In this paper, I explore a tension between the Law in the novel The Island of Doctor Moreau, by H. G. Wells, and Kant's reciprocity thesis. The Law is a series of prohibitions that Moreau has his beasts recite. Moreau devotes his time to transforming animals through a painful surgery into beings that resemble humans, but the humanized beasts are constantly slipping back into animalistic habits, and so Moreau promulgates the Law to maintain decorum. Kant's reciprocity (...) class='Hi'>thesis states that free will is the necessary and sufficient condition of moral practical laws. That is, in order for a moral practical law to be applicable, there must be free will, and, if free will is present, then there will be a moral practical law that sets a standard for the free will. However, in Wells's novel, the humanized beasts seem to lack free will. So, how can a law be applicable to them? By delving deeper into the mystery of Moreau's strange island, I will shed light on the otherwise cumbersome concepts of free will, natural impulses, and practical laws, as well as their interrelationships. The upshot will be a deeper understanding of personhood through an exploration of the instinctual nature of animals, moral law, and free will. (shrink)

In the centennial year of John Dewey’s classic, Democracy and Education (1916), this paper revisits his thesis of the reciprocity of means and ends, arguing that it remains of central importance for debate over the aims of education. The paper provides a Dewey-inspired rebuttal of arguments for an ‘ultimate aim,’ but balances this with a development of the strong overlaps between proponents of pragmatism, intellectual virtues education (Jason Baehr) and critical thinking education (Harvey Siegel). Siegel’s ‘Kantian’ justification of (...) critical thinking as an ultimate aim is critiqued, and contrary to Siegel’s ‘generalist’ focus on logic, the paper concludes with specific suggestions for how the study of ecological rationality and dual-process theories (Gerd Gigerenzer; Keith Stanovich and others) should impact how we teach for critical thinking dispositions. -/- Presentation paper for ‘The Epistemic Aims of Education’ Workshop, Eidyn Research Center & University of Edinburgh, 2016. Special thanks to as IASH Center for sabbatical Fellowship support. (shrink)

This dissertation is a study of the relationship between dunamis and energeia in Aristotle’s ontology. Throughout his writings, Aristotle employs these terms to uncover what I call a proto-phenomenological description of the different ways of being. While contemporary scholarship has suggested the significance of dunamis and energeia for Aristotle’s understanding of being, the relationship between these terms has often been interpreted as mutually exclusive. Accordingly, dunamis would be understood as subordinate to energeia, which would function as the sole primary term (...) of Aristotle’s ontology. I argue that it is a mistake to consider dunamis and energeia as non-reciprocal and subordinate terms. Furthermore, I suggest that this mistake often leads to an underestimation of the dynamic character of Aristotle’s proto-phenomenological account of being. To recover this dimension of Aristotle’s thinking, I claim that dunamis and energeia ought to be understood as reciprocal and co-constitutive terms characterized by a constant and dynamic interrelation. To defend this interpretation, I turn to Aristotle’s conceptions of nature, movement, and soul as discussed in the Metaphysics, Physics, and De Anima. I argue that each of these key terms provide a concrete illustration of how dunamis and energeia function as co-constitutive principles for the manifestation of the being of natural beings. I propose that this proto-phenomenological approach to being remains Aristotle’s most significant and enduring contribution to Western ontology. (shrink)

Claims such as ‘there are no tables and chairs’ have become increasingly common in the philosophical context, and eliminativism is now a fairly well-established position in contemporary debates in analytic metaphysics. This outbreak of eliminativism has prompted a number of responses aimed at saving the manifest image of reality. Prominent amongst the attempts to save the manifest image is a view, powerfully articulated by Frank Jackson in From Metaphysics to Ethics , according to which the manifest properties of objects, properties (...) such as solidity or fragility, can be spared from the eliminativist’s guillotine if it can be shown that they are entailed (through the relation of supervenience) by scientific properties. Jackson’s strategy for saving the manifest image rests on a modest conception of the role of conceptual analysis in metaphysics. On this view, the role of conceptual analysis is modest because it is not the task of philosophy to establish a priori what there is, but rather to determine which features of the manifest image can be located within the scientific image: the manifest properties which cannot be so located are shown to be rogue concepts that have no place in serious metaphysics. This chapter argues against the attempt to save the manifest image by invoking the relation of entailment (whether that implied by the notion of supervenience or by the more traditional notion of analytic entailment) on the grounds that the manifest image is sui generis. The defence of the manifest image that I propose as an alternative here rests on the idealist assumption that knowledge makes a difference to what is known, and that since the manifest and the scientific image are the correlative of two different ways of knowing they do not compete with one another. I call the idealist view that knowledge makes a difference to what is known the Reciprocity Thesis. Rather than seeking to determine what kind of manifest image one is entitled to have in order to comply with the scientific image, the Reciprocity Thesis limits the claims of science to its own explanandum and therefore sees no need to legitimise the manifest image by invoking the relation of entailment. The need to legitimise the manifest image in the light of the scientific image arises because the relation between the scientific and the manifest image has not been properly conceptualised. Once the scientific and the manifest image are understood as the correlative of different ways of knowing, the problem which the location strategy seeks to solve is shown to rest on a misconception of the relationship holding between different kinds of knowledge. (shrink)

The thesis of this paper is that – in order to avoid trivializations – a Philosophy of Birth needs to elaborate a precise concept of transformation and distinguish it carefully from that of adaptation. While transformation goes beyond the limited self-referential perspective of an individual and, on the social level, of the gregarious identity, adaptation aims at strengthening or preserving the old self-referential equilibrium. Transformation is driven by what Zambrano has called, with an exceptionally happy expression, the “hunger to (...) be born completely”. Such a hunger pushes one to continue one’s own birth through the encounter with the Other. Transformation has a creative feature that is made possible by two factors: the surplus of the effect over the cause, and the priority of the real over the possible. These premises lead to a radical questioning of the primacy of the possible on the real, at least as it has been conceived so far in mainstream Western philosophy, with few exceptions, such as Schelling, Bergson and Scheler. In the first part of this text, I shall consider a new Philosophy of Birth in the light of the concept of transformation and in this regard deal with several core themes such as the hunger to be born completely, the new beginning, creative time, the priority of the real over the possible, the limits of finalism, the surplus of effect over cause, and the creative force that expresses itself in the act of ideation. In the second part, I shall analyze the relation between birth and death and focus especially on their intimate and reciprocal connection by referring to the image of the seed that, after falling on the ground, germinates and breaks its own integument. (shrink)

Whereas the Humean accounts of causality in terms of contiguity, temporal priority, constant conjunction, and contingency face difficulties of one sort, the dispositional explanations of causality in terms of reciprocity, simultaneity, ubiquity, and holism seem to meet difficulties of another sort. But the difficulties which dispositionalism faces may be dissipated if one can appeal consistently to the logic of naturalism, rather than to the grammar of an implicit dualism, for example, as it is illustrated when G. Molnar tried to (...) advance the analogy between the mental intentionality and the physical intentionality.The notion of integration is taken to allow a conceptual space for naturalism of one kind. It may be expressed in the thesis that there is integrationality in any entity like dispositions, such that the integrationality is a power to realize the embedded objective of it in the context where it interacts with all others. The thesis would help to see how dispositions can be intentional, how the no... (shrink)

