Cécile Laborde a développé le projet d’un républicanisme critique reposant sur un dialogue entre théorie républicaine normative et théorie sociale critique. Nous proposons ici une présentation et une discussion des principales orientations de ce projet.

Cette recension a pour enjeu d’inviter à croiser deux lectures, celle de The Economy of Esteem. An Essay on Civil and Political Society, Oxford University Press, New York, 2004 de G. Brennan et P. Pettit et celle du livre d’O. Ihl, Le mérite et la République. Essai sur la société des émules, NRF/Gallimard, Paris, 2007. Il s’agit ici de mettre en relief l’apport du second ouvrage en indiquant sur quel point il pourrait nourrir le projet d’une reformulation de l’économie de (...) l’estime. En un premier temps, je vais rappeler les principales orientations de The Economy of Esteem avant de dégager les axes de la réflexion développée par Ihl dans Le mérite et la république. Sur cette base, j’indiquerai succinctement en quoi le travail d’O. Ihl peut contribuer au développement du projet d’une économie de l’estime. (shrink)

Historically left to the margins, the topics of imagination and creativity have gained prominence in philosophy of science, challenging the once dominant distinction between ‘context of discovery’ and ‘context of justification’. The aim of this chapter is to explore imagination and creativity starting from issues within contemporary philosophy of science, making connections to these topics in other domains along the way. It discusses the recent literature on the role of imagination in models and thought experiments, and their comparison with fictions. (...) It then turns to the importance of constraints on imaginings in the scientific domain, as well as whether constraints can hinder creativity. The second part of the paper focuses on the social dimensions of science. It considers imagination and creativity of scientific communities, asks whether the institution of science promotes creativity (and whether we want it to) or if it encourages conservativeness, and ends with a reflection on the politics of imagination and creativity in science. (shrink)

In 1998, Robert Boostrom wrote that ‘safe-space’ was an emerging metaphor in educational discourse but was not yet a ‘topic of educational inquiry’ (p.398). Whilst there has been a great amount of work since then exploring the topic (for example, Holley and Steiner; Stengel; The Roestone Collective and Callan), a lack of clarity still clouds the debate around the place of safe spaces in the classroom. In this paper, I address this lack of clarity by addressing the fundamental question: what (...) does it mean for a classroom to be safe? I do so by considering the variety of meanings which have been ascribed to ’safety’ in educational contexts in light of the purpose for which the concept is used. I’ll defend a particular refinement of the concept – what I call an ’objective approach to safety’ - on the grounds that it most effectively captures the conditions we value, and can appropriately describe as safety, in the classroom. (shrink)

Those who wish to defend the role of aesthetic values in science face a dilemma: Either aesthetic language is used metaphorically for what are ultimately epistemic features, or aesthetic language is used literally but it is difficult to see the importance of such values in science. I introduce a new account that gets around this problem by looking to an overlooked source of aesthetic value in science: the relation between form and content. I argue that a fit between the content (...) of a thought experiment, and the way in which that content is formulated, can have important epistemic pay offs through contributing to scientific understanding. (shrink)

Is there a role for aesthetic judgements in science? One aspect of scientific practice, the use of thought experiments, has a clear aesthetic dimension. Thought experiments are creatively produced artefacts that are designed to engage the imagination. Comparisons have been made between scientific (and philosophical) thought experiments and other aesthetically appreciated objects. In particular, thought experiments are said to share qualities with literary fiction as they invite us to imagine a fictional scenario and often have a narrative form (Elgin 2014). (...) But philosophical discussions of aesthetics in science have focused mainly on the epistemic role of beauty and elegance when it comes to theories and mathematical proofs, and thought experiments have been widely overlooked. My aim in this chapter is to address how the aesthetic choices scientists make in the design of a thought experiment contribute to its function: to communicate, convince, or explain a theory or phenomenon. A key issue is whether any aesthetic features in science provide anything beyond catching our attention, or are at best, a mere heuristic aid. I respond to accounts that argue this way and show how formulation is important in scientific thought experiments and, similarly to literary fictions, there is more than one way of interpreting a thought experiment scenario. I end by considering which literary examples are most appropriate when making comparisons with thought experiments. As a result, the difference between representations in art and science raised in current discussions is not as stark as it has been made out to be, and science is a more heterogeneous practice than has been allowed. Part of the value of thought experiments in scientific practice includes the qualities they share with literary works. (shrink)

