Both Philip and Andrew are philosophy students whose interests converge around the philosophy of technology broadly understood. Philip's interest is specifically aimed toward the ethics of Transhumanism and depictions of Transhumanism in works of fiction. On the other hand, Andrew finds himself more focused on religious behavior in the technological world. While the two perspectives might not seem that close, there is certain to be an overlap in Andrew and Philip's shared understanding of how technological phenomena play a crucial role (...) concerning religion and society. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Offsetting is a very ineffective way to do good. Offsetting your lifetime emissions may increase aggregated life expectancy by at most seven years, while giving the amount it costs to offset your lifetime emissions to a malaria charity saves in expectation the life of at least one child. Is there any moral reason to offset rather than giving to some charity that does good so much more effectively? There might be such a reason if your offsetting compensated or somehow (...) benefitted the victims of your emission, since that could mean that you would satisfy the duty not to harm others by emitting and offsetting. But that is typically not true. If your emission harms some person and your offsetting benefits some person, then these are most likely different people. Hence, I conclude, we have a stronger reason to give to effective charities than we have to offset our emissions. (shrink)

The Precautionary Principle (PP) is an influential principle of risk management. It has been widely introduced into environmental legislation, and it plays an important role in most international environmental agreements. Yet, there is little consensus on precisely how to understand and formulate the principle. In this paper I prove some impossibility results for two plausible formulations of the PP as a decision-rule. These results illustrate the difficulty in making the PP consistent with the acceptance of any trade-offs between catastrophic risks (...) and more ordinary goods. (shrink)

The relationship between “Towards a Critique of Violence” (1921) and the work of Franz Kafka has been well established by several critical studies devoted to Walter Benjamin. However, it is striking that Benjamin himself, already well acquainted with the work of the Czech writer in 1921, never made any comment to Kafka’s work in this essay, and, more broadly, in any of the related texts that make up the project on the ‘Critique of Violence’. In this article, we analyze a (...) set of notions (Entstellung, Entsühnung, Zurechstellen) that allow us to establish a mediated relationship between this essay and the articles and letters that Benjamin devoted to Kafka in the 1930s. This relationship takes us back to the only piece in which Benjamin carries out an autonomous treatment of the “category of justice” (1916) in which he identifies -as it will happen eighteen years later, in the essay on Kafka (1934)- the locus of justice in the “non-violence”, thus untying the knot that binds in a perhaps indiscernible way in the Jewish tradition the notions of “messianism” and “violence”. (shrink)

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about the Ghettos, about wayward youths and Instagram rappers that glorify violence. In this piece, a Warsaw-based philosopher contributes to this discussion by examining the music of the ghetto and the culture of riots. Not in opposition to how bourgeois society usually frames such acts of discontent but rather as a reasonable democratic right that minorities are entitled to.

If I were asked to put forward an ethical principle which I considered to be especially certain, it would be that no one can be responsible, in the properly ethical sense, for the conduct of another. Responsibility belongs essentially to the individual. The implications of this principle are much more far-reaching than is evident at first, and reflection upon them may lead many to withdraw the assent which they might otherwise be very ready to accord to this view of responsibility. (...) But if the difficulties do appear to be insurmountable, and that, very certainly, does not seem to me to be the case, then the proper procedure will be, not to revert to the barbarous notion of collective or group responsibility, but to give up altogether the view that we are accountable in any distinctively moral sense. (shrink)

