The question of our place in nature has long been with us. One answer lies in comparing humans with other animals , thereby highlighting the uniquely human. To this end, I examine the distinction between humans and brutes as delineated by Descartes, Kant, and the Chicago pragmatist George Mead. This selection not merely assures a wide-spectrum of opinion still alive today, it marks a general historical shift from the metaphysical dualism of Descartes' mechanical world and spiritual self, to the epistemic (...) dualism of Kant and his double sense of self, finally to Mead's naturalistic monism, in which consciousness emerges naturally from the non-conscious. Apart from illuminating issues current in the animal-rights literature, examining this single topic casts a new light on these figures, especially Kant and Mead . Descartes' dualism is understandable simply given his scientific commitments, and the chasm he found in the human/brute gap was as much a result of this scientific motivation as any religious or moral one. For Kant, brutes lack the power to judge, understand, or reason. But more importantly, they lack autonomy and are therefore without moral worth. The unbridgeable chasm, metaphysical for Descartes, became for Kant primarily moral. Brutes do have representations and desires, however, and, by virtue of being alive, an immaterial principle; Kant consequently rejected Descartes' animal-machine hypothesis. Darwin's account of the human/brute gap and Mead's Darwinistic psychology are discussed. Selfhood and consciousness are unique to humans, although brutes are conscious in another sense. Mead's different uses of 'consciousness' are separated in order to clarify this difference as well as the role of language in the emergence of mind. Mead argued that humans perceive social objects prior to physical objects while brutes perceive none of these, lacking the capacities of universalization and object-manipulation. Like Descartes and Kant, Mead minimized brute experience, thereby maintaining a wide gulf between humans and brutes despite his Darwinian naturalism. (shrink)

Conceptual metaphor provides a potentially powerful counseling framework, generalizable across theoretical orientations. According to the conceptual perspective, metaphor is not merely a matter of language, but is an indispensable dimension of human understanding and experience whereby more abstract ideas (like relationships) are understood in terms of more concrete experiences (like journeys). Consequently, when a couple in counseling says, “we're just spinning our wheels,” they are not only using a common colloquial expression, but also giving information about how they conceptualize their (...) relationship. This article provides a theoretical foundation for use of conceptual metaphor and offers examples of its potential for counseling. (shrink)

Orson Scott Card and his Ender Series have had a profound impact on the genre of contemporary science fiction, meriting an academic analysis of some of his more theoretical ideas. I have chosen to analyze his concept of “Center” and “Edge” nations found in Xenocide and Children of the Mind through the lens of international relations, sociological, and political theory, in order to bring nuance to an underdeveloped theory that many non-academics may be familiar with. Ultimately, we must conclude (...) that Card’s concept of “Center” and “Edge” nations is too stagnant and does not account for social and hegemonic change, which influences the justifications of why these “nations” may be considered “Center” in the first place. (shrink)

A review of Steven Fuller's excellent book. Steve Fuller, professor of sociology at the University of Warwick, argues that, unfortunately for science, Kuhn won this debate. In the wake of Kuhn, science has come to be justified more by its paradigmatic pedigree than by its progressive aspirations. In other words, science is judged by whatever has come to be the dominant scientific community.

The article examines the impact of the study for Levittown of urban sociologist Herbert Gans on Denise Scott Brown’s thought. It scrutinizes Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, and Steven Izenour’s ‘Remedial Housing for Architects or Learning from Levittown’ conducted in collaboration with their students at Yale University in 1970. Taking as its starting point Scott Brown’s endeavour to redefine functionalism in ‘Architecture as Patterns and Systems: Learning from Planning’, and ‘The Redefinition of Functionalism’, which were included (...) in Architecture as Signs and Systems: For a Mannerist Time (2004), the article sheds light on the fact that the intention to shape a new way of conceiving functionalism was already present in Learning from Las Vegas, where Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour suggested an understanding of Las Vegas as pattern of activities. Particular emphasis is placed on Scott Brown’s understanding of ‘active socioplastics’, and on the impact of advocacy planning and urban sociology on her approach. At the core of the reflections developed in this article is the concept of ‘urban village’ that Gans uses in US in The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans (1972) to shed light on the socio-anthropological aspects of inhabiting urban fabric. (shrink)

