Tasks, tools, and techniques that we perform, use, and acquire, define the elements of expertise which we value as the hallmarks of goal-driven behavior. Somehow, the creation of tools enables us to define new tasks, or is it that the envisioning of new tasks drives us to invent new tools? Or maybe it is that new tools engender new techniques which then result in new tasks? This jumble of issues will be explored and discussed in this diverse collection of papers. (...) Individually, few of the papers are related to each other by topic or by techniques of analysis. Collectively, all focus on tasks performed using tools and discuss the techniques of tool use which enable differences in performance and expertise across individuals, societies, and (even) species. -/- . (shrink)

In Byron, Shelley, and Goethe’s Faust, author Ben Hewitt has provided us with a carefully done and convincing study. Given this, it would have been interesting to see Hewitt’s effort to integrate Mary Shelley’s work into his narrative. Apart from any similarities between Faust and Frankenstein, it bears remembering that Goethe himself remained unconvinced by efforts to clearly demarcate works as “tragic” or “epic”; a fact that becomes especially clear in the number of works he’d devoted to rewriting the story (...) of Prometheus. One cannot help but wish that Hewitt had considered the connection between these works and Shelley’s own “Modern Prometheus” in juxtaposition to his reading of P.B. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, for this would have made for an especially good ending to Hewitt’s story. Wayne Deakin’s consideration of Hegel and the English Romantic Tradition does indeed close with a brief consideration of Mary Shelley’s Prometheus, but this comes only at the end of a much longer set of considerations. In this book Deakin adopts a similar strategy as that of Hewitt, namely, foregoing any historical recovery of Hegel’s direct influence on the English Romantics—in Deakin’s case, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and P.B. Shelley—to focus instead on a reading of key poetic works in concert with their Hegelian framework. This reading essentially flows from Deakin’s effort to rethink Hegel’s relatively early notion of self-consciousness through his late lectures on aesthetics. For Deakin, this leads to “aesthetic recognition”; a situating of the self in relation to the world that remains in tension so far as the subject’s drive for autonomy will automatically be humbled by its reception of and to alterity—be that other “Nature” or other subject. (shrink)

This article explores the meeting of two approaches towards philosophy and education: the philosophy for children approach advocated by Lipman and others, and Schmid’s philosophical concept of Lebenskunst. Schmid explores the concept of the beautiful or good life by asking what is necessary for each individual to be able to develop their own art of living and which aspects of life are significant when shaping a good and beautiful life. One element of Schmid’s theory is the practical application of philosophy (...) through the notions of Bildung, reflection, prudence and practical wisdom, as well as the requirement for each individual to take responsibility for actively shaping their life as an artwork. In this sense, each person is the artist responsible for living their own beautiful life. We argue that there are useful parallels between Schmid’s concept of the art of living and P4C, such as the ideal of a holistic philosophy that is “lived.” The pragmatic approach of P4C focuses on the embodied learner who practices critical, caring and creative thinking. Both P4C and Schmid’s theory are reminiscent of the Aristotelian notion of practical wisdom, which allows for an approach to an education for life that prepares students to develop their own art of living. (shrink)

Several authors, including Thomas Nagel and David Gauthier, have defended the view that reasons of self-interest (prudential reasons) are rationally binding. That is, there is always a reason, bearing on the rational advisability, based on one's self-interest and, as a result, a person may act irrationally by knowingly acting against such reasons regardless of the person's desires or values. Both Nagel and Gauthier argue from the rationally mandatory nature of prudential reasons to the conclusion that moral reasons can be rationally (...) mandatory, challenging the neo-Humean position that practical reasons that bear on an agent's rationality are essentially grounded on the agent's subjective, contingent, conative states. I argue, pace Nagel and Gauthier, that prudential reasons are not rationally mandatory--that the rational requirement to act in one's own interest, when it exists, is, as the neo-Humean insists, grounded on one's subjective, contingent, conative states. Prudential reasons are not reasons for every (conceivable) agent--not in the sense that bears on the rational advisability of action. (shrink)

This paper examines one of the central objections levied against neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics: the self-absorption objection. Proponents of this objection state that the main problem with neo-Aristotelian accounts of moral motivation is that they prescribe that our ultimate reason for acting virtuously is that doing so is for the sake of and/or is constitutive of our own eudaimonia. In this paper, I provide an overview of the various attempts made by neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists to address the self-absorption objection and argue (...) that they all fall short for one reason or another. I contend that the way forward for neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists is to reject the view that the virtuous agent ought to organize her life in a way that is ultimately good for her, and instead adopt a more expansive conception of her ultimate end, one in which no special preference is given to her own good. (shrink)

Scepticism about ought simpliciter is the view that there is no such thing as what one ought simpliciter to do. Instead, practical deliberation is governed by a plurality of normative standpoints, each authoritative from their own perspective but none authoritative simpliciter. This paper aims to resist such scepticism. After setting out the challenge in general terms, I argue that scepticism can be resisted by rejecting a key assumption in the sceptic’s argument. This is the assumption that standpoint-relative ought judgments bring (...) with them a commitment to act in accordance with those judgments. Instead, I propose an alternative account of our normative concepts according to which only ought simpliciter judgments commit one to acting in accordance with those judgments. In addition to answering the sceptical challenge, the proposal offers an independently motivated account of what makes a concept normatively authoritative. (shrink)

