The present collection of translations arises from our work within Writing Urban Places, a network of researchers interested in the different ways citizens appropriate meaningful built environments through stories, and in doing so are also better able to integrate with others. A key locus in this respect is what our network has termed the ‘mid-sized’ [or ‘intermediate’] European city. Often afforded only cursory attention in the discussion of both culture and society, overlooked in favour of more usual suspects, such urban (...) places allow for a more de-centred, and on occasions regionally focused, view of urban practices, even as they play host to a significant element of contemporary European life and experience. The quest for meaningfulness and appropriation of the urban environment through co-creative, adaptive, and transformative processes (many of which have a textual quality) became central to the theoretical framework of this initiative. Between the individual places in which such processes could be observed and documented, we hypothesized, arises the problem of intermediation – the move from place to place, and its techniques. Translation, more than a textual practice among others, emerged as a structuring consideration of the project at a European scale. Other Destinations is the outcome of this collective process presented here, offering entry into this work to an English-language readership for the first time. We hope that, even as they bring their cities of origin somewhat closer to a new readership, those readers will be uprooted and moved some distance in the direction of these ‘other destinations.’ -/- The edited volume Other Destinations. Translating the Mid-sized European City thus features English translations of 15 21st century (mainly) literary texts published in different media (books, podcasts, journals, online/social media) originally written in languages other than English and that have not previously been translated into English. The selected texts cover the topic of mid-sized European cities, where mid-sized does not solely refer to the size in terms of geographical scope or the number of inhabitants, but also to their socio-historical context of urban identity where these cities are neither metropolises nor small towns, but “other”, lesser-known European cities. The texts selected to be translated in this edited volume cover cities like Volos, Canakkale, Varna, Plovdiv, Durres, Tirana, Porto, Den Haag, Osijek, Salzburg, Naples, Zrenjanin, Loule and others…. The publication intends to enhance the dissemination and accessibility to an international readership of texts about overlooked urban contexts, “other”, lesser-known European cities, their stories and signifying practices in order to develop a better awareness of these cities, their self-constructions, and their responses to the challenges of the present. (shrink)

Scholars, journalists, and activists working on climate change often distinguish between “individual” and “structural” approaches to decarbonization. The former concern choices individuals can make to reduce their “personal carbon footprint” (e.g., eating less meat). The latter concern changes to institutions, laws, and other social structures. These two approaches are often framed as oppositional, representing a mutually exclusive forced choice between alternative routes to decarbonization. After presenting representative samples of this oppositional framing of individual and structural approaches in environmental communication, we (...) identify four problems with oppositional thinking and propose five ways to conceive of individual and structural reform as symbiotic and interdependent. (shrink)

Different people reason differently, which means that sometimes they reach different conclusions from the same evidence. We maintain that this is not only natural, but rational. In this essay we explore the epistemology of that state of affairs. First we will canvass arguments for and against the claim that rational methods of reasoning must always reach the same conclusions from the same evidence. Then we will consider whether the acknowledgment that people have divergent rational reasoning methods should undermine one’s confidence (...) in one’s own reasoning. Finally we will explore how agents who employ distinct yet equally rational methods of reasoning should respond to interactions with the products of each others’ reasoning. We find that the epistemology of multiple reasoning methods has been misunderstood by a number of authors writing on epistemic permissiveness and peer disagreement. (shrink)

Abstract. Richard Feldman’s Uniqueness Thesis holds that “a body of evidence justifies at most one proposition out of a competing set of proposi- tions”. The opposing position, permissivism, allows distinct rational agents to adopt differing attitudes towards a proposition given the same body of evidence. We assess various motivations that have been offered for Uniqueness, including: concerns about achieving consensus, a strong form of evidentialism, worries about epistemically arbitrary influences on belief, a focus on truth-conduciveness, and consequences for peer disagreement. (...) We argue that each of these motivations either misunderstands the commitments of permissivism or is question-begging. Better understanding permissivism makes it a much more plausible position. (shrink)

Starting from the premise that akrasia is irrational, I argue that it is always a rational mistake to have false beliefs about the requirements of rationality. Using that conclusion, I defend logical omniscience requirements, the claim that one can never have all-things-considered misleading evidence about what's rational, and the Right Reasons position concerning peer disagreement.

