Kant’s views on the relation between freedom and moral law seem to undergo a major, unannounced shift. In the third section of the Groundwork, Kant seems to be using the fact that we must act under the idea of freedom as a foundation for the moral law. However, in the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant claims that our awareness of our freedom depends on our awareness of the moral law. I argue that the apparent conflict between the (...) two texts depends on a reading of the opening paragraphs of Groundwork III, and on an interpretation of Kant’s claim that we “act under the idea of freedom”, that is implausible on textual and on philosophical grounds. I then present an alternative interpretation of what Kant means by “acting under the idea of freedom” and of the opening paragraphs of Groundwork III. I argue that the only substantive conclusion of these paragraphs is that no theoretical proof of freedom is necessary. Moreover I argue that although these paragraphs raise concerns about the validity of the moral law, these concerns and Kant’s answers to them, do not give rise to any significant conflict with his views in the Critique of Practical Reason. (shrink)

Why are moral actions beautiful, when indeed they are? This paper assesses the view, found most notably in Schiller, that moral actions are beautiful just when they present the appearance of freedom by appearing to be the result of internal harmony (the Schillerian Internal Harmony Thesis). I argue that while this thesis can accommodate some of the beauty involved in contrasts of the ‘continent’ and the ‘fully’ virtuous, it cannot account for all of the beauty in such contrasts, and (...) so needs to be weakened considerably (to the Internal Harmony Thesis). To account for the remaining beauty that cannot be fully accommodated even by this revised thesis, as well as the beauty contained in contrasts that involve agents who experience internal conflict as a result of being sensitive to different sources of moral value to an appropriate extent, a number of further theses need to be posited: namely, that the beauty of some moral actions is to be accommodated in terms of internal disharmony (the Internal Disharmony Thesis), and in terms of a felt harmony between the appreciator of the action and the executor of the action (the Affective Harmony Thesis). As such, in contrast to Schiller, I suggest that we need to take a pluralist and context-sensitive approach to accommodating the beauty of moral actions. (shrink)

"Люди говорят снова и снова, что философия на самом деле не прогресс, что мы по-прежнему заняты теми же философскими проблемами, что и греки. Но люди, которые говорят это, не понимают, почему это должно быть так. Это потому, что наш язык остался прежним и продолжает соблазнять нас задавать те же вопросы. До тех пор, пока по-прежнему существует глагол, который выглядит так, как будто он функционирует так же, как «есть и пить», до тех пор, пока у нас есть прилагательные «идентично», «правда» ( (...) « » » » » » » » » » возможно, до тех пор, как мы продолжаем говорить о реке времени, просторы пространства и т.д., и т.д., люди будут держать спотыкаясь над темже загадочные трудности и найти себя глядя на то, что никакое объяснение, кажется, способны очистки. И более того, это удовлетворяет стремление к трансцендентной, потому что, поскольку люди думают, что они могут видеть ‘"пределы человеческого понимания", они считают, конечно, тони могут видеть за этим. Эта цитата из Людвиг Витгенштейн, который пересмотрел философию около 70 лет назад (но большинство людей до сих пор не выяснить это). Деннетт, хотя он был философом в течение 40 лет, является одним из них. Любопытно также, что и он, и его главный антагонист Джон Сирл учились у знаменитых Витгенштейнов (Сирл с Джоном Остином, Деннет с Гилбертом Райлом), но Сирл более или менее получил точку, а Деннет т , (хотя это растяжение вещей, чтобы назвать Сирл или Райл Витгенштейнов). Деннетт является жесткий детерминант (хотя он пытается проникнуть реальность в задней двери), и, возможно, это связано с Райл, чья знаменитая книга "Концепция разума" (1949) продолжает быть перепечатаны. Эта книга проделала большую работу по изгнанию призрака, но он покинул машину. Деннетт любит делать ошибки Витгенштейна, Райл (и многие другие с тех пор) разоблачили в деталях. Наше использование слов сознание, выбор, свобода, намерение, частицы, мышление, определяет, волна, причина, произошло, событие (и так далее бесконечно) редко источником путаницы, но как только мы оставляем нормальную жизнь и введите философию (и любое обсуждение отделены от среды, в которой язык развивался-т.е., точный контекст, в котором слова имели смысл)хаос царит. Как и большинству,, Деннетне не хватает когерентной структуры - которую Сирл назвал логической структурой рациональности. Я расширил на этом значительно, так как я написал этот обзор, и мои последние статьи показывают подробно, что случилось с подходом Деннетк к философии, который можно было бы назвать Scientism на стероидах. Позвольте мне закончить с другой цитатой из Витгенштейна - "Амбиции является смерть мысли. Те, кто желает всеобъемлющего до современных рамок для человеческого поведения из современных двух systEms зрения могут проконсультироваться с моей книгой"Логическая структура философии, психологии, Минd иязык в Людвиг Витгенштейн и Джон Сирл" второй ред (2019). Те, кто заинтересован в более моих сочинений могут увидеть "Говоря обезьян - Философия, психология, наука, религия и политика на обреченной планете - Статьи и обзоры 2006-2019 3-й ed (2019) и suicidal утопических заблуждений в 21-мst веке 4-й ed (2019) th и другие. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Desmond Hogan aims to explain how Kant could have consistently held that noumenal affection is not only compatible with noumenal ignorance but also with the claim that experience requires causal affection of human cognitive agents by things in themselves. Hogan's argument includes the premise that human cognitive agents have empirical knowledge of one another's actions. Hogan's argument fails because the premise that we have empirical knowledge of one another's actions is ambiguous. On one reading, (...) the argument is valid but its conclusion trivial. On the other, it is unsound on Kant's own view.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Freedom, Knowledge and Affection: Reply to HoganVolume 18, Issue 1Nicholas Stang DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000301Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Freedom, Knowledge and Affection: Reply to HoganVolume 18, Issue 1Nicholas Stang DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000301Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Freedom, Knowledge and Affection: Reply to HoganVolume 18, Issue 1Nicholas Stang DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415412000301Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation. (shrink)

Despite recent neuroscientific research purporting to reveal that free will is an illusion, this paper will argue that agency is an inescapable feature of rationality and thought. My aim will not be to address the methodology or interpretation of such research, which I will only mention in passing. Rather, I will examine a collection of basic concepts which are presupposed by thought, and propose that these concepts are interrelated in ways that makes them both basic and irreducibly complex. The collection (...) includes such concepts as belief, value, meaning, and truth. I will argue that free will belongs to this collection, and as such is also presupposed by thought. This proposal is opposed to a methodological tendency in analytic philosophy, to eliminate aspects of concepts which can’t be given a clear analysis, and to the wish of many empirical psychologists and cognitive scientists to reduce intentional/mental states to neurons and other mindless phenomena which they regard as more fundamental. Instead of offering a direct critique of either of these methodological attitudes, I will try to place the concept of freedom in its proper conceptual context, and make a positive case for its reality. (shrink)

