This piece lays out the framework for a special issue on the topic of "Fits and Misfits," published as volume 7, issue 1 of Puncta: A Journal of Critical Phenomenology. We discuss the relationship between the concept of misfitting, coined by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, and debility, coined by Jasbir Puar, in relationship to scholarship on Merleau-Ponty. We then introduce each of the eight articles in the special issue: Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's "What Misfitting Makes," Susan Bredlau's "Conversational Accessibility: Healthcare, Community, and the (...) Ethics of Everyday Encounters," Helen A. Fielding's "Being Touched by Wellness: Merleau-Ponty, Nancy, and the Intensive Care Unit," Ann Murphy's "The Spirited Interworld: Caregiving and the Liminal Phenomenology of Dementia," Rachel Elliott's "Sharing Time with Misfits: We-Experience across Bodily Difference," David Morris's "An-Archic Time: Melting the Clock as Hypernorm of the I Can -- and Philosophy," Rebecca Longtin's "Merleau-Ponty's Cézanne as Misfit Artist," and, finally, Laura McMahon's "The Politics of Vulnerability and the School for Peace: Insights from Butler, Merleau-Ponty, and Family Systems Theory.". (shrink)

Art has a major role in political critique and in the contemporary world of art, ethics, politics, and aesthetics intersect. Using the work of Alfredo Jaar as an example of these intersections, I argue through my reading of Judith Butler, that his art can provide us with better, more egalitarian versions of populations to be perceived as grievable. Once we apprehend grievability, we can affectively apprehend that lives in the context of war and violence are precarious. Here lies the (...) power of art to challenge the dominant norms and frames. Here also lies the central role of aesthetics as a political critique. From this argument I claim that, instead of accounting for aesthetics being separate from ethics and politics, it is important we understand these fields as intersecting with each other. I analyze the work of Susan Sontag on images of suffering and violence, Butler’s turn to aesthetics in her own work, and Jaar’s own conflict over the use of beauty to convey suffering. I defend that apprehension is a term distinct from recognition but central to understand the intersection between ethics, politics, and aesthetics. -/- Key Words: Aesthetics, Affect, Butler, Ethics, Jaar, Politics, Sontag. (shrink)

This is the text of Dr. Sterrett's replies to an interviewer's questions for simplycharly.com, a website with interviews by academics on various authors, philosophers, and scientists.

l argue that, contra Chalmers,a skeptical scenario involving deception is a genuine possibility,even if he is correct that simulations are real. I call this new skeptical position “Illusory World Skepticism.” Illusory World Skepticism draws from the simulation argument,together with work in physics,astrobiology, and AI,to argue that we may indeed be in an illusory world—a universe scale simulation orchestrated by a deceptive AI—the technophilosopher’s ultimate evil demon. In Section One I urge that Illusory World Skepticism is a bone fide skeptical possibility. (...) In Section Two, I explore features of quantum computation. Then, in Sections Three and Four, I draw from the discussion of quantum computation and assume that the simulation argument is correct,applying considerations from the fields of astrobiology and AI safety to illustrate that illusory world skepticism constitutes what I call “a serious epistemic threat”, a scenario that cannot be dismissed as requiring that knowledge is certainty or which seems to just depict a remote, fictional situation. (shrink)

This paper investigates the lived experience of alienation as a form of mental strife or pathology as it is connected to the digitalization of modern life. To do so, I deploy the concept of affordances from ecological psychology, phenomenology, and embodied cognition. I propose an affordance-based model for understanding digitalized alienation. First, I argue that the lived sense of alienation is best understood as a fracturing of the affordance space, where possibilities for action are lived as disconnected from one another (...) and therefore from one’s personal development and search for meaning. Using this model, I show how the process of digitalization can lead to a lived sense of alienation for modern subjects. On this model, digitalization is alienating insofar as it fractures the affordance space into disconnected fields that invite determinate, separate, and repeatable tasks—swiping, clicking, scrolling, etc.—rather than offering opportunities for the development of new cognitive and bodily skills that are mutually informing and enriching across different affordance fields. (shrink)

