More than twenty years after its original publication, The Case for Animal Rights is an acknowledged classic of moral philosophy, and its author is recognized as the intellectual leader of the animal rights movement. In a new and fully considered preface, Regan responds to his critics and defends the book's revolutionary position.

A Black Forest Walden is a work of philosophical reflection, nature description, and sly humor. In brief chapters, or aphorisms, the American philosopher David Farrell Krell recounts his experiences in a cabin located in the mountains of southern Germany's Black Forest, where he has lived for several decades. Insofar as Krell compares his experiences with those of Henry David Thoreau, who serves as both inspiration and irritation, the book could be described as a critical commentary on Thoreau's Walden. (...) Yet it equally reads as a rigorous yet playful and profoundly literary manifestation of where and how the mind wanders. Hence, the "Marlonbrando" of the subtitle is not the late actor but a feral cat who frequents the cabin and comes to be an important interlocutor, as if playing the role of analyst to the author. The subjects Krell treats are wide-ranging: the changing seasons, environmental issues, romantic love, parent-child relations, European versus American "values," higher education, artistic creativity, solitude, and the contrast between lifestyles in a quiet Black Forest village and in a noisy contemporary United States. Forty-one black-and-white photographs taken by the author accompany and enliven the text. (shrink)

Offers philosophical and psychological reflections on cruelty and tenderness. The Cudgel and the Caress explores the enduring significance of tenderness and cruelty in a range of works across philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literature. Divided into two parts, the book initially focuses on tenderness, with David Farrell Krell delivering original readings of Homer’s Iliad, Sophocles’s Antigone, and writings by Hölderlin, Hegel, Freud, and Derrida that deal with the importance of tenderness and the tragic consequences of its absence. Part One concludes with (...) an extended reading of Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities, in which Krell analyzes the tender relationship between Ulrich and Agathe. In Part Two, Krell begins by examining Otto Rank’s Birth Trauma, which reflects on the tenderness of gestation in the womb and the cruel necessity of birth. He then turns to an examination of cruelty in general, focusing on Derrida’s challenge to contemporary psychoanalysis, his opposition between Kant and Nietzsche, and his analysis (and indictment) of the death penalty. Groundbreaking and insightful, the book provides a rare philosophical treatment of subjects vital to the world we live in. David Farrell Krell is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University and Brauer Distinguished Visiting Professor of German Studies at Brown University. (shrink)

In 1974, thirty-year-old philosopher and translator David Krell began corresponding and then meeting with Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. Years later, he would meet Jacques Derrida and, through many letters and meetings, came to know him well. Drawing on unpublished correspondence and Krell's warmly told personal recollections, Three Encounters presents an intimate and highly insightful look at the lives and ideas of three noted philosophers as they neared the culmination of their careers. Three Encounters offers a chance for (...) readers to encounter these three great philosophers and their ideas, not through the lens of their biographies, but as "people" known through their personal correspondence and Krell's recollections, demonstrating the entanglement of thought and the lived experience. (shrink)

It is an important feature of creatures like us that our various motivations compete for control over our behaviour, including mental behaviour such as imagining and attending. In large part, this competition is adjudicated by the stimulation of affect — the intrinsically pleasant or unpleasant aspects of experience. In this paper I argue that the motivation-affect system controls a sub-type of attention called 'alerting attention' to bring various goals and stimuli to consciousness and thereby prioritize those contents for action. This (...) view allows me to flesh out the global workspace theory of consciousness, as well as some of the phenomenal characteristics of conscious experience. (shrink)

To understand Self-Representationalism you need to understand its family. Self-Representationalism is a branch of the Meta-Representationalist family, and according to theories in this family what distinguishes conscious mental representations from unconscious mental representations is that conscious ones are themselves the target of a mental meta¬-representational state. A mental state M1 is thus phenomenally conscious in virtue of being suitably represented by some mental state M2. What distinguishes the Self-Representationalist branch of the family is the claim that M1 and M2 must (...) be the same token mental state, so a mental state is phenomenally conscious in virtue of suitably representing itself. This Self-Representationalist branch of the family divides into further branches, giving us specific implementations of the Self-Representationalist approach. But before asking whether we should adopt Self-Representationalism, and in what form, we should reflect on why Meta-Representationalism is an attractive family in the first place. After all, Self-Representationalist theories trade on their family name, claiming to deliver on the promises that drive the Meta-Representationalist approach. The two most important promises of Meta-Representationalism are: a) the promise of capturing the transitivity of consciousness and; b) the promise of rendering consciousness naturalisable. I discuss each in turn. (shrink)

