The focus of the study is on the values, priorities and arguments needed to advance ‘design for sustainability’. The discussion critiques conventions related to innovation and technology and offers a product design approach that emphasises minimal intervention, integrated thinking-and-doing, reinstating the familiar, localization and the particularities of place. These interdependent themes are discussed in terms of their relationship to design for sustainability and are clarified through the conceptualization, design, production and use of a simple functional object that is, essentially, a (...) ‘symbolic sustainable artefact’. Although it is fully functional, its practical usefulness in contemporary society would probably be seen as marginal. Its potential contribution is as a symbol of an alternative direction. It asks us to consider aspects of our humanity that are beyond instrumental approaches. It challenges sustainable initiatives that become so caught up in practical and environmental concerns that they fail to question the underlying values, priorities and social drivers which affect how we act in the world; those behaviours and norms that have created the very problems we are so urgently trying to tackle. The discussion is accompanied by a parallel series of photographs that document the relationship between argument, locale and the creation of the conceptual artefact. These photographs convey some of the qualitative differences between the place of much contemporary arte- fact acquisition, i.e. the shopping mall, and the particular locale that yielded the artefact created during this study; they are also useful in conveying the potential relationship that exist between place and the aesthetics of functional objects. (shrink)

Cross cultural studies have played a pivotal role in elucidating the extent to which behavioral and mental characteristics depend on specific environmental influences. Surprisingly, little field research has been carried out on a fundamentally important perceptual ability, namely the perception of biological motion. In this report, we present details of studies carried out with the help of volunteers from the Mundurucu indigene, a group of people native to Amazonian territories in Brazil. We employed standard biological motion perception tasks inspired by (...) over 30 years of laboratory research, in which observers attempt to decipher the walking direction of point-light (PL) humans and animals. Do our effortless skills at perceiving biological activity from PL animations, as revealed in laboratory settings, generalize to people who have never before seen representational depictions of human and animal activity? The results of our studies provide a clear answer to this important, previously unanswered question. Mundurucu observers readily perceived the coherent, global shape depicted in PL walkers, and experienced the classic inversion effects that are typically found when such stimuli are turned upside down. In addition, their performance was in accord with important recent findings in the literature, in the abundant ease with which they extracted direction information from local motion invariants alone. We conclude that the effortless, veridical perception of PL biological motion is a spontaneous and universal perceptual ability, occurring both inside and outside traditional laboratory environments. (shrink)

This chapter puts to rest for all of eternity the self-undermining charge against conciliationism.

Sometimes we learn through the use of imagination. The epistemology of imagination asks how this is possible. One barrier to progress on this question has been a lack of agreement on how to characterize imagination; for example, is imagination a mental state, ability, character trait, or cognitive process? This paper argues that we should characterize imagination as a cognitive ability, exercises of which are cognitive processes. Following dual process theories of cognition developed in cognitive science, the set of imaginative processes (...) is then divided into two kinds: one that is unconscious, uncontrolled, and effortless, and another that is conscious, controlled, and effortful. This paper outlines the different epistemological strengths and weaknesses of the two kinds of imaginative process, and argues that a dual process model of imagination helpfully resolves or clarifies issues in the epistemology of imagination and the closely related epistemology of thought experiments. (shrink)

I examine Zhu Xi's investigation thesis, the claim that a necessary condition (in ordinary cases) for one’s acting fully virtuously is one’s investigating the all-pervasive pattern in things (gewu格物). I identify four key objections that the thesis faces, which I label the rationalism, elitism, demandingness, and irrelevance worries. Zhu Xi, I argue, has resources for responding to each of these worries, and for defending a broadly intellectualist conception of fully virtuous agency.

Traditionally, Aristotle is held to believe that philosophical contemplation is valuable for its own sake, but ultimately useless. In this volume, Matthew D. Walker offers a fresh, systematic account of Aristotle's views on contemplation's place in the human good. The book situates Aristotle's views against the background of his wider philosophy, and examines the complete range of available textual evidence. On this basis, Walker argues that contemplation also benefits humans as perishable living organisms by actively guiding human life (...) activity, including human self-maintenance. Aristotle's views on contemplation's place in the human good thus cohere with his broader thinking about how living organisms live well. A novel exploration of Aristotle's views on theory and practice, this volume will interest scholars and students of both ancient Greek ethics and natural philosophy. It will also appeal to those working in other disciplines including classics, ethics, and political theory. (shrink)

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

Controversial and provocative, To Be Real is a blueprint for the creation of a new political force.