In Gorgias, Socrates stands accused of argumentative "foul play" involving manipulation by shame. Polus says that Socrates wins the fight with Gorgias by shaming him into the admission that "a rhetorician knows what is right . . . and would teach this to his pupils" . And later, when Polus himself has been "tied up" and "muzzled" , Callicles says that he was refuted only because he was ashamed to reveal his true convictions. These allegations, if justified, directly undermine Socrates' (...) claim to be improving his interlocutors by argument. For if Socrates' use of shame tends to produce insincere assertion, then elenchus cannot serve as a tool for moral reform. In an important recent paper, Jessica Moss presents a new apologia for Socrates on these old charges. According to Moss, although Socrates adopts a strategy of shaming rather than reasoning his interlocutors into agreement, this is legitimate because his appeals to shame function as appeals to a moral sense, which connect a person to his own "deep" convictions. Moreover, she claims that shame "can be a more effective tool of persuasion than reason," for it is capable, where reason is not, of dislodging a person's "intuitive" moral beliefs. This essay argues that each of these points is mistaken. (shrink)

The primary concern of our 2014 paper was not notation but the autographic/allographic distinction, not representations as such but works of art. As we see it, Zeimbekis's considerations do not ultimately undermine the position we advanced in 2014— but they do challenge an element of Goodman's own theory of notation that derives from his requirement of recoverability. That requirement can be abandoned without losing the explanatory power of the autographic/allographic distinction as we have refined it.

D. M. Armstrong famously claims that deterministic laws of nature are contingent relations between universals and that his account can also be straightforwardly extended to irreducibly probabilistic laws of nature. For the most part, philosophers have neglected to scrutinize Armstrong’s account of probabilistic laws. This is surprising precisely because his own claims about probabilistic laws make it unclear just what he takes them to be. We offer three interpretations of what Armstrong-style probabilistic laws are, and argue that all three interpretations (...) are incompatible either with some feature of Armstrong’s broader metaphysics or with essential features of his account of laws (or both). (shrink)

In this paper I explore Phyllis Rooney’s 2003 chapter, “Feminist Epistemology and Naturalized Epistemology: An Uneasy Alliance,” taking guidance from her critique of naturalized epistemology in pursuing my own analysis of another uneasy alliance: that between feminist epistemology and social epistemology. Investigating some of the background assumptions at work in prominent conceptions of social epistemology, I consider recent analyses of "epistemic bubbles" to ask how closely such analyses are aligned with ongoing research in feminist epistemology. I argue that critical feminist (...) insights in political philosophy are called for here, especially those that focus on multiple politically salient relationships and also emphasize practices of personal transformation as inseparably bound up with broader movements for social transformation. Insofar as feminist epistemology continues to carry another world in its heart, I argue that it will continue to rest uneasily with any effort to align it with—let alone subsume it within—the still emerging field of social epistemology. (shrink)

In this contribution we explore revisionists and anti-revisionists conceptions of the historical imagination. The focus will be on how these conceptions of the historical imagination determine how one ought to answer the question of whether or not it is in principle possible to know the past in its own terms rather than from the perspective of the present. The contrast that we are seeking to draw is that between a conception of the historical imagination which is revisionist in the sense (...) that it is committed to the claim that knowledge of the past is in principle impossible, and one which is anti-revisionist in the sense that it regards knowledge of the past in its own terms to be in principle possible. Revisionism, as we understand it here, is not the contingent claim that in some cases (where, for example, new evidence which was previously unavailable comes to light) the historical understanding of the past may be revised; rather, it represents an a priori claim about the impossibility of knowing the past in its own terms in all cases, and not just in some. Likewise, anti-revisionism, as we understand it here, is the view that historical knowledge is in principle possible; it is not the claim that it is always achieved as a matter of fact. The debate between revisionist and anti-revisionist conceptions of the historical imagination is therefore a second-order debate about the nature of historical knowing, about whether it is possible, and if so, about what its conditions of possibility are. It is not a first order debate about whether or not such knowledge has been achieved in any given case. (shrink)

German philosopher Immanuel Kant employs the story of Eve in the Garden of Eden as a way to think about what the development of autonomy in human beings must have involved. In the beginning, our ancestors invariably listened to their instincts, which would have seemed to them, as Kant describes it, like the “voice of God which all animals must obey”. Regardless of whether it has any basis in historical reality, that moment represents for Kant the birth of human autonomy: (...) at some point in our history, our ancestors attained self‐awareness and realized that they could disobey their instincts. There is a limited sense in which the actions that stem from internal sources, whether natural or artificial, are autonomous in the sense of involving internal control. The responsibility is one that every autonomous individual has, for better or worse, whether guest or host, in Westworld or outside of it. (shrink)