A prominent objection to non-cognitive moral bio-enhancements is that they would compromise the recipient’s ‘freedom to fall’. I begin by discussing some ambiguities in this objection, before outlining an Aristotelian reading of it. I suggest that this reading may help to forestall Persson and Savulescu’s ‘God-Machine’ criticism; however, I suggest that the objection still faces the problem of explaining why the value of moral conformity is insufficient to outweigh the value of the freedom to fall itself. I (...) also question whether the objection is compatible with Neil Levy’s parity principle. Accordingly, I go on to consider an alternative relational freedom-based objection to NCMBEs that aims to explain the fundamental moral importance of the freedom that NCMBEs would violate. I argue that although this strategy might allow the critic of NCMBEs to bypass a powerful criticism of Harris’ objection, it also weakens the freedom-based objection’s compatibility with the parity principle. (shrink)

Kant’s view that freedom is a “kind of causality” seems to conflict with his claim that the categories of the understanding – including causality – can only be applied objectively to sensible phaenomena, never to supersensible noumena, as freedom is only possible for the latter. I argue that only Kant’s theory of symbolic presentation, according to which the category of cause is applied merely analogically to freedom, can dispel this threatening inconsistency. Unlike it is commonly thought, one (...) cannot here use the category of cause in its unschematised form to think freedom as causality, for its mere logical significance does not suffice for the practical reality of freedom. Symbolic cognition in turn is not unschematised but indirect schematized presentation. Ultimately I will show that symbolic cognition is a necessary condition of moral agency – but not of morality itself – for without it we could not cognize and hence self-consciously use our freedom to act from the moral law. (shrink)

Kant holds that the applicability of the moral ‘ought’ depends on a kind of agent-causal freedom that is incompatible with the deterministic structure of phenomenal nature. I argue that Kant understands this determinism to threaten not just morality but the very possibility of our status as rational beings. Rational beings exemplify “cognitive control” in all of their actions, including not just rational willing and the formation of doxastic attitudes, but also more basic cognitive acts such as judging, (...) conceptualizing, and synthesizing. (shrink)

Two competing models of metaaxiological justification of politics are analyzed. Politics is understood broadly, as actions which aim at organizing social life. I will be, first of all, interested in law making activities. When I talk about metaaxiological justification I think not so much about determinations of what is good, but about determinations refering to the way the good is founded, in short: determinations which answer the question why something is good. In the first model, which is described here as (...) objectivistic, it is assumed that determining that which is good is a matter of cognition; in the second model, which could be described here as voluntaristic or excedingly liberal, it is assumed that determining good is not a matter of cognition but of will – something is good because it is wanted. In the latter model, the cognoscibility of good is rejected and therefore the objective criteria for evaluation of which ‘will’ is better and which is worse are rejected. As a consequence, negative freedom becomes the fundamental value of social order and the basic requirement is that of maximizing the sphere of individual’s free actions, the sphere which is free from interference of other individuals or institutions. I am going to argue that none of these models is acceptable as a basis of oragnizing social life, and at least because of one reason. Each of them leads to a certain version of totalitarianism. In the conclusion I am going to present a mixed model, which, in my opinion, reflexes well the practice of democratic states. Analysis of these three models allows, first of all, to identify more clearly some of the problems appearing in making law, including procedural questions. By pointing at the interdependence of the foundations of good and law making procedures it is argued that the choice of the concept of good (a metaaxiological choice) is primary to the choice of law making procedures. (shrink)

As the science and technology of the brain and mind develop, so do the ways in which brains and minds may be surveilled and manipulated. Some cognitive libertarians worry that these developments undermine cognitive liberty, or “freedom of thought.” I argue that protecting an individual’s cognitive liberty undermines others’ ability to use their own cognitive liberty. Given that the threatening devices and processes are not relevantly different from ordinary and frequent intrusions upon one’s brain and (...) mind, strong protections of cognitive liberty may proscribe neurotechnological intrusions, but also ordinary intrusions. Thus, the cognitive libertarian position “hog-ties” others’ use of their own liberties. This problem for the cognitive libertarian is the same problem that ordinary libertarianism faces in protecting individual rights to property and person. But the libertarian strategies for resolving the problem don’t work for the cognitive libertarian. I conclude that the right to mental privacy is weaker than what cognitive libertarians want it to be. (shrink)

This article synthesizes the current theoretical attempts to understand human-machine interactions and introduces seven premises to understand our emerging dynamics with increasingly competent, pervasive, and instantly accessible algorithms. The hope that these seven premises can build toward a social theory of human-AI cocreation. The focus on human-AI cocreation is intended to emphasize two factors. First, is the fact that our machine learning systems are socialized. Second, is the coevolving nature of human mind and AI systems as smart devices form an (...) indispensable part of our cognitive scaffolds, thus, shaping how we perceive the world and ourselves. The seven premises include: primacy of social structures; human’s desire for freedom and autonomy; AI systems will form inseparable parts of our cognitive/affective scaffolds and can change our self-understanding; philosophy and humanistic foundations on human flourishing as a guide to human-AI interaction; mindsponge information-filtering process; acculturative process of how values change and emerge from human-AI interaction; overlapping Venn diagram of the human-human, human-nature, and human-machine interactions. This article concludes with a discussion on human agency in our entanglements with socialized machines and the illusoriness of the Cartesian agent view of the mind. (shrink)

This paper addresses the recent rise of the use of alternative medicine in Western countries. It offers a novel explanation of that phenomenon in terms of cognitive and economic factors related to the free-market and patient-centric approach to medicine that is currently in place in those countries, in contrast to some alternative explanations of this phenomenon. Moreover, the paper addresses this troubling trend in terms of the serious harms associated with the use of alternative medical modalities. The explanatory theory (...) defended here is then predicated on the idea that an extreme patient-centric model of medical practice that treats largely ignorant patients as consumers of medical products and services endowed with an essentially unrestricted power of freedom to choose treatments predictably leads serious and avoidable harms. Some important moral and epistemological consequences of this model are then articulated and corrective measures are suggested. (shrink)