This chapter offers a complete account of Aristotle’s underexplored treatment of the virtue of wittiness (eutrapelia) in Nicomachean Ethics IV.8. It addresses the following questions: (1) What, according to Aristotle, is this virtue and what is its structure? (2) How do Aristotle’s moral psychological views inform Aristotle’s account, and how might Aristotle’s discussions of other, more familiar virtues, enable us to understand wittiness better? In particular, what passions does the virtue of wittiness concern, and how might the virtue (and its (...) attendant vices) be related to the virtue of temperance (and its attendant vices)? (3) How does wittiness, as an ethical virtue, benefit its possessor? (4) How can Aristotle resolve some key tensions that his introducing a virtue of wittiness apparently generates for his ethics? In addition to exploring these questions, this chapter challenges some commonly accepted accounts of Aristotle’s views on the nature of the laughable. (shrink)

Imagination is necessary for scientific practice, yet there are no in vivo sociological studies on the ways that imagination is taught, thought of, or evaluated by scientists. This article begins to remedy this by presenting the results of a qualitative study performed on two systems biology laboratories. I found that the more advanced a participant was in their scientific career, the more they valued imagination. Further, positive attitudes toward imagination were primarily due to the perceived role of imagination in problem-solving. (...) But not all problem-solving episodes involved clear appeals to imagination, only maximally specific problems did. This pattern is explained by the presence of an implicit norm governing imagination use in the two labs: only use imagination on maximally specific problems, and only when all other available methods have failed. This norm was confirmed by the participants, and I argue that it has epistemological reasons in its favour. I also found that its strength varies inversely with career stage, such that more advanced scientists do (and should) occasionally bring their imaginations to bear on more general problems. A story about scientific pedagogy explains the trend away from (and back to) imagination over the course of a scientific career. Finally, some positive recommendations are given for a more imagination-friendly scientific pedagogy. (shrink)

This is the introduction to the Routledge Companion to Thought Experiments.

We might think that thought experiments are at their most powerful or most interesting when they produce new knowledge. This would be a mistake; thought experiments that seek understanding are just as powerful and interesting, and perhaps even more so. A growing number of epistemologists are emphasizing the importance of understanding for epistemology, arguing that it should supplant knowledge as the central notion. In this chapter, I bring the literature on understanding in epistemology to bear on explicating the different ways (...) that thought experiments increase three important kinds of understanding: explanatory, objectual and practical. (shrink)

Computational systems biologists create and manipulate computational models of biological systems, but they do not always have straightforward epistemic access to the content and behavioural profile of such models because of their length, coding idiosyncrasies, and formal complexity. This creates difficulties both for modellers in their research groups and for their bioscience collaborators who rely on these models. In this paper we introduce a new kind of visualization that was developed to address just this sort of epistemic opacity. The visualization (...) is unusual in that it depicts the dynamics and structure of a computer model instead of that model’s target system, and because it is generated algorithmically. Using considerations from epistemology and aesthetics, we explore how this new kind of visualization increases scientific understanding of the content and function of computer models in systems biology to reduce epistemic opacity. (shrink)

According to Nicomachean Ethics I.7 1098a16–18, eudaimonia consists in activity of soul “according to the best and most final” virtue. Ongoing debate between inclusivist and exclusivist readers of this passage has focused on the referent of “the best and most final” virtue. I argue that even if one accepts the exclusivist's answer to this reference question, one still needs an account of what it means for activity of soul to accord with the best and most final virtue. I examine the (...) nature of this accordance relation and defend a novel inclusivist reading of the whole passage. (shrink)

How do we know what we know and how do we derive meaning and value is one of my basic questions.

What role does the imagination play in scientific progress? After examining several studies in cognitive science, I argue that one thing the imagination does is help to increase scientific understanding, which is itself indispensable for scientific progress. Then, I sketch a transcendental justification of the role of imagination in this process.