Nanomedicine applications are an extension of traditional pharmaceutical drug development that are targeting the most pressing health concerns through improvements to diagnostics, drug delivery systems, therapeutics, equipment, surgery and prosthetics. The benefits and risks to the individual have been extrapolated to include broader societal impacts of nanomedicine with concerns extending to inequitable distribution of benefits accruing to developed, or North countries, rather than developing, or South countries. Analysis reveals a great deal of overlap between the North and South's most serious (...) health priorities which kill millions each year. A significant amount of nanomedicine research activity is also underway for the most pressing South country-specific health concerns. Nanomedicine development promises profound breakthroughs for both North and South countries; however, the existing inequities in pharmaceutical drug development, patenting, access and delivery remain significant barriers for South countries. (shrink)

In May 2010, philosophers, family and friends gathered at the University of Notre Dame to celebrate the career and retirement of Alvin Plantinga, widely recognized as one of the world's leading figures in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. Plantinga has earned particular respect within the community of Christian philosophers for the pivotal role that he played in the recent renewal and development of philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Each of the essays in this volume engages with some (...) particular aspect of Plantinga's views on metaphysics, epistemology, or philosophy of religion. Contributors include Michael Bergman, Ernest Sosa, Trenton Merricks, Richard Otte, Peter VanInwagen, Thomas P. Flint, Eleonore Stump, Dean Zimmerman and Nicholas Wolterstorff. The volume also includes responses to each essay by Bas van Fraassen, Stephen Wykstra, David VanderLaan, Robin Collins, Raymond VanArragon, E. J. Coffman, Thomas Crisp, and Donald Smith. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed numerous weaknesses in pandemic preparedness and response, including underfunding, inadequate surveillance, and inequitable distribution of countermeasures. To overcome these weaknesses for future pandemics, WHO released a zero draft of a pandemic treaty in February, 2023, and subsequently a revised bureau's text in May, 2023. COVID-19 made clear that pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response reflect choices and value judgements. These decisions are therefore not a purely scientific or technical exercise, but are fundamentally grounded in ethics. The latest (...) treaty draft reflects these ethical considerations by including a section entitled Guiding Principles and Approaches. Most of these principles are ethical—they establish core values that undergird the treaty. Unfortunately, the treaty draft's set of principles are numerous, overlapping, and show inadequate coherence and consistency. We propose two improvements to this section of the draft pandemic treaty. First, key guiding ethical principles should be clearer and more precise than they currently are. Second, the link between ethical principles and policy implementation should be clearly established and define boundaries on acceptable interpretation, ensuring that signatories abide by these principles. (shrink)

Allen Buchanan and Russel Powell’s The Evolution of Moral Progress (EMP) is likely to become a landmark. It adeptly builds on much of the recent empirical work, weaving it together with philosophical material drawn from a series of essays published by the two authors. EMP makes the case that moral progress is not only consistent with human psychology but—under some conditions—likely. At its heart is a careful, well-developed rebuttal to the idea that there are evolved constraints endogenous to human minds (...) that place significant limits on various forms of moral progress, especially on the spread and sustainability of inclusive values. The alternative picture they present acknowledges that evolutionary history has shaped how our minds produce behaviour, but emphasizes that the contexts in which they currently operate are just as pivotal. While safe and stable ecological and social circumstances are hospitable to cosmopolitanism and encouraging of inclusive values, dangerous and threatening circumstances are more favourable to parochialism, exclusivist values, and morally regressive outgroup hostility (also see Buchanan and Powell [2015], [2016], [2017]). Overall, EMP is a compelling, well-researched, and timely book. It articulates arguably the most persuasive naturalistic theory of moral progress to date, and lays the groundwork for important and impactful research. (shrink)

Episodic memory (memories of the personal past) and prospecting the future (anticipating events) are often described as mental time travel (MTT). While most use this description metaphorically, we argue that episodic memory may allow for MTT in at least some robust sense. While episodic memory experiences may not allow us to literally travel through time, they do afford genuine awareness of past-perceived events. This is in contrast to an alternative view on which episodic memory experiences present past-perceived events as mere (...) intentional contents. Hence, episodic memory is a way of coming into experiential contact with, or being again aware of, what happened in the past. We argue that episodic memory experiences depend on a causal-informational link with the past events being remembered, and that, assuming direct realism about episodic memory experiences, this link suffices for genuine awareness. Since there is no such link in future prospection, a similar argument cannot be used to show that it also affords genuine awareness of future events. Constructivist views of memory might challenge the idea of memory as genuine awareness of remembered events. We explain how our view is consistent with both constructivist and anti-causalist conceptions of memory. There is still room for an interpretation of episodic memory as enabling genuine awareness of past events, even if it involves reconstruction. (shrink)

We endorse Cesario's call for more research into the complexities of “real-world” decisions and the comparative power of different causes of group disparities. Unfortunately, these reasonable suggestions are overshadowed by a barrage of non sequiturs, misdirected criticisms of methodology, and unsubstantiated claims about the assumptions and inferences of social psychologists.