I discuss the difference and the connections between Kant’s notions of cognition (Erkenntnis) and knowledge (Wissen). Unlike knowledge, cognition is a representational state which need not have the propositional structure of a judgments. Even cognitions that have such a structure need not coincide with knowledge, because they might rather have the doxastic status of opinion or faith, or they might be false (whereas knowledge is a certain recognition of truth). I argue that while Kant distinguishes between many different species of (...) cognition, he uses the term ‘knowledge’ univocally across his theoretical and practical philosophy. All knowledge is based upon some kind of cognition that provides the sufficient objective, certain ground for a knowing assent to a proposition. However, not all knowledge must be based upon the demanding type of cognition that is central to Kant’s overall argument in the first Critique, which requires a synthesis of concepts and sensible intuition. We have a lot of determinate knowledge, including knowledge that we possess transcendental freedom of will, that is based upon purely conceptual practical cognition. We can also have some indeterminate philosophical knowledge (e.g. knowledge that there are non-sensible, noumenal beings) that is based upon purely conceptual theoretical cognition. (shrink)

After a brief discussion of the terms determinism and free will, the paper sets out to compare some recent philosophical approaches to the problem of free will with a theological anthropology account of the notion. It aims to defend the claim, that even though different kind of questions are asked on both sides, they tackle similar issues and a complementary approach is needed. Recent philosophy considers the problem mostly from the standpoint of logic, naturalist evolutionary ontology and cognitive science. (...) In the Christian theological tradition, the idea of free will has been discussed mostly from the perspective of the problem of sin and grace, thus on the grounds of soteriology, hamartiology and theological ethics. The paper shows similarities between the approaches, mainly between the problem of physical determinism and theological determinism and also divine foreknowledge. (shrink)

In three experiments we studied lay observers’ attributions of responsibility for an antisocial act (homicide). We systematically varied both the degree to which the action was coerced by external circumstances and the degree to which the actor endorsed and accepted ownership of the act, a psychological state that philosophers have termed ‘identification’. Our findings with respect to identification were highly consistent. The more an actor was identified with an action, the more likely observers were to assign responsibility to the actor, (...) even when the action was performed under constraints so powerful that no other behavioral option was available. Our findings indicate that social cognition involving assignment of responsibility for an action is a more complex process than previous research has indicated. It would appear that laypersons’ judgments of moral responsibility may, in some circumstances, accord with philosophical views in which freedom and determinism are regarded to be compatible. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to offer one novel perspective on the effects of physical and social isolation on an individual in the period of COVID-19 pandemic. Namely, we can distinguish two standard approaches to studying such effects: psychological, which strives to identify emergence and effects of new external stressors on an individual, and legal and ethical, which evaluates justification and correctness of certain public strategies designed to combat the pandemic that jeopardize human rights, such as the right to (...) class='Hi'>freedom of movement. The novel perspective, offered in this paper, should not replace any of these approaches, instead it will provide some amendments to them by putting in place a new theoretical framework. The focus of the paper will be on justifying two major assumptions of this novel approach – the assumption that individuals as cognitive systems and selves sometimes extend into the environment, and the assumption that this environment can be social, i.e. that individuals sometimes extend on cognitive resources of other people. If these assumptions can be well founded, some psychological effects of isolation could be reconceptualized as instances of the internal transformations of an individual who loses some of her parts. Also, adopting the view that individuals are socially extended cognitive systems would lead to recognizing novel legal and ethical issues with respect to forced social isolation – endangerment of personal rights pertaining to personal integrity and identity. (shrink)

This work develops a philosophically credible and psychologically realisable account of control that is necessary for moral responsibility. We live, think, and act in an environment of subjective uncertainty and limited information. As a result, our decisions and actions are influenced by factors beyond our control. Our ability to act freely is restricted by uncertainty, ignorance, and luck. Through three articles, I develop a naturalistic theory of control for action as a process of error minimisation that extends over time. Thus (...) conceived, control can serve to minimise the influence of luck on action and enable freedom in uncertainty. -/- In Article 1, Thor Grünbaum and I argue for a psychologically plausible account of the kind of control that is necessary for moral responsibility. We begin by establishing the relationship between agentive contribution and responsibility-level control. One way to determine whether one the right kind and degree of control to be morally responsible is to track one’s degree of contribution to an action. However, a psychologically plausible account of control in terms of agentive contribution may seem to contradict the types of functional-mechanistic explanations used in cognitive science. In cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience, personal-level capacities are explained by a set of sub-personal mechanisms. Often, such explanations leave no room for a contribution by the agent. By integrating insights from theories of cognitive control and incorporating them into a philosophical account of intentions, we propose a way of thinking about the distribution of cognitive control resources as something the agent does. -/- Article 2 argues that a classic argument concerning luck, originally aimed at libertarianism, generalises beyond any specific theory of free will, and regardless of whether determinism or indeterminism is true. I call this mental luck. Because we all make decisions under conditions of relative uncertainty and limited information, it is possible for an agent to make decisions that are contrary to their own motivation. In such situations, it may be a matter of luck whether the agent makes the right decision. Mentally lucky decisions are not rationally governed by attitudes within the agent's perspective, and thus, may be indistinguishable from unlucky ones. From the perspective of the agent, such decisions may resemble the outcome of a lottery. Therefore, mental luck poses a challenge to most prominent theories of free action and moral responsibility. -/- Finally, article 3 engages with the issue of resultant luck, namely luck in how things turn out. Resultant luck raises a challenge for theories of moral responsibility because its existence suggests that one may be responsible for factors beyond one’s control. Prominent responses to resultant luck led to a choice between internalism and scepticism. I argue that familiar cases of resultant luck are based on the assumption that actions are events. Instead, I propose an alternative ontology of action as an ongoing goal-directed process with a many-shots structure. Described this way, cases of resultant luck are not representative of ordinary action. The proposal of action as a many-shots process is consistent with predictive coding, a cognitive architecture which centres around error minimisation. Under this framework, cases of resultant more luck are no longer failures of action, but rather anticipated errors to be settled within the ordinary process of action. (shrink)

After being largely unknown to non-siniphone philosophers, Li Zehou's ideas are gradually being translated into English, but very little has been done on his aesthetics, which he says is the key to his oeuvre. In the first of three sections of this paper, I briefly introduce the reader to Kant's aesthetics through Li's eyes, in which he develops an implicit notion of aesthetic freedom as political vehicle through the notions of subjectivity, universalization, and the unity of the cognitive (...) faculties. In the second section, I introduce Marx's notions of 'human nature as practice' and 'freedom as practice', as outlined in his early manuscripts. I conclude that Marx's politics take free practice as the highest expression of humanity, which is finally, ideally, self-legislating. In the final section, I present Li's interpretation of Marx as a remedy for Kant, introducing some of Li's specialized vocabulary and demonstrating his final synthesis of Kant and Marx in a notion of aesthetic freedom that presupposes political freedom. (shrink)