I defend a weak version of the Pigou-Dalton principle for chances. The principle says that it is better to increase the survival chance of a person who is more likely to die rather than a person who is less likely to die, assuming that the two people do not differ in any other morally relevant respect. The principle justifies plausible moral judgements that standard ex post views, such as prioritarianism and rank-dependent egalitarianism, cannot accommodate. However, the principle can be justified (...) by the same reasoning that has recently been used to defend the core axiom of ex post prioritarianism and egalitarianism, namely, Pigou-Dalton for well-being. The arguably biggest challenge for proponents of Pigou-Dalton for chances is that it violates State Dominance for social prospects. However, I argue that we have independent reason for rejecting State Dominance for social prospects, since it prevents a social planner from properly respecting people's preferences. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the knowledge management processes and their role in achieving competitive advantage at Al-Quds Open University. The study was based on the descriptive analytical method, and the study population consists of academic and administrative staff in each of the branches of Al-Quds Open University in (Tulkarm, Nablus and Jenin). The researchers selected a sample of the study population by the intentional non-probability method, the size of (70) employees. A questionnaire was prepared and supervised by a number (...) of specialists in order to obtain the results of the study. The study concluded that there is a positive direct relationship, that is, the higher the degree of application of knowledge management processes, the greater the degree of competitive advantage. Knowledge Technology came first with a score of 80.02% on all items. Competitive advantage came second with 81.74%. In the third place came "knowledge generation" where the total score on all paragraphs in this area (78.24%). In the fourth place, "knowledge transfer" (77.21%). "Developing and storing knowledge" came in fifth place (77.13%). "Acquisition of knowledge" came in sixth place (76.45%). Knowledge Organization ranked seventh (74.26%). The study recommended that the university should enable the employees to benefit from the experiences and expertise available to help generate knowledge. The University encourages the creation of knowledge through the system of incentives and open the way for creators to apply their creations and spread and invest in excellence and creativity. The university should design work performance levels based on the integration of knowledge and organize it according to policies that support freedom of research. The need for Palestinian universities to adopt a knowledge management approach. The need to adopt a system of incentives that rewards cognitive efforts, and give workers enough freedom to enable them to apply their knowledge. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that we should use a lottery to decide who gets a good to which two persons have an equal claim but which only one person can get. Some philosophers think that we should save identified persons from harm even at the expense of saving a somewhat greater number of statistical persons from the same harm. I defend a principled way of justifying both judgements, namely, by appealing to the decreasing marginal moral value of survival chances. I identify (...) four desiderata that, I contend, any such justification should satisfy, and explain how my account meets these desiderata, unlike some previous accounts. (shrink)

Background: A bean is the seed of one of several genera of the flowering plant family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. They can be cooked in many different ways, including boiling, frying, and baking, and are used in many traditional dishes throughout the world. Beans are one of the longest-cultivated plants. Broad beans, also called fava beans, in their wild state the size of a small fingernail, were gathered in Afghanistan and the Himalayan foothills. (...) In a form improved from naturally occurring types, Beans were an important source of protein throughout old and new world history, and still are today. Objectives: The main goal of this expert system is to get the appropriate diagnosis of disease and the correct treatment. Methods: In this paper, the design of the proposed Expert System was produced to help farmers and those interested in agriculture in diagnosing many of the Bean diseases such as Fusarium wilt, Charcoal rot or ashy stem blight, Bacterial leaf spot and blight, Mung bean yellow mosaic virus, Cercospora leaf spot. The proposed expert system presents an overview of Bean diseases are given, the cause of diseases outlined and the treatment of disease whenever possible is given out. CLIPS Expert System language was used for designing and implementing the proposed expert system. Results: The proposed Bean diseases diagnosis expert system was evaluated by Agricultural experts and some friends interested in agriculture and they were satisfied with its performance. Conclusions: The proposed expert system is very useful for Farmers and those interested in agriculture. (shrink)

Hồ Mạnh Tùng và Hồ Mạnh Toàn đều là các nhà nghiên cứu trẻ trong lĩnh vực khoa học xã hội ở độ tuổi dưới 30. Mặc dù mới tham gia nghiên cứu khoa học chưa lâu, nhưng 2 anh em nhà họ Hồ đã có thành tích khoa học ấn tượng.