The method of metaphysics: Metaphysics is empirical but depends not, like the sciences, on recondite experience but on close attention to aspects of everyday experience we ordinarily scarcely notice. "Real" is a broader concept than "exists" (which applies only to particulars) and also applies to phenomena, kinds, and laws, which are real, but not, of course, existent entities. But "there are real kinds, laws, etc." doesn't imply that all the kinds and laws we believe are real, are. I call my (...) approach "Innocent Realism" because--though it's certainly not naive--it requires attending to experience, so far as possible, without substantial preconceptions. There is one real world, enormously varied but also integrated. It includes physical stuff, kinds, laws, etc. and, here on earth, a vast array of human artifacts, physical, social, intellectual, and imaginative, all intimately interconnected. All this requires human mindedness (a better word than "mind" because it doesn't suggest that human mentality is an organ like the heart or the liver). Rather, it's a complex congeries of dispositions and abilities: to understand even such a relatively simple thing as what's involved in someone's believing something, we need to take account of the person's dispositions to behavior, verbal and otherwise; to the neurophysiological realizations of these dispositions; and to their connections to the world and to words in the person's linguistic community--this last requiring other people's words-world connection. "Virtual" reality is just one more computer artifact, clever, no doubt, but not metaphysically startling. It's oversold, but this is advertising hype, not serious metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper appears in Earthly Engagements: Reading Sartre after the Holocene, edited by Matthew Ally and Damon Boria. From the introduction: "In Chapter 6, Michael Butler critically examines the misguided effort to shop our way out of climate change problems. After expositions of some key concepts from Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason, he criticizes ethical consumerism in a way reminiscent of Sartre's criticism of voting as a trap for fools. His concluding section juxtaposes two competing responses to climate change (...) mitigation as a collective action problem, namely the Nudge Agenda and the Green New Deal.". (shrink)

In response to Petitmengin and Bitbol's recent account of first-person methodologies in the study of consciousness, I provide a revised model of our introspective knowledge of our own conscious experience. This model, which I call the existential constitution model of phenomenal knowledge, avoids the problems that Petitmengin and Bitbol identify with standard observational models of introspection while also avoiding an underlying metaphorical misconception in their own proximity model, which misconstrues first-person knowledge of consciousness in terms of a dichotomous epistemic relationship. (...) The end result is a clearer understanding of the unique nature and epistemic properties of our knowledge of consciousness, as well as the epistemic status of subsequent first-person reports on conscious experience. (shrink)

In this analysis of one of the most difficult and neglected topics in Hegelian studies, Songsuk Susan Hahn tackles the status of contradiction in Hegel's ...

Summary Analogue models are actual physical setups used to model something else. They are especially useful when what we wish to investigate is difficult to observe or experiment upon due to size or distance in space or time: for example, if the thing we wish to investigate is too large, too far away, takes place on a time scale that is too long, does not yet exist or has ceased to exist. The range and variety of analogue models is too (...) extensive to attempt a survey. In this article, I describe and discuss several different analogue model experiments, the results of those model experiments, and the basis for constructing them and interpreting their results. Examples of analogue models for surface waves in lakes, for earthquakes and volcanoes in geophysics, and for black holes in general relativity, are described, with a focus on examining the bases for claims that these analogues are appropriate analogues of what they are used to investigate. A table showing three different kinds of bases for reasoning using analogue models is provided. Finally, it is shown how the examples in this article counter three common misconceptions about the use of analogue models in physics. (shrink)

There is a long standing controversy in education as to whether education ought to be teacher- or student- centered. Interestingly, this controversy parallels the parent- vs. child-centered theoretical swings with regard to good parenting. One obvious difference between the two poles is the mode of communication. “Authoritarian” teaching and parenting strategies focus on the need of those who have much to learn to “do as they are told,” i.e. the authority talks, the child listens. “Non-authoritarian” strategies are anchored in the (...) assumption that youngsters ought to be encouraged to develop their natural interests and talents and hence that it is important to allow the children to do the talking and that adults listen. Both strategies seemed flawed due to the absence of the inherent wisdom of its opposing view. This chasm can be overcome. The Community of Inquiry, a pedagogical method used in Philosophy for Children, demands a method of communication which is able to bridge this gap. A Community of Inquiry is neither teacher-centered and controlled nor student-centered and controlled, but centered on and controlled by the demands of truth. Truth is absolutely essential to this method; it is only because of progress toward truth that participants are ultimately convinced of the fruitfulness of the process. Truth, however, is a hard taskmaster; it places severe restrictions on participants and puts exacting demands on the facilitator. These inherent restrictions and demands are too often underplayed, overlooked and sometimes seemingly overtly denied by those who, quite correctly emphasize that ultimately this method depends on maintenance and enhancement of student autonomy. This underrating of the role of the facilitator has led to a severe undervaluing of this otherwise brilliant pedagogical method, but worse, it has left novice teacher/facilitators ill prepared to utilize this method successfully. (shrink)