Abstract Temporal Externalism is the view that future events can contribute to determining the present content of our thoughts and utterances. Two objections to Temporal Externalism are discussed and rejected. The first is that Temporal Externalism has implausible consequences for the epistemology of biology and other taxonomic sciences (Brown, 2000). The second is that it is committed to implausible claims about dispositions.

If we were to connect two individuals’ brains together, how would this affect the individuals’ conscious experiences? In particular, it is possible for two people to share any of their conscious experiences; to simultaneously enjoy some token experiences while remaining distinct subjects? The case of the Hogan twins—craniopagus conjoined twins whose brains are connected at the thalamus—seems to show that this can happen. I argue that while practical empirical methods cannot tell us directly whether or not the twins share conscious (...) experiences, considerations about the locality of content processing in the brain entails that they most likely do so. (shrink)

How wrong is it to deceive someone into sex by lying, say, about one's profession? The answer is seriously wrong when the liar's actual profession would be a deal breaker for the victim of the deception: this deception vitiates the victim's sexual consent, and it is seriously wrong to have sex with someone while lacking his or her consent.

Objectives: Habitually instigated exercise is thought to increase health behavior maintenance. Previous research has explored several aspects of habit formation. However, there is a lack of longitudinal research investigating affective determinants, especially post-exercise affective states. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate a) if behavior frequency will enhance automaticity, b) if positive affect will enhance automaticity, and c) if positive affect will moderate the relationship between behavior frequency and automaticity. Methods: 226 participants (64% females, mean age 24 years) who attended (...) weekly sports and gym classes at two universities were followed for 13 weeks. Class attendance was documented on a weekly basis (behavior frequency) during the semester. Before, during and immediately after each class, participants filled in the Feeling Scale (affective valence). Furthermore, at the beginning of each class, they answered a question about their automaticity in arriving at the decision to attend the class (instigation habit). We used a two-level modeling approach to predict subsequent automaticity by the different constructs at the previous attendance. Results: The cumulative frequency of prior class attendance did not significantly enhance the automaticity of the decision to re-attend the class. There were significant effects of valence on automaticity on the between-subject level, i.e., a one-point higher mean valence score was associated with a 0.62 point increase in automaticity (p=.001). No moderation effects of affect on the association between behavior frequency and automaticity were observed. Conclusions: Behavior repetition, albeit not significant, and positive affective states at the end of an exercise class may be beneficial in building exercise instigation habits. Practitioners and researchers alike may thus want to emphasize the importance of behavior repetition and affective response for health behavior maintenance. (shrink)

In this essay we critically evaluate the progress that has been made in solving the problem of meaning in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. We remain skeptical about solutions based on deep neural networks and cognitive robotics, which in our opinion do not fundamentally address the problem. We agree with the enactive approach to cognitive science that things appear as intrinsically meaningful for living beings because of their precarious existence as adaptive autopoietic individuals. But this approach inherits the problem of (...) failing to account for how meaning as such could make a difference for an agent’s behavior. In a nutshell, if life and mind are identified with physically deterministic phenomena, then there is no conceptual room for meaning to play a role in its own right. We argue that this impotence of meaning can be addressed by revising the concept of nature such that the macroscopic scale of the living can be characterized by physical indeterminacy. We consider the implications of this revision of the mind-body relationship for synthetic approaches. (shrink)