Aristotle’s views on the choiceworthiness of friends might seem both internally inconsistent and objectionably instrumentalizing. On the one hand, Aristotle maintains that perfect friends or virtue friends are choiceworthy and lovable for their own sake, and not merely for the sake of further ends. On the other hand, in Nicomachean Ethics IX.9, Aristotle appears somehow to account for the choiceworthiness of such friends by reference to their utility as sources of a virtuous agent’s robust self-awareness. I examine Aristotle’s views on (...) the utility and choiceworthiness of friends, and offer a novel reading of Nicomachean Ethics IX.9. On this reading, Aristotle accepts a version of instrumental conditionalism about final value, that is, the thesis that goods (including friends) can be choiceworthy for their own sake (i.e., possess final or end value) at least partly on account of their instrumental properties. In articulating what sort of instrumental conditionalism it is reasonable to attribute to Aristotle, I argue that Aristotle appeals to the utility of perfect friends as part of a broadly material causal account of why such friends are choiceworthy for their own sake. On this reading, perfect friends are not choiceworthy for the sake of their utility in eliciting self-awareness; rather, their choiceworthiness for their own sake is (at least partly) realized in, or constituted by, their conduciveness to the virtuous agent’s self-awareness. This reading, I argue, frees Aristotle from the charge of inconsistency: Aristotle can appeal to the conduciveness of perfect friends to the virtuous agent’s self-awareness as a way of explaining why such friends are choiceworthy for their own sake. (shrink)

When philosophers discuss the possibility of machines making scientific discoveries, they typically focus on discoveries in physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics. Observing the rapid increase of computer-use in science, however, it becomes natural to ask whether there are any scientific domains out of reach for machine discovery. For example, could machines also make discoveries in qualitative social science? Is there something about humans that makes us uniquely suited to studying humans? Is there something about machines that would bar them from (...) such activity? A close look at the methodology of interpretive social science reveals several abilities necessary to make a social scientific discovery, and one capacity necessary to possess any of them is imagination. For machines to make discoveries in social science, therefore, they must possess imagination algorithms. (shrink)

Fragments of Aristotle’s lost Protrepticus seem to offer inconsistent arguments for the value of contemplation (one argument appealing to contemplation's uselessness, the other appealing to its utility). In this paper, I argue that these arguments are mutually consistent. Further, I argue that, contrary to first appearances, Aristotle has resources in the Protrepticus for explaining how contemplation, even if it has divine objects, can nevertheless be useful in the way in which he claims, viz., for providing cognitive access to boundary markers (...) (horoi) of the human good. (shrink)

John D. Norton is responsible for a number of influential views in contemporary philosophy of science. This paper will discuss two of them. The material theory of induction claims that inductive arguments are ultimately justified by their material features, not their formal features. Thus, while a deductive argument can be valid irrespective of the content of the propositions that make up the argument, an inductive argument about, say, apples, will be justified (or not) depending on facts about apples. The argument (...) view of thought experiments claims that thought experiments are arguments, and that they function epistemically however arguments do. These two views have generated a great deal of discussion, although there hasn’t been much written about their combination. I argue that despite some interesting harmonies, there is a serious tension between them. I consider several options for easing this tension, before suggesting a set of changes to the argument view that I take to be consistent with Norton’s fundamental philosophical commitments, and which retain what seems intuitively correct about the argument view. These changes require that we move away from a unitary epistemology of thought experiments and towards a more pluralist position. (shrink)

Scientists imagine for epistemic reasons, and these imaginings can be better or worse. But what does it mean for an imagining to be epistemically better or worse? There are at least three metaepistemological frameworks that present different answers to this question: epistemological consequentialism, deontic epistemology, and virtue epistemology. This paper presents empirical evidence that scientists adopt each of these different epistemic frameworks with respect to imagination, but argues that the way they do this is best explained if scientists are fundamentally (...) epistemic consequentialists about imagination. (shrink)

I briefly defend the philosophical cogency of inclusivism about human flourishing, the view that intrinsic goods are valuable for the sake of flourishing by somehow composing flourishing. In particular, I consider the stuctured inclusivist view that intrinsic goods are components of flourishing as body parts are components of a body. As a test case, I examine the conception of human flourishing offered by the early Confucian philosopher Mengzi (Mencius). I argue that by appealing to Mengzi’s account, one can respond to (...) worries (such as those of Richard Kraut) about how such a structured inclusivism could possibly make sense. (shrink)