My initial work, with collaborators Stephen Morris, Thomas Nadelhoffer, and Jason Turner (2005, 2006), on surveying folk intuitions about free will and moral responsibility was designed primarily to test a common claim in the philosophical debates: that ordinary people see an obvious conflict between determinism and both free will and moral responsibility, and hence, the burden is on compatibilists to motivate their theory in a way that explains away or overcomes this intuitive support for incompatibilism. The evidence, if any, offered (...) by philosophers to support the claim that incompatibilism is intuitive has consisted of reports of their own intuitions or informal polls of their students. We were skeptical about the reliability of such evidence, so we used the methodology--”now associated with the label 'experimental philosophy'--”of conducting formal surveys on non-philosophers. Our participants read a scenario that describes a deterministic universe and were then asked to judge whether agents in those scenarios act of their own free will and are morally responsible for their actions. Using three different scenarios with hundreds of participants, we consistently found that the majority (2/3 to 4/5) responded that agents in deterministic universes do act of their own free will and are morally responsible. That is, we found that most ordinary folk do not seem to find incompatibilism intuitive or obviously correct. Our results have been challenged in various ways, philosophical and methodological. For instance, Shaun Nichols (2004, this volume) and Nichols and Joshua Knobe (unpublished) offer some experimental evidence suggesting that, in certain conditions, most people express incompatibilist and libertarian intuitions. I will respond to this work in the following section. I agree that people express conflicting intuitions about free will (after all, we consistently found a minority of participants expressing incompatibilist. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue, grounded on empirical evidence, that enactivism is a promising philosophical stance with great potential to address challenges brought by our rapidly changing world. We then propose Freedom Education, a new form of teaching and learning founded on the enactivist theory. After discussing what constitutes Freedom Education and what it is not, we recommend several principles to establish a learning world of free-dom education.

This paper addresses the question whether we can conceive of music cognition in ecosemiotic terms. It claims that music knowledge must be generated as a tool for adaptation to the sonic world and calls forth a shift from a structural description of music as an artifact to a process-like approach to dealing with music. As listeners, we are observers who construct and organize our knowledge and bring with us our observational tools. What matters is not merely the sonic world in (...) its objective qualities, but the world as perceived. In order to make these claims operational we can rely on the ecological concept of coping with the sonic world and the cybernetic concepts of artificial and adaptive devices. Listeners, on this view, are able to change their semantic relations with the sonic world through functional adaptations at the level of sensing, acting and coordinating between action and perception. This allows us to understand music in functional terms of what it affords to us and not merely in terms of its acoustic qualities. There are, however, degrees of freedom and constraints which shape the semiotization of the sonic world. As such we must consider the role of event perception and cognitive economy: listeners do not perceive the acoustical environment in terms of phenomenological descriptions but as ecological events. (shrink)

As we enter the 21st century, we do well to consider the values implicit in science fiction, the principal arena of future speculation in popular culture. This study explored whether consumption of science fiction (SF) is correlated with distinctive socio-ethical views. SF tends to advocate the extension of value and rights to all forms of intelligence, regardless of physical form; enthusiasm for technology; and social and economic libertarianism. This suggests that consumers with these socio-ethical views would be attracted to the (...) SF genre, and that amount of SF consumption would be correlated with adoption of these views. -/- Groups of respondents involved in medical ethical and environmental issues were surveyed in 1992 (N=278). SF consumption was found, at first-order correlation and controlling for covariates, to be associated with: greater support for extending rights to animal and machine intelligence; greater enthusiasm for technology, and rejection of limits to human endeavors; and greater social libertarianism. SF consumption was not associated with specific views on the cognitively and physically disabled; support for abortion rights; or economic libertarianism. (shrink)

The aim of the study is to spell out and consider Plato' s views on perceptual cog­nition. It is argued that Plato is cornrnitted to the view that perceptual cognition can be rational, and that beliefs about the sensible world need not be confused or ill-founded. Plato' s interest in the matter arises from worries over the way in which his fore­runners and contemporaries conceived of perceptual cognition. They conceived of cognitive processes in terms of corporeal changes and attempted (...) to explain perceptual cognition in causal terms. The problem with such accounts, according to Plato, is that they make perceptual cognition an entirely passive process, and seem incapable of accommodating the freedom of reason. Plato's main target is Protagoras' view on cognition and he accuses him of con­flating different cognitive phenomena that ought to be kept apart. More particularly, he suggests that Protagoras' 'man the measure' thesis is based on the conflation of sen se perception, belief and appearing, and that Protagoras is cornmitted to the view that beliefs are arrived at in a non-rational way. It is shown how Plato takes issue with Protagoras by disentangling these three cognitive phenomena. It is argued that Plato' s way of understanding these notions leaves room for the possibility that reason plays apart in perceptual cognition and that we arrive at beliefs in a rational way. In the course of spelling out the argument, Plato' s views on a number of topics are scrutinised: the perceptual mechanism; the objects of sense perception; perceptual content; the nature of belief; the eon trast between belief and appearing; the nation of reason. (shrink)

The purpose of this dissertation is to design a conception of political poverty that can address the loss of the experience of political freedom. This form of political poverty is described as separate from poverty of resources and opportunities, and poverty of capabilities required for participation. The study aims to make intelligible how a person or a group can suffer from a diminishing and fracturing of social experience, which can lead to the inability to experience oneself as a capable (...) and credible political agent, political engagement as a meaningful field of action, and democratic politics as a meaningful avenue for changing things for the better. This is a phenomenon which has been heretofore neglected by political theorists. -/- The study presents a heuristic diagnosis of political poverty as loss of experiential freedom that involves four aspects of experience that have specifically political relevance: loss of trust, loss of expressivity, loss of a sense of access to the public world, and the loss of future temporality in experience. Diminishing and fracturing of these aspects of social experience can lead to politically impoverished persons and groups to become complicit in their own marginalisation by remaining unmotivated to challenge it. These aspects of social experience are approached through phenomenological portraits, chosen from literature on social exclusion and poverty. The diagnosis remains open to further development through exploration of other aspects of experience. -/- The study draws on the thinking of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Hannah Arendt to present an account of political freedom as only experienced in co-existence with others. Through a critical discussion of their work, a more comprehensive account of political agency is developed. The experience of having political agency involves not just the cognitive and communicative capacities of the subject, but also the entire perceptual and motor intentionality of their lived body. The experience of meaningfulness is approached by exploring the intersubjective constitution of the self in a dialectical process with their social environment. This experience is described as a form of faith in oneself as an agent and in the meaningfulness of political engagement. Such faith is a practical, meaning-giving intentional relationship of a lived body to their social environment. -/- This study emphasizes the experience of being a capable and credible political agent, and experiencing politics as a meaningful field for engagement, as important aspects of political freedom that should be considered alongside inclusivity of democratic processes, the equality of opportunity to participate, and the equality of the cognitive and communicative capabilities required for effective participation. In order to discuss political poverty as the loss of experiential freedom, we must go beyond objectivist models of social critique and approach the problem with the tools of existential phenomenology. (shrink)