While those who take a "structuralist" approach to racial justice issues are right to call attention to the importance of social practices, laws, etc., they sometimes go too far by suggesting that antiracist efforts ought to focus on changing unjust social systems rather than changing individuals’ minds. We argue that while the “either/or” thinking implied by this framing is intuitive and pervasive, it is misleading and self-undermining. We instead advocate for a “both/and” approach to antiracist moral education that explicitly teaches (...) how social structures influence ideas about race and how ideas about race shape, sustain, and transform social structures. Ideally, antiracist moral education will help people see how social change and moral progress depend on the symbiotic relations between individuals and structures. We articulate a conception of “structure-facing virtue” that exemplifies this hybrid approach to illuminate the pivotal role moral education plays in the fight for racial justice. (shrink)

Grief research in philosophy agrees that one who grieves grieves over the irreversible loss of someone whom the griever loved deeply, and that someone thus factored centrally into the griever’s sense of purpose and meaning in the world. The analytic literature in general tends to focus its treatments on the paradigm case of grief as the death of a loved one. I want to restrict my account to the paradigm case because the paradigm case most persuades the mind that grief (...) is a past-directed emotion. The phenomenological move I propose will enable us to (1) respect the paradigm case of grief and a broader but still legitimate set of grief-generating states of affairs, (2) liberate grief from the view that grief is past directed or about the past, and thus (3) account for grief in a way that separates it from its closest emotion-neighbor, sorrow, without having to rely on the affective quality of those two emotions.If the passing of the beloved causes the grief but is not what the grief is about, then we can get at the nature of grief by saying its temporal orientation is in the past (the event of the passing), but its temporal meaning is the present and future—the new significance of a world with the pervasive absence that is the world without the beloved. The no-longer of grief is a no-longer oriented by a past (that which is no longer) that is referred a present and future (that which is a no-longer understood as not now as it once was). Looking at the griever’s relation to time can tell us much about the pain and the object of grief, then. As the griever puts the past before himself with a certainty about this world “henceforth,” a look at the griever’s lived sense of the fi nality of the irreversibly lost (1) liberates grief from the tendency in the literature to be reduced to a past-directed emotion, (2) accounts for grief ’s intensity, its affective force or poignancy, and thus (3) enables us to separate grief from sorrow according to its intentionalobject in light of the temporal meaning of these emotions. (shrink)

S-frames and i-frames do not represent two opposed types of intervention. Rather they are interpretive lenses for focusing on specific aspects of interventions, all of which include individual and structural dimensions. There is no sense to be made of prioritizing either system change or individual change, because each requires the other.

Editors' introduction to 3rd thematic issue on philosophy of medicine.

When summarizing the findings of his 1896 Matter and Memory, Bergson claims: “That every reality has... a relation with consciousness—this is what we concede to idealism.” Yet Bergson’s 1896 text presents the theory of “pure perception,” which, since it accounts for perception according to the brain’s mechanical transmissions, apparently leaves no room for subjective consciousness. Bergson’s theory of pure perception would appear to render his idealistic concession absurd. In this paper, I attempt to defend Bergson’s idealistic concession. I argue that (...) Bergson’s account of cerebral transmissions at the level of pure perception necessarily entails a theory of temporality, an appeal to a theory of time-consciousness that justifies his idealistic concession. (shrink)

Reaction-diffusion systems which have reaction term satisfying f(-q) = -f(q) tend strongly to form striped patterns. Haken’s slaving principle is used to derive differential equations for unstable mode amplitudes close to the Turing instability. This connects a dynamical symmetry to pattern selection, with possible relevance to biological and chemical pattern-forming phenomena.