With the coronavirus pandemic and the Omicron variant once again forcing countries into lockdown, this essay seeks to outline a Foucauldian critique of various legal measures taken by the Danish government to cope with COVID-19 during the first year and a half of the pandemic. The essay takes a critical look at the extra-legal measures employed by the Danish government, as the Danish politicians attempted to halt the spread of the, now almost forgotten, Cluster 5 COVID-19 variant. This situation will (...) serve as a critical point from where to start using Foucault’s writings on life and biopolitics in order to expose various legally problematic governmental decisions that became visible during the handling of COVID-19 in general and the Cluster 5 mutation in particular. Reframing the pandemic within Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, this essay concludes that the state of exception has led to an increase in biopolitical logic, where some lives have come to matter more than others. As a critical counterpoint to this logic, the conclusion suggests that the notion of biocommunism could provide a suitable reconfiguration of communism. A reconfiguration that could mitigate some of the issues related to biopolitics is uncovered earlier in the essay. (shrink)

This volume offers a collection of in-depth explorations of pragmatism as a framework for discussions in philosophy of science and metaphysics. Each chapter involves explicit reflection on what it means to be pragmatist, and how to use pragmatism as a guiding framework in addressing topics such as realism, unification, fundamentality, truth, laws, reduction, and more. -/- .

I argue, first, that the deprived individuals whose predicaments Nussbaum cites as examples of "adaptive preference" do not in fact prefer the conditions of their lives to what we should regard as more desirable alternatives, indeed that we believe they are badly off precisely because they are not living the lives they would prefer to live if they had other options and were aware of them. Secondly, I argue that even where individuals in deprived circumstances acquire tastes for conditions that (...) we regard as bad, they are typically better off having their acquired preferences satisfied. If they are badly off it is because they cannot get what we and they, would regard as more desirable alternatives. Preference utilitarianism explains why individuals in such circumstances are badly off whether they have adapted to their deprived circumstances or not. Even if they prefer the conditions of their lives to all other available alternatives, most would prefer alternatives that are not available to them which would, on the preferentist account, make them better off. And that, on the preferentist account, is the basis for a radical critique of unjust institutions that limit people's options and prevent them from getting what they want. (shrink)

This study aims to identify the strengthening of the global entrepreneurial orientation practice for employees at the University of Palestine, where the researchers used the descriptive and analytical approach, through a questionnaire distributed to a sample of employees at the University of Palestine, where the size of the study population is (234) employees and the sample size is (117) Employees, of whom (90) employees responded. The study found a set of results, the most important of which are: that there is (...) a good degree of global entrepreneurial orientation for employees, as the percentage reached (70.25%), and the results also showed that there are no statistically significant differences in the smart university transformation and their impact on the global entrepreneurial trend according to personal and organizational data. The study presented a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: The need to work to enhance the global entrepreneurial orientation of the university's employees. (shrink)

Abstract: Rice is one of the most important staple crops in the world and serves as a staple food for more than half of the global population. It is a critical source of nutrition, providing carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals to millions of people, particularly in Asia and Africa. This paper presents a study on using deep learning for the classification of different types of rice. The study focuses on five specific types of rice: Arborio, Basmati, Ipsala, Jasmine, and Karacadag. A (...) dataset of 75,000 images was collected and annotated, consisting of 15,000 images for each of the five types of rice. The deep learning system uses convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to classify images of rice grains based on their physical characteristics. The performance of the deep learning system was evaluated using metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. The results show that the proposed deep learning system was able to achieve high accuracy in classifying the different types of rice, outperforming traditional image processing techniques. This study provides valuable insights into the potential of deep learning for classifying different types of rice and can be useful for applications such as quality control in rice processing industries and research in crop science. The large size of the dataset, 15,000 images for each type of rice, helped the deep learning system to learn the features of each type of rice, and increase the performance of the classifier. The attained overall accuracy of the proposed model (99.96%), Precision (99.96%), Recall (99.96%) and F1-score (99.96%). Thus, the proposed model proved that it leaned the five categories of rice and it can generalize these categories and it is effective. (shrink)

Virtue-based approaches have attracted significant recent interest in argumentation, including a recent anthology of Chinese translations of important articles in the field. In this article, adapted from the introduction to that anthology, we discuss the origins of virtue argumentation and some of the challenges it has faced, as well as attempt to provide an overview of recent work on the virtues and vices relevant to argumentation. In the final section we discuss the articles that were selected and motivate their selection.