How ought we to evaluate and respond to expressions of anger and resentment? Can philosophical analysis of resentment as the emotional expression of a moral claim help us to distinguish which resentments ought to be taken seriously? Philosophers have tended to focus on what I call ‘reasonable’ resentments, presenting a technical, narrow account that limits resentment to the expression of recognizable moral claims. In the following paper, I defend three claims about the ethics and politics of resentment. First, if we (...) care about socially just processes of reconciliation, we have good reason to pay attention to the logic of resentments. Second, the account philosophers offer of resentment – its distinctive features, aims, rationality, and gratification – will affect the conclusions we draw about which actual resentments to take seriously, which aspects of resentful claims need addressing, and what it means to address and repair them. In contesting definitions of resentment, I argue, we do more than simply perform housekeeping in philosophical taxonomies of emotion. Restricting our understanding to essentially ‘moral’ cases may cause us to lose sight of expressly political resentments. Instead, I argue, a plausible account of resentment must acknowledge that we resent violations and threats that are not necessarily self-pertaining, may not be expressible as individual, discrete injuries, and cannot always be construed as moral threats. Second, given the dependence of moral judgments on a broader horizon of moral possibility, philosophical standards of ‘reasonable’ or ‘appropriate’ resentment cannot avoid being politically charged. Thus, the widely accepted account of ‘reasonable’ resentment cannot make philosophical sense of the most interesting and perplexing cases. Ironically, a theoretical measure designed to revalue emotional expressions of moral protest may result in the exclusion and silencing of those with the most reasons to protest. (shrink)

In this paper, I reply to 18 of the essays on panpsychism in this issue. Along the way, I sketch out what a post-Galilean science of consciousness, one in which consciousness is taken to be a fundamental feature of reality, might look like.

In the literature on expert trust, it is often assumed that track records are the gold standard for evaluating expertise, and the difficulty of expert identification arises from either the lack of access to track records, or the inability to assess them. I show, using a computational model, that even in an idealized environment where agents have a God’s eye view on track records, they may fail to identify experts. Under plausible conditions, selecting testimony based on track records ends up (...) reducing overall accuracy, and preventing the community from identifying the real experts. (shrink)

This text offers major re-evaluation of Wittgenstein's thinking. It is a collection of essays that presents a significantly different portrait of Wittgenstein. The essays clarify Wittgenstein's modes of philosophical criticism and shed light on the relation between his thought and different philosophical traditions and areas of human concern. With essays by Stanley Cavell, James Conant, Cora Diamond, Peter Winch and Hilary Putnam, we see the emergence of a new way of understanding Wittgenstein's thought. This is a controversial collection, with essays (...) by highly regarded Wittgenstein scholars that may change the way we look at Wittgenstein's body of work. (shrink)

The question of forgiveness in politics has attained a certain cachet. Indeed, in the fifty years since Arendt commented on the notable absence of forgiveness in the political tradition, a vast and multidisciplinary literature on the politics of apology, reparation, and reconciliation has emerged. To a novice scouring the relevant literatures, it might appear that the only discordant note in this new veritable symphony of writings on political forgiveness has been sounded by philosophers. There is a more-than-healthy cynicism directed at (...) what many philosophers see as an uncritical promotion of forgiveness, which – they fear – risks distorting and cheapening forgiveness as a moral ideal, on the one hand, and ignoring the moral and political values of justice, accountability and the cessation of harmful relationships, on the other. Are philosophical fears about the dangers of thinking about forgiveness in political terms warranted – or do they perhaps depend in part on conceptual conservatism regarding what exactly political forgiveness might be? I argue that most, if not all, standard objections to political forgiveness emerge from theoretical reliance on a picture of forgiveness I will call the Emotional Model. Once we make conceptual space for descriptions of forgiveness in performative and social terms, the concept is more easily adapted to a political account without at least some of the risks feared by philosophers. (shrink)

We introduce the topic of panpsychism, before briefly outlining the 19 essays on panpsychism containing in this special issue.