To understand Self-Representationalism you need to understand its family. Self-Representationalism is a branch of the Meta-Representationalist family, and according to theories in this family what distinguishes conscious mental representations from unconscious mental representations is that conscious ones are themselves the target of a mental meta¬-representational state. A mental state M1 is thus phenomenally conscious in virtue of being suitably represented by some mental state M2. What distinguishes the Self-Representationalist branch of the family is the claim that M1 and M2 must (...) be the same token mental state, so a mental state is phenomenally conscious in virtue of suitably representing itself. This Self-Representationalist branch of the family divides into further branches, giving us specific implementations of the Self-Representationalist approach. But before asking whether we should adopt Self-Representationalism, and in what form, we should reflect on why Meta-Representationalism is an attractive family in the first place. After all, Self-Representationalist theories trade on their family name, claiming to deliver on the promises that drive the Meta-Representationalist approach. The two most important promises of Meta-Representationalism are: a) the promise of capturing the transitivity of consciousness and; b) the promise of rendering consciousness naturalisable. I discuss each in turn. (shrink)

Deflationists believe that the question “What is truth?” should be answered not by means of a metaphysical inquiry into the nature of truth, but by figuring out what use we make of the concept of truth, and the word ‘true’, in practice. This article accepts this methodology, and it thereby rejects pluralism about truth that is driven by ontological considerations. However, it shows that there are practical considerations for a pluralism about truth, formulated at the level of use. The theory (...) expounded by this article states that truth is a dual-purpose tool; it can be used as a device for transferring justificatory burdens and, for select areas of discourse, it can also be used as a standard, a norm. This contrast in how truth is used introduces a bifurcation in our discourse that is reminiscent of metaphysical divides traced by more traditional versions of alethic pluralism. However, my pluralism “at the level of use” states that truth is plural solely at the level of use. It is unified at both the conceptual as well as the metaphysical level. At those levels, the theory takes its cue from deflationism. As such, this theory is offered as a midway point and as a potential way forward in the debate between deflationism and pluralism. (shrink)

Abstract -- Background, context, overview, and guiding philosophy -- Emotional intelligence meets virtue ethics : implications for educators -- Emotional intelligence as a component of business ethics pedagogy -- Nourishing life, the daoist concept of virtue -- Cultivation of virtue (dé) 1 according to the neiye -- Cultivation of virtuous leaders according to the huainanzi -- Is there a place for contemplation and inner work in business ethics education? -- Incorporating the inner work of ei and contemplation in ethics education (...) -- Glossary -- About the author. (shrink)

Intro -- Title -- Contents -- Publisher's Acknowledgment -- Introduction -- Madhyamaka's Promise as Philosophy -- 1. Trying to Be Fair -- 2. How Far Can a Mādhyamika Reform Customary Truth? Dismal Relativism, Fictionalism, Easy-Easy Truth, and the Alternatives -- Logic and Semantics -- 3. How Do Mādhyamikas Think? Notes on Jay Garfield, Graham Priest, and Paraconsistency -- 4. "How Do Mādhyamikas Think?" Revisited -- 5. Prasaṅga and Proof by Contradiction in Bhāviveka, Candrakīrti, and Dharmakīrti -- 6. Apoha Semantics: What (...) Did Bhāviveka Have to Do with It? -- 7. What Happened to the Third and Fourth Lemmas in the Tibetan Madhyamaka? -- Ethics and the Spiritual Path -- 8. Madhyamaka Buddhist Ethics -- 9. Reason, Irrationality, and Akrasia (Weakness of the Will) in Buddhism: Reflections upon Śāntideva's Arguments with Himself -- 10. Yogic Perception, Meditation, and Enlightenment: The Epistemological Issues in a Key Debate between Madhyamaka and Chan -- Madhyamaka in Contemporary Debates -- 11. On Minds, Dharmakīrti, and Madhyamaka -- 12. Serious, Lightweight, or Neither: Should Madhyamaka Go to Canberra? -- Notes on the Articles -- Abbreviations -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author -- Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism Titles Previously Published -- About Wisdom Publications -- Copyright. (shrink)

Now that she is old enough to be taken to boring, so-called “cultural” events by her aging, academic relatives, we have just taken Anya to see a performance of Julius Caesar. When it’s over, we discuss the acting, the poetry, the famous lines. At some point, Anya asks: “I wonder if it happened like that?” Anya has not radically misunderstood what we just watched; she did not, for example, rush down and yell at Caesar that he’d better read that scroll. (...) Her question is not uncommon as a response to a history play, from audience members both young and old. It is perfectly intelligible; I would like to give her an answer. Before I sketch some possible answers, it is worth saying something more about Anya’s. (shrink)