As the English word “scientism” is currently used, it is a trivial verbal truth that scientism—an inappropriately deferential attitude to science—should be avoided. But it is a substantial question when, and why, deference to the sciences is inappropriate or exaggerated. This paper tries to answer that question by articulating “six signs of scientism”: the honorific use of “science” and its cognates; using scientific trappings purely decoratively; preoccupation with demarcation; preoccupation with “scientific method”; looking to the sciences for answers beyond their (...) scope; denying the legitimacy or worth of non-scientific (e.g., legal or literary) inquiry, or of writing poetry or making art. (shrink)

If successful scientific inquiry is to be possible, there must be a world that is independent of how we believe it to be, and in which there are kinds and laws; and we must have the sensory apparatus to perceive particular things and events, and the capacity to represent them, to form generalized explanatory conjectures, and check how these conjectures stand up to further experience. Whether these preconditions are met is not a question the sciences can answer; it is specifically (...) philosophical. This is why the myriad forms of scientistic philosophy in vogue today (neurophilosophy, experimental philosophy, naturalized metaphysics, evangelical-atheist reductionism, etc), are all hollow at the core. Does this mean we must return to the old, a priori analytic model? No! What is needed instead is scientific philosophy in the sense Peirce articulated more than a century ago: philosophy motivated by a genuine desire to discover the truth, and relying not solely on reason but also on experience—only not the special, recherché experience required by the sciences, but close attention to aspects of everyday experience so familiar we hardly notice them. (shrink)

While artificial womb technology is currently being studied for the purpose of improving neonatal care, I contend that this technology ought to be pursued as a means to address the unprecedented rate of unintended pregnancies. But ectogenesis, alongside other emerging reproductive technologies, is problematic insofar as it threatens to disrupt the natural link between procreation and parenthood that is normally thought to generate rights and responsibilities for biological parents. I argue that there remains only one potentially viable account of parenthood: (...) the voluntarist account, which construes parental rights as robust moral obligations that must be voluntarily undertaken. The problem is that this account mistakenly presumes a patriarchal divide between procreation and parenthood. I propose a reframing of procreation and parenthood from a feminist perspective that recognises gestational motherhood as involving robust moral obligations that ought to be voluntarily undertaken. If this were the case, all gestational mothers would be, by definition, willing mothers. To make this happen I argue that ectogenesis technology must be a widely available reproductive option. (shrink)

During the past decades, our image ofHomo neanderthalensishas changed dramatically. Initially, Neanderthals were seen as primitive brutes. Increasingly, however, Neanderthals are regarded as basically human. New discoveries and technologies have led to an avalanche of data, and as a result of that it becomes increasingly difficult to pinpoint what the difference between modern humans and Neanderthals really is. And yet, the persistent quest for a minimal difference which separates them from us is still noticeable in Neanderthal research. Neanderthal discourse is (...) a vantage point from which the logic of ‘us’ versus ‘other’ is critically reconsidered. Studying contemporary academic literature and science autobiographies from an oblique perspective, focusing not on Neanderthals as objects, but on the dynamics of interaction between Neanderthal researchers and their finds, basic convictions at work in this type of research are retrieved. What is at issue is not the actual distinction between modern humans and Neanderthals, but rather the dualistic construction of human and nonhuman. Neanderthal understanding is affected by the desire to safeguard human uniqueness. The overall trend is to identify the human mark or spark, which defines us as favoured ‘winners’. The paradoxes emerging in contemporary Neanderthal discourse are symptomatic of the fact that a dualistic style of thinking is no longer tenable. (shrink)