Teachers encountered numerous challenges posed by the COVID-19 outbreak. Herewith, this study aimed to determine the challenges encountered by Filipino teachers in the new normal and their coping mechanisms. This study employed a qualitative inquiry to determine the challenges encountered and coping mechanisms employed by teachers amid modular instruction, involving 10 teachers from five secondary schools in the Philippines who participated voluntarily. Data were gathered through a written narrative from each participant and were analyzed thematically. Themed findings showed that these (...) teachers are greatly challenged in terms of learning quality transfer, module distribution and retrieval, students’ difficulties in following instruction, power disruption, internet connection, and health risks posed by the pandemic. Nevertheless, these teachers dealt with these difficulties by employing their own coping techniques. Teaching can be challenging and frustrating, especially in these difficult times, but as these teachers demonstrated, everything is possible. Hence, educators must be ready for any situation that may arise. This situation is unlikely to get better anytime soon; instead, teachers will need to adjust to and accept this reality. (shrink)

This paper investigates the nature of emotional experience in relation to the senses, and it defends the thesis that emotional experience is partly non-sensory. In §1 I introduce my reader to the debate. I reconstruct a position I call ‘restrictivism’ and motivate it as part of a reductive approach to mind’s place in nature. Drawing on intuitive but insightful remarks on the nature of sensation from Plato, I map out the conditions under which the restrictivist thesis is both substantive and (...) plausible. I then present two arguments against it. The first argument, which I lay out in §2, draws on recent empirical results in emotion research to show that restrictivism cannot be reconciled with the possibility of knowledge of one’s own emotional state by acquaintance. The second argument, which I present in §3, individuates a claim on which most contemporary theories of emotional valence converge and uses it to demonstrate that restrictivism has a false implication: it must deny that valence is experientially felt. (shrink)

Abstract: Don Ross’ Economic Theory and Cognitive Science (2005) provides an elaborate philosophical defense of neoclassical economics. He argues that the central features of neoclassical theory are associated with what he calls the Robbins-Samuelson argument pattern and that it can be reconciled with recent developments in experimental and behavioral economics, as well as contemporary cognitive science. This paper argues that Ross’ Robbins-Samuelson argument pattern is not in the work of either Robbins or Samuelson and in many ways is in conflict (...) with their own versions, and defenses, of neoclassical theory. (shrink)

The theories of cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker arise from an existential and psychological analysis of the death terror/anxiety deep in the unconscious of every human. Becker details how this anxiety governs the ideologies and behaviors of our species—something now confirmed by thousands of experiments performed by psychologists engaged in contemporary terror management theory (TMT). Humans manage their anxiety through what Becker terms “hero systems”—concepts, beliefs, and myths we create to give us a sense of significance and meaning during, and even (...) beyond our mortal lives. Today, many dominant economic, technological, and religious hero systems seek to confirm our significance by denying that we are—like all other species—animals who must exist in a decaying, mortal body. Becker shows how this attempt to deny our “creatureliness” (basic biological nature) causes humans to stand against the natural world we are embedded in, leading to an assault on the planet and nonhuman animals. As a result, Becker believed pacifism was the only hero system capable of keeping humankind from destroying itself and the earth. Pacifism is the precursor to the more encompassing ethical concept of “reverence for life,” advocated by Dr. Albert Schweitzer. By respecting the will-to-live in all sentient beings, reverence for life transcends concern for humans alone and extends moral and physical safeguards to life as such. Confronting the fact that humans are increasingly alienated from their commodified world and their own being, reverence for life stands as a vital solution to many of our modern problems. And following contemporary TMT research, reverencing life can also expand one’s self-esteem, which research shows lowers death anxiety, reduces aggression, and offers authentic meaning to life itself. (shrink)

One of the most frequently voiced criticisms of free will skepticism is that it is unable to adequately deal with criminal behavior and that the responses it would permit as justified are insufficient for acceptable social policy. This concern is fueled by two factors. The first is that one of the most prominent justifications for punishing criminals, retributivism, is incompatible with free will skepticism. The second concern is that alternative justifications that are not ruled out by the skeptical view per (...) se face significant independent moral objections. Yet despite these concerns, I maintain that free will skepticism leaves intact other ways to respond to criminal behavior—in particular preventive detention, rehabilitation, and alteration of relevant social conditions—and that these methods are both morally justifiable and sufficient for good social policy. The position I defend is similar to Derk Pereboom’s, taking as its starting point his quarantine analogy, but it sets out to develop the quarantine model within a broader justificatory framework drawn from public health ethics. The resulting model—which I call the public health -quarantine model—provides a framework for justifying quarantine and criminal sanctions that is more humane than retributivism and preferable to other non-retributive alternatives. It also provides a broader approach to criminal behavior than Pereboom’s quarantine analogy does on its own. (shrink)

I defend the continuing importance, and attraction of, moral saints. The objective of this paper is twofold; firstly, to critique Wolf’s definition of sainthood, and secondly, to argue against her view that one should not desire to be a moral saint, nor emulate them. In section 1, I argue that moral saints are highly complex moral agents, and that Wolf’s definition does not capture this complexity. My second argument is that Wolf’s account that there are two kinds of saints, loving (...) and rational, leads to a tension. Either: (1) the distinction between loving and rational saints is justifiable; but then argu- ments against the benefits of sainthood ought to be directed independently against each kind of saint which, Wolf does not do; or (2) the distinction is not justifiable, in which case the division is explanatorily impotent. In section 2, I will present Wolf’s argument for why one should not want to be a moral saint, nor even know one. I counter that Wolf over-emphasises non-moral values, to the point that these values have a monopoly on what constitutes a well-rounded life. Wolf must provide a more definitive scope for non-moral values, as the distinction between moral and non-moral values is ambiguous. Finally, I argue that moral saints can serve as moral exemplars and visionaries. By admir- ing and emulating them, we can adapt our own moral behavior, and by example, moral saints can discover new and better ways of pursuing moral goods. (shrink)

As philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism continue to gain traction, we are likely to see a fundamental shift in the way people think about free will and moral responsibility. Such shifts raise important practical and existential concerns: What if we came to disbelieve in free will? What would this mean for our interpersonal relationships, society, morality, meaning, and the law? What would it do to our standing as human beings? Would it cause nihilism and despair as some (...) maintain or would it rather have a humanizing effect on our practices and policies, freeing us from the negative effects of belief in free will? In this chapter we consider the practical implications of free will skepticism and argue that life without free will and basic desert moral responsibility would not be as destructive as many people believe. We argue that prospects of finding meaning in life or of sustaining good interpersonal relationships, for example, would not be threatened. On treatment of criminals, we argue that although retributivism and severe punishment, such as the death penalty, would be ruled out, preventive detention and rehabilitation programs would still be justified. While we will touch on all these issues below, our focus will be primarily on this last issue. -/- We begin in section I by considering two different routes to free will skepticism. The first denies the causal efficacy of the types of willing required for free will and receives its contemporary impetus from pioneering work in neuroscience by Benjamin Libet, Daniel Wegner, and John-Dylan Haynes. The second, which is more common in the philosophical literature, does not deny the causal efficacy of the will but instead claims that whether this causal efficacy is deterministic or indeterministic, it does not achieve the level of control to count as free will by the standards of the historical debate. We argue that while there are compelling objections to the first route—e.g., Al Mele (2009), Eddy Nahmias (2002, 2011), and Neil Levy (2005)—the second route to free will skepticism remains intact. In section II we argue that free will skepticism allows for a workable morality, and, rather than negatively impacting our personal relationships and meaning in life, may well improve our well-being and our relationships to others since it would tend to eradicate an often destructive form of moral anger. In section III we argue that free will skepticism allows for adequate ways of responding to criminal behavior—in particular, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and alternation of relevant social conditions—and that these methods are both morally justified and sufficient for good social policy. We present and defend our own preferred model for dealing with dangerous criminals, an incapacitation account built on the right to self-protection analogous to the justification for quarantine (see Pereboom 2001, 2013, 2014a; Caruso 2016a), and we respond to recent objections to it by Michael Corrado and John Lemos. (shrink)

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)

Understanding the nature of pain depends, at least partly, on recognizing its subjectivity (thus, its first-person epistemology). This in turn requires using a first-person experiential method in addition to third-person experimental approaches to study it. This paper is an attempt to spell out what the former approach is and how it can be integrated with the latter. We start our discussion by examining some foundational issues raised by the use of introspection. We argue that such a first-person method in the (...) scientific study of pain (as in the study of any experience) is in fact indispensable by demonstrating that it has in fact been consistently used in conjunction with conventional third-person methodologies, and this for good reasons. We show that, contrary to what appears to be a widespread opinion, there is absolutely no reason to think that the use of such a first-person approach is scientifically and methodologically suspect. We distinguish between two uses of introspective methods in scientific experiments: one draws on the subjects’ introspective reports where any investigator has equal and objective access. The other is where the investigator becomes a subject of his own study and draws on the introspection of his own experiences. We give examples using and/or approximating both strategies that include studies of second pain summation and its relationship to neural activities, and brain imaging- psychophysical studies wherein sensory and affective qualities of pain are correlated with cerebral cortical activity. We explain what we call the experiential or phenomenological approach that has its origins in the work of Price and Barrell (1980). This approach capitalizes on the scientific prospects and benefits of using the introspection of the investigator. We distinguish between its vertical and horizontal applications. Finally, we conclude that integrating such an approach to standard third-person methodologies can only help us in having a fuller understanding of pain and of conscious experience in general. (shrink)

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

Scientific realists have claimed that the posit that our theories are (approximately) true provides the best or the only explanation for their success . In response, I revive two non-realists explanations. I show that realists, in discarding them, have either misconstrued the phenomena to be explained or mischaracterized the relationship between these explanations and their own. I contend nonetheless that these non-realist competitors, as well as their realist counterparts, should be rejected; for none of them succeed in explaining a significant (...) list of successes. I propose a related non-realist explanation of success that appears to be the most suitable among those considered. (shrink)

