Clade selection is unpopular with philosophers who otherwise accept multilevel selection theory. Clades cannot reproduce, and reproduction is widely thought necessary for evolution by natural selection, especially of complex adaptations. Using microbial evolutionary processes as heuristics, I argue contrariwise, that (1) clade growth (proliferation of contained species) substitutes for clade reproduction in the evolution of complex adaptation, (2) clade-level properties favoring persistence – species richness, dispersal, divergence, and possibly intraclade cooperation – are not collapsible into species-level traits, (3) such properties (...) can be maintained by selection on clades, and (4) clade selection extends the explanatory power of the theory of evolution. (shrink)

Understanding community-level selection using Lewontin’s criteria requires both community-level inheritance and community-level heritability, and in the discipline of community and ecosystem genetics, these are often conflated. While there are existing studies that show the possibility of both, these studies impose community-level inheritance as a product of the experimental design. For this reason, these experiments provide only weak support for the existence of community-level selection in nature. By contrast, treating communities as interactors (in line with Hull’s replicator-interactor framework or Dawkins’s idea (...) of the “extended phenotype”) provides a more plausible and empirically supportable model for the role of ecological communities in the evolutionary process. (shrink)

In the half century since the formulation of the prokaryote : eukaryote dichotomy, many authors have proposed that the former evolved from something resembling the latter, in defiance of common (and possibly common sense) views. In such ‘eukaryotes first’ (EF) scenarios, the last universal common ancestor is imagined to have possessed significantly many of the complex characteristics of contemporary eukaryotes, as relics of an earlier ‘progenotic’ period or RNAworld. Bacteria and Archaea thus must have lost these complex features secondarily, through (...) ‘streamlining’. If the canonical three-domain tree in which Archaea and Eukarya are sisters is accepted, EF entails that Bacteria and Archaea are convergently prokaryotic.We ask what this means and how it might be tested. (shrink)

"Over three years of study and fellowship, sixteen Muslim, Jewish, and Christian scholars sought to answer one question: “Do our three scriptures unite or divide us?” They offer their answers in this book: sixteen essays on how certain ways of reading scripture may draw us apart and other ways may draw us, together, into the source that each tradition calls peace. Reading scriptural sources in the classical and medieval traditions, the authors examine how each tradition addresses the “other” within its (...) tradition and without, how all three traditions attend to poverty as a societal and spiritual condition, and what it means to read scripture while facing the challenges of modernity. Ochs and Johnson have assembled a unique approach to inter-religious scholarship and a rare look at scriptural study as a pathway to peace. “Scriptural reasoning, the growing practice of Jews, Christians, and Muslims reading their scriptures together, makes good academic and common sense in a time of crisis. This ground-breaking book, the outcome of an imaginative 3-year experiment by the Princeton Center of Theological Inquiry, shows scholars and thinkers of the Abrahamic traditions going deeper into the traditions and into their contemporary situation. The result is something new, wise, and relevant… full of promise for the future. Where else can one find testimonies to Jews, Christians, and Muslims coming together not only in study, thinking, and wisdom-seeking but also in play, joy, and friendship?”--David F. Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge and Director, Cambridge Inter-Faith Programme". (shrink)

Existing social disparities in the United States are inconsistent with the promise of democracy; therefore, there was a need for critical conceptualization of the first principles that undergird American democracy and the genesis of democratic social change in America. This constructivist grounded theory study aimed to construct a grounded theory that provides an understanding of the process of American democratic social change as it emerged from the nation’s founding documents. A post hoc polytheoretical framework including Foucault’s, Bourdieu’s, and Marx and (...) Engels’s theories of power was used to understand power dynamics. The research question focused on understanding the process of democratic social change in America. The sample comprised the Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers, and the U.S. Constitution. The documents were retrieved from the National Archives and Library of Congress. The data analysis plan incorporated successive comparison, situational and dramaturgical analysis, deconstruction, and perspective taking as strategies. The result was the construction of a democratic social change process theory preceded by five grounded theories: (a) first principles of democracy, (b) first principles of democracy conceptual framework, (c) socio-ethical principles of democracy, (d) demoralizing process, and (e) either-or approach to democracy. Positive social change implications include applying a democratic social change process to future social change endeavors across domains and levels of analysis, a normative framework for a republican form of government, and a tool to analyze and minimize the latent consequences of social justice policies. (shrink)

