The legend of Robin Hood exemplifies a distinct concern of justice neglected by theorists: the distributive results of systemic injustices. Robin Hood’s redistributive activities are justified by the principle that the distributive results of systemic injustices are unjust and should be corrected. This principle has relevance beyond the legend: since current inequalities in the US are results of systemic injustices, the US has good reason to take from the rich and give to the poor.

The irony of the rejection of the sex/gender distinction is that it renders sociology per se an impossible enterprise. For it is my submission that, contra Hood-Williams (1996) and others, the biological and the social constitute distinct, irreducible levels of reality: to conflate (in a ‘downwards’ or ‘upwards’ direction) the two levels is immediately to render analysis of their relative interplay at best intractable. It is indeed arguable that Hood-Williams is not so much concerned with (rightly) rejecting the (...) so-called ‘additive’ approach to the biological and the social where the biological base is seen a priori as immutable, but more fundamentally with rejecting the necessary dualism of nature and culture (ie the biological and the social). In contradistinction, a realist defence of the sex/gender distinction will be made, involving critical reference to various major writers in the field and offering a brief but tentative discussion of the provenance of gender. (shrink)

When experimental participants are given the chance to reflect and revise their initial judgments in a dynamic conversational context, do their responses to philosophical scenarios differ from responses to those same scenarios presented in a traditional static survey? In three experiments comparing responses given in conversational contexts with responses to traditional static surveys, we find no consistent evidence that responses differ in these different formats. This aligns with recent findings that various manipulations of reflectiveness have no effect on participants’ judgments (...) about philosophical scenarios. Although we did not find a consistent quantitative effect of format (conversation vs. static survey), conversational experiments still provide qualitative insights into debates about how participants are understanding (or misunderstanding) the scenarios they read in experimental studies, whether they are replacing difficult questions with questions that are more easily answered, and how participants are imagining the scenarios they read in ways that differ from what is explicitly stated by experimenters. We argue that conversational experiments—"Socratic questionnaires"—help show what is going on “under the hood” of traditional survey designs in the experimental investigation of philosophical questions. (shrink)

A Study of Perennial Philosophy and Psychedelic Experience, with a Proposal to Revise W. T. Stace’s Core Characteristics of Mystical Experience ©Ed D’Angelo 2018 -/- Abstract -/- According to the prevailing paradigm in psychedelic research today, when used within an appropriate set and setting, psychedelics can reliably produce an authentic mystical experience. According to the prevailing paradigm, an authentic mystical experience is one that possesses the common or universal characteristics of mystical experience as identified by the philosopher W. T. Stace (...) in his 1960 work Mysticism and Philosophy. Stace’s common characteristics of mystical experience are the basis for the Hood Mysticism Questionnaire, which is the most widely used quantitative measure of mystical experience in experimental studies of psychedelic experience. In this paper, I trace the historical roots of Stace’s common characteristics of mystical experience back to Christian Neoplatonism and apophatic theology, and I trace those, in turn, back to Plato’s concept of the Good and to Aristotle’s concept of God as active intellect. I argue that Stace’s common characteristics of mystical experience are not universal or culturally invariant but are the product of a specifically Christian religious and moral tradition that has its roots in ancient Greek metaphysics. My paper concludes with a revised list of common characteristics of psychedelic experience that is a better candidate for a list of invariant structures of psychedelic experience than Stace’s common characteristics of Christian mystical experience. (shrink)