This is a draft of the introduction to a forthcoming volume that brings together all of J. G. Herder's student notes from Immanuel Kant's lectures. It is intended as a volume in Kant's gesammelte Schriften (de Gruyter). These are the earliest notes (1762-64) we have from Kant's lectures (which span from 1755 to 1796) and the only notes before his professorship began in 1770. Included are improved transcriptions of Herder's notes on metaphysics, moral philosophy, logic, physics, and mathematics, and the (...) first transcription of his notes from Kant’s physical geography lectures. (shrink)

Despite Kant's belief in a universal causal determinism among phenomena and his rejection of any noumenal agency in brutes, he nevertheless rejected Descartes's hypothesis that brutes are machines. Explaining Kant's response to Descartes forms the basis for this discussion of the nature of consciousness and matter in Kant's system. Kant's numerous remarks on animal psychology-as found in his lecture notes and reflections on metaphysics and anthropology-suggest a theory of consciousness and self-consciousness at odds with that traditionally ascribed to him.

Kant’s body offered a constant target for his own remarks, both in correspondence and during his lunchtime conversations. Several good descriptions of Kant’s body have come down to us over the centuries, as well as a number of visual representations, but these are remarkably limited, given his stature in the world of ideas. A new description of Kant, written by a novelist who visited Kant while passing through Königsberg, has recently come to light. It is reproduced here — in English (...) translation as well as the original German — and earlier descriptions of Kant are briefly recounted. (shrink)

This chapter takes the form of a discussion between the editors of this volume and Steven Lukes, one the most eminent critics of methodological individualism. The focus is on Lukes’ interpretation of methodological individualism in terms of linguistic exclusivism (i.e., naive reductionism), the multiple-realization problem, Boudon’s and Elster’s micro-foundationalist approach, ontological individualism, and the rationality of human action.

Studies of the Early Modern debate concerning absolute and relative space and motion often ignore the significance of the concept of true motion in this debate. Even philosophers who denied the existence of absolute space maintained that true motions could be distinguished from merely apparent ones. In this paper, I examine Berkeley's endorsement of this distinction and the problems it raises. First, Berkeley's endorsement raises a problem of consistency with his other philosophical commitments, namely his idealism. Second, Berkeley's endorsement raises (...) a problem of adequacy, namely whether Berkeley can provide an adequate account of what grounds the distinction between true and merely apparent motion. In this paper, I argue that sensitivity to Berkeley's distinction between what is true in the metaphysical, scientific, and vulgar domains can address both the consistency and the adequacy problems. I argue that Berkeley only accepts true motion in the scientific and vulgar domains, and not the metaphysical. There is thus no inconsistency between his endorsement of true motion in science and ordinary language, and his metaphysical idealism. Further, I suggest that sensitivity to these three domains shows that Berkeley possesses resources to give an adequate account of how true motions are discovered in natural science. (shrink)

Moralization is a social-psychological process through which morally neutral issues take on moral significance. Often linked to health and disease, moralization may sometimes lead to good outcomes; yet moralization is often detrimental to individuals and to society as a whole. It is therefore important to be able to identify when moralization is inappropriate. In this paper, we offer a systematic normative approach to the evaluation of moralization. We introduce and develop the concept of ‘mismoralization’, which is when moralization is metaethically (...) unjustified. In order to identify mismoralization, we argue that one must engage in metaethical analysis of moralization processes while paying close attention to the relevant facts. We briefly discuss one historical example and two contemporary cases related to COVID-19 that we contend to have been mismoralized in public health. We propose a remedy of de-moralization that begins by identifying mismoralization and that proceeds by neutralizing inapt moral content. De-moralization calls for epistemic and moral humility. It should lead us to pull away from our tendency to moralize—as individuals and as social groups—whenever and wherever moralization is unjustified. (shrink)