The thesis revolves around the following questions. What is time? Is time tensed or tenseless? Do things endure or perdure, i.e. do things persist by being wholly present at many times, or do they persist by having temporal parts? Do causes bring their effects into existence, or are they only correlated with each other? Within a realist approach to metaphysics, the author claims that the tensed view of time, the endurance view of persistence, and the production view of causality (...) naturally combine into what is called the dynamic view of temporal reality, and that the tenseless view of time, the perdurance view of persistence, and the correlation view of causality naturally combine into what is called the static view of temporal reality. The author argues in favour of a dynamic view. During the discussion a number of metaphysical problems are addressed. First, it is argued that the charges that the dynamic view is contradictory, made by J.M.E. McTaggart and David Lewis, are viciously circular. Secondly, it is argued that the static view cannot account for change, and deprives metaphysics of essential means to provide natural explanations to empirical phenomena. Thirdly, the author presents a novel account of the nature of necessary causal production. He suggests that the traditional conception of causes as essentially being external to the effects should be abandoned, and that causal production instead should be explicated in terms of reciprocal interactions between coexistent substances. (shrink)

The thesis that there is a reciprocal relationship between human beings and work—i.e., although man controls work, he may find in it either fulfillment or degradation—has its roots in the Marxist theory of alienation. This paper, therefore, tackles this problem from a Marxist perspective. It examines Marx and Engels’s analysis of the history and causes of human alienation by presenting their views on human nature and how work is related to the individual’s search for meaning and fulfillment. The two—man (...) and work—cannot be separated, for doing so leads to alienated work (production alienation) and alienated worker (self-alienation). Hence, the problem of employee satisfaction has to be dealt with from the perspective of how employees experience their relation to their work. (shrink)

Technological artefacts have, in recent years, invited increasingly intimate ways of interaction. But surprisingly little attention has been devoted to how such interactions, like with wearable devices or household robots, shape our minds, cognitive capacities, and moral character. In this thesis, I develop an embodied, enactive account of mind--technology interaction that takes the reciprocal influence of artefacts on minds seriously. First, I examine how recent developments in philosophy of technology can inform the phenomenology of mind--technology interaction as seen through (...) an enactivist lens. Second, I show how an enactive account of remembering can improve operationalizations of the memory palace mnemonic through virtual reality devices. Third, I draw on virtue ethics to argue that an enactivist approach allows us to better grasp the morally shaping aspects of artefacts by looking at social robots. Fourth, I fend off an underlying metaphysical concern about enactivism by arguing that an embodied, enactive account is compatible with the multiple realization of cognitive processes. This principle is often seen as a crucial test favouring accounts such as extended functionalism over enactivism and I argue that some forms of enactivism pass this test as well. Finally, I conclude by considering what the future relationship between enactivism and functionalism may have in store for the study of mind--technology interaction. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The philosophical tradition approaches to morals have their grounds predominantly on metaphysical and theological concepts and theories. Among the traditional ethics concepts, the most prominent is the Divine Command Theory (DCT). As per the DCT, God gives moral foundations to the humankind by its creation and through Revelation. Morality and Divinity are inseparable since the most remote civilization. These concepts submerge in a theological framework and are largely accepted by most followers of the three Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and (...) Islam: the greatest part of the human population. Holding faith and Revelation for its grounds, the Divine Command Theories are not strictly subject to the demonstration. The opponents to the Divine Command conception of morals, grounded in the impossibility of demonstration of its metaphysical and religious assumptions, have tried for many centuries (albeit unsuccessfully) to devalue its importance. They held the argument that it does not show material evidence and logical coherence and, for this reason, cannot be taken into account for scientific nor philosophical purposes. It is just a belief and, as so, should be understood. Besides these extreme oppositions, many other concepts contravene the Divine Command theories, in one or another way, in part or in full. Many philosophers and social scientists, from the classic Greek philosophy up to the present date, for instance, sustain that morality is only a construct, and thus culturally relative and culturally determined. However, this brings many other discussions and imposes the challenge to determine what is the meaning of culture, which elements of culture are morally determinant, and finally, what are the boundaries of such relativity. Moral determinists claim that everything related to human behavior, including morality, is determined, once free will does not exist. More recently, modern thinkers argued that there is a strict science of morality. However, the scientific method alone, despite explaining several facts and evidence, cannot enlighten the entire content and full meaning of ethics. Morals’ understanding requires a broader perception, and an agreement among philosophers, which they have never achieved. All of these questions have many different configurations depending on each philosophical strand, and start complex analysis and endless debates, as long as many of them are reciprocally conflictive. The universe and the atmosphere involving this thesis are the dominions of all these conceptual conflicts, observed from an objective and evolutionary standpoint. Irrespective of this circumstance and its intrinsic importance, however, these questions are far distant from the methodological approach of an analytical discussion on objective morals, what is, indeed, the aim and scope of this work. We should briefly revisit these prominent traditional theories because this thesis shelters a comparative study, and its assumptions at least differ profoundly from all traditional theories. Therefore, it becomes necessary offering direct and specific elements of comparison to the reader, for the right criticism, dispensing interruptive researches. However, even revisiting the traditional theories, for this comparative and critical exposure purpose, they will be kept by the side of our main concerns, as “aliena materia.” Irrespective of the validity of any or all of the elements of this discussion, and their meaning as the philosophical universe of this thesis, the purpose of this work is demonstrating and justifying the existence and meaning of prehistoric moral archetypes arisen directly from the very first social needs and efforts for survival. These archetypes are the definition of the essential foundation of ethics, its aggregation to the collective unconscious and corresponding logic organization and transmission to evolutionary stages of the human genome and different relations space-time, irrespective of any contemporary experience of the individuals. The system defined by these archetypes composes an evolutionary human social model. Is this a metaethical position? Yes, it is. Moreover, as in any metaethical reasoning, we should look carefully for the best and coherent routes, as the Analytical Philosophy offers them. Thus, this work should reasonably demonstrate that morals are not a cultural product of the civilized men or modern societies and that despite being subject to several cultural relative aggregations and subtractions, its essential foundations are archetypal and have never structurally changed. This reasoning induces that morality is an original attribute of the “homo sapiens”; it is not a property and nor an accident: it integrates the human essence and belongs to the realm of the ontological human identity. The human phenomena is a continuing process, playing its role between random determination and free will, and we need to question how morality began and how did it come to us in the present. (shrink)

​I use network models to simulate social learning situations in which the dominant group ignores or devalues testimony from the marginalized group. I find that the marginalized group ends up with several epistemic advantages due to testimonial ignoration and devaluation. The results provide one possible explanation for a key claim of standpoint epistemology, the inversion thesis, by casting it as a consequence of another key claim of the theory, the unidirectional failure of testimonial reciprocity. Moreover, the results complicate (...) the understanding and application of previously discovered network epistemology effects, notably the Zollman effect (Zollman 2007, 2010). (shrink)

Belief in God is a steady epistemic state sustaining an ancient social institution. Not only is it still with us, it is still the same as it ever was. It rests on the same inspiration it did thousands of years ago, commanding the same attention with the same motivation. Deities come and go but the belief stays the same. That is the thesis of this paper. It is more specifically a study of classical Greek polytheism as a paradigm for (...) our longstanding relationship with religious social structures. The main methodological vehicle is a survey of Hesiodic theogony for insight into the monotheism(s) we have adopted in its place. The evidence and implications for meaningful continuity are explored largely through the Judeo-Christian tradition, though that choice is representative rather than exhaustive with respect to the present spectrum of religious affiliation. The overall aim is not to dispute the validity of any particular belief system, past or present, but to expose the prevailing ones as extensions of the abandoned ones originally embraced with the same passion exhibited today. The underlying conviction is that theological explanation and religious orientation are reciprocal parts of a collective work in progress mapping out our common initiative to make sense of the world. (shrink)