Great Britain subjugated colonists using various power strategies, including dehumanization, misinformation, fear, and other divisive strategies. The Founders described these oppressive strategies as “a long train of abuses and usurpations.” Throughout the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, the Founding Fathers imbued the people with hope in a government for the people: one unlike that of the monarchy, which sought to protect itself at the expense of colonists. As a result, the Founders created a government more likely to lead (...) with fairness, demonstrate respect for human dignity, unite Americans as one people, empower citizens through hope, and lead the nation toward security. This socio-ethical framework was an abductive discovery nested within a grounded theory study where it had been concluded that the first principles of democracy were woven within the American founding documents. Using Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory, the first principles of democracy—knowledge, fairness, human dignity, hope, unity, and security—were used to answer an emerging research question: Are there two democratic frameworks in the founding documents, and how do they differ? The first principles of democracy promote a culture of ethics, resilience, and freedom. Their empowering disposition makes them suitable as a normative framework for a democratic government for the people. (shrink)

Customer behavior, market dynamics, and technological advances have made it challenging for marketing theorists to provide comprehensive explanations and actionable insights. Although there are numerous substantive marketing frameworks, no formal marketing theory exists. This study aims to develop the first formal grounded theory in marketing by incorporating artificial intelligence and Forde's conceptual framework as a guiding lens. Charmaz's constructivist grounded theory tradition and Forde's conceptual framework and data analysis strategy were employed for this purpose. The data analysis strategy used with (...) grounded theory’s constant compare-and-contrast method comprises holistic and systems thinking, dramaturgical and situational analysis, perspective-taking, and deconstruction. To evaluate Glaser’s assertion that all is data, artificial intelligence was incorporated into the research as the data source for retrieving the theoretical samples to address the primary research question: How can Forde's conceptual framework and artificial intelligence be leveraged to develop a formal marketing theory grounded in evidence? Of significance was the emergence of democratic marketing behaviors and the normalization of anti-democratic marketing approaches leveraged to manipulate buyers or gain access to segments of customers. Buyers and sellers can simultaneously benefit from and be prejudiced by marketing exchange dynamics. This finding lends credibility to the newly emerged framework of strategic actions where empowerment and disempowerment are leveraged to achieve specific goals. Considering this finding, it is suggested that businesses view marketing as a symbiotic relationship between two power centers, buyers and sellers, who respectively strive to maintain human dignity and sustainability. Researchers are encouraged to apply the framework across substantive areas, international markets, public relations, political campaigns, and others. (shrink)

An outstanding group of leaders left evidence that a richer and more sustainable democracy could be achieved with American independence and democratic principles integrated into a new republican form of government. They were moved by principles that are the very spirit of democracy. These principles are needed to enhance democracy and improve well-being. Using the constructivist tradition of grounded theory and Aristotle’s conception of abstraction, the article proposes a theory of the first principles of democracy based on substantive data: the (...) Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, The Federalist Papers, and the United States Constitution. Knowledge, fairness, human dignity, hope, unity, and security are the first principles of democracy and are regarded as the bedrock of democracy and a government framework for the people. This theory contributed to a formal model of democratic social change. It also contributes a conceptual framework that supports Solum’s semantic originalism, a theory of constitutional interpretation. The principles of democracy can revitalize democracy and provide new possibilities by protecting education as an innate human right, abolishing capital punishment, criminalizing private prisons on the stock market, and reevaluating the proportionality of prison sentences. (shrink)

Existing social disparities in the United States are inconsistent with Lincoln’s promise of democracy; therefore, there is a need for a critical conceptualization of the first principles that undergird American democracy and the genesis of democratic social change in America. This study aimed to construct a grounded theory that provides an understanding of the process of American democratic social change. The result was the construction of two frameworks: the demoralization process that triggers social change, and a formal grounded theory that (...) could explain democratic social change endeavors across different domains and levels of analysis. This democratic social change grounded theory answers the research question: How do the principles of the American founding documents provide an understanding of the process of American democratic social change? (shrink)

The polarities of democracy framework is used to achieve human emancipation by simultaneously managing multiple paradoxes by employing Johnson’s polarity management as the conceptual framework. Although Johnson’s framework may be appropriate for managing other tension-dependent pairs, it is less suitable for managing multiple democratic values when the goal is human emancipation and sustainable democratic social change. Managing multiple polarities is exacerbated by the problem-shifting and problem-creation effect inherent in a tension-driven framework. The aim was to develop a constructivist grounded theory (...) to answer the research question: How can the first principles of democracy be used to reduce dynamic tension and achieve human emancipation? This gap has been filled by a parsimonious conceptual framework based on three democratic principles: human dignity, fairness, and knowledge. The principles of democracy conceptual framework can synthesize the tension between democratic values in order to manage, plan, and evaluate democratic social change initiatives. (shrink)