Nick Shea’s Representation in Cognitive Science commits him to representations in perceptual processing that are about probabilities. This commentary concerns how to adjudicate between this view and an alternative that locates the probabilities rather in the representational states’ associated “attitudes”. As background and motivation, evidence for probabilistic representations in perceptual processing is adduced, and it is shown how, on either conception, one can address a specific challenge Ned Block has raised to this evidence.

The right to be forgotten enables individuals to remove certain links from search results that appear when their names are entered as search terms. Formulated as a distinct application of the general right to privacy, the right to be forgotten has proven highly controversial, for two reasons. First, it is difficult to see how the specific right to be forgotten can apply to the withdrawal of public information, since the general right to privacy typically covers the disclosure of private information. (...) Second, as a putative right to withdraw information from public reach, the right to be forgotten poses a threat to freedom of speech, which depends on the accessibility of information. By responding to these two objections, this paper develops a novel account of the right to be forgotten, understood as a claim of withdrawal grounded in both privacy and free speech interests. -/- . (shrink)

Healthcare is becoming increasingly automated with the development and deployment of care robots. There are many benefits to care robots but they also pose many challenging ethical issues. This paper takes care robots for the elderly as the subject of analysis, building on previous literature in the domain of the ethics and design of care robots. Using the value sensitive design approach to technology design, this paper extends its application to care robots by integrating the values of care, values that (...) are specific to AI, and higher-scale values such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The ethical issues specific to care robots for the elderly are discussed at length alongside examples of specific design requirements that work to ameliorate these ethical concerns. (shrink)

This is a primer on Steven James Bartlett's book CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON: HORIZONS OF POSSIBILITY AND MEANING. ●●●●● -/- Some books are long and complex. The Critique of Impure Reason is such a book. It is long enough and complex enough so that it may be a service to some readers to offer a primer to introduce and partially summarize the book’s objectives and method. Here, the author of Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning provides (...) such a guide, a vade mecum to accompany a reader should he or she embark on a study of the long and complex work. ●●●●● -/- The book is available in a printed edition, ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6, from online booksellers such as Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and through independent bookstores. The book is also available as an eBook, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5458352, through Zenodo, PhilSci, PhilPapers, HAL, and other online archives. (shrink)

I defend a new version of the non-identity theodicy. After presenting the theodicy, I reply to a series of objections. I then argue that my approach improves upon similar approaches in the literature.

For anyone approaching the Encheiridion of Epictetus for the first time, this book provides a comprehensive guide to understanding a complex philosophical text. Including a full translation and clear explanatory commentaries, Epictetus's 'Encheiridion' introduces readers to a hugely influential work of Stoic philosophy. Scott Aikin and William O. Stephens unravel the core themes of Stoic ethics found within this ancient handbook. Focusing on the core themes of self-control, seeing things as they are, living according to nature, owning one's roles (...) and fulfilling the responsibilities that those roles entail, the authors elucidate the extremely challenging ideas in Epictetus's brisk chapters. Divided into five distinct parts, this book provides readers with: -/- - A new translation of the Encheiridion by William O. Stephens. - A new introduction to ancient Stoicism, its system of concepts, and the ancient figures who shaped it. - A fresh treatment of the notorious and counter-intuitive 'Stoic paradoxes'. - An accessible overview of the origin and historical context of the Encheiridion. - Detailed commentaries on each chapter of the Encheiridion that clarify its recurring themes and highlight their interconnections. - Careful attention to the presentation of the arguments embedded in Epictetus's aphoristic style. - A thoughtful discussion of serious criticisms of Epictetus's Stoicism and replies to these objections. -/- Written with clarity and authority, Epictetus's 'Encheiridion' provides a foundation from which readers can understand this important text and engage with the fundamental questions of Stoic philosophy and ethics. This guide will aid teachers of Epictetus, students encountering Stoicism for the first time, and readers seeking a greater understanding of Stoic ethics. (shrink)

Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is an established method for integrating values into technical design. It has been applied to different technologies and, more recently, to artificial intelligence (AI). We argue that AI poses a number of challenges specific to VSD that require a somewhat modified VSD approach. Machine learning (ML), in particular, poses two challenges. First, humans may not understand how an AI system learns certain things. This requires paying attention to values such as transparency, explicability, and accountability. Second, ML (...) may lead to AI systems adapting in ways that ‘disembody’ the values embedded in them. To address this, we propose a threefold modified VSD approach: 1) integrating a known set of VSD principles (AI4SG) as design norms from which more specific design requirements can be derived; 2) distinguishing between values that are promoted and respected by the design to ensure outcomes that not only do no harm but also contribute to good; and 3) extending the VSD process to encompass the whole life cycle of an AI technology in order to monitor unintended value consequences and redesign as needed. We illustrate our VSD for AI approach with an example use case of a SARS-CoV-2 contact tracing app. (shrink)

One might think that if the majority of virtue signallers judge that a proposition is true, then there is significant evidence for the truth of that proposition. Given the Condorcet Jury Theorem, individual virtue signallers need not be very reliable for the majority judgment to be very likely to be correct. Thus, even people who are skeptical of the judgments of individual virtue signallers should think that if a majority of them judge that a proposition is true, then that provides (...) significant evidence that the proposition is true. We argue that this is mistaken. Various empirical studies converge on the following point: humans are very conformist in the contexts in which virtue signalling occurs. And stereotypical virtue signallers are even more conformist in such contexts. So we should be skeptical of the claim that virtue signallers are sufficiently independent for the Condorcet Jury Theorem to apply. We do not seek to decisively rule out the relevant application of the Condorcet Jury Theorem. But we do show that careful consideration of the available evidence should make us very skeptical of that application. Consequently, a defense of virtue signalling would need to engage with these findings and show that despite our strong tendencies for conformism, our judgements are sufficiently independent for the Condorcet Jury Theorem to apply. This suggests new directions for the debate about the epistemology of virtue signalling. (shrink)

[A Polish translation of Steven James Bartlett, “Phenomenology of the Implicit,” Dialectica: Revue international de philosophie de la connaissance, Vol. 29, Nos. 2-3, 1975, pp. 173-188.] -/- This paper marks a juncture between the author’s studies in phenomenology and the transition he made to a study of what he has called a “metalogic of reference.” Published in 1974 in Polish translation, followed by its publication in English in 1975, “Phenomenology of the Implicit” describes the author’s “translation schema” that permits (...) certain of the central goals of Husserlian transcendental philosophy to be transposed to a framework that studies the preconditions of valid reference. The result of this translation was the development of the author’s “de-projective” approach to phenomenology, which he later dissociated from phenomenology in the form of a pure metalogic of reference. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 148-168, March 2022.

Governments around the world have faced the challenge of how to respond to the recent outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease. Some have reacted by greatly restricting the freedom of citizens, while others have opted for less drastic policies. In this paper, I draw a parallel with vaccination ethics to conceptualize two distinct approaches to COVID-19 that I call altruistic and lockdown. Given that the individual measures necessary to limit the spread of the virus can in principle be achieved voluntarily (...) as well as through enforcement, the question arises of how much freedom governments ought to give citizens to adopt the required measures. I argue that an altruistic approach is preferable on moral grounds: it preserves important citizen freedoms, avoids a number of potential injustices, and gives people a much-needed sense of meaning in precarious times. (shrink)