Introduction There are some exceptions, which we shall see below, but virtually all theories in psychology and cognitive science make use of the notion of representation. Arguably, folk psychology also traffics in representations, or is at least strongly suggestive of their existence. There are many different types of things discussed in the psychological and philosophical literature that are candidates for representation-hood. First, there are the propositional attitudes – beliefs, judgments, desires, hopes etc. (see Chapters 9 and 17 of this (...) volume). If the propositional attitudes are representations, they are person-level representations – the judgment that the sun is bright pertains to John, not a subpersonal part of John. By contrast, the representations of edges in V1 of the cerebral cortex that neuroscientists talk about and David Marr’s symbolic representations of “zero-crossings” in early vision (Marr 1982) are at the “sub-personal” level – they apply to parts or states of a person (e.g. neural parts or computational states of the visual system). Another important distinction is often made among perceptual, cognitive, and action-oriented representations (e.g. motor commands). Another contrast lies between “stored representations” (e.g. memories) and “active representations” (e.g. a current perceptual state). Related to this is the distinction between “dispositional representations” and “occurrent representations.” Beliefs that are not currently being entertained are dispositional, e.g. your belief that the United States is in North America - no doubt you had this belief two minutes ago, but you were not consciously accessing it until you read this sentence. Occurrent representations, by contrast, are active, conscious thoughts or perceptions. Which leads us to another important distinction: 1 between conscious and non-conscious mental representations, once a bizarre-sounding distinction that has become familiar since Freud (see Chapter 4 of this volume). I mention these distinctions at the outset to give you some idea of the range of phenomena we will be considering, and to set the stage for our central “problem of representation”: what is a mental representation, exactly, and how do we go about deciding whether there are any? We know there are public representations of various kinds: words, maps, and pictures, among others.. (shrink)

This study in moral, political, and legal philosophy contends that it is morally impermissible to circumcise male minors without a medical indication (nontherapeutic circumcision). Male minors have a moral anticipatory autonomy right-in-trust not to be circumcised. This right depends on norms of autonomy and bodily integrity. These norms generate three direct non-consequentialist arguments against nontherapeutic circumcision: (1) the loss of nonrenewable functional tissue, (2) genital salience, and (3) limits on a parental right to permanently modify their sons' bodies. An indirect (...) argument holds (4) that if it is morally impermissible to remove the female prepuce (clitoral hood), then it is also morally impermissible to remove the male prepuce (foreskin). Although there is debate across medical cultures, a reasonable understanding supports the claim that nontherapeutic circumcision causes some harms and imposes unwarranted risks on male minors. The overall moral case applies to secular circumcisions and, with some qualifications, to religious circumcisions in Judaism and Islam. Arguments of political philosophy that invoke the freedom of religion, toleration, multiculturalism, and social meaning qualify somewhat, but do not eliminate, the case against circumcising male minors without a medical indication. Nevertheless, the arguments deployed in this study do not warrant legal interference at this time with secular and religious practices of nontherapeutic circumcision. (shrink)

Abstract This article delves into the study of the term «tark-i awlà» (abandoning performance of that which is better and doing that which is less than better) as an approach for defending the infallibility of the prophets when confronting verses from the Holy Qur‘ān that apparently prove the prophets committed sins; and after going into the semantics of «tark-i awlà», the following question has been made the focus of discussion and study: are the intellectual arguments proving the infalliblity of the (...) Prophets in agreement with the fact that the prophets committed tark-i awlà? According to the author, considering that tark-i awlà is a type of error and lapse and because the intellectual arguments for infallibility (like the trust and certitude of the people, the guiding purpose of prophet hood, the necessity of following the prophets, the principle of luṭf (grace) and absence of disinclination in the hearts of the people towards the prophets) necessitate the negation of all types of errors and lapses from the prophets, the prophets must be infallible from tark-i awlà too and this approach by Islamic theologians in justifying the verses that indicate the committing of sins by the prophets is not successful. Accepting the committing of tark-i awlà by the prophets is to accept that they committed errors and is against the belief of the Shi‘a regarding the infallibility of the prophets. As a result, Shi‘a theology will face a great challenge in justifying the verses that indicate the committing of errors and lapses by the Prophets which, according to the author, necessitates a revision of the Shi‘a theological belief in regards to the absolute infallibility of the prophets. (shrink)