We present a technique for the analysis of pattern formation by a class of models for the formation of ocular dominance stripes in the striate cortex of some mammals. The method, which employs the adiabatic approximation to derive a set of ordinary differential equations for patterning modes, has been successfully applied to reaction-diffusion models for striped patterns [1]. Models of ocular dominance stripes have been studied [2,3] by computation, or by linearization of the model equations. These techniques do not provide (...) a rationale for the origin of the stripes. We show here that stripe formation is a non-linear property of the models. Our analysis indicates that stripe selection is closely linked to a property in the dynamics of the models which arises from a symmetry between ipsilateral and contralateral synapses to the visual cortex of a given hemisphere. (shrink)

In recent years, semiotics has become an innovative theoretical framework in mathematics education. The purpose of this article is to show that semiotics can be used to explain learning as a process of experimenting with and communicating about one's own representations of mathematical problems. As a paradigmatic example, we apply a Peircean semiotic framework to answer the question of how students learned the concept of "distribution" in a statistics course by "diagrammatic reasoning" and by developing "hypostatic abstractions," that is by (...) forming new mathematical objects which can be used as means for communication and further reasoning. Peirce's semiotic terminology is used as an alternative for notions such as modeling, symbolizing, and reification. We will show that it is a precise instrument of analysis with regard to the complexity of learning and of communication in mathematics classroom. (shrink)

In debates over the regulation of communication related to dual-use research, the risks that such communication creates must be weighed against against the value of scientific autonomy. The censorship of such communication seems justifiable in certain cases, given the potentially catastrophic applications of some dual-use research. This conclusion however, gives rise to another kind of danger: that regulators will use overly simplistic cost-benefit analysis to rationalize excessive regulation of scientific research. In response to this, we show how institutional design principles (...) and normative frameworks from free speech theory can be used to help extend the argument for regulating dangerous dual-use research beyond overly simplistic cost-benefit reasoning, but without reverting to an implausibly absolutist view of scientific autonomy. (shrink)

Frege argued for the force-content distinction not only by appealing to the logical and fictional contexts which are most closely associated with the “Frege point", but also based on the fact that an affirmative answer to a yes-no question constitutes an assertion. Supposedly this is only intelligible if the question contains a forceless thought or proposition which an affirmative answer then asserts. Against this I argue that this fact more readily supports the view that questions operate on assertions and other (...) forceful acts themselves. Force is neither added to propositions as on the traditional view, nor is it cancelled as has recently been proposed. Rather higher-level acts such as questioning, but also e.g. conditionalizing, embed and present assertoric or directive acts that are forceful and committal, while suspending commitment to them. The Frege point confounds different varieties of force and the question whether something is merely presented for consideration with the question what is so presented. Force is representational: through assertoric and directive force indicators subjects non-conceptually present positions of theoretical or practical knowledge, while interrogative acts indicate positions of wondering which strive for such knowledge. (shrink)

Throughout the biological and biomedical sciences there is a growing need for, prescriptive ‘minimum information’ (MI) checklists specifying the key information to include when reporting experimental results are beginning to find favor with experimentalists, analysts, publishers and funders alike. Such checklists aim to ensure that methods, data, analyses and results are described to a level sufficient to support the unambiguous interpretation, sophisticated search, reanalysis and experimental corroboration and reuse of data sets, facilitating the extraction of maximum value from data sets (...) them. However, such ‘minimum information’ MI checklists are usually developed independently by groups working within representatives of particular biologically- or technologically-delineated domains. Consequently, an overview of the full range of checklists can be difficult to establish without intensive searching, and even tracking thetheir individual evolution of single checklists may be a non-trivial exercise. Checklists are also inevitably partially redundant when measured one against another, and where they overlap is far from straightforward. Furthermore, conflicts in scope and arbitrary decisions on wording and sub-structuring make integration difficult. This presents inhibit their use in combination. Overall, these issues present significant difficulties for the users of checklists, especially those in areas such as systems biology, who routinely combine information from multiple biological domains and technology platforms. To address all of the above, we present MIBBI (Minimum Information for Biological and Biomedical Investigations); a web-based communal resource for such checklists, designed to act as a ‘one-stop shop’ for those exploring the range of extant checklist projects, and to foster collaborative, integrative development and ultimately promote gradual integration of checklists. (shrink)

This paper explores the epistemological significance of the view that we can literally see, hear, and touch evaluative properties (the high-level theory of value perception). My central contention is that, from the perspective of epistemology, the question of whether there are such high-level experiences doesn’t matter. Insofar as there are such experiences, they most plausibly emerged through the right kind of interaction with evaluative capacities that are not literally perceptual (e.g., of the sort involved in imaginative evaluative reflection). But even (...) if these other evaluative capacities turn out not to alter the content of perceptual experience, they would still be sufficient to do all of the justificatory work that high-level experiences are meant to do. I close by observing that it may matter a great deal whether a certain other picture of value perception is true. This alternative picture has it that desires and/or emotions are perceptual-like experiences of value. (shrink)