This paper makes an ethical and a conceptual case against any purported duty to come out of the closet. While there are recognizable goods associated with coming out, namely, leading an authentic life and resisting oppression, these goods generate a set of imperfect duties that are defeasible in a wide range of circumstances, and are only sometimes fulfilled by coming out. Second, practices of coming out depend on a ‘lump’ picture of sexuality and on an insufficiently subtle account of responsible (...) disclosure. We value and promote the goods of out best when we leave the framework of the closet, and not merely the closet door, behind. (shrink)

Two types of formal models - landscape search tasks and two-armed bandit models - are often used to study the effects that various social factors have on epistemic performance. I argue that they can be understood within a single framework. In this unified framework, I develop a model that may be used to understand the effects of functional and demographic diversity and their interaction. Using the unified model, I find that the benefit of demographic diversity is most pronounced in a (...) functionally homogeneous group, and decreases with the increase of functional diversity. (shrink)

In this paper, I take issue with the widespread philosophical consensus that only victims of wrongdoing are in a position to forgive it. I offer both a defense and a philosophical account of third-party forgiveness. I argue that when we deny this possibility, we misconstrue the complex, relational nature of wrongdoing and its harms. We also risk over-moralizing the victim's position and overlooking the roles played by secondary participants. I develop an account of third-party forgiveness that both demonstrates how successful, (...) morally legitimate, acts of third-party forgiveness are possible and simultaneously highlights the particular moral risks that would-be third-party forgivers face. I conclude insofar as they are appropriately grounded and cautiously bestowed, at least some acts of third-party forgiveness contribute significantly to post-conflict repair. (shrink)

Objectification involves treating someone as a thing. The role of images in perpetuating objectification has been discussed by feminist philosophers. However, the precise effect that images have on an individual's visual system is seldom explored. Kathleen Stock’s work is an exception—she describes certain images of women as causing viewers to develop an objectifying ‘gestalt’ which is then projected onto real-life women. However, she doesn’t specify the level of visual processing at which objectification occurs. In this paper, I propose that images (...) can affect a viewer's early visual system. I will argue that if a viewer is exposed to a lot of images that depict women as sexual objects, this will bias their early visual selection mechanisms in a way that can result in an objectifying way of seeing. This is an important contribution to work on objectification as it incorporates empirical studies on vision and findings from philosophy of mind. It also examines some of the epistemic and moral consequences of objectification occurring at this early visual stage. (shrink)

Forgiveness is typically regarded as a good thing - even a virtue - but acts of forgiveness can vary widely in value, depending on their context and motivation. Faced with this variation, philosophers have tended to reinforce everyday concepts of forgiveness with strict sets of conditions, creating ideals or paradigms of forgiveness. These are meant to distinguish good or praiseworthy instances of forgiveness from problematic instances and, in particular, to protect the self-respect of would-be forgivers. But paradigmatic forgiveness is problematic (...) for a number of reasons, including its inattention to forgiveness as a gendered trait. We can account for the values and the risks associated with forgiving far better if we treat it as a moral practice and not an ideal. (shrink)

Should philosophers be more polite to one another? The topic of good manners—or, more grandly, civility—has enjoyed a recent renaissance in philosophical circles, but little of the formal discussion has been self-directed: that is, it has not examined the virtues and vices of polite and impolite philosophizing, in particular. This is an oversight; practices of rudeness do rather a lot of work in enacting distinctly philosophical modes of engagement, in ways that both shape and detract from the aims of our (...) discipline. If we fail to recognize practices of rudeness, we become vulnerable to some of... (shrink)

My concern in this paper is how to reconcile a central tension in Hannah Arendt’s thinking, one that – if left unresolved – may make us reluctant to endorse her political theory. Arendt was profoundly and painfully aware of the horrors of political evil; in fact, she is almost unparalleled in 20 th century thought in her concern for the consequences of mass political violence, the victims of political atrocities, and the most vulnerable in political society – the stateless, the (...) pariahs, the outcasts. At least, this is the case in her discussions of concrete, historical political situations. Yet in her philosophical writings, she continues to argue that the political realm ultimately redeems human existence, and furthermore, that politics should remain distinct and autonomous from moral evaluation. Political action must be evaluated according to “greatness,” not goodness or any other explicitly moral or even ethical standard. She goes so far as to suggest that politics and morality may be deeply hostile to one another, and can only be reconciled in situations of extreme emergency. This can leave many feeling both perplexed and deeply uncomfortable with the theory of human action that Arendt proposes. Drawing on her notions of political conscience, judgment and - in particular - her account of forgiveness, in this paper I argue that Arendt offers an ethics of plurality, in which what is good is developed from what is most politically important: amor mundi, or love of our shared political world. (shrink)

It used to be thought that rational coherence and metaphysical possibility went hand in hand. Kripke and Putnam put a spanner in the works by proposing examples of propositions which seem to violate this principle. I will propose a nuanced form of modal rationalism consistent with the Kripke/putnam cases. The rough idea is that rational coherence entails possibility when you grasp the essential nature of what you’re conceiving of.