Philosophers of dispositionalism deny the Humean account of causality in terms of constant conjunction, contiguity, temporal priority and contingency. And some of them go further to explain the causal relation not between events or objects, but between properties, in terms of reciprocity, simultaneity, ubiquity, intentionality and holism. But their exposition seems to remain fragmented even though they try to make use of the notions of intentionality and holim. I would inquire reasons why it is piecemeal, by analysing that they (...) employ these notions of intentionality and holism which has been constructed within the dualistic tradition. If one wants to make the dispositional project to be powerful, she should look for the notions of intentionality and holism which are free of the dualistic traits and which have been constructed in the tradition of naturalism. The concept of integrationality may be a candidate for such a task. This conception was coined in Zhongyong under the name of cheng in that there is nothing without cheng, and was developed in one of Sok-hon Ham's thesis that any entity in the world contains "seed" within it to realize objectives shared by all involved. Humans are privileged and distinct from other natures, but there is continuity between them. An example of the integrationality applied to the case of humans would be that realization of myself and realizations of all others are one and not two. I would summarize notions of "cheng" and "seed" by offering the integrationality thesis, that is, that there is integrationality in any entity like dispositions such that the integrationality is a power to realize the embedded objective of it in the context where it interacts with all others. I would claim that integrationality is a metaphysical basis for a way of human thinking, by arguing that it is a necessary part of presupposition for our understanding of the world without which the world is not intelligible. The notion of integrationality is involved empirically as well as conceptually. Empirically, there are numerous reports from physics, biology and information science, which provide with a clue which may well be taken to show the ubiquitous integrationality. But some conceptual considerations would also indicate necessarily toward the same direction. These would include various theses of ontology, epistemology, disposition, modality, naturalized intentionality, fitting and topics like these. I will investigate some of them in order to justify my claim of this paper. (shrink)

Critics of commercial societies complain that the free-market system of property rights and freedom of contract tends to commodify relationships and erode the bonds of personal and civic friendship. I argue that this thesis rests on a misunderstanding of both markets and friendship. As voluntary, reciprocal relationships, market relationships and friendship share important properties. So-called market norms, such as instrumentality and fungibility, come in varying degrees and characterize not only market, but also non-market, relationships, including friendship. Further, although market (...) relationships are primarily instrumental, the individuals involved are not. Both the virtues of markets and their vices have their counterparts in friendship. Like all relations and activities that exercise important human capacities and play an important role in a meaningful life, market relations and activities are essentially structured and supported by ethical norms and, in turn, support these norms. For these and other reasons, market societies are not only not inimical to friendship, they create a more secure matrix for civic and personal friendship, as well as for other important values like art, science, or philosophy, than any other developed form of society. (shrink)

Robert Brandom’s notion of historical rationality seeks to supplement his inferentialism thesis by providing an account for the validity of conceptual contents. This account, in the shape of a historical process, involves the same self-integration of Brandom’s earlier inferentialism and is similarly restricted by reciprocal recognition of others. This article argues that in applying the synchronic social model of normative discourse to the diachronic axis of engaging the past, Brandom premises a false analogy between present community and past tradition, (...) which obscures the important differences between the two axes. This is explored by looking closely at how Brandom’s own engagements with the past exemplify his historical rationality. Taking its cue from Brandom’s critics, the article shows that Brandom’s own discourse with tradition is not, and cannot be, dialogical and, in accordance, that historical rationality is not, and cannot be, governed by the same social structure of inferentialism. The article concludes with the implications of such a claim on Brandom’s thesis as a whole and on the role of tradition in the process of normative change, in light of it. (shrink)

This article argues that we need to learn from the living earth how living systems sustain themselves and use this knowledge to transform our unsustainable and destructive social systems into sustainable and symbiotic systems within systems. I first set out what I take to be four central features of sustainable living systems according to the life and earth sciences. Secondly, I set out what I take to be the main features of our unsustainable social system that cause damage to the (...) ecosphere on the one hand and give rise to the illusion of independence from it on the other hand. I then turn to several ways of responding to the sustainability crisis that are informed by this way of thinking about our interdependent relationship in and with ecosocial systems. These are ways of dis-engaging from our unsustainable practices, beginning to engage in practices of re-engaging and reconnecting socially and ecologically, and thus beginning to bring into being unalienated and sustainable ways of life on earth. If the symbiotic interdependency thesis of the first section is true, then participants in these connecting practices should be empowered in reciprocity by the interdependent relationships they connect with, and thus initiate expanding virtuous cycles. This reciprocal empowerment is discussed in the final section. (shrink)

ABSTRACT BEER, P. A. C. The matter of truth in knowledge production about psychic suffering: considerations from Ian Hacking and Jacques Lacan. 2020. 250p. Thesis (PhD) – Instituto de Psicologia, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2020. The thesis aims to reaffirm the importance of the debate around the matter of truth in relation to the production of knowledge concerning psychic suffering. Its point of departure is the understanding that the matter of truth contains two main appearances: as (...) employed to legitimize produced knowledge while establishing normative patterns, and as presenting itself in a critical form as a disruptive element to established knowledge. As such, it is a discussion that embraces both an affirmation of knowledge’s necessary character and of its variability. It will be argued in the above sense that the term “truth” must be taken as an inclusive and reciprocal gathering of epistemological, ontological, ethical and political elements. Ian Hacking’s historicized understanding of science enables such a consideration of contingent bases to scientific practice, while still producing necessary knowledge. It thus becomes is possible to establish a field in which normative understandings about scientific praxis might be criticized without it resulting in any kind of refusal or disqualification of the relevant, produced knowledge. Hacking’s proposition of a “historical ontology” and of a “dynamic nominalism” also represents an important contribution to the accumulation of knowledge production about psychic suffering debate, by affirming the ontological effects of knowledge. The way as truth is mobilized within Lacanian psychoanalysis flows from that standpoint, seen as focused on three main elements: truth’s autonomy towards the subject, (truth speaks), the opposing and temporary character of a positivized truth facing established knowledge ,(truth as critique), and the negative dimension of truth which relates to the inexhaustibility of this dialectical process of negations, (truth as radical difference). It is argued that it is possible to sustain a particular reasoning style, (in Hacking’s terms), for psychoanalysis, which is based on radical negativity. It is further argued, that the above rationalities in question work with a historicized understanding of knowledge that does not have any external (nor internal) criteria to warrant its truth. However, psychoanalysis takes negativity — arguably the base of knowledge’s variability and of truth’s disruptive character — beyond Hacking’s philosophy of science, and can thus offer even wider possibilities of thinking about the causality of psychic suffering. Even if with different intensities, both approaches signal the necessity of ethical and political implication in knowledge’s production and employment. Once there is no epistemological warranty to knowledge, its production value reverts to social agreements and ethical positioning. There is, therefore, the necessity of considering power relations. Finally, it is argued that the radical negativity sustained from psychoanalysis locates the political as an actually necessary field, inescapable by the very fact that it is not possible to crystalize any form of truth which is not the affirmation of radical difference. It is maintained then that introducing the matter of truth has as horizon the production of a kind of knowledge about psychic suffering which puts into question, at all time, its epistemological, ontological, ethical and political assumptions. (shrink)