The Frege point to the effect that e.g. the clauses of conditionals are not asserted and therefore cannot be assertions is often taken to establish a dichotomy between the content of a speech act, which is propositional and belongs to logic and semantics, and its force, which belongs to pragmatics. Recently this dichotomy has been questioned by philosophers such as Peter Hanks and Francois Recanati, who propose act-theoretic accounts of propositions, argue that we can’t account for propositional unity independently of (...) the forceful acts of speakers, and respond to the Frege point by appealing to a notion of force cancellation. I argue that the notion of force cancellation is faced with a dilemma and offer an alternative response to the Frege point, which extends the act-theoretic account to logical acts such as conditionalizing or disjoining. Such higher-level acts allow us to present forceful acts while suspending commitment to them. In connecting them, a subject rather commits to an affirmation function of such acts. In contrast, the Frege point confuses a lack of commitment to what is put forward with a lack of commitment or force in what is put forward. (shrink)

I propose a framework, derived from moral theory, for assessing the moral status of intelligent machines. Using this framework, I claim that some current and foreseeable intelligent machines have approximately as much moral status as plants, trees, and other environmental entities. This claim raises the question: what obligations could a moral agent (e.g., a normal adult human) have toward an intelligent machine? I propose that the threshold for any moral obligation should be the "functional morality" of Wallach and Allen [20], (...) while the upper limit of our obligations should not exceed the upper limit of our obligations toward plants, trees, and other environmental entities. (shrink)

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a consortium that comprises leading informaticians, biologists, clinicians, and ontologists, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap, to develop innovative technology and methods that allow scientists to record, manage, and disseminate biomedical information and knowledge in machine-processable form. The goals of the Center are (1) to help unify the divergent and isolated efforts in ontology development by promoting high quality open-source, standards-based tools to create, manage, and use ontologies, (2) to create (...) new software tools so that scientists can use ontologies to annotate and analyze biomedical data, (3) to provide a national resource for the ongoing evaluation, integration, and evolution of biomedical ontologies and associated tools and theories in the context of driving biomedical projects (DBPs), and (4) to disseminate the tools and resources of the Center and to identify, evaluate, and communicate best practices of ontology development to the biomedical community. Through the research activities within the Center, collaborations with the DBPs, and interactions with the biomedical community, our goal is to help scientists to work more effectively in the e-science paradigm, enhancing experiment design, experiment execution, data analysis, information synthesis, hypothesis generation and testing, and understand human disease. (shrink)

Sceptical theists--e.g., William Alston and Michael Bergmann--have claimed that considerations concerning human cognitive limitations are alone sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil. We argue that, if the considerations deployed by sceptical theists are sufficient to undermine evidential arguments from evil, then those considerations are also sufficient to undermine inferences that play a crucial role in ordinary moral reasoning. If cogent, our argument suffices to discredit sceptical theist responses to evidential arguments from evil.

Using William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the play-within-the play, The Murder of Gonzago, as a case study, this essay argues that theatrical utterances constitute a special case of language usage not previously elucidated: the utterance of a statement with propositional content in theatre functions as an event. In short, the propositional content of a particular p (e.g. p1, p2, p3 …), whether or not it is true, is only understood—and understood to be true—if p1 is uttered in a particular time, place, (...) and situation (i.e. during a theatrical event); otherwise, the propositional content in those theatrical utterances can either be false or contingently true. (shrink)

When you hallucinate an object, you are not in the normal sort of concurrent causal sensory interaction with that object. It's standardly further inferred that the hallucinated object does not actually exist. But the lack of normal concurrent causal sensory interaction does not imply that there does not exist an object that is hallucinated. It might be a past‐perceived object. In this paper, I argue that this claim holds for at least some interesting cases of hallucination. Hallucinations generated by misleading (...) cues (e.g. ‘seeing’ Kanizsa triangles), hallucinations of Charles Bonnet Syndrome patients, and dreams are experiences of past‐perceived objects. (shrink)

Significant associations have been found between specific human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles and organ transplant rejection, autoimmune disease development, and the response to infection. Traditional searches for disease associations have conventionally measured risk associated with the presence of individual HLA alleles. However, given the high level of HLA polymorphism, the pattern of amino acid variability, and the fact that most of the HLA variation occurs at functionally important sites, it may be that a combination of variable amino acid sites shared (...) by several alleles (shared epitopes) are better descriptors of the actual causative genetic variants. Here we describe a novel approach to genetic association analysis in which genes/proteins are broken down into smaller sequence features and then variant types defined for each feature, allowing for independent analysis of disease association with each sequence feature variant type. We have used this approach to analyze a cohort of systemic sclerosis patients and show that a sequence feature composed of specific amino acid residues in peptide binding pockets 4 and 7 of HLA-DRB1 explains much of the molecular determinant of risk for systemic sclerosis. (shrink)