Samuel Thomas (von) Soemmerring (1755–1830) war ein umfassend gebildeter und vielseitig interessierter Aufklärer, der sich vor allem als (Neuro-)Anatom anhaltende Berühmtheit ver- diente. Unrühmliche Bedeutung erlangten seine Untersuchung „zur körperlichen Verschiedenheit des Mohren vom Europäer“ und sein Versuch, die menschliche Seele im Liquor cerebrospinalis zu verorten. Weitgehend in Vergessenheit geraten sind seine Ver- dienste um die Gesundheit der Frauen und auch mancher Kna- ben, die ehedem in ein Korsett gezwungen wurden. Kants Kritik an Soemmerrings Organ der Seele (1796) nahm moderne (...) neuro- biologische Konzepte der Neurotransmission vorweg und inspi- rierte Soemmerring zum Bau eines einfachen Nervensystems, dem elektrolytischen Telegrafenapparat. (shrink)

This classic collection of essays, first published in 1968, represents H.L.A. Hart's landmark contribution to the philosophy of criminal responsibility and punishment. Unavailable for ten years, this new edition reproduces the original text, adding a new critical introduction by John Gardner, a leading contemporary criminal law theorist.

Abstract: This study aims to identify the level of creativity in the University of Palestine from the point of view of the employees, as the researchers used the descriptive and analytical method, through a questionnaire distributed to a sample of employees at the University of Palestine, where the size of the study population is (234) employees, and the size of the sample (117) employees, of which (90) employees responded. The study reached a set of results, the most important of which (...) are: A high degree of creativity from the employees 'point of view, and the study confirmed that there were no differences in the level of creativity at the University of Palestine from the Employees point of view, according to demographic variables. The study presented a set of recommendations, the most important of which are: The need for universities to enhance creativity. (shrink)

The concept of “progress” in evolutionary theory and its relationship to a putative notion of “Progress” in a global, normatively loaded sense of “change for the better” have been the subject of debate since Darwin admonished himself in a marginal note to avoid using the terms ‘higher’ and ‘lower.’ While an increase in some kind of complexity in the natural world might seem self-evident, efforts to explicate this trend meet notorious philosophical difficulties. Numerous historians pin the Modern Synthesis as a (...) pivotal moment in this history; Michael Ruse even provocatively hypothesizes that Ernst Mayr and other “architects” of the Synthesis worked actively to eliminate Progress from evolutionary biology’s scientific purview. I evaluate these claims here with a textual analysis of the journals Evolution and Proceedings of the Royal Society B (a corpus of 27,762 documents), using a dynamic topic modeling approach to track the fate of the term ‘progress’ across the Modern Synthesis. The claim that this term declines in importance for evolutionary theorizing over this period can, indeed, be supported; more tentative evidence is also provided that the discussion of ‘progress’ is largely absent from the British context, emphasizing the role of American paleontology in the rise and fall of ‘progress’ in 20th-century evolutionary biology. (shrink)

Een vrije en veerkrachtige samenleving ontstaat niet vanzelf en blijft niet vanzelf bestaan. In dit themanummer verkennen we de publieke onderwijstaak van het hoger beroepsonderwijs om studenten te onderwijzen de gemeenschappelijke wereld én het publieke gesprek over die wereld centraal te stellen. Met dit themanummer willen wij iets tegenover het vigerende marktdenken zetten. We laten ons hierbij inspireren door het gedachtegoed van Hannah Arendt (1906–1975). Ze heeft uitgebreid geschreven over ‘het publieke’. Ze verbindt de inzet van wetenschappelijke kennis en technologie (...) met het politieke vraagstuk: willen we daadwerkelijk leven in de wereld die we aan het scheppen zijn? Arendts gedachtegoed biedt volop handvatten om op verschillende niveaus van het hoger beroepsonderwijs deze taak te doordenken en invulling te geven. (shrink)