One of the most frequently voiced criticisms of free will skepticism is that it is unable to adequately deal with criminal behavior and that the responses it would permit as justified are insufficient for acceptable social policy. This concern is fueled by two factors. The first is that one of the most prominent justifications for punishing criminals, retributivism, is incompatible with free will skepticism. The second concern is that alternative justifications that are not ruled out by the skeptical view per (...) se face significant independent moral objections (Pereboom 2014: 153). Despite these concerns, I maintain that free will skepticism leaves intact other ways to respond to criminal behavior—in particular incapacitation, rehabilitation, and alteration of relevant social conditions—and that these methods are both morally justifiable and sufficient for good social policy. The position I defend is similar to Derk Pereboom’s (2001, 2013, 2014), taking as its starting point his quarantine analogy, but it sets out to develop the quarantine model within a broader justificatory framework drawn from public health ethics. The resulting model—which I call the public health-quarantine model (Caruso 2016, 2017a)—provides a framework for justifying quarantine and criminal sanctions that is more humane than retributivism and preferable to other non-retributive alternatives. It also provides a broader approach to criminal behavior than Pereboom’s quarantine analogy does on its own since it prioritizes prevention and social justice. -/- In Section 1, I begin by (very) briefly summarizing my arguments against free will and basic desert moral responsibility. In Section 2, I then introduce and defend my public health-quarantine model, which is a non-retributive alternative to criminal punishment that prioritizes prevention and social justice. In Sections 3 and 4, I take up and respond to two general objections to the public health-quarantine model. Since objections by Michael Corrado (2016), John Lemos (2016), Saul Smilanksy (2011, 2017), and Victor Tadros (2017) have been addressed in detail elsewhere (see Pereboom 2017a; Pereboom and Caruso 2018), I will here focus on objections that have not yet been addressed. In particular, I will respond to concerns about proportionality, human dignity, and victims’ rights. I will argue that each of these concerns can be met and that in the end the public health-quarantine model offers a superior alternative to retributive punishment and other non-retributive accounts. (shrink)

Faculty resistance to Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) is an issue that has been recognized by WAC program directors and practitioners for decades, yet it remains unresolved. Perhaps the problem is not resistance per se, but how we interpret and react to it. Faculty resistance is typically viewed as an impediment to the pedagogical change WAC programs hope to achieve. Moreover, the label of "resistance" is often used without further examination of the underlying causes. Based on research and experience as (...) doctoral Writing Fellows in the Borough of Manhattan Community College WAC Program, we argue that so-called resistances are often justified concerns in regard to implementing WAC under given institutional, disciplinary, departmental, and personal constraints. We also suggest that if we listen and respond to these concerns, they become means to facilitate faculty engagement with WAC. By working through their concerns and adapting WAC to their context, faculty can take ownership of WAC and further develop the practice. Thus, what at first appears to be an impediment to deep-rooted pedagogical change ”resistance” can be used to encourage faculty to make WAC their own. (shrink)

This research investigates 3- and 5-year-olds' relative fairness in distributing small collections of even or odd numbers of more or less desirable candies, either with an adult experimenter or between two dolls. The authors compare more than 200 children from around the world, growing up in seven highly contrasted cultural and economic contexts, from rich and poor urban areas, to small-scale traditional and rural communities. Across cultures, young children tend to optimize their own gain, not showing many signs of self-sacrifice (...) or generosity. Already by 3 years of age, self-optimizing in distributive justice is based on perspective taking and rudiments of mind reading. By 5 years, overall, children tend to show more fairness in sharing. What varies across cultures is the magnitude of young children's self-interest. More fairness (less self-interest) in distributive justice is evident by children growing up in small-scale urban and traditional societies thought to promote more collective values. (shrink)

A question, long discussed by legal scholars, has recently provoked a considerable amount of philosophical attention: ‘Is it ever appropriate to base a legal verdict on statistical evidence alone?’ Many philosophers who have considered this question reject legal reliance on bare statistics, even when the odds of error are extremely low. This paper develops a puzzle for the dominant theories concerning why we should eschew bare statistics. Namely, there seem to be compelling scenarios in which there are multiple sources of (...) incriminating statistical evidence. As we conjoin together different types of statistical evidence, it becomes increasingly incredible to suppose that a positive verdict would be impermissible. I suggest that none of the dominant views in the literature can easily accommodate such cases, and close by offering a diagnosis of my own. (shrink)

Aristotle is essentially human; that is, for all possible worlds metaphysically consistent with our own, if Aristotle exists, then he is human. This is a claim about the essential property of an object. The claim that objects have essential properties has been hotly disputed, but for present purposes, we can bracket that issue. In this essay, we are interested, rather, in the question of whether properties themselves have essential properties (or features) for their existence. We call those who suppose they (...) do “property essentialists”; those who do not, “property anti-essentialists,” or “quidditists.” We offer two complementary arguments. Our total argument is under-girded by two assumptions: transworld identity theory and “received view” counterfactual semantics, a la David Lewis. We then argue that, if one presumes that these are true, then one risks running headlong into paradox if one also accepts property anti-essentialism. That's the first argument. By contrast, if one accepts these same assumptions in conjunction with property essentialism, then the paradox is avoided. This is the second argument. We take it that our arguments work to show that, between property essentialism and quidditism, the property essentialist is on better footing. Plausibly, properties themselves do have essential properties for their existence. (shrink)

This paper argues that Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy attempts to reopen the question of human transcendence in contemporary terms. While his conception of language as self-transcending is deeply Husserlian, Ricoeur also responds to the analytical challenge when he deploys a basic distinction in Fregean logic in order to clarify Heidegger’s phenomenology of world. Ricoeur’s commitment to a transcendental view is evident in his conception of narrative, which enables him to emphasize the role of the performative in literary reading. The meaning (...) of the self in time provides Ricoeur with a discursive basis for distinguishing his own position from that of Kant and other philosophers in the transcendental tradition. (shrink)