There are two ways to characterize symmetric relations. One is intensional: necessarily, _Rxy_ iff _Ryx_. In some discussions of relations, however, what is important is whether or not a relation gives rise to the same completion of a given type (fact, state of affairs, or proposition) for each of its possible applications to some fixed relata. Kit Fine calls relations that do ‘strictly symmetric’. Is there is a difference between the notions of necessary and strict symmetry that would prevent them (...) from being used interchangeably in such discussions? I show that there is. While the notions coincide assuming an intensional account of relations and their completions, according to which relations/completions are identical if they are necessarily coinstantiated/equivalent, they come apart assuming a hyperintensional account, which individuates relations and completions more finely on the basis of relations’ real definitions. I establish this by identifying two definable relations, each of which is necessarily symmetric but nonetheless results in distinct facts when it applies to the same objects in opposite orders. In each case, I argue that these facts are distinct because they have different grounds. (shrink)

Bioethics, Volume 36, Issue 6, Page 687-698, July 2022.

Pre-publication certification through peer review stands in need of philosophical examination. In this paper, philosopher-psychologist Steven James Bartlett recalls the arguments marshalled four hundred years ago by English poet John Milton against restraint of publication by the "gatekeepers of publication," AKA today's peer reviewers.

In “Desire as Belief” and “Desire as Belief II,” David Lewis ( 1988 , 1996 ) considers the anti-Humean position that beliefs about the good require corresponding desires, which is his way of understanding the idea that beliefs about the good are capable of motivating behavior. He translates this anti-Humean claim into decision theoretic terms and demonstrates that it leads to absurdity and contradiction. As Ruth Weintraub ( 2007 ) has shown, Lewis’ argument goes awry at the outset. His decision (...) theoretic formulation of anti-Humeanism is one that no sensible anti-Humean would endorse. My aim is to demonstrate that Lewis’ infelicitous rendering of anti-Humeanism really does undermine the force of his arguments. To accomplish this, I begin by developing a more adequate decision theoretic rendering of the anti-Humean position. After showing that my formulation of anti-Humeanism constitutes a plausible interpretation of the anti-Humean thesis, I go on to demonstrate that if we adopt this more accurate rendition of anti-Humeanism, the view is no longer susceptible to arguments like the ones Lewis has devised. I thereby provide a more robust response to Lewis’ arguments than has yet been offered, and in the process I develop a formulation of anti-Humeanism that creates the possibility for future decision theoretic arguments that, unlike Lewis’, speak directly to the plausibility of anti-Humeanism. (shrink)

This paper argues that although moral intuitions are insufficient for making judgments on new technological innovations, they maintain great utility for informing responsible innovation. To do this, this paper employs the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) methodology as an illustrative example of how stakeholder values can be better distilled to inform responsible innovation. Further, it is argued that moral intuitions are necessary for determining stakeholder values required for the design of responsible technologies. This argument is supported by the claim that the (...) moral intuitions of stakeholders allow designers to conceptualize stakeholder values and incorporate them into the early phases of design. It is concluded that design-for-values (DFV) frameworks like the VSD methodology can remain potent if developers adopt heuristic tools to diminish the influence of cognitive biases thus strengthening the reliability of moral intuitions. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy is a relatively recent discipline that employs experimental methods to investigate the intuitions, concepts, and assumptions behind traditional philosophical arguments, problems, and theories. While experimental philosophy initially served to interrogate the role that intuitions play in philosophy, it has since branched out to bring empirical methods to bear on problems within a variety of traditional areas of philosophy—including metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. To date, no connection has been made between developments in experimental philosophy (...) and philosophy of technology. In this paper, I develop and defend a research program for an experimental philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Safe-by-Design (SBD) frameworks for the development of emerging technologies have become an ever more popular means by which scholars argue that transformative emerging technologies can safely incorporate human values. One such popular SBD methodology is called Value Sensitive Design (VSD). A central tenet of this design methodology is to investigate stakeholder values and design those values into technologies during early stage research and development (R&D). To accomplish this, the VSD framework mandates that designers consult the philosophical and ethical literature to (...) best determine how to weigh moral trade-offs. However, the VSD framework also concedes the universalism of moral values, particularly the values of freedom, autonomy, equality trust and privacy justice. This paper argues that the VSD methodology, particularly applied to nano-bio-info-cogno (NBIC) technologies, has an insufficient grounding for the determination of moral values. As such, an exploration of the value-investigations of VSD are deconstructed to illustrate both its strengths and weaknesses. This paper also provides possible modalities for the strengthening of the VSD methodology, particularly through the application of moral imagination and how moral imagination exceed the boundaries of moral intuitions in the development of novel technologies. (shrink)