The monograph offers an original account of Spinoza’s philosophy and ethics concentrated on its concordance with selected modern neuroscientific theories. The book proceeds through the whole of Spinoza’s philosophy and by increasingly complex analytical account acquaints with its essential frameworks, terminology, and concepts, and is thus accessible also to readers who are not yet familiar with the thought of this peculiar thinker. The fundamental motives of this interpretation are the nature of the mind and the questions of human freedom (...) and human bondage, mainly in connection with the investigation of affects (passions and drives) that the mind tends to be bound with. In his philosophy, Spinoza not only offers brilliant analyses of human experience but in anticipation of modern psychotherapeutic techniques suggests practical methods for the realization of sufficiently functional affective-cognitive self-therapy aimed at the regulation and control of one’s passivity. The understanding of and working with one’s weaknesses is, according to Spinoza, the necessary condition for realizing one’s freedom, or – for being able to shift from pathetics to ethics. (shrink)

To pursue the cultivation of a compassionate disposition is often perceived as an external demand, constraining one's individual freedom. Some might think of it as a necessary burden for the benefit of society, while others may exercise it only in the most convenient occasions. This most common view is gravely impoverished. Compassion is in fact a cognitive disposition with a certain historical life that actually frees us from our own perceptive constraints.

This paper addresses the question whether we can conceive of music cognition in ecosemiotic terms. It claims that music knowledge must be generated as a tool for adaptation to the sonic world and calls forth a shift from a structural description of music as an artifact to a process-like approach to dealing with music. As listeners, we are observers who construct and organize our knowledge and bring with us our observational tools. What matters is not merely the sonic world in (...) its objective qualities, but the world as perceived. In order to make these claims operational we can rely on the ecological concept of coping with the sonic world and the cybernetic concepts of artificial and adaptive devices. Listeners, on this view, are able to change their semantic relations with the sonic world through functional adaptations at the level of sensing, acting and coordinating between action and perception. This allows us to understand music in functional terms of what it affords to us and not merely in terms of its acoustic qualities. There are, however, degrees of freedom and constraints which shape the semiotization of the sonic world. As such we must consider the role of event perception and cognitive economy: listeners do not perceive the acoustical environment in terms of phenomenological descriptions but as ecological events. (shrink)

What might early Buddhist teachings offer neuroscience and how might neuroscience inform contemporary Buddhism? Both early Buddhist teachings and cognitive neuroscience suggest that the conditioning of our cognitive apparatus and brain plays a role in agency that may be either efficacious or non-efficacious. Both consider internal time to play a central role in the efficacy of agency. Buddhism offers an approach that promises to increase the efficacy of agency. This approach is found in five early Buddhist teachings that (...) are re-interpreted here with a view to explaining how they might be understood as a dynamic basis for ‘participatory will’ in the context of existing free will debates and the neuroscientific work of Patrick Haggard (et al.). These perspectives offer Buddhism and neuroscience a basis for informing each other as the shared themes of: (1) cognition is dynamic and complex/aggregate based, (2) being dynamic, cognition lacks a fixed basis of efficacy, and (3) efficacy of cognition may be achieved by an understanding of the concept of dynamic: as harmony and efficiency and by means of Buddha-warranted processes that involve internal time. (shrink)

In Schopenhauer’s thought, the will’s primacy over the intellect seems to suggest that the intellect plays no role in determining what we do. I provide an alternative picture of the intellect as actively deliberating and choosing in abstract cognition from what it passively receives from the will in natural cognition.

What might early Buddhist teachings offer neuroscience and how might neuroscience inform contemporary Buddhism? Both early Buddhist teachings and cognitive neuroscience suggest that the conditioning of our cognitive apparatus and brain plays a role in agency that may be either efficacious or non-efficacious. Both consider internal time to play a central role in the efficacy of agency. Buddhism offers an approach that promises to increase the efficacy of agency. This approach is found in five early Buddhist teachings that (...) are re-interpreted here with a view to explaining how they might be understood as a dynamic basis for ‘participatory will’ in the context of existing free will debates and the neuroscientific work of Patrick Haggard. These perspectives offer Buddhism and neuroscience a basis for informing each other as the shared themes of: cognition is dynamic and complex/aggregate based, being dynamic, cognition lacks a fixed basis of efficacy, and efficacy of cognition may be achieved by an understanding of the concept of dynamic: as harmony and efficiency and by means of Buddha-warranted processes that involve internal time. (shrink)

This essay aims to appreciate the evolution of the problems regarding the ontological understanding of the photographic image and its derivative, the film, in the face of the sophistication of the apparatus of its production. The creative freedom in making images through optical machines is inversely proportional to their credibility as documents. Since its appearance in the human landscape, as a cultural object, the technology of recording images with lights has brought with it a complex of aporias about what (...) would the nature of the image produced by cameras be: a document or an artistic object, intentionally produced and with created meaning? Consequently: are they denotative or, necessarily, connotative? The development of automatic image capture in the 1980s represented the first update of the question. To what extent, and for how long, will it be possible to trust photography and film as documents through which man aims to access reality? The question now seems to be settled, definitively, in the face of the invention of artificial photography made by algorithms. (shrink)

Personal AI assistants are now nearly ubiquitous. Every leading smartphone operating system comes with a personal AI assistant that promises to help you with basic cognitive tasks: searching, planning, messaging, scheduling and so on. Usage of such devices is effectively a form of algorithmic outsourcing: getting a smart algorithm to do something on your behalf. Many have expressed concerns about this algorithmic outsourcing. They claim that it is dehumanising, leads to cognitive degeneration, and robs us of our (...) class='Hi'>freedom and autonomy. Some people have a more subtle view, arguing that it is problematic in those cases where its use may degrade important interpersonal virtues. In this article, I assess these objections to the use of AI assistants. I will argue that the ethics of their use is complex. There are no quick fixes or knockdown objections to the practice, but there are some legitimate concerns. By carefully analysing and evaluating the objections that have been lodged to date, we can begin to articulate an ethics of personal AI use that navigates those concerns. In the process, we can locate some paradoxes in our thinking about outsourcing and technological dependence, and we can think more clearly about what it means to live a good life in the age of smart machines. (shrink)

The authors respond to a wide range of objections defending our argument that some forms of behaviour modification utilising advances in the cognitive sciences are desirable and need not necessarily undermine autonomy or freedom.