Important features of space and time are taken to be missing in quantum gravity, allegedly requiring an explanation of the emergence of spacetime from non-spatio-temporal theories. In this paper, we argue that the explanatory gap between general relativity and non-spatio- temporal quantum gravity theories might significantly be reduced with two moves. First, we point out that spacetime is already partially missing in the context of general relativity when understood from a dynamical perspective. Second, we argue that most approaches to quantum (...) gravity already start with an in-built distinction between structures to which the asymmetry between space and time can be traced back. (shrink)

Spacetime functionalism is the view that spacetime is a functional structure implemented by a more fundamental ontology. Lam and Wüthrich have recently argued that spacetime functionalism helps to solve the epistemological problem of empirical coherence in quantum gravity and suggested that it also (dis)solves the hard problem of spacetime, namely the problem of offering a picture consistent with the emergence of spacetime from a non-spatio-temporal structure. First, I will deny that spacetime functionalism solves the hard problem by showing that it (...) comes in various species, each entailing a different attitude towards, or answer to, the hard problem. Second, I will argue that the existence of an explanatory gap, which grounds the hard problem, has not been correctly taken into account in the literature. (shrink)

Zombies are bodies without minds: creatures that are physically identical to actual human beings, but which have no conscious experience. Much of the consciousness literature focuses on considering how threatening philosophical reflection on such creatures is to physicalism. There is not much attention given to the converse possibility, the possibility of minds without bodies, that is, creatures who are conscious but whose nature is exhausted by their being conscious. We can call such a ‘purely conscious’ creature a ghost.

The practice of official apology has a fairly poor reputation. Dismissed as ‘crocodile tears’ or cheap grace, such apologies are often seen by the public as an easy alternative to more punitive or expensive ways of taking real responsibility. I focus on what I call the role-playing criticism: the argument that someone who offers an apology in public cannot be appropriately apologetic precisely because they are only playing a role. I offer a qualified defence of official apologies against this objection, (...) considering them through the lens of fiduciary duties. This focus draws our attention to formal or impersonal relationships that are nevertheless normatively rich, capable of sustaining trust, concern, and care. At the same time, I highlight several pitfalls for fiduciary apologisers, including the tension between apology as a mode of truth telling and the duty of confidentiality. I consider whether the fiduciary apologiser, in reflecting on her fiduciary obligations, has ‘one thought too many’ for genuine apology, and argue that the issue of mixed motives is not limited to fiduciary contexts, cautioning against excessive idealism in our conception of apology. I conclude with some reflections on possible conflicts between fiduciary obligations and the conscientious desire to apologise. (shrink)

In The Atrocity Paradigm, Claudia Card suggests we forgiveness as a potentially valuable exercise of a victim's moral powers. Yet Card never makes explicit just what 'moral powers' are, or how to understand their grounding or scope. I draw out unacknowledged implications of her framework: namely, that others than the primary victim may forgive, and -- conversely -- that some victims may find themselves morally dis-empowered. Furthermore, talk of "moral powers" allows us to appropriately acknowledge the value of refusals to (...) forgive and the issue of "forgivable" evils, in ways that talk of forgiveness as a duty or virtue cannot. (shrink)

The categorical denial of third-party forgiveness represents an overly individualistic approach to moral repair. Such an approach fails to acknowledge the important roles played by witnesses, bystanders, beneficiaries, and others who stand in solidarity to the primary victim and perpetrator. In this paper, I argue that the prerogative to forgive or withhold forgiveness is not universal, but neither is it restricted to victims alone. Not only can we make moral sense of some third-party acts and utterances of the form, “I (...) can or cannot forgive…” but also, we ought to recognize them as legitimate instances of third party forgiveness. Concern for the primary victim’s autonomy tends to exaggerate a need for moral deference, while ignoring how others are called upon to support and mediate for victims of violence and oppression. I advocate a cautious extension of the victim’s prerogative to forgive, one that grounds forgiveness in a double relation of sympathetic identification and attentive care. Following Jean Harvey’s recent work, I call this relationship moral solidarity. Furthermore, I argue, there are important moral and political reasons to acknowledge third party forgiveness; these reasons are particularly evident in contexts of oppression. In fact, third party refusals to forgive may have particular moral significance. In situations of abuse, oppression and damaged self-respect, third party refusals may protect the agency of victims who too easily forgive. (shrink)