In addition to the Frege point, Frege also argued for the force-content distinction from the fact that an affirmative answer to a yes-no question constitutes an assertion. I argue that this fact more readily supports the view that questions operate on and present assertions and other forceful acts themselves. Force is neither added to propositions as on the traditional view, nor is it cancelled as has recently been proposed. Rather higher level acts such as questioning, but also e.g. conditionalizing, embed (...) assertive or directive acts that are forceful and committal, while suspending commitment to them. The Frege point confounds different varieties of force and the question whether something is merely presented for consideration with the question what is so presented. Force is representational: through assertoric and directive force indicators subjects non-conceptually present positions of theoretical or practical knowledge, while interrogative acts indicate positions of wondering which strive for such knowledge. (shrink)

Epistemic responsibility involves at least two central ideas. (V) To be epistemically responsible is to display the virtue(s) epistemic internalists take to be central to justification (e.g., coherence, having good reasons, fitting the evidence). (C) In normal (non-skeptical)circumstances and in thelong run, epistemic responsibility is strongly positively correlated with reliability. Sections 1 and 2 review evidence showing that for a wide range of real-world problems, the most reliable, tractable reasoning strategies audaciously flout the internalist''s epistemic virtues. In Section 3, I (...) argue that these results force us to give up either (V), our current conception of what it is to be epistemically responsible, or (C) the responsibility-reliability connection. I will argue that we should relinquish (V). This is likely to reshape our epistemic practices. It will force us to alter our epistemic judgments about certain instances of reasoning, to endorse some counterintuitive epistemic prescriptions, and to rethink what it is for cognitive agents to be epistemically responsible. (shrink)

While philosophers hold that it is patently absurd to blame robots or hold them morally responsible [1], a series of recent empirical studies suggest that people do ascribe blame to AI systems and robots in certain contexts [2]. This is disconcerting: Blame might be shifted from the owners, users or designers of AI systems to the systems themselves, leading to the diminished accountability of the responsible human agents [3]. In this paper, we explore one of the potential underlying reasons for (...) robot blame, namely the folk's willingness to ascribe inculpating mental states or "mens rea" to robots. In a vignette-based experiment (N=513), we presented participants with a situation in which an agent knowingly runs the risk of bringing about substantial harm. We manipulated agent type (human v. group agent v. AI-driven robot) and outcome (neutral v. bad), and measured both moral judgment (wrongness of the action and blameworthiness of the agent) and mental states attributed to the agent (recklessness and the desire to inflict harm). We found that (i) judgments of wrongness and blame were relatively similar across agent types, possibly because (ii) attributions of mental states were, as suspected, similar across agent types. This raised the question - also explored in the experiment - whether people attribute knowledge and desire to robots in a merely metaphorical way (e.g., the robot "knew" rather than really knew). However, (iii), according to our data people were unwilling to downgrade to mens rea in a merely metaphorical sense when given the chance. Finally, (iv), we report a surprising and novel finding, which we call the inverse outcome effect on robot blame: People were less willing to blame artificial agents for bad outcomes than for neutral outcomes. This suggests that they are implicitly aware of the dangers of overattributing blame to robots when harm comes to pass, such as inappropriately letting the responsible human agent off the moral hook. (shrink)

The thought of G. W. F. Hegel (1770 -1831) has had a deep and lasting influence on a wide range of philosophical, political, religious, aesthetic, cultural and scientific movements. But, despite the far-reaching importance of Hegel's thought, there is often a great deal of confusion about what he actually said or believed. G. W. F. Hegel: Key Concepts provides an accessible introduction to both Hegel's thought and Hegel-inspired philosophy in general, demonstrating how his concepts were understood, adopted and critically transformed (...) by later thinkers. The first section of the book covers the principal philosophical themes in Hegel's system: epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethical theory, political philosophy, philosophy of nature, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, philosophy of history and theory of the history of philosophy. The second section covers the main post-Hegelian movements in philosophy: Marxism, existentialism, pragmatism, analytic philosophy, hermeneutics and French poststructuralism. The breadth and depth of G. W. F. Hegel: Key Concepts makes it an invaluable introduction for philosophical beginners and a useful reference source for more advanced scholars and researchers. (shrink)