Alphonso Lingis is the author of many books and renowned for his translations of Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and Klossowski. By combining a rich philosophical training with an extensive travel itinerary, Lingis has developed a distinctive brand of phenomenology that is only now beginning to gain critical attention. Lingis inhabits a ready-made language and conceptuality, but cultivates a style of thinking which disrupts and transforms the work of his predecessors, setting him apart from the rest of his field. This essay sketches Lingis’ (...) phenomenology of sensation in order to give expression to some dimensions of Lingisian travel. As we see, Lingis deploys a theory of the subject which features the plasticity of the body, the materiality of affect, and the alimentary nature of sensation. (shrink)

_A proactive, inclusive plan for the cross-disciplinary teaching of climate change from preschool to high school._ In _Teach for Climate Justice_, accomplished educator and social and emotional learning expert Tom Roderick proposes a visionary interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to PreK–12 climate education. He argues that meaningful instruction on this urgent issue of our time must focus on climate justice—the convergence of climate change and social justice—in a way that is emotionally safe, developmentally appropriate, and ultimately empowering. Drawing on examples of (...) real-life educators teaching climate change, Roderick identifies eight key dimensions of climate education that will prepare students to face the challenges of the climate crisis and give them the means to take action. These dimensions include not only educating for a deep understanding of the scientific, geopolitical, and socioeconomic equity issues that surround global warming, but also cultivating appreciation for the environment, building a supportive community, and fostering active hope for the future. Roderick's intentional layering of skills will help students develop the knowledge and sense of agency necessary to engage in civil resistance and nonviolent activism. In support of this crucial endeavor, Roderick suggests evidence-based teaching strategies, practices that promote inclusivity, and tools for social and emotional learning. This timely and uplifting book lays out a powerful vision for teaching, learning, and curriculum development to nurture a generation of courageous, informed advocates for climate justice. (shrink)

The third chapter of Brentano's dissertation "On the Manifold Meaning of Being According to Aristotle" (1862) analyzes "Being in the sense of the True." Because Heidegger has always related the Question of Being to the Question of Truth, and because he calls Brentano's work the "chief help and guide" of his first venture into philosophy, the question arises: does Brentano's account of "Being in the sense of the True" have significant bearing on Heidegger's response to the principal matter of his (...) thought, i.e., Aletheia as the Unconcealment of Beings in Presence? This article traces the parallels and divergencies in Brentano's and Heidegger's accounts of the relation between Being and Truth. (shrink)

A philosophical memoir about becoming a father in an increasingly terrible world – can I hope the child growing in my partner's womb will have a good-enough life? For Kant, philosophy boiled down to three key questions: “What can I know?”, “What ought I do?”, and “What can I hope for?” In philosophy departments, that third question has largely been neglected at the expense of the first two – even though it is crucial for understanding why anyone might ask them (...) in the first place. In Infinitely Full of Hope, as he prepares to become a father for the first time, the philosopher Tom Whyman attempts to answer Kant’s third question, trying to make sense of it in the context of a world that increasingly seems like it is on the verge of collapse. Part memoir, part theory, and part reflection on fatherhood, Infinitely Full of Hope asks how we can cling to hope in a world marked by crisis and disaster. (shrink)

Philosophical Papers, Volume 41, Issue 1, Page 175-179, March 2012.