In this field questions arise which are certainly difficult; but as I listened last time to members of the group, I felt that the main difficulty perhaps lay in determining precisely what questions we are trying to answer. I have the conviction that if we could only say clearly what the questions are, the answers to them might not appear so elusive. So I have begun with a simple list of questions about discretion which in one form or another were, (...) as it seemed to me, expressed by the group last time. I may indeed have omitted something and inserted something useless: if so, no doubt I shall be informed of this later. The central questions then seem to me to be the following: 1. What is discretion, or what is the exercise of discretion? 2. Under what conditions and why do we in fact accept or tolerate discretion in a legal system? 3. Must we accept discretion or tolerate discretion, and if so, why? 4. What values does the use of discretion menace, and what values does it maintain or promote? 5. What can be done to maximize the beneficial operation of the use of discretion and to minimize any harm that it does? (shrink)

Bartha and DesRoches (Synthese 199(3–4):8701–8740, 2021) and Steel and Bartha (Risk Analysis 43(2):260–268, 2023) argue that we should understand the precautionary principle as the injunction to maximise lexical utilities. They show that the lexical utility model has important pragmatic advantages. Moreover, the model has the theoretical advantage of satisfying all axioms of expected utility theory except continuity. In this paper I raise a trilemma for any attempt at modelling the precautionary principle with lexical utilities: it permits choice cycles or leads (...) to paralysis or implies that the smallest value difference that is possible in a context has extreme axiological implications. (shrink)

Catastrophic risk raises questions that are not only of practical importance, but also of great philosophical interest, such as how to define catastrophe and what distinguishes catastrophic outcomes from non-catastrophic ones. Catastrophic risk also raises questions about how to rationally respond to such risks. How to rationally respond arguably partly depends on the severity of the uncertainty, for instance, whether quantitative probabilistic information is available, or whether only comparative likelihood information is available, or neither type of information. Finally, catastrophic risk (...) raises important ethical questions about what to do when catastrophe avoidance conflicts with equity promotion. (shrink)

Advances in science and technology have added to our insights into the vulnerabilities of human agency as well as to the methods of exploiting them. This has raised the stakes for efforts to clarify the concept and ethics of manipulation. Among these efforts, Robert Noggle’s influencer-centered account of manipulation has been most significant. He defines manipulative acts as those whereby an agent intentionally influences a recipient’s attitudes so that they do not conform as closely as they otherwise would to the (...) pertinent norms and ideals endorsed by the influencer. This provides a relatively simple and in many ways clear definition of manipulation. It sidesteps thorny debates about autonomy, freedom, or practical rationality. It also promises to reveal a conceptual parallel between manipulating and lying, and thus to explain why manipulation is pro tanto wrong. In one respect, however, the account remains ambiguous: It remains unclear whether, and to what extent, it requires that influencers’ beliefs about what is ideal for their recipients to be grounded in some effort on the part of the influencer to identify with or take on the role of her recipient. This paper explains this ambiguity. It argues that influencer-centrism cannot remain indifferent to the validity of an agent’s beliefs about the ideal state of the recipient and provide an identification requirement that would render the whole account plausible and sufficiently determinate. (shrink)

According to the orthodox treatment of risk preferences in decision theory, they are to be explained in terms of the agent's desires about concrete outcomes. The orthodoxy has been criticised both for conflating two types of attitudes and for committing agents to attitudes that do not seem rationally required. To avoid these problems, it has been suggested that an agent's attitudes to risk should be captured by a risk function that is independent of her utility and probability functions. The main (...) problem with that approach is that it suggests that attitudes to risk are wholly distinct from people's (non-instrumental) desires. To overcome this problem, we develop a framework where an agent's utility function is defined over chance propositions (i.e., propositions describing objective probability distributions) as well as ordinary (non-chance) ones, and argue that one should explain different risk attitudes in terms of different forms of the utility function over such propositions. (shrink)