Critics of the computational connectionism of the last decade suggest that it shares undesirable features with earlier empiricist or associationist approaches, and with behaviourist theories of learning. To assess the accuracy of this charge the works of earlier writers are examined for the presence of such features, and brief accounts of those found are given for Herbert Spencer, William James and the learning theorists Thorndike, Pavlov and Hull. The idea that cognition depends on associative connections among large networks of neurons (...) is indeed one with precedents, although the implications of this for psychological issues have been interpreted variously — not all versions of connectionism are alike. (shrink)

Given the importance of theoretical wisdom in Aristotle’s account of the human good, it is striking that contemporary virtue ethicists have been virtually silent about this intellectual virtue and what contribution it makes – or could make – toward human flourishing. In this paper, I examine, and respond to, two main worries that account for theoretical wisdom’s current marginality. Along the way, I sketch a neo-Aristotelian conception of theoretical wisdom, and argue that this intellectual virtue is more central to the (...) concerns of contemporary virtue ethicists than it has perhaps so far seemed. (shrink)

In Plato’s Symposium, the mysterious Apollodorus recounts to an unnamed comrade, and to us, Aristodemus’ story of just what happened at Agathon’s drinking party. Since Apollodorus did not attend the party, however, it is unclear what relevance he could have to our understanding of Socrates’ speech, or to the Alcibiadean “satyr and silenic drama” (222d) that follows. The strangeness of Apollodorus is accentuated by his recession into the background after only two Stephanus pages. What difference—if any—does Apollodorus make to the (...) Symposium? Does his inclusion call the dramatic and philosophical unity of the work into question? I argue that despite initial appearances, Plato has important philosophical reasons for including Apollodorus as a character. Far from being an odd appendage to an otherwise complete narrative, the figure of Apollodorus is useful for our understanding of Socrates’s conception of eros later in the work. (shrink)

On the one hand, Hume accepts the view -- which he attributes primarily to Stoicism -- that there exists a determinate best and happiest life for human beings, a way of life led by a figure whom Hume calls "the true philosopher." On the other hand, Hume accepts that view -- which he attributes to Scepticism -- that there exists a vast plurality of good and happy lives, each potentially equally choiceworthy. In this paper, I reconcile Hume's apparently conflicting commitments: (...) I argue that Hume's "Sceptical" pluralism about the character of the happiest life need not conflict with his "Stoic" advocacy of the supreme happiness of the true philosopher, given Hume's flexible understanding of how one might live as a true philosopher. (shrink)

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois introduces double consciousness as a result of racial prejudice and oppression. Explained as a state of confliction felt by black Americans, Du Bois presents double consciousness as integral to understanding the black experience. Later philosophers question the importance of double consciousness to current race discussions, but this paper contends that double consciousness provides valuable insights into black and white relations. To do this, I will utilize the modern slang term, “Oreo,” to (...) highlight how a perceived incompatibility between blacks and whites could prevent America from achieving a greater unity. (shrink)

Can an ugly experiment be a good experiment? Philosophers have identified many beautiful experiments and explored ways in which their beauty might be connected to their epistemic value. In contrast, the present chapter seeks out (and celebrates) ugly experiments. Among the ugliest are those being designed by AI algorithms. Interestingly, in the contexts where such experiments tend to be deployed, low aesthetic value correlates with high epistemic value. In other words, ugly experiments can be good. Given this, we should conclude (...) that beauty is not generally necessary or sufficient for epistemic value, and increasing beauty will not generally tend to increase epistemic value. (shrink)

Confucius and Aristotle both put a primacy on the task of ethical self-cultivation. Unlike Aristotle, who emphasizes the instrumental value of legal punishment for cultivation’s sake, Confucius raises worries about the practice of punishment. Punishment, and the threat of punishment, Confucius suggests, actually threatens to warp human motivation and impede our ethical development. In this paper, I examine Confucius’ worries about legal punishment, and consider how a dialogue on punishment between Confucius and Aristotle might proceed. I explore how far apart (...) these thinkers actually stand, and examine the possibilities for a rapprochement between them. Doing so brings to light the self-cultivation perspective’s range of resources for thinking about punishment’s justification. (shrink)

This chapter examines key Confucian worries about the Aristotelian sophos as a model of human flourishing. How strong are these worries? Do Aristotelians have good replies to them? Could the Aristotelian sophos, and this figure's distinguishing feature, sophia, be more appealing to the Confucian than they initially appear?