Suicide is a complex act whose meanings, while sometimes tragic, vary widely. This chapter surveys the ethical landscape surrounding algorithmic methods of suicide prevention especially as it pertains to social media activity and to the moderation of online suicide communities. We begin with a typology of suicide, distinguishing between varied goals in which suicide may factor as a means. Suicides should be understood as an act with varied eliciting desires, meanings, consequences, and ethics. Further,while many suicides may be grounded on (...) irrational desire, we argue that a desire to suicide may nonetheless be rational in some cases. We then offer a survey of the attempts by social media corporations to create suicide prediction algorithms and launch interventions aimed at preventing suicide as well as an overview of the current ethical debate. We argue that the values embedded within algorithmic suicide prevention nudges are “thick” in a substantive sense and deserving of scrutiny. Given that debates about the rationality, meaning, and permissibility of suicide are common and subject to intracultural and cross-cultural differences, we maintain that the task of suicide prediction is ill-suited to algorithmic approaches. Despite an algorithm’s ability to quantify a complex phenomenon like suicide risk and its appearance of objectivity, any suicide prediction algorithm is thoroughly subjective and involves moral judgments all the way down. Any such algorithm would necessarily impose a normative stance on suicide onto its user base that is subject to reasonable intra and cross-cultural disagreement. (shrink)

That the world is awash with resentment poses a genuine question for educators. Here, we will suggest that resentment can be better harnessed for good if we stop focusing on people and tribes and, instead, focus on systems: those invisible norms that often produce locked-in structures of social interaction. A “systems lens” is vast, so fixes will have to be an iterative process of reflection, and revision toward a more just system. Nonetheless, resentment toward the status quo may be an (...) important element in keeping that otherwise tedious process going, with the caveat that resentment is only productive when it is combined with reason, and that, therefore, educators, rather than privileging participant reactive attitudes, ought, instead, to promote participant reactive reasoning, as the latter can be a genuine force for both personal and interpersonal growth, while the former might very well do the reverse. (shrink)

Given that one of the major goals of the practice of Philosophy for Children (P4C) is the development of critical thinking skills (Sharp 1987/2018, pp. 4 6), an urgent question that emerged for one of the authors, who is of Chinese Heritage and a novice practitioner at a P4C summer camp was whether this emphasis on critical thinking might make this practice incompatible with the fabric of Chinese culture. Filial piety (孝), which requires respect for one’s parents, elders, and ancestors (...) is considered an important virtue in Asian culture, as is the preservation of harmony. But if one of the goals of P4C is to teach youngsters to courageously pursue reasoned dialogue, does this not set-up young Asians for serious conflict when they come face-to-face with positions that are articulated by elders, but which are ones to which they are diametrically opposed; a racist grandmother, for instance, or an uncle who insists that those at the Tiananmen Square uprising were nothing but hooligan’s. It is this question that we will explore in this presentation. In the process, we will come to the conclusion that, when positions seem irreconcilable, rather than continuing to pursue rigorous critical interchange that may do little other than escalate insult, the facilitator, rather, ought to move toward creating a deeper understanding of each position juxtaposed against its opposing view (a process that we refer to as ‘collaborative caring’), so as to produce side-by-side understanding, knowing that communal bonds have been maintained and, hence, that the opportunity for genuine reasoned collaborative inquiry on other issues and at future times remains open. (shrink)

Plotinus’ famous treatise against the Gnostics (33), together with contemporary and thematically related treatises on Intelligible Beauty (31), on Number (34), and on Free Will and the Will of the One (39), can be seen as providing the essential components of a Plotinian defense of polytheism against conceptual moves that, while associated for him primarily with Gnostic sectarians overlapping with Platonic philosophical circles, will become typical of monotheism in its era of hegemony. When Plotinus’ Gnostics ‘contract’ divinity into a single (...) God, they not only devalue the cosmos for its multiplicity and diversity, but also multiply intelligible principles unreasonably. This is because they have foreclosed the distinction, which is to become increasingly explicit in the later antique Platonists, between the intelligible and that which is given existentially, the domain belonging to Plotinus’ indeterminate multiplicity of ‘intelligible Gods’, as opposed to the dialectically determinate number of intelligible principles. Plotinus is prescient in recognizing that incipient monotheism threatens to erase the distinction between philosophy and theology, and between both of these and psychology, the final outcome of which can only be solipsism or nihilism. The defense of polytheism is seen in this fashion to be essential to the preservation of the space for philosophical discourse. (shrink)