We take up questions of passing/outing as they arise for those with queer femme identities. We argue that for persons with female-identified bodies and queer, feminine (‘femme’) gender identities, the possibilities above may not exist as distinct options: for example, what it means to ‘pass’ or ‘cover’ is not always distinguishable – conceptually or in practice – from living authentically and resisting heteronormative identification: i.e. the conditions of being ‘out’. In some ways, these conflations privilege queer femmes; in others, femmes (...) find themselves implicated in a political double bind. We contend that this example problematizes the very concepts of passing and outing, and the political and ethical demands that are taken to arise from them. We conclude by exploring what it means to live queer femme identity responsibly and what this means for the ethics of sexual identity more generally. (shrink)

“Pick a card, any card. This has to be a completely free choice.” the magician tells you. But is it really? Although we like to think that we are using our free will to make our decisions, research in psychology has shown that many of our behaviours are automatic and unconsciously influenced by external stimuli (Ariely, 2008; Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Newell & Shanks, 2014; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977), and that we are often oblivious to the cognitive mechanisms that underpin (...) our decision (Wegner, 2002, 2003). Magicians have exploited this illusory sense of agency for a long time, and have developed a wide range of techniques to influence and control spectators’ choices of such things as card, word, or number (Annemann, 1933; Banachek, 2002a; Jones, 1994; Turner, 2015). These techniques are instances of what is called forcing. -/- Many forces are extremely effective, illustrating various weaknesses in our sense of control over decisions and their outcomes. Researchers have started to investigate them in various ways (Kuhn, Pailh s, & Lan, 2020; Olson, Amlani, Raz, & Rensink, 2015; Pailhes & Kuhn, 2020b, 2020c; Shalom et al., 2013) and are beginning to obtain valuable insights into decision-making processes as well as a better understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that lead people to experience an illusory sense of free will and of agency. -/- Although magicians have acquired large amounts of knowledge in covertly controlling people’s choices, much of this knowledge is only discussed in the context of individual magic tricks, or in books that are not readily accessible to non-magicans. As we and others have argued elsewhere (Ekroll, Sayim, & Wagemans, 2017; Kuhn, 2019; Kuhn, Amlani, & Rensink, 2008; Kuhn, Caffaratti, Teszka, & Rensink, 2014; Macknik et al., 2008; Olson et al., 2015; Olson, Landry, Appourchaux, & Raz, 2016; Shalom et al., 2013; Thomas, Didierjean, Maquestiaux, & Gygax, 2015), a particularly effective way of making this knowledge more available is via the creation of taxonomies centered around psychological mechanisms (Rensink & Kuhn, 2015). For example, the psychologically based taxonomy of misdirection (Kuhn et al., 2014) helps draw links between misdirection and formal theories of perception and cognition. -/- Our aim here is to apply a similar process to the knowledge magicians have about forcing. The present paper develops a psychologically based taxonomy of forcing techniques with two goals in mind. Firstly, it should help uncover the various psychological mechanisms that underlie forcing techniques. Secondly, it should facilitate knowledge transfer between magicians and psychologists. Among other things, this knowledge will allow researchers to gain new insights into the mechanisms underlying decision-making, and the feeling of free will and of agency over choice. We start by defining the magician’s force and then look at some of the past classifications of forcing. (shrink)