This paper describes a thought experiment that shows that people can travel faster than the speed of light: we are not bound by Einstein’s speed limit. Of course, any two-bit sci-fi story can describe faster-than-light travel. The difference is that the thought experiment proposed here is consistent with Einstein’s theory. The way to extricate ourselves from this seeming contradiction is to acknowledge that persons are not entirely physical. In other words, the explanation for why faster-than-light travel is possible for persons, (...) yet consistent with our best physics, is that persons are not wholly physical. The thought experiment also has implications for our understanding of death, specifically, the death of the body may not be the death of the person. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics X.7–8, Aristotle defends a striking view about the good for human beings. According to Aristotle, the single happiest way of life is organized around philosophical contemplation. According to the narrowness worry, however, Aristotle's contemplative ideal is unduly Procrustean, restrictive, inflexible, and oblivious of human diversity. In this paper, I argue that Aristotle has resources for responding to the narrowness worry, and that his contemplative ideal can take due account of human diversity.

In fragments of the lost Protrepticus, preserved in Iamblichus, Aristotle responds to Isocrates’ worries about the excessive demandingness of theoretical philosophy. Contrary to Isocrates, Aristotle holds that such philosophy is generally feasible for human beings. In defense of this claim, Aristotle offers the progress argument, which appeals to early Greek philosophers’ rapid success in attaining exact understanding. In this paper, I explore and evaluate this argument. After making clarificatory exegetical points, I examine the argument’s premises in light of pressing worries (...) that the argument reasonably faces in its immediate intellectual context, the dispute between Isocrates and Aristotle. I also relate the argument to modern concerns about philosophical progress. I contend that the argument withstands these worries, and thereby constitutes a reasonable Aristotelian response to the Isocratean challenge. (shrink)

In fragments from the Protrepticus, Aristotle offers three linked arguments for the view that philosophy is easy. According to an obvious normative worry, however, Aristotle also seems to think that the easiness of many activities has little to do with their choiceworthiness. Hence, if the Protrepticus seeks to exhort its audience to philosophize on the basis of philosophy’s easiness, then perhaps the Protrepticus provides the wrong sort of hortatory appeal. In response, I briefly situate Aristotle’s arguments in their dialectical context. (...) On this basis, I elucidate what sort of easiness Aristotle attributes to philosophy, and what difference Aristotle thinks philosophy’s easiness makes to its choiceworthiness. (shrink)

Programs of drug testing welfare recipients are increasingly common in US states and have been considered elsewhere. Though often intensely debated, such programs are complicated to evaluate because their aims are ambiguous – aims like saving money may be in tension with aims like referring people to treatment. We assess such programs using a proportionality approach, which requires that for ethical acceptability a practice must be: reasonably likely to meet its aims, sufficiently important in purpose as to outweigh harms incurred, (...) and lower in costs than feasible alternatives. In the light of empirical findings, we argue that the programs fail the three requirements. Pursuing recreational drug users is not important in the light of costs incurred, while dependent users who may require referral are usually identifiable without testing and typically need a broader approach than one focussing on drugs. Drug testing of welfare recipients is therefore not ethically acceptable policy. (shrink)

I examine and compare Confucian wu-wei rule and Aristotelian non-imperative rule as two models of non-impositional rule. How exactly do non-impositional rulers, according to these thinkers, generate order? And how might a Confucian/Aristotelian dialogue concerning non-impositional rule in distinctively political contexts proceed? Are Confucians and Aristotelians in deep disagreement, or do they actually have more in common than they initially seem?