Many academic works as well as many works of art are such that if they had never been produced, no one would be worse off. Yet it is hard to resist the judgment that some such works are good nonetheless. We are rightly grateful that these works were created; we rightly admire them, appreciate them, and take pains to preserve them. And the authors and artists who produced them have reason to be proud. This should lead us to question the (...) view that in order for a thing to be good, in a sense which implies that the thing merits our attention and positive concern, it needs to be good for someone or something whose welfare is enhanced by it. (shrink)

On a literal reading of `Computing Machinery and Intelligence'', Alan Turing presented not one, but two, practical tests to replace the question `Can machines think?'' He presented them as equivalent. I show here that the first test described in that much-discussed paper is in fact not equivalent to the second one, which has since become known as `the Turing Test''. The two tests can yield different results; it is the first, neglected test that provides the more appropriate indication of intelligence. (...) This is because the features of intelligence upon which it relies are resourcefulness and a critical attitude to one''s habitual responses; thus the test''s applicablity is not restricted to any particular species, nor does it presume any particular capacities. This is more appropriate because the question under consideration is what would count as machine intelligence. The first test realizes a possibility that philosophers have overlooked: a test that uses a human''s linguistic performance in setting an empirical test of intelligence, but does not make behavioral similarity to that performance the criterion of intelligence. Consequently, the first test is immune to many of the philosophical criticisms on the basis of which the (so-called) `Turing Test'' has been dismissed. (shrink)

Naess and Sessions “Deep Ecology Platform” provided a loose framework for a movement that was gaining momentum after a series of successful social and political actions and events throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Most of the points are essentially adopted from Naess’ earlier work, which provided the basis for a number of the core concepts expressed in the later eight points and is largely an expression of a movement that sought to create a shift in consciousness of society towards (...) the natural world. It is probably better understood as a lose framework that encapsulates a world view and perspective of nature which is better understood as an aesthetic movement rather than a moral or ethical movement. (shrink)

There are kinds of dialogue that support social justice and others that do the reverse. The kinds of dialogue that support social justice require that anger be bracketed and that hiding in safe spaces be eschewed. All illegitimate ad hominem/ad feminem attacks are ruled out from the get-go. No dialogical contribution can be down-graded on account of the communicator’s gender, race, or religion. As well, this communicative approach unapologetically privileges reason in full view of theories and strategies that might seek (...) to undermine reasoning as just another illegitimate form of power. On the more positive side, it is argued in this paper that social justice dialogue will be enhanced by a kind of “communicative upgrading,” which amplifies “person perception,” foregrounds the impersonal forces within our common social spaces rather than the “baddies” within, and orients the dialogical trajectory toward the future rather than the past. Finally, it is argued in this paper that educators have a pressing responsibility to guide their students through social justice dialogue so that their speech contributes to the amelioration of injustice, rather than rendering the terrain more treacherous. (shrink)

This paper contends that under a Sartrean framework, any moral judgment we make regarding our own action is never final; the meaning and moral value of our past actions always remains reinterpretable in light of what unfolds in the future. Our interactions with other people reveal that we are responsible for far more than we had initially supposed ourselves to be choosing when we began our project , such that it is in fact impossible to ever finish taking responsibility completely.

After the 2016 election of Donald Trump, many commentators latched on to the accusations Rorty levels at the American Left in Achieving Our Country. Rorty foresaw, they claimed, that the Left's preoccupation with cultural politics and neglect of class politics would lead to the election of a "strongman" who would take advantage of and exploit a rise in populist sentiment. -/- In this paper, I generally agree with these readings of Rorty; he does think that the American Left has made (...) the mistake of putting class on the political backburner. However, I suggest that this position follows from his view that economic security is vital for solidarity. Because economic security is under increasing threat in contemporary America, so too is solidarity. If greater solidarity is a goal of liberal democracy, then class politics, aimed at ending selfishness, ought to be as much a priority for the American Left as is cultural politics, aimed at ending sadism. (shrink)

The concept of similar systems arose in physics, and appears to have originated with Newton in the seventeenth century. This chapter provides a critical history of the concept of physically similar systems, the twentieth century concept into which it developed. The concept was used in the nineteenth century in various fields of engineering, theoretical physics and theoretical and experimental hydrodynamics. In 1914, it was articulated in terms of ideas developed in the eighteenth century and used in nineteenth century mathematics and (...) mechanics: equations, functions and dimensional analysis. The terminology physically similar systems was proposed for this new characterization of similar systems by the physicist Edgar Buckingham. Related work by Vaschy, Bertrand, and Riabouchinsky had appeared by then. The concept is very powerful in studying physical phenomena both theoretically and experimentally. As it is not currently part of the core curricula of STEM disciplines or philosophy of science, it is not as well known as it ought to be. (shrink)