Background: The United States symbolizes democracy in the new world and contributes to global prosperity. Nevertheless, incrementalism is a historically dominant national approach to public policy implementation that delays democracy and undermines human dignity. Human flourishing and national development are endangered by slow-moving democratic changes. This necessitates a social justice framework that traces the exploitation of incrementalism and the consequences of opportunity gaps. Objectives: This study aims to construct a grounded theory to address and answer the following research question: Are (...) anti-democratic concepts part of a process or strategy that hinders democratic change, and what reinforces it, if anything? Methods: Two categories emerged from a grounded theory of democratic social change. This combination of anti-democratic tenets and democratic principles led to abductive reasoning to fill the research gap. Results: The key finding was the existence of a systematic approach that led to democracy while simultaneously disempowering the same group through legal and extralegal means. Two processes hinder democracy: incrementalism and an anti-democratic demoralizing process. A constructivist social justice grounded theory was developed to analyze and evaluate public policy for barriers and facilitators of democracy. A thorough analysis and evaluation of the impact and consequences of public policy is recommended to better understand how such policies impede democracy and influence American perceptions of justice. (shrink)

Few scholars have explored the founding documents to identify the deliberate social change strategy that led to America's independence and a new form of government that was of, by, and for the people. This study aimed to apply a post-hoc polytheoretical framework of power to the findings of a democratic social change study to understand the dynamics of power between Great Britain and the American colonists. The original study employed the constructivist grounded theory tradition to explore democracy in the Declaration (...) of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, The Federalist Papers, and the United States Constitution. This produced two frameworks of power strategies, one empowering and the other demoralizing: principles of democracy and anti-democratic tenets. To gain a holistic perspective of the interplay of power, a polytheoretical framework of power consisting of theories of power proposed by Marx and Engels, Bourdieu, and Foucault was employed to discuss the findings. The findings suggested that democratic social change interacts with structural forces, culture, and power strategy selection. This could provide an alternative lens through which to explore whether people of color in America were used instrumentally to sustain democracy. (shrink)

Grounded theory methodology is perceived as challenging due to its systematic and rigorous process. However, this is because most people do not realize that the strategies used in the grounded theory data analysis process are used by laypeople and professionals regularly, if not daily. This article aims to help others interested in grounded theory with a background in qualitative data analysis feel comfortable engaging in the methodology and constructing multiple theories in the same study. It shares my latest experience incorporating (...) various data analysis strategies with the constructivist approach: holistic and systems thinking, situational analysis, dramaturgical analysis, perspective taking, and abstraction. The examples remove the mystery from abstraction and abductive reasoning. (shrink)

While the idea of philosophy as conceptual analysis has attracted many adherents and undergone a number of variations, in general it suffers from an authority problem with two dimensions. First, it is unclear why the analysis of a concept should have objective authority: why explicating what we mean should express how things are. Second, conceptual analysis seems to lack intersubjective authority: why philosophical analysis should apply to more than a parochial group of individuals. I argue that Hegel’s conception of social (...) ontology, focused on his concept of “ethical life” (Sittlichkeit), helps to explain how concepts (and their explication) have both objective and intersubjective authority in the social domain. Hegel claims that modern institutions are the product of self-conscious purposes, so that they are conceptually constituted. Concepts do not just represent these objects and so depend on a contingent relation to them. As many contemporary social ontologists agree, this means that our concepts of these institutions are uniquely epistemically “transparent.” They have objective authority. Concepts have intersubjective authority in the modern world as well, according to Hegel. However, I show that this feature of Hegel’s account does not rely on the solution to a philosophical problem. Rather, since the concepts of modern ethical life are “essentially contested,” their content depends on the practical and political agreement of modern subjects. This means that concepts can only have objective authority if some prior intersubjective agreement has been reached. The role of philosophy as conceptual analysis is thus importantly dependent on political developments. (shrink)