This paper advances a theory of disease as domino dysfunction. It is often argued that diseases are biological dysfunctions. However, a theory of disease as biological dysfunction is complicated by some plausible cases of dysfunction, which seem clearly non-pathological. I argue that pathological conditions are not just dysfunctions but domino dysfunctions, and that domino dysfunctions can be distinguished on principled biological grounds from non-pathological dysfunctions. I then show how this theory can make sense of the problem cases; they are not (...) diseases because they are not domino dysfunctions. (shrink)

A chapter in an edited volume discussing philosophy and Ted Chiang's short stories. In this chapter, I show how philosophical debates about imaginative resistance and what can/can't be fictionally true influence our interpretation of "Division by Zero.".

Neoclassical economists use expected utility theory to explain, predict, and prescribe choices under risk, that is, choices where the decision-maker knows---or at least deems suitable to act as if she knew---the relevant probabilities. Expected utility theory has been subject to both empirical and conceptual criticism. This chapter reviews expected utility theory and the main criticism it has faced. It ends with a brief discussion of subjective expected utility theory, which is the theory neoclassical economists use to explain, predict, and prescribe (...) choices under uncertainty, that is, choices where the decision-maker cannot act on the basis of objective probabilities but must instead consult her own subjective probabilities. (shrink)

This essay rethinks the concept of biocommunism by rearticulating it via a sensitivity towards individual suffering rather than the human species as a whole. The essay is divided into three parts. The first part outlines Marx’s concept of alienation because of the central role that the fourth kind of alienation plays in Dyer-Witheford’s original conception of biocommunism. The second part briefly elaborates on the discussion of species in the Kyoto School. These two parts lead to the third part, where a (...) novel interpretation of biocommunism is outlined, focusing on individual suffering rather than the human species. (shrink)

Signing Ceremony of MOU on Professional Legal Diploma, Government of Dubai 2020.

Considerations of dynamic inconsistency have figured prominently in debates over the rationality of preferences that violate the separability conditions characteristic of expected utility theory. These debates have mostly focused on risk- and ambiguity averse preferences, but analogous considerations apply to preferences for fairness. We revisit these debates in the context of a specific hypothesis regarding the violations of separability by such preferences, namely that they are potentially both explained and rationalised by attitudes to the chances of goods that motivate a (...) preference for equality in the distribution of chances across people and possible events. Our main aim is to argue that, first, when these violations of static separability are motivated by such attitudes to chances, then they need not result in dynamically inconsistent behaviour. Second, and more generally, considerations of dynamic consistency do not, we argue, undermine the rationality of such attitudes towards the distribution of chances, despite the fact that such attitudes give rise to violations of the static separability assumptions of expected utility theory. (shrink)

Dieser Text beinhaltet nichts Neues. Nur hinlänglich Bekanntes, Erinnerungen an Gelesenes und Reflektiertes, vor allem zur Philosophie der Kunst mit ihrer zentrale Frage, was Kunst ist. Und eng damit verknüpft die Frage, was ein Kunstwerk ist und was einen Künstler und eine Künstlerin auszeichnet. In diesem Essay wird es aber nicht um die Kunst im Allgemeinen gehen, sondern um die abstrakte Kunst und die abstrakte Malerei im Besonderen. Was zeichnet sie aus und was ist ihr Wesen? Ist es die Freiheit?

Jordan agreed to extensive liberalization undertakings under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (“GATS”) that would open some sectors that were previously closed or restricted to foreign suppliers and investors. It undertook horizontal commitments in cross-border movement of individuals and commercial presence covering all types of services.