Each of us is a measure. The project of advocates of change in Plato’s Theaetetus as compared with sophistic thought -/- Summary -/- One of the most intriguing motives in Plato’s Theaetetus is its historical-based division of philosophy, which revolves around the concepts of rest (represented by Parmenides and his disciples) and change (represented by Protagoras, Homer, Empedocles, and Epicharmus). This unique approach gives an opportunity to reconstruct the views of marginalized trend of early Greek philosophy - so called „the (...) sophistic movement”. Paradoxically, previous research shows little interest in sophistic thought as a source of the standpoint of advocates of change („the secret doctrine”). The roots of „the secret doctrine” were investigated in the works of Heraclitus, Aristippus, and Antisthenes or those related to “neoheracliteanism”. However, researchers did not make any significant attempt to confront this concept with the contemporary research on the sophistic movement. The conviction that sophistry was primarily humanistically oriented was one of the main reasons why researches were opposed to the fact that „the secret doctrine” could represent a true expression of Protagoras’ views. This is why J. Burnet and F. M. Cornford in their seminal works assumed that “the secret doctrine” should be attributed to Plato, who simply combined a series of loose statements into one single project. In this work, we argue that the thesis which questions the parallels between the sophists’ interests and the philosophers of nature requires a significant revision. There is ample evidence to suggest that the philosophy of nature was a part of sophists’ research. This is supported by two main arguments. First, the tutors of sophists were philosophers of nature. Second, there are numerous sources that explicitly show sophists’ interest in the physical issues. These sources include anecdotal evidence about the fact that sophists wrote works On nature. There is also information confirming that they deliberated on detailed physical issues. The analogies between the concepts attributed to the advocates of change and our knowledge about sophists from other sources is very wide and contains most elements, which are included in the project of “changeable reality” presented in Theaetetus. The deliberations on the mechanism of perception, which are close to those of flux theory of perception in Theaetetus, are present in the sources referring to Gorgias of Leontinoi, the famous sophist and rhetorician. Also, the second element of “the secret doctrine” that is the metaphysics of flux matches up with what we know about the sophists’ views from other sources. On this basis, one can deduce that – contrary to the tradition which marginalized the role of sophistic considerations on the issue of being and non-being – it was one of the major subjects of sophistic research. Its main point was the criticism of the Eleatic conception of a single and unchangeable being, which also plays a key role in the doctrine of flux in Theaetetus. The epistemological theses which are presented in Theaetetus are borne out in sophistic sources. They include the definition of knowledge as perception, the „Man-measure” formula and a number of principles, which result from these foundational theses. Sophists’ empirical preferences resonate with the theses of the advocates of change in Theaetetus. Special attention that is given to the issues of differences among people, and even to cognitive differences in one person depending on the changeable states to which a person is subject, goes well together with what we know about reciprocal influence between the sophistry and medicine. The consequences of the epistemological conception present in Theaetetus have their equivalents in sophists’ works and other testimonies. An example of these consequences may be the abolition of truth and falsehood or the abolition of contradiction, which finds its expression in the thesis ouk estin antilegein. The analogies also concern reflections on the language itself. The project of the “new language” uses categories, which were developed by sophists. These include the antithesis of nomos and physis. The general intentions of this project reflect Protagoras’ ideas, at least to the extent to which they are known from the sources reporting his thoughts on language. Plato’s Theaetetus can thus be considered a veritable treasury of sophistic motifs. Even though the problem remains unsolved and one is still not able to unambiguously decide about the author of “the secret doctrine”, one can come to a certain conclusion – even if Plato synthesized various doctrines, he must have relied in his project mostly on the elements that he borrowed from sophists. Moreover, the value of reconstructing the project of the advocates of change in Theaetetus does not consist of mere enumeration of sophistic motifs. The dialogue is key to understanding the sophistic movement, whose separate doctrines – for the lack of sources and as a result of centuries-old disregard – are usually treated as rhetorical formulae that are interpreted in many ways and have no philosophical foundations. If it is really the case that the theses attributed to Protagoras in Theaetetus were actually a part or a derivative of Protagoras’ thought, or – speaking more conservatively – if they constitute a synthesis of sophistic thought done by Plato, they could represent philosophical foundations for the most important sophistic theses: the “Man-measure” formula, the ouk estin antilegein principle, the concept of language as a tool, the idea of the relativity of good and the whole practical sphere of sophists’ activity. Contrary to the views of many researchers, we are certain that the representatives of the sophistic movement did not limit themselves only to the application of practical rules, which determined the extent of their educational or rhetorical-political activity. They were capable of creating – indeed, they did create comprehensive projects that embraced the whole thematic scope subject to philosophical reflection. (shrink)

This book is an anthology with the following themes. Non-European Tradition: Bussanich interprets main themes of Hindu ethics, including its roots in ritual sacrifice, its relationship to religious duty, society, individual human well-being, and psychic liberation. To best assess the truth of Hindu ethics, he argues for dialogue with premodern Western thought. Pfister takes up the question of human nature as a case study in Chinese ethics. Is our nature inherently good (as Mengzi argued) or bad (Xunzi’s view)? Pfister ob- (...) serves their underlying agreement, that human beings are capable of becoming good, and makes precise the disagreement: whether we achieve goodness by cultivating autonomous feelings or by accepting external precepts. There are political consequences: whether government should aim to respect and em- power individual choices or to be a controlling authority. Early Greek Thinking: Collobert examines the bases of Homeric ethics in fame, prudence, and shame, and how these guide the deliberations of heroes. She observes how, by depending upon the poet’s words, the hero gains a quasi- immortality, although in truth there is no consolation for each person’s inevi- table death. Plato: Santas examines Socratic Method and ethics in Republic 1. There Socrates examines definitions of justice and tests them by comparison to the arts and sciences. Santas shows the similarities of Socrates’ method to John Rawls’ method of considered judgments in reflective equilibrium. McPherran interprets Plato’s religious dimension as like that of his teacher Socrates. McPherran shows how Plato appropriates, reshapes, and extends the religious conventions of his own time in the service of establishing the new enterprise of philosophy. Ac- cording to Taylor, Socrates believes that humans in general have the task of helping the gods by making their own souls as good as possible, and Socrates’ unique ability to cross-examine imposes on him the special task of helping others to become as good as possible. This conception of Socrates’ mission is Plato’s own, consisting in an extension of the traditional conception of piety as helping the gods. Brickhouse and Smith propose a new understanding of Socratic moral psychology—one that retains the standard view of Socrates as an intellectualist, but also recognizes roles in human agency for appetites and passions. They compare and contrast the Socratic view to the picture of moral psychology we get in other dialogues of Plato. Hardy also proposes a new, non-reductive understanding of Socratic eudaimonism—he argues that Socrates invokes a very rich and complex notion of the “Knowledge of the Good and Bad”, which is associated with the motivating forces of the virtues. Rudebusch defends Socrates’ argument that knowledge can never be impotent in the face of psychic passions. He considers the standard objections: that knowledge cannot weigh incom- mensurable human values, and that brute desire, all by itself, is capable of moving the soul to action. Aristotle: Anagnostopoulos interprets Aristotle on the nature and acquisition of virtue. Though virtue of character, aiming at human happiness, requires a complex awareness of multiple dimensions of one’s experience, it is not properly a cognitive capacity. Thus it requires habituation, not education, according to Aristotle, in order to align the unruly elements of the soul with reason’s knowledge of what promotes happiness. Shields explains Aristotle’s doctrine that goodness is meant in many ways as the doctrine that there are different analyses of goodness for different types of circumstance, just as for being. He finds Aristotle to argue for this conclusion, against Plato’s doctrine of the unity of the Good, by applying the tests for homonymy and as an immediate cons- equence of the doctrine of categories. Shields evaluates the issue as unresolved at present. Russell discusses Aristotle’s account of practical deliberation and its virtue, intelligence (phronesis). He relates the account to contemporary philo- sophical controversies surrounding Aristotle’s view that intelligence is neces- sary for moral virtue, including the objections that in some cases it is unnecessary or even impedes human goodness. Frede examines the advantages and disadvantages of Aristotle’s virtue ethics. She explains the general Greek con- ceptions of happiness and virtue, Aristotle’s conception of phronesis and compares the Aristotle’s ethics with modern accounts. Liske discusses the question of whether the Aristotelian account of virtue entails an ethical-psy- chological determinism. He argues that Aristotle’s understanding of hexis allows for free action and ethical responsibility : By making decisions for good actions we are able to stabilize our character (hexis). Hellenistic and Roman: Annas defends an account of stoic ethics, according to which the three parts of Stoicism—logic, physics, and ethics—are integrated as the parts of an egg, not as the parts of a building. Since by this analogy no one part is a foundation for the rest, pedagogical decisions may govern the choice of numerous, equally valid, presentations of Stoic ethics. Piering interprets the Cynic way of life as a distinctive philosophy. In their ethics, Cynics value neither pleasure nor tradition but personal liberty, which they achieve by self-suffi- ciency and display in speech that is frank to the point of insult. Plotinus and Neoplatonism: Gerson outlines the place of ordinary civic virtue as well as philosophically contemplative excellence in Neoplatonism. In doing so he attempts to show how one and the same good can be both action-guiding in human life and be the absolute simple One that grounds the explanation of everything in the universe. Delcomminette follows Plotinus’s path to the Good as the foundation of free will, first in the freedom of Intellect and then in the “more than freedom” of the One. Plotinus postulates these divinities as not outside but within each self, saving him from the contradiction of an external foundation for a truly free will. General Topics: Halbig discusses the thesis on the unity of virtues. He dis- tinguishes the thesis of the identity of virtues and the thesis of a reciprocity of virtues and argues that the various virtues form a unity (in terms of reciprocity) since virtues cannot bring about any bad action. Detel examines Plato’s and Aristotle’s conceptions of normativity : Plato and Aristotle (i) entertained hybrid theories of normativity by distinguishing functional, semantic and ethical normativity, (ii) located the ultimate source of normativity in standards of a good life, and thus (iii) took semantic normativity to be a derived form of normativity. Detel argues that hybrid theories of normativity are—from a mo- dern point of view—still promising. Ho ̈ffe defends the Ancient conception of an art of living against Modern objections. Whereas many Modern philosophers think that we have to replace Ancient eudaimonism by the idea of moral obligation (Pflicht), Ho ̈ffe argues that Eudaimonism and autonomy-based ethics can be reconciled and integrated into a comprehensive and promising theory of a good life, if we enrich the idea of autonomy by the central elements of Ancient eudaimonism. Some common themes: The topics in Chinese and Hindu ethics are perhaps more familiar to modern western sensibilities than Homeric and even Socratic. Anagnostopoulos, Brickhouse and Smith, Frede, Liske, Rudebusch, and Russell all consider in contrasting ways the role of moral character, apart from intellect, in ethics. Brickhouse / Smith, Hardy, and Rudebusch discuss the Socratic con- ception of moral knowledge. Brickhouse / Smith and Hardy retain the standard view of the so called Socratic Intellectualism. Shields and Gerson both consider the question whether there is a single genus of goodness, or if the term is a homonym. Bussanich, McPherran, Taylor, and Delcomminette all consider the relation between religion and ethics. Pfister, Piering, Delcomminette, and Liske all consider what sort of freedom is appropriate to human well-being. Halbig, Detel, and Ho ̈ffe propose interpretations of main themes of Ancient ethics. (shrink)