What is Consciousness? When one looks up what the group called Project Consciousness (private group in Facebook) is all about, one finds the above question. As such, I find this group as a forum to share scientific information and our own ideas about what the nature of Consciousness is. Therefore, I would like to share my own ideas on the subject for your consideration. After much research and reflection, IMHO, I propose consciousness as an objective reality of quantum neuro dynamics (...) whose manifestations are conveyed along the cooperative activity between the cognitive, sensorial, and volitional faculties. As such, consciousness would be an attribute inherent to the individual nature solely intrinsic to human beings. (shrink)

The status of being a subject, a self and being self-aware of it, is to be interpreted here through the process of the child‘s role play with the doll: By speaking to the doll, this inanimate being is seen as animate and becoming the alter ego of the child. Communicating with it thus means that the child speaks to it- self. It has thus established a — so to speak 'tautological‘ — self-relationship, a behavior in which it encounters only figures (...) of itself. This effect of reflexive tautologization, as I would like to say briefly, is decisive: The individual does not gain a self be- cause he puts himself in the other´s place — think of G.H. Mead — but because he rather eliminates the moment of otherness by means of reflexive tautologization and thus, in tautological self-execution, constitutes himself as self and ultimately as self- consciousness: role-playing as the self-fulfilling design of self- hood. Implicated thereby is, according to my argument, that the self-interpretation of the subject as free or as determined is essentially to be conceived as a self-fulfilling design — free is he who (with all conditionalities) 'designs' himself as free. And in turn, the demand for mutual recognition of the subjects results from this as well. ************************************************************************************************* Der Status, ein Subjekt, ein Selbst und dessen sich selbst bewusst zu sein, soll hier am Vorgang des kindlichen Rollenspiels mit der Puppe gedeutet werden: lndem das Kind zur Puppe spricht, kann dieses an sich Leblose begeistet und zum Alter Ego werden. Mit ihm kommunizieren bedeutet somit, dass das Kind vielmehr zu sich selbst spricht. Es hat damit ein — gleich- sam 'tautoIogisches‘ — Selbstverhältnis hergestellt, ein Verhal- ten, in dem ihm nur Gestalten seiner selbst begegnen. Dieser Effekt reflexiver Tautologisierung, wie ich kurz sagen möchte, ist entscheidend: Das lndividuum gewinnt nicht deshalb ein Selbst, weil es sich in den Andern versetzt — man denke an G.H. Mead —, sondern weil es vermittels reflexiver Tautologi- sierung das Moment der Andersheit vielmehr eliminiert und sich so, im tautologischen Selbstvollzug, als Selbst und letztlich als Selbst-Bewusstsein konstituiert: Rollenspiel als sich selbst er- füllender Entwurf von Selbstsein. lmpliziert ist damit, so mein Argument, dass die Selbstdeutung des Subjekts als frei oder als determiniert, essentiell als selbsterfüllender Entwurf zu be- greifen ist — frei ist, wer sich (bei allen Bedingtheiten) als frei 'entwirft'. Und im Gegenzug ergibt sich die Forderung wechsel- seitiger Anerkennung der Subjekte ebenso daraus. (shrink)

It is commonplace for philosophers to distinguish mere truths from truths that perspicuously represent the world's structure. According to a popular view, the perspicuous truths are supposed to be metaphysically revelatory and to play an important role in the accounts of law-hood, confirmation, and linguistic interpretation. Yet, there is no consensus about how to characterize this distinction. I examine strategies developed by Lewis and by Sider in his Writing the Book of the World which purport to explain this distinction (...) in terms of vocabulary: the truths that represent the world perspicuously have better, joint-carving vocabulary. I argue that the distinction between a perspicuous and mere truth concerns both the vocabulary of the sentence and its grammar. I then show that the collective motivations for distinguishing perspicuous from mere truths do not allow Lewis and Sider to properly impose constraints on grammar. (shrink)