This article is the preface to a completed book manuscript, United Nations Human Rights Ethics. Based on the indivisibility of human rights, the Four Freedoms Speech, and the Preamble of the Universal Declaration, the book takes freedom of expression as the one human right. Other rights are modes of this one. For example, one exercises freedom of expression (speech) by exercising the right to life, access to courts, etc.. The book argues that human rights are primarily an ethical concept (introduced (...) by Rousseau) rather than a concept of international law. (shrink)

In this reading of the Euthyphro, Socrates and Euthyphro are seen less in a primordial conflict between reason and devotion, than as sincere Hellenic polytheists engaged in an inquiry based upon a common intuition that, in addition to the irreducible agency of the Gods, there is also some irreducible intelligible content to holiness. This reading is supported by the fact that Euthyphro does not claim the authority of revelation for his decision to prosecute his father, but rather submits it to (...) elenchus, and that Euthyphro does not embrace the ‘solution’ of theological voluntarism when Socrates explicitly offers it. Since the goal of this inquiry is neither to eliminate the noetic content of the holy, nor to eliminate the Gods’ agency, the purpose of the elenchus becomes the effort to articulate the results of this productive tension between the Gods and the intelligible on the several planes of Being implied by each conception of the holy which is successively taken up and dialectically overturned to yield the conception appropriate to the next higher plane, a style of interpretation characteristic of the ancient Neoplatonists. (shrink)

The essay explores the systematic relationship in the work of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) between his monadology, his metaphysics as presented in works such as De la causa, principio et uno, the mythopoeic cosmology of Lo spaccio de la bestia trionfante, and practical works like De vinculis in genere. Bruno subverts the conceptual regime of the Aristotelian substantial forms and its accompanying cosmology with a metaphysics of individuality that privileges individual unity (singularity) over formal unity and particulars over substantial forms without (...) sacrificing a metaphysical perspective on the cosmos. The particular is individuated as a unique site of desire, continually transforming but able to entrain itself and others through phantasmatic ‘bonding’, the new source of regularity in Bruno’s polycentric universe. Bruno thus tries to do justice to the demands of intelligibility as well as transformative eros. The essay concludes with a note on Bruno’s geometry as it relates to his general conception of form. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to go some way towards showing that the maintenance of hard and fast dichotomies, like those between mind and body, and the real and the virtual, is untenable, and that technological advance cannot occur with being cognisant of its reciprocal ethical implications. In their place I will present a softer enactivist ontology through which I examine the nature of our engagement with technology in general and with virtual realities in particular. This softer ontology is (...) one to which I will commit Kant, and from which, I will show, certain critical moral and emotional consequences arise. It is my contention that Kant’s logical subject is necessarily embedded in the world and that Kant, himself, would be content with this view as an expression of his inspired response to the ‘‘scandal to philosophy... that the existence of things outside us... must be accepted merely on faith’’ [Bxl]. In keeping with his arguments for the a priori framing of intuition, the a priori structuring of experience through the spontaneous application of the categories, the synthesis of the experiential manifold, and the necessity of a unity of apperception, I will present an enactivist account of agency in the world, and argue that it is our embodied and embedded kinaesthetic engagement in our world which makes possible the syntheses of apprehension, reproduction and recognition, and which, in turn, make possible the activity of the reproductive or creative imagination. (shrink)

Continuing the systematic henadological interpretation of Proclus' Platonic Theology begun in "The Intelligible Gods in the Platonic Theology of Proclus" (Methexis 21, 2008, pp. 131-143), the present article treats of the basic characteristics of intelligible-intellective (or noetico-noeric) multiplicity and its roots in henadic individuality. Intelligible-intellective multiplicity (the hypostasis of Life) is at once a universal organization of Being in its own right, and also transitional between the polycentric henadic manifold, in which each individual is immediately productive of absolute Being, and (...) the formal intellective organization, which is monocentrically and diacritically disposed. Intelligible-intellective multiplicity is generated from the dyadic relationship of henads to their power(s), the phase of henadic individuality expressed in the second intelligible triad, and is mediated, unlike the polycentric manifold, but not by identity and difference, like the intellective organization. Instead, the hypostasis of Life is constituted by ideal motility and spatiality, figural dispositions, and the intersubjective relations depicted in the divine symposium of Plato's Phaedrus. (shrink)