An aesthetic object should be understood and analyzed by the subject in accordance with its object characteristics, except that it is the subject of the subject. In this sense, the aesthetic object, rather than just an object, has all the cognitive characteristics of its artist. The aesthetic subject faces these cognitive characteristics. The perception-perception structure of the subject and the reciprocity relation with the object are examined in this thesis study in order to perceive the aesthetic object correctly (...) and to judge about it. This study is also a study of what the subject can perceive in terms of their perception and interpretation abilities. Additionally, such an approach will enrich the perception-based aesthetic perspectives in the focus of discussions in the philosophy of art. (shrink)

Philosophical work on explanation has focused on the following two topics: theories of explanation, intended to enumerate necessary and sufficient conditions for explanation, and inference to the best explanation as the strongest form of justification for ontological or metaphysical claims. I critically examine the most important philosophical work in both of these areas and defend my own conclusions about the connections between explanation and ontology. I argue that all of our inferences about the nature of the world, in ontology or (...) metaphysics, presuppose criteria for acceptable explanation. I first examine the metaphysics of Plato, Aristotle, and Leibniz, arguing that their metaphysical reasoning was guided by assumptions about the nature of explanation. I also survey some recent work in ontology and find inference to the best explanation offered as the strongest available method of defending existence claims. To conclude this discussion, I offer an original argument for the thesis that all reasoning about existence claims, being nondeductive, presupposes some criteria for acceptable explanations, or a theory of explanation. Carl Hempel and Wesley Salmon have been two of the most influential philosophers offering theories of explanation, and I examine their work with the intention of discovering ontological or metaphysical assumptions shaping their theories of explanation. I argue that Hempel's theory rests on deterministic assumptions, and I argue the Salmon's theory of causality, which he admits supports his theory of explanation, is subject to empiricist criticisms. Theories of explanation typically rest on assumptions about the nature of the world, I argue, and I explain why this is so with an original theory of explanation connecting it to the psychological phenomenon of understanding. We rely on understanding in the identification of explanations, and understanding requires establishing a metaphysical context for an explanandum-event. I end by indicating the possibility of generating vicious justificatory circles through the reciprocal relationship of support between explanation and ontology, and I argue that vicious circles can be avoided only by grounding all ontological reasoning in a fundamental explanatory task of giving order to experience through a system of categories. (shrink)

In this paper, we present two proofs of the reciprocal butterfly theorem. The statement of the butterfly theorem is: Let us consider a chord PQ of midpoint M in the circle Ω(O). Through M, two other chords AB and CD are drawn, such that A and C are on the same side of PQ. We denote by X and U the intersection of AD respectively CB with PQ. Consequently, XM = YM. For the proof of this theorem, see [1]. The (...) reciprocal of the butterfly theorem has the following statement: In the circle Ω(O), let us consider the chords PQ, AB and CD which are concurrent in the point M≠O, such as the points A and C are on the same side of the line PQ. Let X and Y respectively be the intersections of the chord PQ with AD and BC respectively. If XM = YM, then M is the middle of the chord PQ. (shrink)

In the classical Turing test, participants are challenged to tell whether they are interacting with another human being or with a machine. The way the interaction takes place is not direct, but a distant conversation through computer screen messages. Basic forms of interaction are face-to-face and embodied, context-dependent and based on the detection of reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies. Our idea is that interaction detection requires the integration of proprioceptive and interoceptive patterns with sensorimotor patterns, within quite short time lapses, so that (...) they appear as mutually contingent, as reciprocal. In other words, the experience of interaction takes place when sensorimotor patterns are contingent upon one’s own movements, and vice versa. I react to your movement, you react to mine. When I notice both components, I come to experience an interaction. Therefore, we designed a “minimal” Turing test to investigate how much information is required to detect these reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies. Using a new version of the perceptual crossing paradigm, we tested whether participants resorted to interaction detection to tell apart human from machine agents in repeated encounters with these agents. In two studies, we presented participants with movements of a human agent, either online or offline, and movements of a computerized oscillatory agent in three different blocks. In each block, either auditory or audiovisual feedback was provided along each trial. Analysis of participants’ explicit responses and of the implicit information subsumed in the dynamics of their series will reveal evidence that participants use the reciprocal sensorimotor contingencies within short time windows. For a machine to pass this minimal Turing test, it should be able to generate this sort of reciprocal contingencies. (shrink)

Direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, and reputation are important interrelated topics in the evolution of sociality. This non-mathematical review is a summary of each. Direct reciprocity (the positive kind) has a straightforward structure (e.g., "A rewards B, then rewards A") but the allocation might differ from the process that enabled it (e.g., whether it is true reciprocity or some form of mutualism). Indirect reciprocity (the positive kind) occurs when person (B) is rewarded by a third party (...) (A) after doing a good deed towards somebody else (C) — with the structure "A observes B help C, therefore A helps B." Here too, the allocation differs from the process: if there is underlying cognition, then indirect reciprocity is based on some ability to keep track of the reputations of others (to remember that "B helped C"). Reputation is a kind of social impression based on typicality, derived from three channels of experience (direct encounters, bystander observation, and gossip). Although non-human animals cannot gossip verbally, they can eavesdrop on third parties and learn vicariously. This paper ends with a proposal to investigate the topic of social expertise as a model for understanding how animals understand and utilise observed information within their social groups. (shrink)

Gauss’s quadratic reciprocity theorem is among the most important results in the history of number theory. It’s also among the most mysterious: since its discovery in the late 18th century, mathematicians have regarded reciprocity as a deeply surprising fact in need of explanation. Intriguingly, though, there’s little agreement on how the theorem is best explained. Two quite different kinds of proof are most often praised as explanatory: an elementary argument that gives the theorem an intuitive geometric interpretation, due (...) to Gauss and Eisenstein, and a sophisticated proof using algebraic number theory, due to Hilbert. Philosophers have yet to look carefully at such explanatory disagreements in mathematics. I do so here. According to the view I defend, there are two important explanatory virtues—depth and transparency—which different proofs (and other potential explanations) possess to different degrees. Although not mutually exclusive in principle, the packages of features associated with the two stand in some tension with one another, so that very deep explanations are rarely transparent, and vice versa. After developing the theory of depth and transparency and applying it to the case of quadratic reciprocity, I draw some morals about the nature of mathematical explanation. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Hegel’s concept of recognition and Levinas’ concept of responsibility complement each other and lead to the idea of an asymmetrical reciprocity in which the origin of our social relations is not mutual equality, but rather mutual inequality. I will unfold this argument in three steps. I will first work out a fundamental asymmetry of recognition in Hegel by means of the figure of the bondsman before elucidating in a second step the asymmetry of (...) responsibility in Levinas by means of the figure of the hostage. In the last and third step, I will correlate both asymmetries and show how far the asymmetry of recognition and the asymmetry of responsibility constantly develop from and transition into one another in our social relationships. (shrink)

This dissertation seeks to demonstrate that Proclus articulates a metaphysics not merely compatible with his polytheism, but to which in fact polytheism is integral. For Proclus the One Itself, which according to the First Hypothesis of the Parmenides neither is, nor is one, is instead as each henad, that is, as each God. The henads or Gods thus form a multiplicity unlike any other. Ontic multiplicities always exhibit mediation, in accord with a logic subordinating the many to the one. Correlatively, (...) ontic unity is formal unity, structured by a logic of wholes and parts. These are the dominant characteristics of the realm of Being. The huperousios, or "supra-essential" domain of the Gods, by contrast, is that of a multiplicity of absolute individuals with no totalizing principle over them and no reciprocal relations between them, insofar as either of these would diminish that quality which they pre-eminently possess, namely unity. The supreme form of unity in Proclus' universe, therefore, is the individuality possessed by each absolutely unique God. Chapters 1--4 are concerned with elucidating the nature of the Gods as such. ;The last three chapters provide a close reading of the third, fourth and fifth books of Proclus' Platonic Theology, which I read as an account of the emergence of ontic unity out of henadic unity through the Gods' progressive self-diremption by which a space of mediation is constituted through which they come ultimately to be conceivable as a multiplicity like any other. The key stages in this process are the ontic hypostases of Being, Life and Intellect. The first represents the analysis of the "elements" of each God as such; the second represents the positing of the Gods in co-emergent groupings or pantheons; the third the emergence of fully reciprocal relations in the actions of mythic narrative. At the end of this cosmogonic process, the basic intellectual structures have been constituted which allow the formulation of the philosophical system. The relationship between the Gods and Being is thus embodied in that between myth and dialectic, theology and philosophy. (shrink)

According to Rainer Forst, (i) moral and political claims must meet a requirement of reciprocal and general acceptability (RGA) while (ii) we are under a duty in engaged discursive practice to justify such claims to others, or be able to do so, on grounds that meet RGA. The paper critically engages this view. I argue that Forst builds a key component of RGA, i.e., reciprocity of reasons, on an idea of the reasonable that undermines both (i) and (ii): if (...) RGA builds on this idea, RGA is viciously regressive and a duty of justification to meet RGA fails to be agent transparent. This negative result opens the door for alternative conceptions of reciprocity and generality. I then suggest that a more promising conception of reciprocity and generality needs to build on an idea of the reasonable that helps to reconcile the emancipatory or protective aspirations of reciprocal and general justification with its egalitarian commitments. But this requires to downgrade RGA in the order of justification and to determine on prior, substantive grounds what level of discursive influence in reciprocal and general justification relevant agents ought to have. (shrink)

Rainer Forst and others claim that normative moral and political claims depend for their justification on meeting a requirement of reciprocal and general acceptability (RGA). I focus on a core component of RGA, namely, the idea of reciprocity of reasons, distinguish between two readings of RGA, and argue that if reciprocity of reasons is understood in Forst’s terms, then RGA, even on the most promising reading, may not serve as a requirement of moral or political justification at all. (...) The discussion concludes with constructive observations on a path forward for theorists who nevertheless are inclined to hold on to RGA. (shrink)

Political liberals ask citizens not to appeal to certain considerations, including religious and philosophical convictions, in political deliberation. We argue that political liberals must include a demanding requirement of intellectual modesty in their ideal of citizenship in order to motivate this deliberative restraint. The requirement calls on each citizen to believe that the best reasoners disagree about the considerations that she is barred from appealing to. Along the way, we clarify how requirements of intellectual modesty relate to moral reasons for (...) deliberative restraint. And we argue against attempts to weaken our requirement of intellectual modesty by emphasizing those moral reasons. (shrink)

Using the concepts of epistemic virtue and vice as defined by José Medina, and reciprocal recognition as outlined by Glen Coulthard, I argue that the Canadian state is currently in a non-reciprocal relationship with Indigenous peoples as a result of epistemic failure on the part of the state. This failure involves a surfacelevel recognition of Indigenous peoples at the same time as the manifestation of the epistemic vices of arrogance, laziness and closed-mindedness. The epistemic injustice framework alongside a critique of (...) the politics of recognition can help shed light on what is going wrong betweenthe settler state and Indigenous peoples. Moreover, by appealing to grounded normativity, an Indigenous ethical framework, I argue that a land-based ethics of reciprocity can help us move toward reciprocal recognition and equality, if we are epistemically humble, curious and open-minded to it. (shrink)

This paper explores two different but intimately linked concepts. First, there is "reciprocal illumination," or the relation of interdependence of the object of knowledge and its subject. Second is the "irreversibility" which characterizes the process of applying constitutive rules, which causes institutional facts to become facts, and to be even stricter and more epistemologically constant than brute facts.