People who report believing in God fear death. They also experience grief when someone they love dies. Philosophers and social scientists sometimes claim that this can only be plausibly explained by the hypothesis that people who claim to believe in God do not really believe in God. I show that this is mistaken. I identify three independently plausible explanations of why people who genuinely believe in God would have these behaviors and attitudes. First, there is an evolutionary explanation of why (...) the fear of death would be resilient even if one genuinely believes God has good things in store for us after death. Second, people often fear low probability outcomes. It may be that religious people are afraid of hell or the cessation of existence even if they judge those outcomes to have a low probability. Third, belief in God is typically combined with views according to which death is accompanied by the permanent loss and radical transformation of important relationships. (shrink)

Most engineers Fwork within social structures governing and governed by a set of values that primarily emphasise economic concerns. The majority of innovations derive from these loci. Given the effects of these innovations on various communities, it is imperative that the values they embody are aligned with those societies. Like other transformative technologies, artificial intelligence systems can be designed by a single organisation but be diffused globally, demonstrating impacts over time. This paper argues that in order to design for this (...) broad stakeholder group, engineers must adopt a systems thinking approach that allows them to understand the sociotechnicity of artificial intelligence systems across sociocultural domains. It claims that value sensitive design, and envisioning cards in particular, provides a solid first step towards helping designers harmonise human values, understood across spatiotemporal boundaries, with economic values, rather than the former coming at the opportunity cost of the latter. (shrink)

Although continued investments in nanotechnology are made, atomically precise manufacturing (APM) to date is still regarded as speculative technology. APM, also known as molecular manufacturing, is a token example of a converging technology, has great potential to impact and be affected by other emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and ICT. The development of APM thus can have drastic global impacts depending on how it is designed and used. This paper argues that the ethical issues that arise from APM (...) - as both a standalone technology or as a converging one - affects the roles of stakeholders in such a way as to warrant an alternate means furthering responsible innovation in APM research. This paper introduces a value-based design methodology called Value Sensitive Design (VSD) that may serve as a suitable framework to adequately cater to the values of stakeholders. Ultimately, it is concluded that VSD is a strong candidate framework for addressing the moral concerns of stakeholders during the preliminary stages of technological development. (shrink)