In this chapter, the author's unplanned venture into public philosophy began in the mid‐to‐late 1980s, just as Ronald Reagan was insisting that a certain famous wall be torn down. Various European thinkers and political philosophers in America, along with a few people working in the author's own tradition, like Robert Nozick and Peter Singer, had already begun to work in the nascent movement of “applied philosophy,” and in a public way. The author's early work in philosophy had been solidly within (...) the analytical tradition, with a special interest in religion, focused mainly on metaphysics and, secondarily, epistemological issues. Public philosophy can be rekindled in our time by any number of means and across a wide variety of topics. Many of the philosophers who had the biggest public impact in their own time and into our own have been good storytellers, and some have used the power of humor well. (shrink)

Die Entdeckung des Straßburger Empedokles-Papyrus und seine 1999 erfolgte Publikation war für die Erforschung der antiken Philosophie ein einzigartiger Glücksfall. Die neu hinzugekommenen Texte ergänzten die fragmentarische Überlieferung von Empedokles’ naturphilosophischem Lehrgedicht Physika (so der in der Antike gebräuchliche Titel) an entscheidenden Stellen. Allerdings wurde das Potenzial des Papyrus zur Klärung ungelöster Interpretationsprobleme in der auf die Veröffentlichung folgenden Forschungsdiskussion noch nicht ausgeschöpft. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird auf der Basis einer kontinuierlichen inhaltlichen und sprachlichen Analyse des Textes eine Gesamtrekonstruktion (...) des empedokleischen Theoriegebäudes vorgelegt. Untersucht werden dabei vor allem die zyklische Struktur allen Werdens, die Funktionen von Liebe und Streit, die einzelnen Stadien von Kosmogonie und Zoogonie und das inhaltliche Verhältnis von Physika und einem weiteren Gedicht des Autors, den Katharmoi. Die Ergebnisse werden abschließend auch in einer neuen Übersetzung der durch Einbeziehung des Straßburger Papyrus wiedergewonnenen Teile des Gedichts zusammengeführt. (shrink)

The following paper, delivered as a lecture to the philosophy departments of a number of American universities in 1979, traces a parallel between Hegelian phenomenology and Freudian psychoanalysis. It stems from a project I have been working on for several years now entitled Erinnerungsversuch or "Essay in Remembrance. " In my studies of Freud and Hegel for that project I was struck by the importance of memory for their work, not only as a field of investigation but also as a (...) method of the investigation itself. Remembering and forgetting are the crucial events for both psychoanalysis and phenomenology, crucial yet maddeningly intertwined, so that while memory seems eminently subject to malfunction and even illness it remains the sole source of insight and cure. I therefore determined to extend the parallel as far as it would go-perhaps even farther-and the present paper is the result. I am of course aware that Hegel was not a psychotherapist, Freud not a systematic philosopher, and realize that if essays like this one may be excused at all it is only because they eventually grow silent and allow irreconcilable differences to reassert themselves. Yet there is a sense in which Hegel's creative recapitulation of the history of philosophy, seeking as it does to liberate philosophical thought from a crippling self-ignorance, amounts to therapy of spirit; and there is a sense in which Freudian therapy must shatter traditional prejudices in our thoughts about what the psyche or spirit is, by letting psychological phenomena show themselves as they are. I have tried to make the parallel as concrete as possible, shunning Freud's metapsychology and turning instead to one of his earliest accounts of psychoanalytic praxis, eschewing sweeping remarks about Hegel's "system" and concentrating on just a few pages from the Phenomenology. Readers trained in philosophy will know that a few pages of Hegel are bound to contain labyrinths. I hope that my psychologist-readers will overlook the oversimplified presentation of Freud-which results partly from the lecture form-and will forgive my unwillingness to make Hegel's thought seem less demanding than it is. Finally, if I am right, the Freud-Hegel parallel with respect to memory tells us a good deal not only about this fascinating faculty but also about that singular creature who is so ardent to remember and so prone to forget. (shrink)