The topical theme of this paper explores the ethical principles of Mahayana Buddhism, based on Bodhicaryavatara(BC) of Santideva(7thcentury A.D.). According to him, only generation of enlightened mind (bodhicitta-intellect) and virtuous actions are not sufficient to attain the main objective i.e. Buddha-hood, the state of perfect enlightenment. But, for the fulfillment of this goal one must have to gain perfection to engage in the performance of six actions, termed as –Sadparmitas. It is necessary to stop present and future sufferings, and (...) to bring eternal pleasure, for all sentient beings. For this self-attitude and behavior in everyday affairs towards other beings is necessary. Thus, the ethics in Buddhism is directly associated with theory of Karman (action). Here, ethics means not only pure observance of virtuous actions but also good performance of one’s own duty and good actions in all affairs. It means while we work and act must be abstain from negative thinking doing harm for other beings. Therefore, Santideva emphasizes on applied form of teachings of the ethical theory. According to him, who has proper vision and understanding can act, of the work of compassionate, beyond the ethical code of conduct prescribed by the scriptures as warranted by circumstances and conditions for the sake of others. Thus, the ethical theory is based on good or bad intention of mind of an individual. This is so as what is virtuous and non-virtuous actions are not so easy to understand because it depends on purity of mind. In fact, nothing is good and nothing is bad, circumstances and intentions make it so. (shrink)

Some environmentalists have argued that an effective ecological conscience may be rooted in a perspective that is either anthropocentric or sentiocentric. But, neither seems to have had any substantial effect on the ways in which our species treats nature. In looking to successfully awaken the ecological conscience, the focus should be on extending moral consideration to the land (wherein doing so includes all of the soils, waters, plants, animals, and the collectivity of which these things comprise) by means of coming (...) to love the land. Coming to love the land involves coming to view the land’s interests as our own—and, conferring upon the land a kind of moral patient-hood. In order to perceive the land’s “subjectivity,” and so, to come to love the land, we must relearn the way to look at the land by viewing its personality through the lens of he or she who can already do so, i.e., the nature writer. (shrink)

Does it matter whether we perceptually represent tomato-hood?

“No lies": The Hurricane Notebook, found on a Wilmington beach after a storm, contains the thoughts, artistic experiments, vignettes, and recorded dialogues of an unknown author calling herself "Elizabeth M." Its entries record the inner life of a soul in crisis, perpetually returning to the moment she learned of her sister's suicide and making an unrelenting attempt to understand herself and the human condition. Whether engaged in introspective soul-searching, or reconstructing her discussions with friends, mentors, and acquaintances, she challenges herself (...) to accept "No lies" that would mask or hide her own responsibility for evil in the world. The notebook ends abruptly; having traversed subjects as diverse as God, childhood, chess, philosophy, ballet, self-hood, conscience, guilt, and friendship, Elizabeth's questions are left uncertain and hanging in the air, just like her hope that she might find "one person on earth who understands me," and unanswered, like her plea "Having understood me, would you grieve on my behalf, my friend?". (shrink)

In 2009, we celebrated the bicentennial of the birth of Charles Darwin and the sesquicentennial of the publication of his book The Origin of Species. This seems to be a good opportunity to evaluate the importance of Darwin’s work for the social sciences, mainly for philosophical anthropology. The aim of this paper is to discuss the traditional anthropocentric conceptions of man, which consider our biological species to be exceptional – qualitatively higher than other living organisms. Over the course of the (...) 20th century, philosophers have argued for the claim in a number of ways: man is supposed to be the only animal capable of laughter, love, thought or language. It has also been claimed that only members of Homo sapiens have free will, morality or religion. The paper refutes these arguments on the basis of contemporary studies by M. Davila Ross, H. Fischer, K. Arnold, K. Zuberbühler, G. Konopka, B. Libet, F. De Waal, M. Bekoff, P. Boyer, B. Hood, G. Paul and others. The author argues that the only differences between man and other animals are quantitative, and therefore the nature of humans should be studied using the methods of naturalized philosophy, with respect to the natural sciences. (shrink)