Global structural injustices are harms caused by structural processes, involving multiple individuals, acting across more than one state. Young (2011) developed the concept of ‘political responsibility,’ to allocate responsibility for structural injustice. In this paper, I am going to argue that when considering the climate crisis Young’s model needs to be adapted— to have agency as a basis for allocating political responsibility instead of contribution. This is a more intuitive way to allocate responsibility for the climate crisis given its nature (...) as a threshold problem, and the subtle structural positions occupied by the individuals involved. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore how theorists might navigate a course between the twin dangers of piety and excess cynicism when thinking critically about state apologies, by focusing on two government apologies to indigenous peoples: namely, those made by the Australian and Canadian Prime Ministers in 2008. Both apologies are notable for several reasons: they were both issued by heads of government, and spoken on record within the space of government: the national parliaments of both countries. Furthermore, in each case, (...) the object of the apology – that which was apologized for – comes closer to disrupting the idea both countries have of themselves, and their image in the global political community, than any previous apologies made by either government. Perhaps as a result, both apologies were surrounded by celebration and controversy alike, and tracing their consequences – even in the short term – is a difficult business. We avoid excessive piety or cynicism, I argue, when we take several things into account. First, apologies have multiple functions: they narrate particular histories of wrongdoing, they express disavowal of that wrongdoing, and they commit to appropriate forms of repair or renewal. Second, the significance and the success of each function must be assessed contextually. Third, when turning to official political apologies, in particular, appropriate assessment of their capacity to disavow or to commit requires that consider apologies both as performance and as political action. While there remain significant questions regarding the practice of political apology – in particular, its relationship to practices of reparation, forgiveness and reconciliation – this approach can provide a framework with which to best consider them. (shrink)

Machine intelligence already helps medical staff with a number of tasks. Ethical decision-making, however, has not been handed over to computers. In this proof-of-concept study, we show how an algorithm based on Beauchamp and Childress’ prima-facie principles could be employed to advise on a range of moral dilemma situations that occur in medical institutions. We explain why we chose fuzzy cognitive maps to set up the advisory system and how we utilized machine learning to train it. We report on the (...) difficult task of operationalizing the principles of beneficence, non-maleficence and patient autonomy, and describe how we selected suitable input parameters that we extracted from a training dataset of clinical cases. The first performance results are promising, but an algorithmic approach to ethics also comes with several weaknesses and limitations. Should one really entrust the sensitive domain of clinical ethics to machine intelligence? (shrink)

This paper is a discussion of the ‘moralization’ of resentment in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. By moralization, I do not refer to the complex process by which resentment is transformed by the machinations of sympathy, but a prior change in how the ‘raw material’ of the emotion itself is presented. In just over fifty pages, not only Smith’s attitude toward the passion of resentment, but also his very conception of the term, appears to shift dramatically. What is an (...) unpleasant, unsocial and relatively amoral passion of anger in general metamorphoses into a morally and psychologically rich account of a cognitively sharpened, normatively laden attitude, an attitude that contains both the judgment that the injury done to me was unjust and wrongful, and the demand that the offender acknowledge its wrongfulness. Two very different readings of ‘Smithean resentment’ are thus available from the text. Indeed, the notion of two distinct forms of resentment – an instinctive, amoral version and a rich, rationally appraising attitude – would bring Smith into line with an earlier account of resentment, found in Bishop Joseph Butler’s Fifteen Sermons Preached at Rolls Chapel, first published in 1726. Ultimately, I argue, the differences in their theories are to Smith’s credit. It is precisely because the ‘thin’ or generic retaliatory passion described in Part I can be reconciled with the rich, normative attitude in Part II, that Smith is able to accomplish his meta-ethical goal of grounding moral judgments in naturally occurring emotions. (shrink)

Trudy Govier offers a sweeping moral critique of revenge, arguing that even non-violent, limited, acts of revenge are wrong, insofar as they necessarily treat the target as an instrument of the revenger’s satisfaction (offending against respect for persons) and thus morally diminish the revenger. I challenge Govier’s critique by broadening her account of revenge, focusing in particular on its communicative complexities. Revenge aims to address rather than use its target, I argue, for the revenger to be satisfied. It is plausibly (...) described as a kind of forcible persuasion, in which the revenger aims to convince her target of the target’s moral desert and the revenger’s moral authority. Nevertheless, the unilateral nature of this address and the morally simplistic worldview on which it depends present significant (and likely fatal) moral risks to any project of vengeance. (shrink)

"I am often rude. I often want to be rude. I often enjoy being rude. I even frequently enjoy witnessing the rudeness of others. Indeed, I could write a book devoted entirely to rudeness I have relished." This is, perhaps, the most charming opening to a philosophical study of civility that has been, and maybe ever will be, penned. The rest of us working on the topic should probably abandon our aspirations now. And these lines are not only charming; they (...) are illuminating, revealing something of both the style and substance of The Wrongs of Rudeness. Stylistically, we learn that the work that follows will be both personal and personable, its author a warm and witty companion. Substantively, we learn that this exhortation... (shrink)

This article responds to Nir Eisikovits’ recent book Sympathizing with the Enemy: Reconciliation, Transitional Justice, Negotiation (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2010).