The following paper, delivered as a lecture to the philosophy departments of a number of American universities in 1979, traces a parallel between Hegelian phenomenology and Freudian psychoanalysis. It stems from a project I have been working on for several years now entitled Erinnerungsversuch or "Essay in Remembrance. " In my studies of Freud and Hegel for that project I was struck by the importance of memory for their work, not only as a field of investigation but also as a (...) method of the investigation itself. Remembering and forgetting are the crucial events for both psychoanalysis and phenomenology, crucial yet maddeningly intertwined, so that while memory seems eminently subject to malfunction and even illness it remains the sole source of insight and cure. I therefore determined to extend the parallel as far as it would go-perhaps even farther-and the present paper is the result. I am of course aware that Hegel was not a psychotherapist, Freud not a systematic philosopher, and realize that if essays like this one may be excused at all it is only because they eventually grow silent and allow irreconcilable differences to reassert themselves. Yet there is a sense in which Hegel's creative recapitulation of the history of philosophy, seeking as it does to liberate philosophical thought from a crippling self-ignorance, amounts to therapy of spirit; and there is a sense in which Freudian therapy must shatter traditional prejudices in our thoughts about what the psyche or spirit is, by letting psychological phenomena show themselves as they are. I have tried to make the parallel as concrete as possible, shunning Freud's metapsychology and turning instead to one of his earliest accounts of psychoanalytic praxis, eschewing sweeping remarks about Hegel's "system" and concentrating on just a few pages from the Phenomenology. Readers trained in philosophy will know that a few pages of Hegel are bound to contain labyrinths. I hope that my psychologist-readers will overlook the oversimplified presentation of Freud-which results partly from the lecture form-and will forgive my unwillingness to make Hegel's thought seem less demanding than it is. Finally, if I am right, the Freud-Hegel parallel with respect to memory tells us a good deal not only about this fascinating faculty but also about that singular creature who is so ardent to remember and so prone to forget. (shrink)

After listing a series of topics in Scott’s Living with Indifference that I would have wanted to address but, if only for reasons of space, could not, I focus on the uses of narrative or fiction in Scott’s book. I am particularly interested in the relation of fiction to trauma. It is the resilience of fiction that perhaps enables it to speak—or to write—so eloquently about traumatic occurrences. As a writer of fiction, I am gripped by the proximity and even (...) intimacy of fiction and trauma in Scott’s thinking. (shrink)

This chapter discusses vagueness in ethics.

We address the question of consistency strength of certain filters and ultrafilters which fail to satisfy the Galvin property. We answer questions [Benhamou and Gitik, Ann. Pure Appl. Logic 173 (2022) 103107; Questions 7.8, 7.9], [Benhamou et al., J. Lond. Math. Soc. 108(1) (2023) 190–237; Question 5] and improve theorem [Benhamou et al., J. Lond. Math. Soc. 108(1) (2023) 190–237; Theorem 2.3].

An introduction to functionalism in the philosophy of psychology/mind, and review of the current state of debate pro and con. Forthcoming in the Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Psychology (John Symons and Paco Calvo, eds.).

Alphonso Lingis is the author of many books and renowned for his translations of Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and Klossowski. By combining a rich philosophical training with an extensive travel itinerary, Lingis has developed a distinctive brand of phenomenology that is only now beginning to gain critical attention. Lingis inhabits a ready-made language and conceptuality, but cultivates a style of thinking which disrupts and transforms the work of his predecessors, setting him apart from the rest of his field. This essay sketches Lingis’ (...) phenomenology of sensation in order to give expression to some dimensions of Lingisian travel. As we see, Lingis deploys a theory of the subject which features the plasticity of the body, the materiality of affect, and the alimentary nature of sensation. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Note.

The tragedy of critique -- The sound and the fury : the insights and limits of the critique of critique -- The experience of critique : inside permanent liminality -- Critique is history? : understanding a tradition of tradition-breaking -- Unthinking critical thinking : the reduction of philosophy to negative logic -- The cacophony of critique : populist radicals and hegemonic dissent -- Asocial media : an auto-ethnography of on-line critiques -- Towards acritical theory -- Bibliography -- Index.

Quid est veritas? -- What is science? how we understand the physical world -- What a piece of work is man: the rise of the social sciences -- Educational science and pseudo science -- Multiple intelligences: if everyone's smart, no one is -- My NLP and brain gym hell -- Group work: failing better, together -- I'm with stupid: emotional intelligence -- Buck Rogers and the 21st century curriculum -- Techno, techno, techno, techno: digital natives in flipped classrooms -- The (...) holy trinity of the three-part lesson -- There are no such things as learning styles -- Game over: the gamification of education -- Learning to learn to learn to learn -- The hard smell: smell/ dance/ box/sing yourself smarter/ happier/ healthier -- Thinking hats on! -- School uniform armageddon -- What everyone in education should do next. (shrink)