Cover songs are a familiar feature of contemporary popular music. Musicians describe their own performances as covers, and audiences use the category to organize their listening and appreciation. However, until now philosophers have not had much to say about them. This book explores how to think about covers, appreciating covers, and the metaphysics of covers and songs. Along the way, it explores a range of issues raised by covers, from the question of what precisely constitutes a cover, to the history (...) and taxonomy of the category, the various relationships that hold between songs, performances, and tracks, and the appreciation and evaluation of covers. (shrink)

In a world of more than 7 billion people, 80% live on less than $10 per day. Five (5) percent of global income is generated by the poorest 40 percent of the world’s population; while the wealthiest 20% of the population generates 75 percent of world income. Economics attempts to define or describe behavior and it ventures into the realm of predicting. Economics should therefore accept responsibility for controlling/directing realities. If we can understand, define and predict behavior, we should accept (...) the responsibility for changing behavior, and as economists, bring that to bear on material upliftment of the greater majority of the earth’s populace. . Since 1847, numerous role-players have debated and worked tirelessly to promote the welfare of those who are marginalised from mainstream society. To what avail? Exactly one hundred and fifty eight years later, one of the iconic statesmen of the twentieth century, Nelson Mandela, stated: “Massive poverty and obscene inequality are such terrible scourges of our time – times in which the world boasts breathtaking advances in science, technology, industry and wealth accommodation – that they have to rank alongside slavery and apartheid as social evils” (as quoted in Green 2009:2).Clearly, significant progress in addressing the issue has not been made. A concerted drive by the United Nations led to the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals in September 2000, and was endorsed by 189 world leaders. Some progress has been made during the past decade, but it is apparent that many countries are not going to be able to reach their goals. Hence, in order to address poverty at its root, attention is increasingly focused on the contribution of the informal sector and small, medium and micro enterprises. This paper explores such and offers alternatives to combat the spectres of structural unemployment and poverty. (shrink)

For many years Sir Roger Scruton’s incendiary pen, his own fine-point flamethrower, provoked outrage in the fields of journalism, literature, and in popular, as well as academic studies. As a philo...

Daniel Dennett (1996) has disputed David Chalmers' (1995) assertion that there is a "hard problem of consciousness" worth solving in the philosophy of mind. In this paper I defend Chalmers against Dennett on this point: I argue that there is a hard problem of consciousness, that it is distinct in kind from the so-called easy problems, and that it is vital for the sake of honest and productive research in the cognitive sciences to be clear about the difference. But I (...) have my own rebuke for Chalmers on the point of explanation. Chalmers (1995, 1996) proposes to "solve" the hard problem of consciousness by positing qualia as fundamental features of the universe, alongside such ontological basics as mass and space-time. But this is an inadequate solution: to posit, I will urge, is not to explain. To bolster this view, I borrow from an account of explanation by which it must provide "epistemic satisfaction" to be considered successful (Rowlands, 2001; Campbell, 2009), and show that Chalmers' proposal fails on this account. I conclude that research in the science of consciousness cannot move forward without greater conceptual clarity in the field. (shrink)

Although vision is the de facto model system of consciousness research, studying olfactory consciousness has its own advantages, as this collection of articles emphatically demonstrates. One advantage of olfaction is its computational and phenomenological simplicity, which facilitates the identification of basic principles. Other researchers study olfactory consciousness not because of its simplicity, but because of its unique features. Together, olfaction's simplicity and its distinctiveness make it an ideal system for testing theories of consciousness. In this research topic, the results of (...) recent research into olfactory consciousness are presented. (shrink)

Many of us read Peter Singer ’ s work on our obligations to those in desperate need with our students. Famously, Singer argues that we have a moral obligation to give a significant portion of our assets to famine relief. If my own experience is not atypical, it is quite common for students, upon grasping the implications of Singer ’ s argument, to ask whether Singer gives to famine relief. In response it might be tempting to remind students of the (...) ad hominem fallacy of attacking the person advancing an argument rather than the argument itself. In this paper I argue that the “ ad hominem reply ” to students ’ request for information about Singer is misguided. First I show that biographical facts about the person advancing an argument can constitute indirect evidence for the soundness / unsoundness of the argument. Second, I argue that such facts are relevant because they may reveal that one can discard the argument without thereby incurring moral responsibility for failing to act on its conclusion even if the argument is sound. (shrink)

Meta-induction, in its various forms, is an imitative prediction method, where the prediction methods and the predictions of other agents are imitated to the extent that those methods or agents have proven successful in the past. In past work, Schurz demonstrated the optimality of meta-induction as a method for predicting unknown events and quantities. However, much recent discussion, along with formal and empirical work, on the Wisdom of Crowds has extolled the virtue of diverse and independent judgment as essential to (...) maintenance of 'wise crowds'. This suggests that meta-inductive prediction methods could undermine the wisdom of the crowd inasmuch these methods recommend that agents imitate the predictions of other agents. In this article, we evaluate meta-inductive methods with a focus on the impact on a group's performance that may result from including meta-inductivists among its members. In addition to considering cases of global accessibility (i.e., cases where the judgments of all members of the group are available to all of the group's members), we consider cases where agents only have access to the judgments of other agents within their own local neighborhoods. (shrink)