Few these days dispute that the knowledge argument demonstrates an epistemic gap between the physical facts and the facts about experience. It is much more contentious whether that epistemic gap can be used to demonstrate a metaphysical gap of a kind that is inconsistent with physicalism. In this paper I will explore two attempts to block the inference from an epistemic gap to a metaphysical gap – the first from the phenomenal concept strategy, the second from Russellian monism – and (...) suggest how the proponent of the knowledge argument might respond to each of these challenges. In doing so, I will draw on recent discussions of grounding and essence in the metaphysics literature. (shrink)

Andy Clark and David Chalmers’s theory of extended mind can be reevaluated in today’s world to include computational and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. This paper argues that AI can be an extension of human mind, and that if we agree that AI can have mind, it too can be extended. It goes on to explore the example of Ganbreeder, an image-making AI which utilizes human input to direct behavior. Ganbreeder represents one way in which AI extended mind could be achieved. (...) The argument of this paper is that AI can utilize human input as a social extension of mind, allowing AI to access the external world that it would not otherwise be able to access. (shrink)

Philosophical arguments regarding academic freedom can sometimes appear removed from the real conflicts playing out in contemporary universities. This paper focusses on a set of issues at the front line of these conflicts, namely, questions regarding sex, gender and gender identity. We document the ways in which the work of academics has been affected by political activism around these questions and, drawing on our respective disciplinary expertise as a sociologist and a philosopher, elucidate the costs of curtailing discussion on fundamental (...) demographic and conceptual categories. We discuss some philosophical work that addresses the conceptual distinction between academic freedom and free speech and explore how these notions are intertwined in significant ways in universities. Our discussion elucidates and emphasises the educational costs of curtailing academic freedom. (shrink)

This paper seeks to point the epistemic aspects of obstetric violence. In order to do so, we will introduce the concept of epistemic injustice, as developed by Miranda Fricker, and how it has been used by the social epistemology literature to think about health issues. Subsequently, we will examine reports of cases of obstetric violence as well as a case of forced sterilization, by reviewing the Final Report of the CPMI on the incidence of mass sterilization of women in Brazil, (...) as well as papers that describe cases of obstetric violence. Thus, we aim to point out that there is an epistemic aspect to such violations and that a change in the distribution of credibility may be relevant to confront obstetric violence. (shrink)

This thesis is an exploration of the chapters of Francesco Di Giorgio's Trattati di Architettura, Ingegneria e Arte Militare, that pertain to mechanical devices. While it is difficult to imagine actually constructing Di Giorgio's machines from the drawings and descriptions in his treatises, given their apparent inefficiencies and ambiguities, the Aristotelean science and philosophy referenced throughout the Trattati provides a basis for looking at them as demonstrations of concepts beyond their immediate applications for architecture and engineering. By considering these devices (...) in Di Giorgio's own terms, terms suggested by his own experiences, as well as his writings and paintings, strong associations can be made to the science, philosophy and the theology of his time. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Japan's approach toward the adoption of Generative AI such as ChatGPT in education via studying media discourse and guidelines at both the national as well as local levels. It highlights the lack of consideration for socio-cultural characteristics inherent in the Japanese educational systems, such as the notion of self, teachers’ work ethics, community-centric activities for the successful adoption of the technology. We reveal ChatGPT’s infusion is likely to further accelerate the shift away from traditional notion of (...) self, which has been ongoing during past educational reforms, towards active and self-directed learning. The current discourse on Generative AI’s infusion in education is driven by neoliberal agendas aimed at increasing employability and individualism. Moreover, the introduction of ChatGPT in the context of Japan's educator culture offers potential solutions to address issues of overwork but also necessitates considerations regarding increased responsibilities for teachers and the preservation of their central role in student education. Finally, the irreplicable social growth fostered by community-centric activities in the Japanese educational system highlights the limitations of ChatGPT in replicating dynamic social interactions, emphasizing the importance of holistic approaches to education beyond technological integration. (shrink)

We develop a new version of the causal theory of spacetime. Whereas traditional versions of the theory seek to identify spatiotemporal relations with causal relations, the version we develop takes causal relations to be the grounds for spatiotemporal relations. Causation is thus distinct from, and more basic than, spacetime. We argue that this non-identity theory, suitably developed, avoids the challenges facing the traditional identity theory.