Philosophical defenses of parents’ rights typically appeal to the interests of parents, the interests of children, or some combination of these. Here I propose that at least in the case of biological, non-adoptive parents, these rights have a different normative basis: namely, these rights should be accorded to biological parents because of the compensatory duties such parents owe their children by virtue of having brought them into existence. Inspried by Seana Shiffrin, I argue that procreation inevitably encumbers the wills of (...) children in otherwise morally objectionable ways. Such subjection generates duties to compensate children, even if the child’s life is on balance a benefit to her. The right to procreate is thus conditioned on prospective parent’s willingness to compensate for the harms of procreation. And because parents bear such compensatory duties, they must be accorded permissions (i.e., rights) to fulfill these duties. These rights include familiar exclusionary rights to promote children’s welfare, etc. Moreover, because subjecting children to harms or the risks thereof violates their autonomy, parental duties (and rights) include the provision of education and other goods that enable their subsequent autonomy as adults. Grounding parental rights in compensatory procreative duties avoids problems associated with appeals to the interests of children (e.g., that these interests do not seem to generate exclusive parental rights) or to the interests of parents (e.g., that these interests do not appear strong enough to permit the creation of a new, vulnerable human individual). (shrink)

E 'sia sorprendente e appropriato che questo enorme, gergo-carico (questo libro ha davvero bisogno di un glossario!), lavoro pesantemente accademico è diventato un best seller nel mondo degli istruiti. Bisogna dedicarsi a imparare il gergo e poi ad arare attraverso 551 pagine di testo e 238 pagine di note. Meanwhile, ci viene detto più e più volte che questo è solo un contorno di ciò che verrà! Anche se critica severamente gli eccessi dei tre movimenti, si tratta di un'interpretazione mistica (...) e postmoderna decostruttiva e New Age della religione, della filosofia e delle scienze comportamentali da un punto di vista molto liberale e spirituale, cioè senza il peggior decon, pm e Vietnam gergo, egualitarismo rabbioso e anti-intellettualismo. Si ottiene un fantastico campionamento di scritte sbagliate, idee confuse e obsolete e gergo obsoleto. Se uno ha una buona istruzione attuale, è doppiamente doloroso leggere questo libro (e la maggior parte della scrittura sul comportamento umano). Doloroso perché è così torturato e confuso, e poi di nuovo quando ti rendi conto di quanto sia semplice con la psicologia moderna e la filosofia. La terminologia e le idee sono orribilmente confuse e datate (ma meno nell'analisi di Wilber che nelle sue fonti). Questo libro e la maggior parte delle sue fonti sono testi di psicologia aspiranti, anche se la maggior parte degli autori non se ne rese conto. Si tratta del comportamento umano e del ragionamento sul perché pensiamo e agiamo come facciamo e come potremmo cambiare in futuro. Ma (come tutte queste discussioni fino a poco tempo fa) nessuna delle esplicazionisono davvero spiegazioni, e quindi non danno alcuna comprensione del comportamento umano. Nessuno discute i meccanismi mentali coinvolti. È come descrivere come funziona un'auto discutendoil volante e il metallo e vernice senza alcuna conoscenza del motore, del carburante o del treno a trazione. Infatti, come la maggior parte delle più vecchie spiegazioni di comportamento, i testi citatiqui e i comments di Wilber sono spesso più interessanti per che tipo di cose che accettano (eomettere!) come spiegazioni, e il tipo di ragionamento they uso, che per il contenuto effettivo. Se si è sulla filosofia e la psicologia cognitiva ed evolutiva, la maggior parte di questo è arcaico. Come quasi tutti (studiosi e pubblico allo stesso modo-e.g. vedi la mia recensione di Freedom Evolves di Dennett e di altri libri), non capisce che le basi della religione e dell'etica, in realtà tutti i comportamenti umani, sono programmati nei nostri geni. Una rivoluzione nella comprensione di noi stessi stava avvenendo mentre scriveva i suoi numerosi libri e lo passava davanti. Coloro che desiderano un quadro aggiornato completo per il comportamento umano dalla moderna vista a due systems possono consultare il mio libro 'La struttura logica dellafilosofia, psicologia, Mind e il linguaggio in Ludwig Wittgenstein e John Searle' 2nd ed (2019). Coloro che sono interessati a più dei miei scritti possono vedere 'TalkingMonkeys--Filosofia, Psicologia, Scienza, Religione e Politica su un Pianeta Condannato--Articoli e Recensioni 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) e Suicidal Utopian Delusions nel 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