This research examines the most important historical, political, economic, social, cultural, and religious factors before, during, and after the reign of Communism in Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 2021 and their effect on the extreme increase in atheism and decrease in Christianity, particularly Roman Catholicism, in the present-day Czech Republic. It devotes special attention to the role of the Clandestine Catholic Church (Ecclesia Silentii) and the changing policies of the Holy See vis-à-vis this Church, examining these policies' impact on the continuing (...) decline of Roman Catholicism in the Czech Republic after the collapse of Communism. The article also deals with Pope Pius XII's Secret Mandates of 1948-1950, the Second Vatican Council, and the Holy See's Ostpolitik. Scholars, who previously relied only on the views of the Czechs, blame the unprecedented drop in Christianity, the near-total destruction of the Catholic Church, and the rise in atheism on the Czechoslovak communist government's four decades of totalitarianism. Although the increase in atheism and decrease in Christianity were substantial during the era of Communism from 1948 to 1989, our data indicate that the decline in Christianity, particularly the historically predominating Roman Catholicism, did not commence with the 1948 communist coup d’état but traces its origins to the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the conclusion of WWI and the establishment of Czechoslovakia on October 28, 1918. What's more, this research shows that the most significant and unprecedented steep deterioration of the Christian Faith, namely Roman Catholicism, did not occur during the era of Communism but only after the Czechoslovak communist government collapsed in 1989. This massive decay did not happen even during the most extraordinary communist persecution of the Catholic Church during the era of Stalinism in Czechoslovakia. This research further finds that the Holy See's ill-advised policies and systematic, sustained, and prevalent failures in leadership, guidance, and teachings are responsible for the near destruction of the Roman Catholic Church and especially the end destruction of the Clandestine Catholic Church (Ecclesia Silentii), in the Czech and Slovak Republics after the fall of Communism. These failures furthermore contributed to the Czech Republic, the historical lands of Bohemia and Moravia that once were in the center of Christendom, degenerating into the most atheist country in Europe and the world today. (shrink)

While examining the important role of imagination in making moral judgments, John Dewey and Moral Imagination focuses new attention on the relationship between American pragmatism and ethics. Steven Fesmire takes up threads of Dewey's thought that have been largely unexplored and elaborates pragmatism's distinctive contribution to understandings of moral experience, inquiry, and judgment. Building on two Deweyan notions—that moral character, belief, and reasoning are part of a social and historical context and that moral deliberation is an imaginative, dramatic rehearsal (...) of possibilities—Fesmire shows that moral imagination can be conceived as a process of aesthetic perception and artistic creativity. Fesmire's original readings of Dewey shed new light on the imaginative process, human emotional make-up and expression, and the nature of moral judgment. This original book presents a robust and distinctly pragmatic approach to ethics, politics, moral education, and moral conduct. [The downloadable sample is Chapter Seven, "The Moral Artist."]. (shrink)

A RELATIVISTIC THEORY OF PHENOMENOLOCICAL CONSTITUTION: A SELF-REFERENTIAL, TRANSCENDENTAL APPROACH TO CONCEPTUAL PATHOLOGY. (Vol. I: French; Vol. II: English) -/- Steven James Bartlett -/- Doctoral dissertation director: Paul Ricoeur, Université de Paris Other doctoral committee members: Jean Ladrière and Alphonse de Waehlens, Université Catholique de Louvain Defended publically at the Université Catholique de Louvain, January, 1971. -/- Universite de Paris X (France), 1971. 797pp. -/- The principal objective of the work is to construct an analytically precise methodology which can (...) serve to identify, eliminate, and avoid a certain widespread _conceptual fault_ or _misconstruction_, called a "projective misconstruction" or "projection" by the author. It is argued that this variety of error in our thinking (i) infects a great number of our everyday, scientific, and philosophical concepts, claims, and theories, (ii) has largely been undetected, and (iii), when remedied, leads to a less controversial and more rigorous elucidation of the transcendental preconditions of human knowledge than has traditionally been possible. The dissertation identifies, perhaps for the first time, a _projective_ variety of self-referential inconsistency, and proposes an innovative, self-reflexive approach to transcendental argument in a logical and phenomenological context. The strength of the approach lies, it is claimed, in the fact that a rejection of the approach is possible only on pain of self-referential inconsistency. The argument is developed in the following stages: A general introduction identifies the central theme of the work, defines the scope of applicability of the results reached, and sketches the direction of the studies that follow. The preliminary discussion culminates in a recognition of the need for a _critique of impure reason_. The body of the work is divided into two parts: Section I seeks to develop a methodology, on a purely formal basis, which is, on the one hand, capable of being used to study the transcendental foundations of the special sciences, including its own proper transcendental foundation. On the other hand, the methodology proposed is intended as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool for dealing with _projective_ uses of concepts. The approach initiates an analysis of concepts from a perspective which views _knowledge as coordination_. Section I describes formal structures that possess the status of preconditions in such a coordinative account of knowledge. Special attention is given to the preconditions of _identifying reference_ to logical particulars. The first section attempts, then, to provide a self-referential, transcendental methodology which is essentially revisionary in that it is motivated by a concern for conceptual error-elimination. Phenomenology, considered in its unique capacity as a self-referential, transcendental discipline, is of special relevance to the study. Section II accordingly examines a group of concepts which come into question in connection with the central theme of _phenomenological constitution_. The "_de-projective methodology_" developed in Section I is applied to these concepts that have a foundational importance in transcendental phenomenology. A translation is, in effect, proposed from the language of consciousness to a language in which preconditions of referring are investigated. The result achieved is the elimination of self-defeating, projective concepts from a rigorous, phenomenological study of the constitutive foundations of science. The dissertation was presented in a two volume, double-language format for the convenience of French and English researchers. Each volume contains an analytical index. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) methodology provides a principled approach to embedding common values in to AI systems both early and throughout the design process. To do so, it draws on an important case study: the evidence and final report of the UK Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence. This empirical investigation shows that the different and often disparate stakeholder groups that are implicated in AI design and use share some common values that can be used to (...) further strengthen design coordination efforts. VSD is shown to be both able to distill these common values as well as provide a framework for stakeholder coordination. (shrink)