Scientific realists and antirealists believe that a successful scientific theory is true and merely empirically adequate, respectively. In contrast, epistemic reciprocalists believe that realists’ positive theories are true, and that antirealists’ positive theories are merely empirically adequate, treating their target agents as their target agents treat other epistemic agents. Antirealists cannot convince reciprocalists that their positive theories are true, no matter how confident they might be that they are true. In addition, reciprocalists criticize antirealists’ positive theories exactly in the way (...) that antirealists criticize their epistemic colleagues’ theories. Reciprocalism is a better epistemic policy than realism and antirealism in the epistemic battleground in which we strive to be epistemically safe vis-à-vis our epistemic colleagues’ theories and strive to convince our epistemic colleagues that our theories are true. (shrink)

This paper focuses on reciprocity among the nomadic hunter-gatherer Rāute and sedentary groups, ie farmers and artisans. The Rāute’s reciprocal relation depends on social contracts, trust, territorial relations and residential propinquity. These facets of reciprocity can be accepted, denied or even cancelled. I argue that the Rāute are economically prosperous because of their regular exchange of woodenwares for grains and other necessary items, though they refrain from storing resources, earning cash incomes, and eschew agricultural production and animal husbandry. (...) Sharing, exchange, gift and counter-gift engagements are obligatory or compulsory, free and voluntary, ensuring their reciprocity with neighbouring populations – which has been regulated by seasonality, foraging and population density around the vicinities of their camps. Qualitative research was employed, with informal interviews, observations, personal accounts, audio and video recording, as well as field diaries. (shrink)

In the center of the fifth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle elliptically characterizes political justice as a form of reciprocal rule that exists between free and equal persons pursuing a common life directed toward self-sufficiency under the rule of law. My dissertation analyzes Aristotle's thematic treatments of political justice in the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics in order to elucidate its meaning, clarify its relationship to the other forms of justice that he also discusses, and compare it to contemporary neo-Aristotelian (...) accounts of justice. ;The first chapter examines the unclear and disputed passages of Ethics V.6--7 and explains why Aristotle discusses political justice in his ethical treatise. The second chapter makes use of Aristotle's juxtaposition of political justice to household justice on the one hand and despotic justice on the other hand in order to explicate the necessary conditions of political justice, namely, freedom, equality, commonality, self-sufficiency, and the rule of law. To make sense of these concepts, the chapter explores such topics as Aristotle's understanding of the household, his notion of the self and his political criticisms of Socrates. The third chapter examines political justice or reciprocal rule in the Politics in order to understand how political justice can be both a human virtue and an institutional arrangement of offices. The fourth chapter offers a critique of Fred Miller's reconstruction of Aristotelian natural rights. Although Miller is correct to say that Aristotle recognized and understood "rights claims," he is mistaken in claiming that they are an integral part of Aristotle's practical philosophy. Aristotle understood the problems for political compromise posed by rights conceived as "trumps," and he rejects rights as philosophically fundamental on the grounds that they are an inadequate solution to both the political problem of justice and the stability of flourishing political institutions. (shrink)

The notion of a physiological individuals has been developed and applied in the philosophy of biology to understand symbiosis, an understanding of which is key to theorising about the major transition in evolution from multi-organismality to multi-cellularity. The paper begins by asking what such symbiotic individuals can help to reveal about a possible transition in the evolution of cognition. Such a transition marks the movement from cooperating individual biological cognizers to a functionally integrated cognizing unit. Somewhere along the way, did (...) such cognizing units simultaneously have cognizers as parts? Expanding upon the multiscale integration view of the Free Energy Principle, this paper develops an account of reciprocal integration, demonstrating how some coupled biological cognizing systems, when certain constraints are met, can result in a cognizing unit that is in ways greater than the sum of its cognizing parts. Symbiosis between V. Fischeri bacteria and the bobtail squid is used to provide an illustration this account. A novel manner of conceptualizing biological cognizers as gradient is then suggested. Lastly it is argued that the reason why the notion of ontologically nested cognizers may be unintuitive stems from the fact that our folk-psychology notion of what a cognizer is has been deeply influenced by our folk-biological manner of understanding biological individuals as units of reproduction. (shrink)

The advent and widespread adoption of modern technology has impacted our society in a significant and ubiquitous manner. I argue that our dependence on modern technology, specifically, has prompted a loss of human autonomy that corresponds directly to its advancement. I argue that this anti-reciprocal phenomenon is self-instituted. In this sense, autonomy is not lost like ones wallet or car keys, but rather handed over to modern technology in exchange for the streamlined processes and conveniences it promises. -/- I arrive (...) at this conclusion through exploring the research and findings of other thinkers situated in the field of philosophy of technology and the analyses made by other contemporary authors. I also provide my own analysis incorporating relevant phenomena that serve to validate and solidify my arguments. -/- For as much talk of technology that comes part and parcel with a work of this nature, I suggest something quite divergent from its leading critics. It is true that modern technology impacts nearly every aspect of our lives today, and in many ways, its influence defines the very way we have evolved as a society. In its use, there can be seen a wide spectrum of advocacy from philia to phobia and everything between. Yet, I recognize that the one common factor in the invention, adoption, advancement, and widespread utilization of modern technology is a human inventor, adopter, advancer, and end user. It is my contention that the blame can rest not in a thing for the phenomenon of human dependence and loss of autonomy. To truly understand the way modern technology affects us, we must look upon ourselves. (shrink)

Two lines of evidence indicate that there exists a reciprocal inhibitory relationship between opposed brain networks. First, most attention-demanding cognitive tasks activate a stereotypical set of brain areas, known as the task-positive network and simultaneously deactivate a different set of brain regions, commonly referred to as the task negative or defaultmode network. Second, functional connectivity analyses show that these same opposed networks are anti-correlated in the resting state. Wehypothesize that these reciprocally inhibitory effects reflect two incompatible cognitive modes, each of (...) which may be directed towards understanding the external world. Thus, engaging onemode activates one set of regions and suppresses activity in the other.Wetest this hypothesis by identifying two types of problem-solving task which, on the basis of prior work, have been consistently associated with the task positive and task negative regions: tasks requiring social cognition, i.e., reasoning about the mental states of other persons, and tasks requiring physical cognition, i.e., reasoning about the causal/mechanical properties of inanimate objects. Social and mechanical reasoning tasks were presented to neurologically normal participants during fMRI. Each task type was presented using both text and video clips. Regardless of presentation modality, we observed clear evidence of reciprocal suppression: social tasks deactivated regions associated with mechanical reasoning and mechanical tasks deactivated regions associated with social reasoning. These findings are not explained by self-referential processes, task engagement, mental simulation,mental time travel or external vs. internal attention, all factors previously hypothesized to explain default mode network activity. Analyses of resting state data revealed a close match between the regions our tasks identified as reciprocally inhibitory and regions of maximal anti-correlation in the resting state. These results indicate the reciprocal inhibition is not attributable to constraints inherent in the tasks, but is neural in origin. Hence, there is a physiological constraint on our ability to simultaneously engage two distinct cognitive modes. Furtherwork is needed tomore precisely characterize these opposing cognitive domains. (shrink)

An underexplored aspect of moral experience is the experience of apprehending other people as mattering, grasping the significance of whether their interests are set back or enhanced. I refer to these as value-apprehensional experiences. I argue, partly on the basis of data regarding moral cognition in psychopaths, that experiencing other people's value is one way that we attain adequate systematic comprehension of morality, understanding that others' welfare is the point behind rules against harming them. I then turn to a positive (...) account of what capacities we should expect to facilitate value-apprehensional experiences. I suggest we should look to the capacity to care emotionally about others: roughly, to feel emotions congruent with someone else's well-being, for her sake. I argue that this 'emotional caring' is better suited to explain value-apprehensional experience than other constructs, including empathy. The broader hypothesis this raises is that emotional caring enables and improves our value-apprehensional abilities. To the extent that is true, I argue, we should consider caring people to have more trustworthy moral intuitions than others, especially if they are not just competent, but skilled at caring about others. Emotions are, of course, biased in various ways, so I suggest attention-refocusing strategies for mitigating these biases. These are epitomized by an unaffiliated caring perspective, one removed from affiliation with any of a morally relevant situation's protagonists, but informed through emotional caring about the the interests of each. Finally, I turn to special value-apprehensional experiences that we have in intense, reciprocal relationships of caring with individuals who are special to us. I argue that, if we accept that general v-a experiences reveal people's moral significance, we have even more reason to think that special v-a experiences reveal the special moral significance not only of the parties in the relationship, but of their participation in the relationship, for both their sakes. That is, there are moral reasons to devote caring attention to special others, even if we could otherwise do objectively more good. Emotional cares reveal not only values within everyone but reasons to devote ourselves to the individuals we care about. (shrink)