Ausgangspunkt ist die Frage, was Masse ist, wodurch sie insbesondere befähigt ist, Dauer zu konstituieren und deshalb - im Sinn des kinematischen Relativitätsprinzips - ebenso als bewegt wie als ruhend betrachtet werden kann. In einem Gedankenexperiment wird diese Frage, in Umkehrung der Perspektive, hier nicht von der Masse selbst, sondern von einer stehenden Lichtwelle her angegangen. In diesem Modell lassen sich masse-analoge Strukturen rekonstruieren, die in relativer Bewegung sein können. Die (empirisch bekannte) Unabhängigkeit der Lichtgeschwindigkeit vom Bezugssystem ist dabei nicht (...) vorausgesetzt. Doch kann gezeigt werden, dass die Lichtgeschwindigkeit Grenzgeschwindigkeit solcher relativer Bewegungen ist, dass dies für alle durch masse-analoge Strukturen konstituierte, relativ zueinander gleichförmig bewegten Bezugssysteme gilt und dass die Lichtgeschwindigkeit selbst in allen diesen Systemen gleich ist. Die Absolutheit der Lichtgeschwindigkeit und die Relativität der Massebewegungen erweisen sich so als zwar differente, aber intrinsisch zusammengehörende Momente des kinematischen Relativitätsprinzips: ein Beitrag zu einer Philosophie der Relativitätstheorie. - Die mathematischen Zusammenhänge werden im Anhang ausführlicher dargelegt. (shrink)

Our starting point is the question ‘What is mass’, what in particular enables mass to constitute duration: so that mass can be regarded as moving as well as at rest (the kinematic principle of relativity). In a thought experiment, this question is attacked here not from the perspective of mass itself, but from that of a standing light wave. In this model, mass-analogous structures can be re- constructed that can be in relative motion to each other. The (empirically known) constancy (...) of the speed of light in every reference system is not as- sumed here. However, it can be shown that the speed of light is identical in all systems constituted by mass-analogous structures that move uniformly relative to each other and that the speed of light moreover is the limiting speed of mo- tions. This indepence of the motion of light from the system of reference, this character of absoluteness, and the relativity of mass motions thus prove to be contrary but inextricably linked moments of the kinematic principle of relativi- ty: an interesting perspective concerning a philosophy of relativity theory. - The mathematical relationships are explained in more detail in the appendix. (shrink)

This book extends the concept of linguistic coordinate geometry using linguistic planes or semi-linguistic planes. In the case of coordinate planes, we are always guaranteed of the distance between any two points in that plane. However, in the case of linguistic and semi-linguistic planes, we can not always determine the linguistic distance between any two points. This is the first limitation of linguistic planes and semi-linguistic planes.

In this book, authors, for the first time, introduce the new notion of special subset linguistic topological spaces using linguistic square matrices. This book is organized into three chapters. Chapter One supplies the reader with the concept of ling set, ling variable, ling continuum, etc. Specific basic linguistic algebraic structures, like linguistic semigroup linguistic monoid, are introduced. Also, algebraic structures to linguistic square matrices are defined and described with examples. For the first time, non-commutative linguistic topological spaces are introduced. The (...) notion of a linguistic special subset of doubly non-commutative topological spaces of linguistic topological spaces is introduced in this book. (shrink)

Blame is multifarious. It can be passionate or dispassionate. It can be expressed or kept private. We blame both the living and the dead. And we blame ourselves as well as others. What’s more, we blame ourselves, not only for our moral failings, but also for our non-moral failings: for our aesthetic bad taste, gustatory self-indulgence, or poor athletic performance. And we blame ourselves both for things over which we exerted agential control (e.g., our voluntary acts) and for things over (...) which we lacked such control (e.g., our desires, beliefs, and intentions). I argue that, despite this manifest diversity in our blaming practices, it’s possible to provide comprehensive account of blame. Indeed, I propose a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that aims to specify blame’s extension in terms of its constitution as opposed to its function. And I argue that this proposal has a number of advantages beyond accounting for blame in all its disparate forms. For one, it can account for the fact that one’s having had control over whether one was to φ is a necessary condition for one’s being fittingly blamed for having φ-ed. For another, it can account for why, unlike fitting shame, fitting blame is always deserved, which in turn explains why there is something morally problematic about ridding oneself of one’s fitting self-blame (e.g., one’s fitting guilt). (shrink)

Things and Their Place in Theories Our talk of external things, our very notion of things, is just a conceptual apparatus that helps us to foresee and ...