Creativity has often been declared, especially by philosophers, as the last frontier of science. The assumption is that it will defy explanation forever. I will defend two claims in order to oppose this assumption and to demystify creativity: (1) the perspective that creativity cannot be explained wrongly identifies creativity with what I shall call metaphysical freedom; (2) the Darwinian approach to creativity, a prominent naturalistic account of creativity, fails to give an explanation of creativity, because it confuses conceptual issues (...) with explanation. I will close with some remarks on the status and differences in some explanations available in contemporary cognitive science. (shrink)

The human mind has been a subject matter of study in psychology, law, science, philosophy and other disciplines. By definition, its potential is power, abilities and capacities including perception, knowledge, sensation, memory, belief, imagination, emotion, mood, appetite, intention, and action (Pardo, Patterson). In terms of role, it creates and shapes societal morality, culture, peace and democracy. Today, a rapidly advancing science–technology–artificial intelligence (AI) landscape is able to reach into the inner realms of the human mind. Technology, particularly neurotechnology enables access (...) to the human mind for research, treatment and other purposes. This enabling feature is now a growing concern. In the field of human rights, this human-science–technology interface is leading to articulation of new human rights to safeguard against modern threats. The wider usage of expressions like neurolaw and mental autonomy reflects on the emerging field of standards to protect the human mind from interference, manipulation and control. Growing literature on the subject sheds light on the human-rights-based approach to the challenge. (shrink)

The author undertakes the problem of the identity of Western civilization in the light of a correlation between politics and religion. First, he traces the theoretical debates about the mutual correspondence of politics and religion in ancient Greece. Following two extreme errors depicted by Sophocles in his “Antigone,” and by Plato in his “Apology of Socrates,” he infers that the “Golden Mean” is necessary in resolving the problem of politics and religion. Then, he examines the underlying errors put forward in (...) the history. His investigations show the erroneousness of endowing either politics or religion with sovereign status in culture. There is always a conflict between politics and religion unless man regains his own sovereignty from them. Ultimately the author arrives at the conclusion that the “Golden Mean” correlating politics and religion distinctly strengthens the identity of the Western Civilization, and consists in respecting all real and universal parameters of human person life, such as cognition, freedom (and responsibility), love, agency in law, ontological sovereignty, and religious dignity. (shrink)

This article introduces and defends the “pathological complexity thesis” as a hypothesis about the evolutionary origins of minimal consciousness, or sentience, that connects the study of animal consciousness closely with work in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology. I argue that consciousness is an adaptive solution to a design problem that led to the extinction of complex multicellular animal life following the Avalon explosion and that was subsequently solved during the Cambrian explosion. This is the economic trade-off problem of having to (...) deal with a complex body with high degrees of freedom, what I call “pathological complexity.” By modeling the explosion of this computational complexity using the resources of state-based behavioral and life history theory we will be able to provide an evolutionary bottom-up framework to make sense of subjective experience and its function in nature by paying close attention to the ecological lifestyles of different animals. (shrink)

According to Friedrich Schleiermacher, religiosity is rooted in feeling (Gefühl). As a result of our engagement with the world, on which we depend and which we can influence, we have both a sense of dependence and of freedom. Schleiermacher speculated that a sense of absolute dependence in reflective beings with self-consciousness (human beings) gave rise to religion. Using insights from contemporary philosophy of biology and cognitive science, I seek to naturalize Schleiermacher's ideas. I moreover show that this naturalization (...) is in line with Schleiermacher's outlook on biology, as he already had evolutionary considerations in mind when he wrote the Christian Faith (1830). While Schleiermacher rejects natural theology in a narrow sense (proofs for the existence of God), his project is natural theological in a broader sense, as it roots religion in experiences that we can examine using naturalistic theories. (shrink)

I argue that the traditional free will debate has focused too much on whether free will is compatible with determinism and not enough on whether free will is compatible with specific causal explanations for our actions, including those offered by empirical psychology. If free will is understood as a set of cognitive and volitional capacities, possessed and exercised to varying degrees, then psychology can inform us about the extent to which humans (as a species and as individuals) possess those (...) capacities and manage to exercise them across various situations. While recent work on the role of consciousness in action has been misinterpreted to suggest its role is illusory, recent work in social psychology presents a more viable challenge to our free will. The extent to which we can act on reasons we would accept or can know why we are doing what we do appears to be much less than we presume. Further work is necessary, of course, and it will need to involve both philosophical analysis and psychological investigation. Questions regarding the nature of human freedom and responsibility clearly require the conceptual resources of philosophy and the empirical resources of psychology. (This chapter was written in 2008 for the never published Oxford Handbook on Philosophy of Psychology.). (shrink)

Schelling scholars face an uphill battle. His confinement to the smallest circles of ‘continental’ thought puts him at the margins of what today counts as philosophy. His eclipse by Fichte and Hegel and inheritance by better-read thinkers like Kierkegaard and Heidegger tend to reduce him to a historical footnote. And the sometimes obscure formulations he uses makes the otherwise difficult writings of fellow post-Kantians seem comparatively more accessible. For those seeking to widen these circles, see through this eclipse and elucidate (...) these formulations, a deeper internal challenge is to make sense of the appearance and disappearance of intellectual intuition in Schelling’s work. The term’s apotheosis is often attributed to the height of German idealism and especially to Schelling’s identity philosophy, outside which he subjects the term to a radical critique. The identity philosophy aims to cognize the absolute ground of the system of knowledge and the system of nature, for which cognition Schelling enlists intellectual intuition. While the identity philosophy falls between a Fichtean debut and a late attack on Hegel, it is difficult to determine its exact parameter. I propose that a necessary condition for doing so is to clarify the explanatory role of intellectual intuition—that is, the specific problem to which it is the intended solution—on which the identity philosophy depends. To this end, I will trace a nexus of problems that Schelling’s use of intellectual intuition is meant to solve. Doing so will not only help to delineate the identity philosophy, but show it to be continuous with Schelling’s earlier and later periods. In §1, I account for the nexus of the problems of grounding, freedom and meaning. These problems demand, respectively, a principle by which cognition forms a system rather than an aggregate, a principle by which a system of cognition is compatible with freedom rather than incompatible and a principle by which a system of freedom can show why there is meaning rather than none. In §2, I reconstruct Schelling’s argument in the identity philosophy for why intellectual intuition can resolve this nexus of problems and, in §3, his arguments during other periods of his thought for why it cannot. I conclude in §4 by suggesting why the identity philosophy is continuous with these periods. Beyond fulfilling the interpretive task of making sense of intellectual intuition in Schelling’s sprawling corpus, my aim is thus to contribute to a unified reading of the latter. (shrink)