Economic theory has tended to reduce all social bonds and relations to forms of contract, whereas social theory has seen contracts as opposed to, and destructive of, genuine social bonds. Bruni sees these contrapositions as ideological (‘left’ against ‘right’, p. xi). His main goal is to overcome them; to show that three forms of reciprocity, covering the ideological spectrum from left to right, are complementary and simultaneously required in a healthy society. These three forms are, in his words: ‘(1) (...) the reciprocity of contract or ‘cautious’; (2) the reciprocity of friendship or philia and (3) the ‘unconditional’ reciprocity, the one more controversial . . .’ (p. x). (shrink)

For four decades Ifeanyi Menkiti has addressed the question of which sort of community constitutes personhood from a characteristically African perspective. In this chapter, I critically discuss the conceptions of how one acquires personhood through community that Menkiti has advanced, in search of the one that would most enable him to avoid prominent moral objections made to his views over the years. In particular, his account of personhood has been criticized for insufficiently accommodating individual difference, most recently in respect of (...) gender and sexuality. I draw on the resources in Menkiti’s work for rebutting this line of criticism, but contend that, even if he can avoid that one, another, new objection looms large: because of Menkiti’s claim that reciprocity is central to community, he is committed to the view that human infants and mentally incapacitated adults lack moral standing, in the way he explicitly believes animals lack it. After showing that, according to Menkiti’s strongest conception of personhood, one counterintuitively cannot acquire it in the course of interacting with any non-persons, I articulate an alternative conception of how to understand the role of community in acquiring personhood that avoids this problem as well as the other ones discussed. (shrink)

In this paper I present a precise version of Stalnaker's thesis and show that it is both consistent and predicts our intuitive judgments about the probabilities of conditionals. The thesis states that someone whose total evidence is E should have the same credence in the proposition expressed by 'if A then B' in a context where E is salient as they have conditional credence in the proposition B expresses given the proposition A expresses in that context. The (...) class='Hi'>thesis is formalised rigorously and two models are provided that demonstrate that the new thesis is indeed tenable within a standard possible world semantics based on selection functions. Unlike the Stalnaker-Lewis semantics the selection functions cannot be understood in terms of similarity. A probabilistic account of selection is defended in its place. -/- I end the paper by suggesting that this approach overcomes some of the objections often leveled at accounts of indicatives based on the notion of similarity. (shrink)

Looking out the window, I see that it's raining outside. Do I know that it’s raining outside? According to proponents of the Entailment Thesis, I do. If I see that p, I know that p. In general, the Entailment Thesis is the thesis that if S perceives that p, S knows that p. But recently, some philosophers (McDowell 2002, Turri 2010, Pritchard 2011, 2012) have argued that the Entailment Thesis is false. On their view, we can (...) see p and not know that p. In this paper, I argue that their arguments are unsuccessful. (shrink)

Xunzi's philosophy provides a rich resource for understanding how ethical relationships between humans and nature can be articulated in terms of harmony. In this paper, I build on his ideas to develop the concept of reciprocal harmony, which requires us to reciprocate those who make our lives liveable. In the context of the environment, I argue that reciprocal harmony generates moral obligations towards nature, in return for the existential debt that humanity owes towards heaven and earth. This can be used (...) as a normative basis for an environmental ethic that enables humanity and nature to flourish together. (shrink)

In tradition linked to Aristotle and Kant, many contemporary philosophers treat practical and theoretical normativity as two genuinely distinct domains of normativity. In this paper I consider the question of what it is for normative domains to be distinct. I suggest that there are two different ways that the distinctness thesis might be understood and consider the different implications of the two different distinctness theses.

In this article, I explore the relationship between the supersession thesis and the rights of future people. In particular, I show that changes in circumstances might supersede future people’s rights. I argue that appropriating resources that belong to future people does not necessarily result in a duty to return the resources in full. I explore how these findings are relevant for climate change justice. Assuming future generations of developing countries originally had a right to use a certain amount of (...) the carbon budget, changing circumstances could result in rights-supersession. Consequently, members of future generations of industrialized countries may be allowed to use part of the share of the carbon budget belonging to developing countries. (shrink)

This article deals with the relationship between philosophy and science in the writings of Karl Jaspers and with its reception in the wider scholarly literature. The problem discussed is how to characterize the relationship that exists between science—defined on pure Kantian grounds as a universally valid knowledge of phenomenal objects—and philosophy—conceived by Jaspers as the transcending mode of thinking of personal Existenz rising towards the totality and unity of Being. Two solutions to that problem arise from Jaspers’s writings. The oppositionist (...) view is based in his earlier philosophy of Existenz. It describes the discrepancy between determinateness, bestowed by science to its objects, and freedom of self-determination, which is both a synonym and a condition of possibility for Existenz. The reciprocal view is based in Jaspers’s later works, where he focuses on exploration of his concept of Being (das Umgreifende). By contrast with most of Jaspers’s commentators, the present interpretation is anchored in a developmentaland contextual understanding of Jaspers’s thought. Showing the transcendental background of this topic, the proposed interpretation allows us to abstain from viewing the two solutions as incoherent or contradictory and instead to see them as constitutive of a single philosophical course. (shrink)

The Qualitative Thesis says that if you leave open P, then you are sure of if P, then Q just in case you are sure of the corresponding material conditional. We argue the Qualitative Thesis provides compelling reasons to accept a thesis that we call Conditional Locality, which says, roughly, the interpretation of an indicative conditional depends, in part, on the conditional’s local embedding environment. In the first part of the paper, we present an argument—due to Ben (...) Holguín—showing that, without Conditional Locality, the Qualitative Thesis is in tension with a margin for error principle on rational sureness. We show Conditional Locality reconciles the Qualitative Thesis with the margin for error principle. In the second part, we argue the full range of data supports what we call the Strong Qualitative Thesis. Without Conditional Locality, the Strong Qualitative Thesis has unacceptable consequences. But with Conditional Locality, it is tenable. (shrink)

I discuss Young’s “asymmetrical reciprocity” and apply it to an ethics of mental health care. Due to its emphasis on engaging with others through respectful dialogue in an inclusive manner, asymmetrical reciprocity serves as an appropriate framework for guiding caregivers to interact with their patients and to understand them in a morally responsible and appropriate manner. In Section 1, I define empathy and explain its benefits in the context of mental health care. In Section 2, I discuss two (...) potential problems surrounding empathy: the difficulty of perspectivetaking and “compassion fatigue.” In Section 3, I argue that these issues can be resolved if examined through the lens of an ethics of care. Reciprocal relationships between patients and caregivers are an important element in the development of an ethics of care. In Section 4, I introduce two models of reciprocity that can be applied to a health care context: Benhabib’s symmetrical reciprocity and Young’s asymmetrical reciprocity. In Section 5, I demonstrate how asymmetrical reciprocity cultivates empathy and, in Section 6 and Section 7, I show how it overcomes the objections of empathy and improves therapeutic relationships. (shrink)