I defend the view that a significant ethical distinction can be made between justified killing in self-defense and police use of lethal force. I start by opposing the belief that police use of lethal force is morally justified on the basis of self-defense. Then I demonstrate that the state’s monopoly on the use of force within a given jurisdiction invests police officers with responsibilities that go beyond what morality requires of the average person. I argue that the police should primarily (...) be concerned with preserving public safety. As a consequence, police have additional moral permissions to use lethal force. But this also means that the principle of restraint is inherent to the policing function and therefore police are obliged to go to greater lengths to avoid killing. I concede that the just use of police force can be made difficult in extreme situations such as a mass riot. In such cases, police should take proportionate actions necessary to protect the lives of inhabitants by restoring order, which might include calling on military support. I conclude with a cautionary note opposing militarization of the policing role. (shrink)

Cyberspace relies on information technologies to mediate relations between different people, across different communication networks and is reliant on the supporting technology. These interactions typically occur without physical proximity and those working depending on cybersystems must be able to trust the overall human–technical systems that support cyberspace. As such, detailed discussion of cybersecurity policy would be improved by including trust as a key value to help guide policy discussions. Moreover, effective cybersystems must have resilience designed into them. This paper argues (...) that trustworthy cybersystems are a key element to resilient systems, and thus are core to cybersecurity policy. The paper highlights the importance of trustworthiness for resilient cybersystems. The importance of trustworthiness is shown through a discussion of three events where trustworthiness was the target or casualty of cyberattacks: Stuxnet, hacking of communications and the Edward Snowden revelations. The impact of losing trust is highlighted, to underpin the argument that a resilient cybersystem ought to design in trustworthiness. The paper closes off by presenting a general set of policy implications arising from recognition of the interplay between trust, trustworthiness and resilience for effective cybersecurity. (shrink)

In the discipline of international relations there are contending general theories or theoretical perspectives. Realism, also known as political realism, is a view of international politics that stresses its competitive and conflictual side. It is usually contrasted with idealism or liberalism, which tends to emphasize cooperation. Realists consider the principal actors in the international arena to be states, which are concerned with their own security, act in pursuit of their own national interests, and struggle for power. The negative side of (...) the realists’ emphasis on power and selfinterest is often their skepticism regarding the relevance of ethical norms to relations among states. National politics is the realm of authority and law, whereas international politics, they sometimes claim, is a sphere without justice, characterized by active or potential conflict among states. Not all realists, however, deny the presence of ethics in international relations. The article presents a comprehensive picture of political realism. -/- Korab-Karpowicz, W. Julian, "Political Realism in International Relations", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2018 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). (shrink)

In this chapter, we examine the key moral issues for the intelligence community with regard to the use of robots for intelligence collection. First, we survey the diverse range of spy robots that currently exist or are emerging, and examine their value for national security. This includes describing a number of plausible scenarios in which they have been (or could be) used, including: surveillance, attack, sentry, information collection, delivery, extraction, detention, interrogation and as Trojan horses. Second, we examine several areas (...) in which spy robots present serious ethical and legal challenges. We conclude by examining some moral concerns with shifting from intelligence collection to action, as enabled by robotics technology. (shrink)

'The arrow of time' refers to the curious asymmetry that distinguishes the future from the past. Reversing the Arrow of Time argues that there is an intimate link between the symmetries of 'time itself' and time reversal symmetry in physical theories, which has wide-ranging implications for both physics and its philosophy. This link helps to clarify how we can learn about the symmetries of our world, how to understand the relationship between symmetries and what is real, and how to overcome (...) pervasive illusions about the direction of time. Roberts explains the significance of time reversal in a way that intertwines physics and philosophy, to establish what the arrow of time means and how we can come to know it. This book is both mathematically and philosophically rigorous yet remains accessible to advanced undergraduates in physics and the philosophy of physics. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. (shrink)

This chapter takes a longitudinal approach to the survey of intelligence research published in Australia, or by Australian authors overseas, in the decade 2007–2017, analyses it, and compares these findings with trends overseas. It then undertakes a quantitative and qualitative survey of intelligence education programs at Australian and Western tertiary institutions in order to show how Australia fares in an international context. It concludes by offering some suggestions on the way ahead for Intelligence Studies in Australia.