In the complex tapestry of existence, we journey down the corridors of thought, proclaiming Descarte's famed words: "Cogito ergo sum." Yet, the journey does not conclude with merely affirming our existence but falls down the endless pit of the dimensions and complex corridors of free will and autonomy. Let us establish the terms that shall guide our thoughts for this voyage. First, a multi-faceted free will that transcends mere ownership of thoughts, extending to the profound responsibility for our actions within (...) the temporal plane we inhabit," an existence yet to be fully revealed. Second, the insistence on the necessity, or at least the belief in the potential, of self-control. Here, we differ from conventional definitions of free will to assert the capacity to govern the mind and ego, even when one perceives a lack of control. The mind, which exists somewhere, owns the authority over its thoughts, which is you. And thirdly, the elusive question: What is "I"? Not into the human "you" or the one that speaks and sees but into the core thinker, the intangible essence that animates. The "I" resides within, shaping the tangible reality and, paradoxically, depending on nothing while being the core of reality. Yet, the pivotal question still stands: Do others exist? Autonomy becomes the litmus test. If I, as an autonomous being, fail to wield dominion over external circumstances. Weakness in reshaping the external world confirms the separation, a stark admission of being powerless in the face of objective reality. While using ocoms razer, our answer is found. Thus, the conclusion is a solitary existence in the ability to affirm one's own being while recognizing others through autonomy. (shrink)

This short paragraph reminds us, humans, that our own activities, past and present, have triggered many of the grave environmental problems we have been facing.

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)

The most plausible line of anti-doping argumentation starts with the fact that performance enhancing substances are harmful and put at considerable risk the health and the life of those who indulge in the overwhelming promises these substances hold. From a liberal point of view, however, this is not a strong reason neither to morally reject doping altogether, nor to put a blanket ban on it; on the contrary, allowing adult, competent and informed athletes to have access to performance enhancement drugs (...) is often showcased as a liberty-related right of noninterference. In this article I will first discuss doping from the liberal point of view, especially in the light of the harm principle as it was introduced by Mill and elaborated by his successors, most notably by Joel Feinberg. Then I will examine whether – and to what degree – one’s decision to receive performance enhancement drugs would mean to use humanity in one’s own person only as a means, which would be self-defeating in the light of Kantian ethics. From this I will move one step backwards to what I consider as the core question concerning the ethics of doping, the one that is logically prior to any other in my view, and concerns the consistency of the thesis that doping may be compatible with sport. I will argue that there is an inherent logical antinomy between doing sport and using performance enhancement drugs, one that presents any argumentation in favor of doping as essentially self-contradictory. (shrink)

The evidence is overwhelming that members of particularly wealthy and industry-owning segments of Western societies have much larger carbon footprints than most other humans, and thereby contribute far more than their “fair share” to the enormous problem of climate change. Nonetheless, in this paper we shall counsel against a strategy focused primarily on blaming and shaming and propose, instead, a change in the ethical conversation about climate change. We recommend a shift in the ethical framework from a focus on the (...) role of individual agents and a conversation about guilt; in its place, we propose a relational approach to public health ethics that is centered around the idea of relational solidarity. We begin by briefly reviewing the most common—and woefully inadequate—approach in the West to reducing emissions and responding to the health-related impacts of climate change. We then go on to propose a relational approach to public health ethics as an alternative ethical framework that better fits the moral problems associated with climate change and holds promise for a more meaningful response. (shrink)

Some researchers and autistic activists have recently suggested that because some ‘autism-related’ behavioural atypicalities have a function or purpose they may be desirable rather than undesirable. Examples of such behavioural atypicalities include hand-flapping, repeatedly ordering objects (e.g., toys) in rows, and profoundly restricted routines. A common view, as represented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV-TR (APA, 2000), is that many of these behaviours lack adaptive function or purpose, interfere with learning, and constitute the non-social behavioural (...) dysfunctions of those disorders making up the Autism Spectrum. As the DSM IV-TR continues to be the reference source of choice for professionals working with individuals with psychiatric difficulties, its characterization of the Autism Spectrum holds significant sway. We will suggest Extended Mind and Enactive Cognition Theories, which theorize that mind (or cognition) is embodied and environmentally embedded, as coherent conceptual and theoretical spaces within which to investigate the possibility that certain repetitive behaviours exhibited by autistics possess functions or purposes that make them desirable. As lenses through which to re-examine ‘autism-related’ behavioral atypicalities, these theories not only open up explanatory possibilities underdeveloped in the research literature, but also cohere with how some autistics describe their own experience. Our position navigates a middle way between the view of autism as understood in terms of impairment, deficit and dysfunction and one that seeks to de-pathologize the Spectrum. In so doing we seek to contribute to a continuing dialogue between researchers, clinicians and self- or parent advocates. (shrink)

(article sent to participants of the Lindau meeting where a talk on this subject was given) David Bohm suggested that some kind of implicate order underlies the manifest order observed in physical systems, while others have suggested that some kind of mind-like process underlies this order. In the following a more explicit picture is proposed, based on the existence of parallels between spontaneously fluctuating equilibrium states and life processes. Focus on the processes of natural language suggests a picture involving an (...) evolving ensemble of experts, each with its own goals but nevertheless acting in harmony with each other. The details of how such an ensemble might function and evolve can translate into aspects of the world of fundamental physics such as symmetry and symmetry breaking, and can be expected to be the source of explicit models. This picture differs from that of regular physics in that goal-directedness has an important role to play, contrasting with that of the conventional view which implies a meaningless universe. (shrink)