Completing the systematic henadological interpretation of Proclus' Platonic Theology begun in "The Intelligible Gods in the Platonic Theology of Proclus" (Méthexis 21, 2008, pp. 131-143) and "The Second Intelligible Triad and the Intelligible-Intellective Gods" (Methexis 23, 2010, pp. 137-157), the present article concerns the conditions of the emergence of fully mediated, diacritical multiplicity out of the polycentric henadic manifold. The product of the activity of the intellective Gods (that is, the product of the intellective activity of Gods as such), in (...) resolving the contradiction between existential uniqueness and universalizable potencies in the divine natures, also grounds the human exercise of phi- losophical cognition in the founding self-analysis of divine individuals. (shrink)

In *Engaging Capital Emotions,* Douglas Berman and Stephanos Bibas argue that emotion is central to understanding and evaluating the death penalty, and that the emotional case for the death penalty for child rape may be even stronger than for adult murder. Both the Berman and Bibas article and the subsequent Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana (striking down the death penalty for child rape) raise difficult questions about how to measure the heinousness of crimes other than murder, and about (...) the role the pain suffered by victims and victims' families should play in this inquiry. In this Reply, I agree with the authors on the importance of confronting emotion's role in capital punishment, for reasons I discuss in Part A. However, I disagree with their claim that the moral outrage evoked by child rape supports making it a capital crime. Part B explores the difficulties of using the existence of moral outrage as a measure of appropriate punishment. Part C argues that the penal system should not merely reflect moral outrage, but channel and educate it. It suggests that the availability of the death penalty may create an anchoring effect, communicating the message that the death penalty is the proper way to express moral outrage and to honor the worth of murder victims. It explores the consequences of this message. Section II focuses on the role of emotion in deciding whether child rape should be a capital crime. Part A considers the problematic role of victim harm in determining whether the death penalty is appropriate. It explores the question, raised in Kennedy v Louisiana, of whether the effect of a capital trial on child rape victims ought to be part of the calculus. Part B argues that there are three particular problems with allowing juries to sentence child rapists to death: the deleterious effect of anger and empathy, the problem of generic prejudice, and the issue of race. (shrink)

The concept of the subject, of what Hegel calls absolute negativity, already appears early in the logic of being.1 Absolute negativity, negation of the negation, occurs throughout the logic as identity in difference understood as self-identification under different descriptions. First, the subject refers to itself merely under an incomplete description. Secondly, it refers to something other than itself under a second description which is logically required by the first. (For example, the description of being in general requires some determinate description (...) of being in particular). But this second description is dialectically excluded by the assumption that the first description is complete. Thirdly, the subject negates its negation of the other. It discovers itself in the other, under the other description, and thus comes to refer to itself less incompletely. This is Hegel in the analytic mode. (shrink)

There is a clear distinction between genuine and fraudulent reasoning. Being seduced by the latter can result in horrific consequences. This paper explores how we can arm ourselves, and others with the ability to recognize the difference between genuine and pseudo-reasoning, with the motivation to maintain an unbending commitment to follow the “impersonal” “norm-driven” rules of reason even in situations in which “non-reasonable” strategies appear to support short-term bests interests, and with the confidence that genuine reasoning is the best defense (...) against the pseudo-reasoning. It also provides a simple table of “markers” whereby genuine reasoning can be distinguished from the “fake stuff.”. (shrink)

Philosophical discussion of Alan Turing’s writings on intelligence has mostly revolved around a single point made in a paper published in the journal Mind in 1950. This is unfortunate, for Turing’s reflections on machine (artificial) intelligence, human intelligence, and the relation between them were more extensive and sophisticated. They are seen to be extremely well-considered and sound in retrospect. Recently, IBM developed a question-answering computer (Watson) that could compete against humans on the game show Jeopardy! There are hopes it can (...) be adapted to other contexts besides that game show, in the role of a collaborator of, rather than a competitor to, humans. Another, different, research project—an artificial intelligence program put into operation in 2010—is the machine learning program NELL (Never Ending Language Learning), which continuously ‘learns’ by ‘reading’ massive amounts of material on millions of web pages. Both of these recent endeavors in artificial intelligence rely to some extent on the integration of human guidance and feedback at various points in the machine’s learning process. In this paper, I examine Turing’s remarks on the development of intelligence used in various kinds of search, in light of the experience gained to date on these projects. (shrink)