Hyperlogic is a hyperintensional system designed to regiment metalogical claims (e.g., “Intuitionistic logic is correct” or “The law of excluded middle holds”) into the object language, including within embedded environments such as attitude reports and counterfactuals. This paper is the first of a two-part series exploring the logic of hyperlogic. This part presents a minimal logic of hyperlogic and proves its completeness. It consists of two interdefined axiomatic systems: one for classical consequence (truth preservation under a classical interpretation of the (...) connectives) and one for “universal” consequence (truth preservation under any interpretation). The sequel to this paper explores stronger logics that are sound and complete over various restricted classes of models as well as languages with hyperintensional operators. (shrink)

We initially characterize what we’ll call existence problems as problems where there is evidence that a putative entity exists and this evidence is not easily dismissed; however, the evidence is not adequate to justify the claim that the entity exists, and in particular the entity hasn’t been detected. The putative entity is elusive. We then offer a strategy for determining whether an existence problem is philosophical or scientific. According to this strategy (1) existence problems are characterized in terms of causal (...) roles, and (2) these problems are categorized as scientific or philosophical on the basis of the epistemic context of putative realizers. We argue that the first step of the strategy is necessary to avoid begging the question with regard to categorization of existence problems, and the second step categorizes existence problems on the basis of a distinction between two ways in which an entity can be elusive. This distinction between kinds of elusiveness takes as background a standard account of inference to the best explanation. Applying this strategy, we argue that the existence of a multiverse is a scientific problem. (shrink)

This chapter tells the story of how the philosophy of language, as it exists now, grew out of work in the history of analytic philosophy. I pay particular attention to the history of semantics, to debates about propositional content, and to the origins of contemporary pragmatics and speech-act theory. I identify an overarching narrative: Many of the ideas that are now used to understand natural language on its own terms were originally developed not for this purpose, but as methodological tools (...) for diverse philosophical ends. (shrink)

Deleuze argued that a fundamental mutation in the concept of time occurred in Kant. In antiquity, the concept of time was subordinated to the concept of movement: time was a ‘measure’ of movement. In Kant, this relation is inverted: time is no longer subordinated to movement but assumes an autonomy of its own: time becomes "the pure and empty form" of everything that moves and changes. What is essential in the theory of time is not the distinction between objective ‘clock (...) time’ (or physical time) and the subjective experience of ‘time consciousness,’ since both of them measure movements, whether the movement of extensive objects or intensive states. What is fundamental is rather the relation between time and movement, since time can only assume its own concept when it ceases to be subordinate to movement, whether that movement is objective or subjective. This article examines how Kant inverted the relation between time and movement, and how Deleuze’s own theory of time builds on Kant’s revolution and extends it further. (shrink)

This chapter examines the spectrum inversion hypothesis as an argument against certain kinds of account of what it’s like to be conscious of color. The hypothesis aims to provide a counterexample to accounts of what it’s like to be conscious of color in non-qualitative terms, as well as to accounts of what it’s like to be conscious of color in terms of the representational content of conscious visual states (which, according to some philosophers, is in turn given an account in (...) non-qualitative terms). I explain the hypothesis’s reasoning in sections 1 and 2. I then take up background issues: since the counterexample provided by the hypothesis is typically given as a possibility rather than an actuality, I briefly discuss the kind of possibility involved in section 3, and the methodologies used to evaluate the plausibility of possibilities in section 4. In section 5, I describe some general considerations that are commonly used against the spectrum inversion hypothesis. I take up attempts to support the hypothesis with findings from color science in section 6. I end with comments skeptical of both the motivation for the spectrum inversion hypothesis and the methodology used to support it. (shrink)

In this chapter, we compare Kant and James’ accounts of freedom. Despite both thinkers’ rejecting compatibilism for the sake of practical reason, there are two striking differences in their stances. The first concerns whether or not freedom requires the possibility of an open future. James holds that morality hinges on the real possibility that the future can be affected by our actions. Kant, on the other hand, seems to maintain that we can still be free in the crucial sense, even (...) if none of our actions can have any effect on the future. The second difference between them is related, and concerns the location of freedom. Kant views experience as determined by natural necessity, and locates freedom outside of it, in things-in-themselves. James, on the other hand, has a richer conception of experience than Kant, and holds that we can locate our freedom within experience alone. In the end, we contend that James has a better account of how freedom relates to our experience, but this comes at a cost. For while Kant's account struggles with the relationship between freedom and experience, it has the advantage of insulating our freedom from potential empirical challenges. (shrink)

I defend a modified rights-based unjust threat account for morally justified killing in self-defense. Rights-based moral justifications for killing in self-defense presume that human beings have a right to defend themselves from unjust threats. An unjust threat account of self-defense says that this right is derived from an agent’s moral obligation to not pose a deadly threat to the defender. The failure to keep this moral obligation creates the moral asymmetry necessary to justify a defender killing the unjust threat in (...) self-defense. I argue that the other rights-based approaches explored here are unfair to the defender because they require her to prove moral fault in the threat. But then I suggest that the unjust threat account should be modified so that where the threat is non-culpable or only partially culpable, the defender should seek to share the cost and risk with the threat in order for both parties to survive. (shrink)