When it comes to understanding the genesis and development of Heidegger’s thought, it would be rather difficult to overestimate the importance of the “Aristotle-Introduction” of 1922, Heidegger’s “Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect to Aristotle.” This text is both a manifesto which describes the young Heidegger’s philosophical commitments, as well as a promissory note which outlines his projected future work. This Aristotle-Introduction not only enunciates Heidegger’s broad project of a philosophy which is both systematic and historical; it also indicates, in particular, why (...) a principal (or fundamental) ontology can be actualized only through a destruction of the history of ontology. This text anticipates several central themes of Being and Time (e.g., facticity, death, falling), and also foreshadows some of the issues which were to occupy the later Heidegger (e.g., “truth” as a heterogenous process of unconcealment). There is no doubt that much can – and will – be written on the meaning and implications of this important text. But instead of making my own, early contribution to such a secondary literature, I have decided to limit myself in this “Preface” to a few brief remarks concerning the historical background to Heidegger’s “Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect to Aristotle.”. (shrink)

Una breve rassegna della vita e dell'autobiografia spirituale dell'unico mistico americano Adi Da (Franklin Jones). L'adesivo sulla copertina di alcune edizioni dice 'L'autobiografia spirituale più profonda di tutti i tempi' e questo potrebbe essere vero. Ho 70 anni e ho letto molti libri di insegnanti spirituali e sulla spiritualità, e questo è uno dei più grandi. Certamente, è by lontano il resoconto più completo e piùchiaro del processo di illuminazione che abbia mai visto. Anche se non hai alcun interesse nel (...) più affascinante di tutti i processi psicologici umani, è un documento incredibile che rivela molto sulla religione, lo yoga e la psicologia umana e sonda le profondità e i limiti delle possibilità umane. Lo descrivo in dettaglio e paragono il suo insegnamento a quello del mistico indiano contemporaneo Osho. Coloro che desiderano un quadro aggiornato completo per il comportamento umano dalla moderna vista a due systems possono consultare il mio libro 'La struttura logica dellafilosofia, psicologia, Mind e il linguaggio in Ludwig Wittgenstein e John Searle' 2nd ed (2019). Coloro che sono interessati a più dei miei scritti possono vedere 'TalkingMonkeys--Filosofia, Psicologia, Scienza, Religione e Politica su un Pianeta Condannato--Articoli e Recensioni 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) e Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

Past research has found that the value of a person's activities can affect observers' judgments about whether that person is experiencing certain emotions (e.g., people consider morally good agents happier than morally bad agents). One proposed explanation for this effect is that emotion attributions are influenced by judgments about fittingness (whether the emotion is merited). Another hypothesis is that emotion attributions are influenced by judgments about the agent's true self (whether the emotion reflects how the agent feels “deep down”). We (...) tested these hypotheses in six studies. After finding that people think a wide range of emotions can be fitting and reflect a person's true self (Study 1), we tested the predictions of these two hypotheses for attributions of happiness, love, sadness, and hatred. We manipulated the emotions' fittingness (Studies 2a-b and 4) and whether the emotions reflected an agent's true self (Studies 3 and 5), measuring emotion attributions as well as fittingness judgments and true self judgments. The fittingness manipulation only impacted emotion attributions in the cases where it also impacted true self judgments, whereas the true self manipulation impacted emotion attribution in all cases, including those where it did not impact fittingness judgments. These results cast serious doubt on the fittingness hypothesis and offer some support for the true self hypothesis, which could be developed further in future work. -/- . (shrink)

There is much to admire in John Pittard’s recent book on the epistemology of disagreement. But here we develop one concern about the role that rational insight plays in his project. Pittard develops and defends a view on which a party to peer disagreement can show substantial partiality to his own view, so long as he enjoys even moderate rational insight into the truth of his view or the cogency of his reasoning for his view. Pittard argues that this may (...) happen in ordinary cases of religious disagreement—cases in which it’s a live skeptical possibility that one is misdescribing his insight, or not having insight at all—and therefore one need not be strongly conciliatory even in the face of peer disagreement. Yet Pittard agrees that one should be strongly conciliatory in cases of disagreement involving, e.g., visual perception and dim rational insight, since the sort of fallible, corrigible evidence involved in such cases may be counterbalanced by symmetrical evidence on the part of one’s disagreeing peer. We worry that there’s an inconsistency here. If it’s unreasonable to show partiality to one’s visual experience (or dim rational insight) in cases like “Horse Race” and “Restaurant Check,” it’s likewise unreasonable to show partiality in religious disagreements to one’s moderate rational insight, fallible and corrigible as it is. (shrink)