This paper sets mathematics among the sciences, despite not being empirical, because it studies relations of various sorts, like the sciences. Each empirical science studies the relations among objects, which relations determining which science. The mathematical science studies relations as such, regardless of what those relations may be or be among, how relations themselves are related. This places it at the extreme among the sciences with no objects of its own (A Subject with no Object, by J.P. Burgess and G. (...) Rosen). Examples are discussed. The historical development of written mathematics from algorithms on clay tablets to theorems with proofs is said to show that application of algorithms to specific problems and theorems to scientific objects is like allegorical interpretation. Mathematics fits into the modern scientific context because the sciences, beginning with Galileo, have been constructed in imitation of mathematics. Viewing mathematics this way does not solve any ontological problems, but it does show how mathematics avoids them. Epistemological problems, insuperable for object realism, are simplified. For example, we have access to relations among any objects that we can consider objectively, first physical objects and then mathematical objects of greater and greater abstraction. (shrink)

Can one’s genetic profile be owned? How about techniques to improve genetic profi les? A brave new world of genetic enhancement is upon us and we’d better be ready to answer such questions. Adam Moore is ready. He thinks the answers to these questions are resoundingly “yes.” He defends this on the ground of individual liberty in the face of potential government control of such technology. He argues that genetic property is to be assimilated to rights of privacy and property (...) in general and can be owned. He defends this against several important objections on the basis of societal overriding needs or goods. (shrink)

In this chapter I offer a critique of the received way of thinking about responsibility for collective inaction and propose an alternative approach that takes as its point of departure the epistemic agency exhibited by people navigating impossible situations together. One such situation is becoming increasingly common in the context of climate change: so-called “natural” disasters wreaking havoc on communities—flooding homes, collapsing infrastructures, and straining the capacities of existing organizations to safeguard lives and livelihoods. What happens when philosophical reflection begins (...) here—in places where the institutions and practices that have emerged over the last century seem incapable of addressing the problems communities face now, and where people find themselves turning to one another for the sake of their own survival? (shrink)

A new translation and edition of Aristotle's Protrepticus (with critical comments on the fragments) -/- Welcome -/- The Protrepticus was an early work of Aristotle, written while he was still a member of Plato's Academy, but it soon became one of the most famous works in the whole history of philosophy. Unfortunately it was not directly copied in the middle ages and so did not survive in its own manuscript tradition. But substantial fragments of it have been preserved in several (...) works by Iamblichus of Chalcis, a third century A.D. neo-Pythagorean philosopher and educator. On the basis of a close study of Iamblichus' extensive use and excerption of Aristotle's Protrepticus, it is possible to reconstruct the backbone of the lost work, and then to flesh it out with the other surviving reports about the work from antiquity (for example in Alexander of Aphrodisias and other ancient commentators on Aristotle). It is also possible to identify several papyrus fragments of the work, and many references and literary allusions in later authors, especially Cicero, whose own lost dialogue Hortensius was a defense of philosophy modeleld on Aristotle's. (shrink)

One important aim of moral philosophy courses is to help students build the skills necessary to make their own well-reasoned decisions about moral issues. This includes the skill of determining when a particular moral reason provides a good answer to a moral question or not. Helping students think critically about religious reasons like “because God says so” and “because scripture explicitly says so” can be challenging because such lessons can be misperceived as coercive or anti-religious. I describe a framework for (...) teaching about religion and moral reasons that I have found overcomes these challenges while also building generalizable skill at analyzing and evaluating moral reasons. (shrink)

This book is a case of “too little, too late”: too little in that it represents voices not from the developing world as a whole but from a particular Catholic viewpoint in the Philippines, too late in that others have already gone “beyond a Western bioethics”—which, in any case, is not the unified and rigid set of principles that the authors make it out to be. The publication is a long delayed spinoff of a series of bioethics seminars held in (...) Manila and Houston under the leadership of H Tristram Engelhardt Jr, who has contributed an introduction to the volume on Western bioethics reconsidered. (As Engelhardt writes: “Like good wine, this work has come slowly into its own” (page xii). Engelhardt’s bias is evident in the phrase he uses early on in this introduction, “the customary American/western European indoctrination in …. (shrink)

A recording or performance of a song is a cover if there is an earlier, canonical recording of the song. It can seem intuitive to think that properly appreciating a cover requires considering it in relation to the original, or at least that doing so will yield a deeper appreciation. This intuition is supported by some philosophical accounts of covers. And it is complicated by the possibility of hearing in, whereby one hears elements of the original version in the cover. (...) We argue that it can nevertheless be just as legitimate to consider a cover version on its own as it is to consider it in relation to the earlier recording that it is covering. In some cases, these two modes of appreciation will offer distinct rewards. In other cases, one mode will be substantially more rewarding than the other. The details matter, especially in complicated cases like covers of covers, but neither mode is privileged in principle. (shrink)