Our understanding of what exactly needs protected against in order to safeguard a plausible construal of our ‘freedom of thought’ is changing. And this is because the recent influx of cognitive offloading and outsourcing—and the fast-evolving technologies that enable this—generate radical new possibilities for freedom-of-thought violating thought manipulation. This paper does three main things. First, I briefly overview how recent thinking in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science recognises—contrary to traditional Cartesian ‘internalist’ assumptions—ways in which (...) our cognitive faculties, and even our beliefs, can be materially realised by as well as stored non-biologically and extracranially. Second, and taking brain-computer interface technologies (BCIs) and the associated possibility of ‘extended’ beliefs as a reference point, I propose and defend a sufficient condition on freedom-of-thought violating (extended) thought manipulation. On the view proposed, the right not to have one’s thoughts or opinions manipulated is violated if one is (i) caused to acquire non-autonomous propositional attitudes (acquisition manipulation) or (ii) caused to have otherwise autonomous propositional attitudes non-autonomously eradicated (eradication manipulation). The implications of this view are then illustrated through four thought experiments, which map on to four distinct ways—what I call Type 1-Type 4 manipulation—in which, and with reference to the view defended, one’s freedom of thought is plausibly violated. (shrink)

This paper takes a new look at an old question: what is the human self? It offers a proposal for theorizing the self from an enactive perspective as an autonomous system that is constituted through interpersonal relations. It addresses a prevalent issue in the philosophy of cognitive science: the body-social problem. Embodied and social approaches to cognitive identity are in mutual tension. On the one hand, embodied cognitive science risks a new form of methodological individualism, implying a (...) dichotomy not between the outside world of objects and the brain-bound individual but rather between body-bound individuals and the outside social world. On the other hand, approaches that emphasize the constitutive relevance of social interaction processes for cognitive identity run the risk of losing the individual in the interaction dynamics and of downplaying the role of embodiment. This paper adopts a middle way and outlines an enactive approach to individuation that is neither individualistic nor disembodied but integrates both approaches. Elaborating on Jonas’ notion of needful freedom it outlines an enactive proposal to understanding the self as co-generated in interactions and relations with others. I argue that the human self is a social existence that is organized in terms of a back and forth between social distinction and participation processes. On this view, the body, rather than being identical with the social self, becomes its mediator. (shrink)

This essay presents a point of view for looking at `free will', with the purpose of interpreting where exactly the freedom lies. For, freedom is what we mean by it. It compares the exercise of free will with the making of inferences, which usually is predominantly inductive in nature. The making of inference and the exercise of free will, both draw upon psychological resources that define our ‘selves’. I examine the constitution of the self of an individual, especially (...) the involvement of personal beliefs, personal memories, affects, emotions, and the hugely important psychological value-system, all of which distinguish the self of one individual from that of another. The foundational position that adopted in this essay is that all psychological processes are correlated with corresponding ones involving large scale neural aggregates in the brain, communicating with one another through wavelike modes of excitation and de-excitation. Of central relevance is the value-network around which the affect system is organized, the latter, in turn, being the axis around which is assembled the self, with all its emotional correlates. The self is a complex system. I include a brief outline of what complexity consists of. In reality all systems are complex, for complexity is ubiquitous, and certain parts of nature appear to us to be ‘simple’ only in certain specific contexts. It is in this background that the issue of determinism is viewed in this essay. Instead of looking at determinism as a grand principle entrenched in nature independent of our interpretation of it, I look at our ability to explain and to predict events and phenomena around us, which is made possible by the existence of causal links running in a complex course that set up correlations between diverse parts of nature, in this way putting the stamp of necessity on these events. However, the complexity of systems limits our ability to explain and to predict to within certain horizons defined by contexts. Our ability to explain and predict in matters relating to acts of free will is similarly limited by the operations of the self that remain hidden from our own awareness. The aspects of necessity and determinism appear to us in the form of reason and rationality that explain and predict only within a limited horizon, while the rest depends on the complex operation of self-linked psychological resources, where the latter appear as contingent in the context of the exercise of free will. The hallmark of complex systems is the existence of amplifying factors that operate as destabilizing ones, along with inhibiting or stabilizing factors as well that generally limit the destabilizing influences to local occurrences, while preserving the global integrity of a system. This complex interplay of destabilizing and stabilizing influences lead to the possibility of an enormous number of distinct modes of behavior that appear as emergent phenomena in complex systems. Looking at the particular case of the self of an individual that guide her actions and thoughts, it is the operation of our emotions, built around the psychological value-system, that provide for the amplifying and inhibiting factors mentioned above. The operation of these self-linked factors stamps our actions and thoughts as contingent ones that do not fit with our concepts of reason and rationality. And this is what provides the basis of our idea of free will. Free will is not ‘free’ in virtue of exemption from causal links running through all our self-based processes - ones that remain hidden from our awareness, but is free of what is perceived to be ‘reason and rationality’ based on knowledge and the common pool of beliefs and principles associated with a shared world-view. When we speak of the choice involved in an act of exercise of free will what we actually refer to is the commonly observed fact that various different individuals of a similar disposition respond differently when placed under similar circumstances. In other words, free will is ‘free’ precisely because it is not subject to constraints of a commonly accepted and shared set of principles, beliefs, and values. While it is possible that, in an exercise of free will, the self-linked psychological resources are brought into action when a number of alternatives are presented to the self by the operation of the ingredients of a commonly shared world-view, it seems likely that, that set of alternatives is not of primary relevance in the final response that the mind produces, since the latter is primarily a product of the operation of the self-based psychological resources. What is of greater relevance here is the operation of emotion-driven processes, guided by the psychological value-system based on the activity of the so-called reward-punishment network in the brain. These processes lead the individual to a response that appears to be free from the shackles of determinism precisely because their mechanisms, which are hidden from us, do not conform to commonly accepted and shared rules and principles. In contrast, inductive inference is a process that is based on the ‘cognitive face’ of self, where the self-based psychological resources play a supportive role to the commonly shared world-view of an individual. There is never any freedom from the all-pervading causal links representing correlations among all objects, entities, and events in nature. In the midst of all this, the closest thing to freedom that we can have in our life comes with self-examination and self-improvement. The possibility of self-examination appears in the form of specific conjunctions between our complex self-processes and the ceaseless changes of scenario in our external world. This actually makes the emergent phenomenon of self-examination a matter of chance, but one that keeps on appearing again and again in our life. Once realized, self examination creates possibilities that would not be there in the absence of it, and these possibilities include the enhancement of further self-enrichment and further diversity in the exercise of our free will. (shrink)