The present essay argues that Bergson’s account of the comic can only be fully appreciated when read in conjunction with his later metaphysical exposition of the élan vital in Creative Evolution and then by the account of fabulation that Bergson only elaborates fully three decades later in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. The more substantive account of the élan vital ultimately shows that, in Laughter, Bergson misses his own point: laughter does not simply serve as a means for (...) correcting human behavior but is rather the élan vital’s vital summons, the demand of life itself, that human beings challenge their obligations, question their societal forms, and thereby create new and, for Bergson, more ideal forms of life and community. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the practice of civil disagreement has robust epistemic benefits and that these benefits enable meaningful forms of reconciliation—across worldview lines and amid the challenging information environment of our age. I then engage two broad groups of objections: either that civil disagreement opposes, rather than promotes, clarity, or else that it does little to help it. If successful, my account gives us reason to include civil disagreement among what Mill calls “the real morality of public (...) discussion,” a fact that should stir us to take more seriously the decline of civility in contemporary life. (shrink)

In the world of philosophy of science, the dominant theory of confirmation is Bayesian. In the wider philosophical world, the idea of inference to the best explanation exerts a considerable influence. Here we place the two worlds in collision, using Bayesian confirmation theory to argue that explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant.

Physical boundaries and the earliest topologists. Topology has a relatively short history; but its 19th century roots are embedded in philosophical problems about the nature of extended substances and their boundaries which go back to Zeno and Aristotle. Although it seems that there have always been philosophers interested in these matters, questions about the boundaries of three-dimensional objects were closest to center stage during the later medieval and modern periods. Are the boundaries of an object actually existing, less-than-three-dimensional parts of (...) the object—that is, are solids bounded by two-dimensional surfaces, surfaces by one-dimensional “edges” or “physical lines”, edges by dimensionless “simples”? If not, how does a perfectly spherical object manage to touch a perfectly flat object—what part of the sphere is in immediate contact with the plane, if the sphere has no unextended parts? But if such parts be admitted, are we not then saddled with “actual infinities” of simples, lines, and surfaces spread throughout each continuous object—the boundaries of all the object’s internal parts? Does it help to say that these internal boundaries exist only “potentially”? (shrink)

The problem of forgiveness may rightly be regarded as a perennial philosophical problem. But of what sort? Introducing his 1973 contribution to the discussion, entitled simply "Forgiveness"—an essay that remains the standard reference for contemporary discussions of the problem, especially in the Anglo-American philosophical community—Aurel Kolnai writes that while the ethical nature of the problem is indisputable, he intends his argument "to be chiefly logical in nature: the central question I wish to discuss is … whether, and if so in (...) what manner, [forgiveness] is logically possible at all."1 The problem, as Kolnai develops it in the first two sections of his essay, is that forgiveness seems to be either... (shrink)

The notes for Theodor Adorno’s courses in the 1960’s are important resources not only for an understanding of his magnum opus, Negative Dialectics, but also for developing critical responses to this problematic philosophical heir of idealism. Particularly noteworthy among the volumes that have appeared so far is from Adorno’s 1965 course on metaphysics where he engages in a sustained reading of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and explicitly connects it with the project of Negative Dialectics. Adorno’s chief concern is to demonstrate, by way (...) of Eduard Zeller’s work, that Aristotle is indeed a proto-idealist and that his ontology is comprised of a fundamental dualism. Adorno is not an informed reader of Aristotle, as his reliance on Zeller makes clear, but he succeeds in drawing the reader’s attention to the organizing force exerted by  upon . The interest in this organizing force is motivated by an interest in the ethics that is consequent upon it: an ethics that ignores the sufferings of the concrete in the name of a rational ideal. While there are echoes of this in Aristotle’s ethical writings, his account of imagination in De Anima ought to give pause to an account as reductive as Adorno’s. In De Anima, Aristotle provides an account of the imagination () that makes it a power reducible neither to  nor to . The imagination, a power of the bodily senses, and especially sight, is a power that grants to thinking its power but is itself the unmotivated actualization of the purely potential. This essay argues that such a power resists interpretation into any dialectical schema insofar as it constitutes a distinct power of the human animal. At the same time, such an interpretation provides a possible route out of the ethical impasse of the unthinkable concrete. (shrink)

