended to all the virtues of character. Though sympathetic to his conclusion, I offer three reasons for thinking that wit is ill-suited to play the role in which Kraut casts it: (...) first, what Aristotle says about wit elsewhere in the NE calls its status as a character virtue into question; second, the taxonomy of virtue and vice implicit in NE IV suggests that wit is not a full-fledged character virtue; and third, in Eudemian Ethics III.7 Aristotle holds that wit is not a virtue of character. Along the way I discuss some intriguing complexities in Aristotle’s taxonomy of virtues and vices and suggest that Aristotle has the resources to make a principled distinction between personality and character traits. (shrink)

The concept of alienation is one of the most important and fruitful legacies of Hegel's social philosophy. It is strange therefore that Hegel's own account is widely rejected, not least by writers in those traditions which have taken up and developed the concept in the most influential ways: Marxism and existentialism.

The concept of authenticity -- the idea of `being oneself' or being `true to oneself' -- is central to modern moral thought. Yet it is a puzzling notion. This article discusses two accounts of it. Essentialism holds that each individual has a `true' nature or self. Feelings and actions are authentic when they correspond to this nature. This approach is contrasted with views of the self as a complex entity in which all parts are essential, and in which authenticity involves (...) the harmonious functioning of all parts together. This approach is illustrated from Freud and Plato, and defended against the charge of conservatism (Marcuse) and the postmodernist rejection of the very idea of an integral self (Rorty). (shrink)

The realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as (...) a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with the realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working day is its basic prerequisite. (Marx 1971, 820). (shrink)

It seems evident that class differences and class struggle continue to exist in socialist societies; that is to say, in societies like the Soviet Union and China, which have undergone socialist revolutions and in which private property in the means of production has been largely abolished. I shall not attempt to prove this proposition here; rather it will form my starting point. For my purpose in this paper is to show how the phenomenon of class in socialist society can be (...) understood and interpreted in Marxist terms; and, in particular, to explain and expound Mao Zedong's attempt to do so. For one of Mao's most striking and important contributions to Marxism was his recognition that `contradictions among the people' continue to exist in socialist society, and his attempt to explain them within the theoretical framework of historical materialism. Marx outlines his account of historical development in the following well-known words: It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - what is merely a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within the framework of which they have hitherto operated. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. At that point an era of social revolution begins. With the change in the economic foundation the whole immense superstructure is more slowly or more rapidly transformed. (Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy) It has been common to interpret these words as expressing a simple form of economic or even technological determinism which would rule out the very possibility of class divisions continuing to be a fundamental feature of socialist society. For, according to this account, a socialist society, by abolishing the private ownership of the means of production, thereby abolishes the material and economic basis of class differences; and so classes are destined to die out in socialist society 2 as the forces of production are developed. According to this interpretation, which I shall call the `traditional' account, in Marx's account of historical development all the emphasis is placed upon the development of the productive forces.. (shrink)