This paper introduces the concept of collective intentionality and shows its relevance when we seek to understand public management. Social ontology – particularly its leading concept, collective intentionality – provides critical insights into public organisations. The paper sets out the some of the epistemological limitations of cultural theories and takes as its example of these the group-grid theory of Douglas and Hood. It then draws upon Brentano, Husserl and Searle to show the ontological character of public management. Modern public (...) institutions – such as advisory organisations and service delivery agencies, including schools and universities – are expressions of human collective intentionality. The central concept within these institutions, as a phenomenology reveals, is cooperation. Public institutions are natural structures that emerge from our evolutionary ancestry as cooperative animals and enduringly display all the features of that ancestry. (shrink)

In his book, Romaphobia: The Last Acceptable form of Racism, Aidan McGarry gives a powerful analysis of anti-Roma racism in Europe. His aims in the book are to highlight the plight of European Roma and to anal- yse the underlying causes of their persecution. The quandary, as McGarry sees it, is that Roma persecution in Europe has persisted unabated for over six hundred years. As soon as Roma appeared in Europe in the late fourteenth century they were traded as slaves, (...) or targeted by laws calling for assimilation or death. Roma were targeted for mass extermination during the Holocaust, and even now, they face widespread persecution across Europe. Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini, for instance, insists on compiling a “Gypsy Registry” and cleansing Italian neighbour- hoods of Roma camps. The French government targets Roma settlements for demolition and, in defiance of European laws, deports around twenty thousand Roma to other countries every year. Targeted murders of Roma in Hungary, Slovakia, and the Ukraine are encouraged, and ignored. Tabloid newspapers in the UK drum up anti-Roma sentiment. Indeed, the Daily Mail even cite former UK opposition leader Jeremy Corbin’s past attempts to protect Roma from eviction in London as a reason for his unsuitability to become Prime Minister—in modern Britain, compassion for Gypsies is a sign of questionable character. For McGarry, then, this persistence is central to the puzzle of Romaphobia—why does this form of racism remain unchallenged and acceptable? (shrink)

Human beings are by nature enshrined in an inescapable world - hood web called language. As a symbolic construction and human agenda setting in semantic space, language ensures the application of social meaning, control, culture and social knowledge. As a re sult of the place that language occupies in the integration, interpretation and internalization of convention for the state of affairs of sociality, it is not surprising that it has always been an attractive area and a fascinating topic for (...) philosophers. T he history of philosophical thinking about language is almost impossible to separate from the history of logic and indeed the entire history of philosophy. This piece argued that human beings do not live in the world without the agency of language which be comes the medium of expression within particular societies. It is based on this understanding (that the real world of a people is based on their language habits) that this paper employed Igwebuike as an ontological toolbox that forms the trajectory system of the Igbo - African world. Within the context of Igbo - African philosophy of language, this piece argued for the necessity of the use of the word “Igwebuike” as it captures and communicates the Igbo - African world. Igwebuike is the form (and symbolic) of the Igbo - African mental being, and thus, the gateway to Igbo - African philosophy. Beyond the literal understanding of Igwebuike (Igwe - number; bu - is; ike - strength) as ‘there is strength in number’, it captures the Igbo philosophy of relationality, complementar ity and interconnectedness of reality. The objective of this work is to discover the centrality of language within philosophy and thus give correct bearing to philosophy. For the purpose of this piece, the Igwebuike holistic approach will be employed. (shrink)

According to one influential view, something which we might have reason to think is a language, is not proven to be such until it has been translated. I will try to show, to the contrary, that it is necessary to appeal to factors which are independent of translation in order to establish that it is indeed a language which has been translated in the first place. If this is right, it follows that proof of languagehood, so far from depending on (...) translation, is in fact logically prior to translation. (shrink)

This book illustrates a new theory of Consciousness attempting to solve the meta-problem of Consciousness and the mind-body problem using Aristotle's soul as the basis of self-hood. It attempts to solve the mind-body problem by illustrating the transition of the Soul as the body into a mind, using emotional experiences turning into experiences of feelings.