According to an influential contextualist solution to skepticism advanced by Keith DeRose, denials of skeptical hypotheses are, in most contexts, strong yet insensitive. The strength of such denials allows for knowledge of them, thus undermining skepticism, while the insensitivity of such denials explains our intuition that we do not know them. In this paper we argue that, under some well-motivated conditions, a negated skeptical hypothesis is strong only if it is sensitive. We also consider how a natural response on behalf (...) of DeRose appears to be equally available to his primary rival (viz., the sensitivity theorist). (shrink)

Attentive readings of Deleuze’s works alongside the projects of his teachers show that they often share a common problem or set of problems. One of the most innovative and influential of these projects is the work of Jean Wahl. Wahl’s analysis of French existential phenomenology, here analyzed through a representative essay published in 1950, focuses on the problem of the pre-personal, pre-subjective elements of thinking and worldly existence. Deleuze’s philosophical project, already visible in his early essays on Bergson, is a (...) critique of the phenomenological presuppositions that determine this problem in terms of negation. (shrink)

The Racial Contract pone la teoría clásica del contrato social occidental, sin ambages, al servicio de un uso radical extraordinario. Con una mirada arrolladora sobre el expansionismo y el racismo europeos de los últimos quinientos años, Charles W. Mills demuestra cómo este peculiar y no reconocido "contrato" ha dado forma a un sistema de dominación europea global: cómo da lugar a la existencia de "blancos" y "no blancos", personas de pleno derecho y subpersonas, cómo influye en la teoría moral y (...) la psicología moral de los blancos; y cómo este sistema se impone a los no blancos mediante el condicionamiento ideológico y la violencia. The Racial Contract sostiene que la sociedad en la que vivimos es un estado continuado de supremacía blanca. Levantando un espejo ante la filosofía dominante, este provocativo libro explica el esquema evolutivo del contrato racial desde la época de la conquista del Nuevo Mundo y el posterior colonialismo, pasando por el contrato escrito de la esclavitud, hasta el sistema de segregación "separados pero iguales" en los Estados Unidos del siglo XX. Según Mills, el contrato ha proporcionado la arquitectura teórica que justifica toda una historia de atrocidades europeas contra los no blancos, desde las afirmaciones de David Hume e Immanuel Kant de que los negros tenían un poder cognitivo inferior, pasando por el Holocausto, hasta el tipo de imperialismo en Asia que se demostró con la guerra de Vietnam. Mills sugiere que la guetización del trabajo filosófico sobre la raza no es accidental. Este trabajo desafía la suposición de que la teoría dominante carece en sí misma de raza. Al igual que la teoría feminista ha revelado el sesgo invisible de la filosofía política hacia los hombres blancos, la explicación de Mills del contrato racial expone sus fundamentos raciales. (shrink)

As automating technologies are increasingly integrated into workplaces, one concern is that many of the human workers who remain will be relegated to more dull and less positively impactful work. This paper considers two rival theories of meaningful work that might be used to evaluate particular implementations of automation. The first is achievementism, which says that work that culminates in achievements to workers’ credit is especially meaningful; the other is the practice view, which says that work that takes the form (...) of an open-ended practice is especially meaningful. Of the two, the practice view is the better tool for assessing the future of meaningful work, because achievementism is explanatorily inadequate in two ways. Moreover, the practice view can explain why the most meaningful forms of work cannot be automated. A procedure can only be automated as long as the steps are defined, whereas, in such work, which steps to take is indefinitely open to redefinition. This reveals the real threat to meaningful work to be a political-economic one. The relevant ethical questions there have to do with how much creative control workers retain in crafting their own jobs, when those jobs involve meaningful work in collaboration with machines; and how to liberate workers from jobs that do not involve meaningful work, which should be left to machines anyway. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that the notion which Michael Walzer calls jus ad vim might improve the moral evaluation for using military lethal force in conflicts other than war, particularly those situations of conflict short-of-war. First, I describe his suggested approach to morally justifying the use of lethal force outside the context of war. I argue that Walzer’s jus ad vim is a broad concept that encapsulates a state’s mechanisms for exercising power short-of-war. I focus on his more narrow (...) use of jus ad vim which is the state’s use of lethal force. Next I address Tony Coady’s critique of jus ad vim. I argue that Coady highlights some important problems with jus ad vim, but these concerns are not sufficient to dismiss it completely. Then, in the final section, I argue that jus ad vim provides an appropriate “hybrid” moral framework for judging the ethical decision-making outside of war by complementing other conventional just war distinctions. A benefit of jus ad vim is that it stops us expanding the definition of war while still providing the necessary ethical framework for examining violent conflict outside that context. (shrink)