I anledning af Judith Butlers forelæsning om klimasorg på KU er jeg blevet bedt om at besvare spørgsmålet om, hvad man kan bruge Butlers tænkning til i dag og om den stadig er aktuel. Min første tanke var at besvare spørgsmålet med svaret: Man kan bruge Butlers tænkning til ALT! Men for at fokusere mit svar, har jeg besluttet mig for at gennemgå Butlers tænkning i forhold til spørgsmålet om prekære liv og vold og ikke-vold, og hvordan disse emner udspringer (...) af Butlers tænkning om køn i 1990’erne. /// In connection with Judith Butler's lecture on climate grief at KU, I have been asked to answer the question of how Butler's thinking could be used today and whether it is still relevant. My first thought was to answer the question with the answer: You can use Butler's thinking for EVERYTHING! However, to focus my answer, I have decided to review Butler's thinking in relation to the issues of precarious lives and violence and non-violence and how these issues stem from Butler's thinking on gender in the 1990s. (shrink)

The veil of ignorance argument was used by John C. Harsanyi to defend Utilitarianism and by John Rawls to defend the absolute priority of the worst off. In a recent paper, Lara Buchak revives the veil of ignorance argument, and uses it to defend an intermediate position between Harsanyi's and Rawls' that she calls Relative Prioritarianism. None of these authors explore the implications of allowing that agent's behind the veil are averse to ambiguity. Allowing for aversion to ambiguity---which is both (...) the most commonly observed and a seemingly reasonable attitude to ambiguity---however supports a version of Egalitarianism, whose logical form is quite different from the theories defended by the aforementioned authors. Moreover, it turns out that the veil of ignorance argument neither supports standard Utilitarianism nor Prioritarianism unless we assume that rational people are insensitive to ambiguity. (shrink)

Rowe has recently argued that pure risk of harm cannot itself be a harm. I respond to Rowe and argue that given an appropriate understanding of objective probabilities, pure objective risk of harm can itself be a harm.

This book is a translation of W.V. Quine's Kant Lectures, given as a series at Stanford University in 1980. It provide a short and useful summary of Quine's philosophy. There are four lectures altogether: I. Prolegomena: Mind and its Place in Nature; II. Endolegomena: From Ostension to Quantification; III. Endolegomena loipa: The forked animal; and IV. Epilegomena: What's It all About? The Kant Lectures have been published to date only in Italian and German translation. The present book is filled out (...) with the translator's critical Introduction, "The esoteric Quine?" a bibliography based on Quine's sources, and an Index for the volume. (shrink)

This paper examines the metaphysically modest view that attributionsof normative reasons can be made true in the absence of a responseindependent normative reality. The paper despairs in finding asatisfactory account of normative reasons in metaphysically modestterms.

We present an epistemological schema of natural sciences inspired by Peirce's pragmaticist view, stressing the role of the \emph{phenomenological map}, that connects reality and our ideas about it. The schema has a recognisable mathematical/logical structure which allows to explore some of its consequences. We show that seemingly independent principles as the requirement of reproducibility of experiments and the Principle of Sufficient Reason are both implied by the schema, as well as Popper's concept of falsifiability. We show that the schema has (...) some power in demarcating science by first comparing with an alternative schema advanced during the first part of the 20th century which has its roots in Hertz and has been developed by Einstein and Popper. Further, the identified differences allow us to focus in the construction of Special Relativity, showing that it uses an intuited concept of velocity that does not satisfy the requirements of reality in Peirce. While the main mathematical observation connected with this issue has been known for more than a century, it has not been investigated from an epistemological point of view. A probable reason could be that the socially dominating epistemology in physics does not encourage such line of work. We briefly discuss the relation of the abduction process presented in this work with discussions regarding ``abduction'' in the literature and its relation with ``analogy''. (shrink)

A social planner who evaluates risky public policies in light of the other risks with which their society will be faced should judge favourably some such policies even though they would deem them too risky when considered in isolation. I suggest that a longtermist would—or at least should—evaluate risky polices in light of their prediction about future risks; hence, longtermism supports social risk-taking. I consider two formal versions of this argument, discuss the conditions needed for the argument to be valid, (...) and briefly compare these conditions to some risky policy options with which actual public decision-makers are faced. (shrink)