In the opening of Plato’s Lysis, Socrates criticizes the love-besotted Hippothales’ way of speaking to, and about, Hippothales’ yearned-for Lysis. Socrates subsequently proceeds to demonstrate (ἐπιδεῖξαι) how Hippothales should converse with Lysis (206c5–6). But how should we assess Socrates’ criticisms of, and demonstration to, Hippothales? Are they defensible by Socrates’ own standards, as well as independent criteria? In this note, I first articulate and assess Socrates’ criticisms of Hippothales. Second, I identify, examine, and respond to puzzles to which Socrates’ demonstration (...) to Hippothales gives rise. (shrink)

Attempts to ‘naturalize’ phenomenology challenge both traditional phenomenology and traditional approaches to cognitive science. They challenge Edmund Husserl’s rejection of naturalism and his attempt to establish phenomenology as a foundational transcendental discipline, and they challenge efforts to explain cognition through mainstream science. While appearing to be a retreat from the bold claims made for phenomenology, it is really its triumph. Naturalized phenomenology is spearheading a successful challenge to the heritage of Cartesian dualism. This converges with the reaction against Cartesian thought (...) within science itself. Descartes divided the universe between res cogitans, thinking substances, and res extensa, the mechanical world. The latter won with Newton and we have, in most of objective science since, literally lost our mind, hence our humanity. Despite Darwin, biologists remain children of Newton, and dream of a grand theory that is epistemologically complete and would allow lawful entailment of the evolution of the biosphere. This dream is no longer tenable. We now have to recognize that science and scientists are within and part of the world we are striving to comprehend, as proponents of endophysics have argued, and that physics, biology and mathematics have to be reconceived accordingly. Interpreting quantum mechanics from this perspective is shown to both illuminate conscious experience and reveal new paths for its further development. In biology we must now justify the use of the word “function”. As we shall see, we cannot prestate the ever new biological functions that arise and constitute the very phase space of evolution. Hence, we cannot mathematize the detailed becoming of the biosphere, nor write differential equations for functional variables we do not know ahead of time, nor integrate those equations, so no laws “entail” evolution. The dream of a grand theory fails. In place of entailing laws, a post-entailing law explanatory framework is proposed in which Actuals arise in evolution that constitute new boundary conditions that are enabling constraints that create new, typically unprestatable, Adjacent Possible opportunities for further evolution, in which new Actuals arise, in a persistent becoming. Evolution flows into a typically unprestatable succession of Adjacent Possibles. Given the concept of function, the concept of functional closure of an organism making a living in its world, becomes central. Implications for patterns in evolution include historical reconstruction, and statistical laws such as the distribution of extinction events, or species per genus, and the use of formal cause, not efficient cause, laws. (shrink)

The notion of Socratic Note Taking is introduced to enhance students’ learning from assigned readings. SNT features students asking questions and answering their own questions while doing the readings. To test the effectiveness of SNT, half the students from two sections of a philosophy course were assigned SNT on alternating weeks. Quizzes each week alternated between the two classes as either high or low stakes in a counterbalanced format. The design was a 2 x 2 x 2 within-participants factorial. On (...) ten-point quizzes, SNT made an average difference of 1.22 points. Furthermore, the results indicate that SNT is particularly effective with weaker students, e.g., we found a nearly three-point increase on ten-point quizzes for the weakest students. (shrink)

The literature of Twelve Step groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous contains apparently contradictory implications regarding powerlessness and personal responsibility. In this essay I examine the treatment of these concepts in Twelve Step literature and their implications for the self-conception of people in these programs. In the first section, I examine the literature to demonstrate that addicts are presented as powerless over, yet responsible for, their addictive behaviors. In the second section, I outline two potential ways people in Twelve Step programs (...) might reconcile this contradiction within their self-conception, but I argue that neither is satisfactory. In the third section, I draw on Paul Ricoeur's theory of narrative identity to develop an account of how someone ni a Twelve Step group could coherently understand herself as both powerless and responsible. (shrink)

Gavagai! or the Future History of the Animal Language Controversy By DAVID PREMACK.

I explore Aristotle’s account in the Nicomachean Ethics of how agents attain self-awareness through contemplation. I argue that Aristotle sets up an account of self-awareness through contemplating friends in Books VIII-IX that completes itself in Book X’s remarks on theoretical contemplation. I go on to provide an account of how contemplating the divine, on Aristotle’s view, elicits self-awareness.