This paper and its sequel “look under the hood” of the usual sorts of proof-theoretic systems for certain well-known intuitionistic and classical propositional modal logics. Section 1 is preliminary. Of most importance: a marked formula will be the result of prefixing a formula in a propositional modal language with a step-marker, for this paper either 0 or 1. Think of 1 as indicating the taking of “one step away from 0.” Deductions will be constructed using marked formulas. Section 2 (...) presents the model-theoretic concepts, based on those in [7], that guide the rest of this paper. Section 3 presents Natural Deduction systems IK and CK, formalizations of intuitionistic and classical one-step versions of K. In these systems, occurrences of step-markers allow deductions to display deductive structure that is covered over in familiar “no step” proof-theoretic systems for such logics. Box and Diamond are governed by Introduction and Elimination rules; the familiar K rule and Necessitation are derived (i.e. admissible) rules. CK will be the result of adding the 0-version of the Rule of Excluded Middle to the rules which generate IK. Note: IK is the result of merely dropping that rule from those generating CK, without addition of further rules or axioms (as was needed in [7]). These proof-theoretic systems yield intuitionistic and classical consequence relations by the obvious definition. Section 4 provides some examples of what can be deduced in IK. Section 5 defines some proof-theoretic concepts that are used in Section 6 to prove the soundness of the consequence relation for IK (relative to the class of models defined in Section 2.) Section 7 proves its completeness (relative to that class). Section 8 extends these results to the consequence relation for CK. (Looking ahead: Part 2 will investigate one-step proof-theoretic systems formalizing intuitionistic and classical one-step versions of some familiar logics stronger than K.). (shrink)

Part 1 [Hodes, 2021] “looked under the hood” of the familiar versions of the classical propositional modal logic K and its intuitionistic counterpart. This paper continues that project, addressing some familiar classical strengthenings of K and GL), and their intuitionistic counterparts. Section 9 associates two intuitionistic one-step proof-theoretic systems to each of the just mentioned intuitionistic logics, this by adding for each a new rule to those which generated IK in Part 1. For the systems associated with the intuitionistic (...) counterparts of D and T, these rules are “pure one-step”: their schematic formulations does not use □ or ♢. For the systems associated with the intuitionistic counterparts of K4, etc., these rules meet these conditions: neither □ nor ♢ is iterated; none use both □ and ♢. The join of the two systems associated with each of these familiar logics is the full one-step system for that intuitionistic logic. And further “blended” intuitionistic systems arise from joining these systems in various ways. Adding the 0-version of Excluded Middle to their intuitionistic counterparts yields the one-step systems corresponding to the familiar classical logics. Each proof-theoretic system defines a consequence relation in the obvious way. Section 10 examines inclusions between these consequence relations. Section 11 associates each of the above consequence relations with an appropriate class of models, and proves them sound with respect to their appropriate class. This allows proofs of some failures of inclusion between consequence relations. Section 12 proves that the each consequence relation is complete or weakly complete, that relative to its appropriate class of models. The Appendix presents three further results about some of the intuitionistic consequence relations discussed in the body of the paper. For Keywords, see Part 1. (shrink)

The ongoing debates about what rationality consists in remain unsettled and leave plenty of interpretation for what is rational in belief formation and action. Hinman risks a large step in seeming to assume that it is rational not to contravene scientific theories and findings and irrational to disallow this openness. These -- possibilities lending a potential for deistic beliefs not to be inconsistent with rationality. The presumed scientific approach to allowing a rationality in such belief revolves around the development of (...) the so-called "M-scale" in the psychology of belief. The other, even more intense, global debate here is whether such an approach to rationality and rational belief is indeed valid, that is, the ongoing concen of whether such belief is consistent or not with scientific practice, understanding, and method. Readers interested in these debates should be interested in this unusual work and its purports. (shrink)