This article aims to read feminist new materialisms (Barad), together with ‘postulated’ linguistic or cultural primacy of Queer Theory (Butler), to show how both are engaged in similar critical-ethical endeavours. The central argument is that the criticism of Barad and new materialisms misses Butler’s materialistic insights due to a narrow interpretation of Butler's alleged social-constructivist position. There is, therefore, a specific focus on where they both make similar ethical appeals. Moreover, the article relies on Adorno's negative dialectic to highlight an (...) interpretation of Barad and Butler as being part of the same dialectical movement, in which materialism and idealism fluctuate in their mutual criticisms, thus continuing the procession towards 'new knowledge' and emancipation, or freedom, through their motions back and forth. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that indeterminacy and indeterminism make most ordinary counterfactuals false. I argue that a plausible way to avoid such counterfactual skepticism is to postulate the existence of primitive modal facts that serve as truth-makers for counterfactual claims. Moreover, I defend a new theory of ‘might’ counterfactuals, and develop assertability and knowledge criteria to suit such unobservable ‘counterfacts’.

According to advocates of internalism about reasons for action, there is an interesting connection between an agent’s reasons and the agent’s present desires. On the simplest version of this view, an agent has a reason to act a certain way at some time if and only if acting that way would promote his present desires. Let us call this the sub-Humean model.1 The sub-Humean model is widely regarded as too simple on the grounds that there are adverse conditions, such as (...) massive confusion, in which desires are irrationally possessed or acquired, thereby failing to provide reasons for action.2. (shrink)

Those who are risk averse with respect to money, and thus turn down some gambles with positive monetary expectations, are nevertheless often willing to accept bundles involving multiple such gambles. Therefore, it might seem that such people should become more willing to accept a risky but favourable gamble if they put it in context with the collection of gambles that they predict they will be faced with in the future. However, it turns out that when a risk averse person adopts (...) the long-term perspective, she faces a decision-problem that can be analysed as a noncooperative game between different “time-slices” of herself, where it is in the interest of each time-slice (given its prediction about other slices) to turn down the gamble with which it is faced. Hence, even if a risk averse but rational person manages to take the long-term perspective, she will, in the absence of what Hardin called “mutual coercion”, end up in a situation analogous to the “tragedy of the commons”. (shrink)

This essay seeks to engage critically with the transhumanist goal of achieving the technological possibility of transferring consciousness into a computer. The general aim of the critical impulse of this essay is to interpret the various techno-optimistic attempts at transcending the bodily condition of life as being a kind of modern-day necromancy. By alluding to the magical or ritual notion of necromancy, this essay will show how the rationale behind Transhumanism and mind-transfer are premised on a desire to overcome life (...) itself by becoming immortal. Necromancy, whereby a sorcerer or practitioner suspends the dialectics of life and death, elevates the human to an inhuman position by attacking the very foundation of life itself – reviving the dead. This essay will juxtapose Transhumanism with necromancy by interpreting the goal to develop mind-transferring technologies in relation to texts that describe various technological means for practicing the art of necromancy or dark magic. By reinterpreting Transhumanism in this manner, this essay will show how the ritualistic, magical, or mythical foundations, that humanity had earlier called upon to overcome the fragility of their bodies have survived in the premises that underlining the modern-day endeavors to overcome the body via technological means. (shrink)

This article integrates John Dewey’s _Art as Experience_, Mikel Dufrenne’s _Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience_, and phenomenological interviews with museum visitors to answer what it means to be ‘moved by art’. The interviews point to intense affective and existential experiences, in which encounters with art can be genuinely transformative. We focus on Dufrenne’s notion of ‘adherent reflection’ and Dewey’s notions of ‘doing and undergoing’ to understand the intentional structure and dynamics of such experiences, concluding that being moved contains two merged forms (...) of intentionality: one overt aspect of perceptual intentionality directed at the work, and a covert affective intentionality directed back at oneself in one’s situated existence. These are operational simultaneously but can work in loops, one leading to an intensification of the other and vice versa. As such, these analyses emphasize the value of phenomenological interviews and advance the integration of phenomenological and pragmatist thinking in the context of aesthetic experience. (shrink)