1. Animal Cruelty Industrial farming is appallingly abusive to animals. Pigs. In America, nine-tenths of pregnant sows live in “gestation crates. ” These pens are so small that the animals can barely move. When the sows are first crated, they may flail around, in an attempt to get out. But soon they give up. Crated pigs often show signs of depression: they engage meaningless, repetitive behavior, like chewing the air or biting the bars of the stall. The sows live like (...) this for four months. Gestation crates will be phased out in Europe by the end of 2012, but they will still be used in America.1 In nature, pigs nurse their young for about thirteen weeks. But in industrial farms, piglets are taken from their mothers after about ten days. Because the piglets are weaned prematurely, they develop a lifelong craving to suck and chew. But the farmers don’t want them sucking and chewing on other pigs’ tails. So the growers routinely snip off the tails of all their pigs. They do this with a pair of pliers and no anesthetic. However, the whole tail is not removed; a tender stump remains. The point is to render the area sensitive, so the pigs being chewed on will fight back. Which they do.2 Over 113 million pigs are slaughtered each year in America.3 Typically, these pigs are castrated, their needle teeth are clipped, and one of their ears is notched for identification —all without pain relief.4 In nature, pigs spend up to three quarters of their waking hours foraging and exploring their environment.5 But in the factory farms, “tens of thousands of hogs spend their entire lives ignorant of earth or straw or sunshine, crowded together beneath a metal roof standing on metal slats suspended over a septic tank. ”6 Bored, and in constant pain, the pigs must perpetually inhale the fumes of their own waste. These pigs often get sick, and their ill health is exacerbated by the overcrowding. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Agriculture compared hog farms containing over 10,000 pigs—which is the norm—with farms containing under 2,000 pigs. (shrink)

Philosophical conceptual analysis is an experimental method. Focusing on this helps to justify it from the skepticism of experimental philosophers who follow Weinberg, Nichols & Stich. To explore the experimental aspect of philosophical conceptual analysis, I consider a simpler instance of the same activity: everyday linguistic interpretation. I argue that this, too, is experimental in nature. And in both conceptual analysis and linguistic interpretation, the intuitions considered problematic by experimental philosophers are necessary but epistemically irrelevant. They are like variables introduced (...) into mathematical proofs which drop out before the solution. Or better, they are like the hypotheses that drive science, which do not themselves need to be true. In other words, it does not matter whether or not intuitions are accurate as descriptions of the natural kinds that undergird philosophical concepts; the aims of conceptual analysis can still be met. (shrink)

SNePS, the Semantic Network Processing System 45, 54], has been designed to be a system for representing the beliefs of a natural-language-using intelligent system (a \cognitive agent"). It has always been the intention that a SNePS-based \knowledge base" would ultimatelybe built, not by a programmeror knowledge engineer entering representations of knowledge in some formallanguage or data entry system, but by a human informing it using a natural language (NL) (generally supposed to be English), or by the system reading books or (...) articles that had been prepared for human readers. Because of this motivation, the criteria for the development of SNePS have included: it should be able to represent anything and everything expressible in NL; it should be able to represent generic, as well as speci c information; it should be able to use the generic and the speci c information to reason and infer information implied by what it has been told; it cannot count on any particular order among the pieces of information it is given; it must continue to act reasonably even if the information it is given includes circular de nitions, recursive rules, and inconsistent information. (shrink)

Cognitive agents, whether human or computer, that engage in natural-language discourse and that have beliefs about the beliefs of other cognitive agents must be able to represent objects the way they believe them to be and the way they believe others believe them to be. They must be able to represent other cognitive agents both as objects of beliefs and as agents of beliefs. They must be able to represent their own beliefs, and they must be able to represent beliefs (...) as objects of beliefs. These requirements raise questions about the number of tokens of the belief representation language needed to represent believers and propositions in their normal roles and in their roles as objects of beliefs. In this paper, we explicate the relations among nodes, mental tokens, concepts, actual objects, concepts in the belief spaces of an agent and the agent's model of other agents, concepts of other cognitive agents, and propositions. We extend, deepen, and clarify our theory of intensional knowledge representation for natural-language processing, as presented in previous papers and in light of objections raised by others. The essential claim is that tokens in a knowledge-representation system represent only intensions and not extensions. We are pursuing this investigation by building CASSIE, a computer model of a cognitive agent and, to the extent she works, a cognitive agent herself. CASSIE's mind is implemented in the SNePS knowledge-representation and reasoning system. (shrink)