Introduction to the Special Volume, “Method, Science and Mathematics: Neo-Kantianism and Analytic Philosophy,” edited by Scott Edgar and Lydia Patton. At its core, analytic philosophy concerns urgent questions about philosophy’s relation to the formal and empirical sciences, questions about philosophy’s relation to psychology and the social sciences, and ultimately questions about philosophy’s place in a broader cultural landscape. This picture of analytic philosophy shapes this collection’s focus on the history of the philosophy of mathematics, physics, and psychology. The following (...) essays uncover, reflect on, and exemplify modes of philosophy that are engaged with these allied disciplines. They make the case that, to the extent that analytic philosophers are still concerned with philosophy’s ties to these disciplines, we would do well to pay attention to neo-Kantian views on those ties. (shrink)

Religious fictionalism is the theory that it is morally and intellectually legitimate to affirm religious sentences and to engage in public and private religious practices, without believing the content of religious claims. This article discusses the main features of fictionalism, contrasts hermeneutic, and revolutionary kinds of fictionalism and explores possible historical and recent examples of religious fictionalism. Such examples are found in recent theories of faith, pragmatic approaches to religion, and mystical traditions in religious theology.

For any essential property God has, there is an ability He does not have. He is unable to bring about any state of affairs in which He does not have that property. Such inabilities seem to preclude omnipotence. After making trouble for the standard responses to this problem, I offer my own solution: God is not omnipotent. This may seem like a significant loss for the theist. But I show that it is not. The theist may abandon the doctrine that (...) God is omnipotent without scaling back the extent of His power and without denying that He has all perfections. (shrink)

Kopeikin (forthcoming a, forthcoming b) and Rachels’ (1975) bare-difference cases elicit the intuition that killing is no different than letting die. Hill’s (2018) bare-difference cases elicit the intuition that killing is worse than letting die. At least one of the intuitions must be mistaken. This calls for an error theory. Hill has an error theory for the intuition elicited by the Kopeikin/Rachels’ cases. Kopeikin and Rachels have an error theory for the intuition elicited by Hill’s cases. A natural thought is (...) that we are at an impasse. There is no plausible basis for preferring one error theory to the other. I argue that this natural thought is mistaken. Not all error theories are equal. Preliminary considerations favor Hill’s error theory and disfavor the Kopeikin/Rachels error theory. But preliminary considerations are not decisive. The way forward in the bare-difference debate is not to evaluate intuitions. The intuitions are in. What is left to do now is evaluate the comparative status of the Hill and the Kopeikin/Rachels error theories. (shrink)