“Postularse como un ser radicalmente autogenerado, ser el autor de la propia voluntad y conocimiento, es negar que uno está constituido en y por lo que es infinitamente más grande que el individuo humano. Kierkegaard llamará a esta fuente más grande que todo lo humano 'Dios' o 'el infinito'. Negar que uno está constituido en lo que es más grande que uno mismo es, para Kierkegaard, estar en una especie de desesperación”.

This book manuscript, entitled United Nations Human Rights Ethics: For The Greatest Success of the Greatest Number, critically examines most all major normative ethical theories since Socrates and finds Roman Stoic ethics to be the least deficient. It divides ethical theories into popular ones with little academic support, other popular ones that have had such support, and Kantian ethics standing alone as a philosopher's academic ethical philosophy with limited popular support. It criticizes the appropriation of human rights by the international (...) law profession to the exclusion of moral philosophy, despite the origin of "human rights" in the moral philosopher Rousseau. It blames the inability of moral philosophers to reach a professional consensus on the elements of normative ethics, not the legal profession. It laments both the failure of human rights education to human beings everywhere as requested by the Universal Declaration and the decline in popular support for human rights in favor of nationalism in current history since 2015. It advocates a way of redirecting human right education to people on the ground rather than mainly to law students. Such education has been overtaken by the Rule of Law movement fighting high crimes crimes against humanity unanticipated by the Universal Declaration. It argues for a way for ethicists to get on the same page in teaching elements in ethics and argues forcefully for a positive method for popular human rights education as well as for human rights-based elementary ethical theory. (shrink)

I address questions about values in model-making in engineering, specifically: Might the role of values be attributable solely to interests involved in specifying and using the model? Selected examples illustrate the surprisingly wide variety of things one must take into account in the model-making itself. The notions of system, and physically similar systems are important and powerful in determining what is relevant to an engineering model. Another example illustrates how an idea to completely re-characterize, or reframe, an engineering problem arose (...) during model-making. I employ a qualitative analogue of the notion of physically similar systems. Historical cases can thus be drawn upon; I illustrate with a comparison between a geoengineering proposal to inject, or spray, sulfate aerosols, and two different historical cases involving the spraying of DDT. The current geoengineering proposal is seen to be like the disastrous and counterproductive case, and unlike the successful case, of the spraying of DDT. I conclude by explaining my view that model-making in science is analogous to moral perception in action, drawing on a view in moral theory that has come to be called moral particularism. (shrink)

The article explains my third argument for panpsychism, based on disolving all properties, including dispositional physical properties like mass, energy, and force, into phenomenal properties. I thus reject a dual-property version of panpsychism. I seek to show, contrary to Paul Churchland, that the general panpsychist hypothesis has some explanatory value, and makes a cosmology consisting in comparative psychology possible. The mental life even of so-called physical particles in physics is hypothesized to help explain their behavior.

Tradução do artigo "What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault's Virtue.".

Misrepresentations can be innocuous or even useful, but Kant’s corollary to the formula of universal law appears to involve a pernicious one: “act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature”. Humans obviously cannot make their maxims into laws of nature, and it seems preposterous to claim that we are morally required to pretend that we can. Given that Kant was careful to eradicate pernicious misrepresentations from theoretical metaphysics, the imperative (...) to act as if I have this supernatural power has typically been treated as an embarrassment meriting apology. The wording of the corollary may be vindicated, however, by recognizing that “as if” (als ob) is a technical term both in the Critique of Pure Reason and here. It signals a modal shift from the assertoric to the problematic mode of cognition, one that is necessitated by the attempt to incorporate the natural effects of a free will into a universal moral imperative that is philosophically practical. In this paper I sketch how the modal shift makes sense of the corollary as a subjectively necessary, philosophically practical idealization of the extension of human freedom into nature, one that accurately represents a necessary parameter of moral conduct: moral ambition. (shrink)