With the success of cognitive science's interdisciplinary approach to studying the mind, many theorists have taken up the strategy of appealing to science to address long standing disputes about metaphysics and the mind. In a recent case in point, philosophers and psychologists, including Robert Kane, Daniel C. Dennett, and Daniel M. Wegner, are exploring how science can be brought to bear on the debate about the problem of free will. I attempt to clarify the current debate by considering how (...) empirical research can be useful. I argue that empirical findings don't apply to one basic dimension of the problem, namely the dispute between compatibilism and incompatibilism. However, I show that empirical research can provide constraints in connection with another fundamental dimension, namely the dispute between libertarianism, which claims that indeterminacy is, in certain contexts, sufficient for freedom, and hard determinism and compatibilism, which deny this. I argue that the source of the most powerful constraint is psychological research into the accuracy of introspection. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the knowledge management processes and their role in achieving competitive advantage at Al-Quds Open University. The study was based on the descriptive analytical method, and the study population consists of academic and administrative staff in each of the branches of Al-Quds Open University in (Tulkarm, Nablus and Jenin). The researchers selected a sample of the study population by the intentional non-probability method, the size of (70) employees. A questionnaire was prepared and supervised by a number (...) of specialists in order to obtain the results of the study. The study concluded that there is a positive direct relationship, that is, the higher the degree of application of knowledge management processes, the greater the degree of competitive advantage. Knowledge Technology came first with a score of 80.02% on all items. Competitive advantage came second with 81.74%. In the third place came "knowledge generation" where the total score on all paragraphs in this area (78.24%). In the fourth place, "knowledge transfer" (77.21%). "Developing and storing knowledge" came in fifth place (77.13%). "Acquisition of knowledge" came in sixth place (76.45%). Knowledge Organization ranked seventh (74.26%). The study recommended that the university should enable the employees to benefit from the experiences and expertise available to help generate knowledge. The University encourages the creation of knowledge through the system of incentives and open the way for creators to apply their creations and spread and invest in excellence and creativity. The university should design work performance levels based on the integration of knowledge and organize it according to policies that support freedom of research. The need for Palestinian universities to adopt a knowledge management approach. The need to adopt a system of incentives that rewards cognitive efforts, and give workers enough freedom to enable them to apply their knowledge. (shrink)

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)

This chapter provides summaries of the chapter of this book and introduces the major themes and debates addressed in the volume. Discussed are Nietzsche’s metaphysics; his philosophy of mind in light of contemporary views; the question of panpsychism of Beyond Good and Evil 36; the rejection of dualism in favour of monism, in particular a monism of value; Nietzsche’s positions on consciousness and embodied cognition in light of recent cognitive science; a conception of freedom and agency based on (...) an intrinsically motivating; embodied sense of self-efficacy; a Nietzschean account of valuing understood as drive-induced affective orientations of which an agent approves; the idea of ressentiment conceived as a process of intentional, not reflectively strategic, self-deception about one’s own conscious mental states; and a defence of a Nietzschean naturalism. (shrink)

According to intellectualists, the will is a rational inclination towards apprehended goodness. This conception of the will makes its acts intelligible: they are explained by (i) the nature of the will as a rational inclination, and (ii) the judgement of the intellect that moves the will. From this it follows that it is impossible for an agent to will evil as such or for its own sake. In explaining wrongdoing intellectualists cite cognitive error or the disruptive influences of the (...) passions; these considerations, however, seem involuntary and at least partly exculpatory. The intellectualist needs an account that renders wrongful actions intelligible without undermining their status as responsible. I argue that Leibniz has the theoretical tools to provide at least part of an answer to this problem. In sum, an agent is directly responsible for her wrongdoing if the cognitive error or the disruptive influence of the passions that help explain this wrongdoing do not completely undermine her acting freely; an agent is indirectly responsible for her wrongdoing if she is directly responsible for previous actions which partly resulted in her wrongdoing, even if the presence of cognitive error or disruptive influence of the passions completely undermines her acting freely. (shrink)

This paper expands on another which focussed on Socrates’s question: ‘How should one live?’. The present paper also focusses on the ‘meaning of life’ and ‘meaning in life’ issues, and more on rights. To fully rationally answer Socrates’s question, we need to answer the epistemic question: ‘How can one know how one should live?’. This paper attempts to answer both. And knowing how one should live fundamentally involves knowing what values one should live by. This includes which rights one should (...) have and which rights others should have. So one’s values include how one should treat all persons (and (other) animals, the environment and so on.) All this relates to what one finds meaningful in life and the meaning or point of one’s life. In sum, all the notions in this paper’s title are interrelated. The issue of rationality is crucial here. Just one example here (qualified later) is that our rationality gives us cognitively meaningful notions. ‘Rationality’ here only concerns knowledge, e.g., ways to acquire scientific knowledge, and meta-knowledge concerning values. No values or rights as such are rational or knowledge. However:- Many factors are required for human rationality to exist and develop, e.g., life, mental health and evidence-based education. Human rationality’s need for those factors, hence their value to rationality, is rationally-unquestionable – and that applies to the practised values prescribing the prescribable factors. With this, there are rationally-unquestionable rights to those factors. Those prescribable factors require certain interrelated epistemic, moral, social, political, legal, educational and other values/rights to be practised. This implies a pro-rationality values-theory with one obligatory, general end – a uniquely rationally-unquestionable end. This end provides the basis for answering Socrates’s question as rationally (correctly) as is possible for values/rights. That end is fundamentally epistemic, namely ‘Be pro-rationality’, yet the theory has deeply-humanly-meaningful, universal applications. It has implications for current and all possible moral, social, political, legal, educational, environmental etc issues. E.g., the theory shows that human rationality crucially requires love and certain other emotions, health-care, education and upbringing. These require certain right to be respected and practised. With this, the paper discusses affection, free speech, journalism, psychotherapy, political and sexual consent, responsibilities, freedom and government. The theory’s general sub-values prescribe much prescribed by some other theories, e.g., broad and deep knowledge-acquisition (in certain areas), rationally-critical thinking, non-sexism, non-racism, general types of liberalism, holistic flourishing, happiness, unselfishness and fairness. However, all other values-theories lack pro-rationality theory’s maximum possible rational-unquestionability, internal coherence and coherence with rationality. The theory encourages (the right to) total freedom in a-rationality areas, areas irrelevant to its obligatory end. The theory inherently requires its advocates to be (self )critical, rationally viewing the theory’s necessarily human-suggested specifics as often fallible or unavoidably approximate. So the theory is a work-in-progress. (shrink)

This paper critically compares the philosophy of Günther Anders and the contemporary transhumanists, like Julian Savulescu, Ingmar Persson, or Thomas Douglas. The Andersian concepts of moral blindness, promethean gap, and promethean shame will be discussed in order to understand human beings’ outdatedness; parallel to this, we will also expose the transhumanist analysis on the unfitness of human beings in evolutive and cognitive terms. We will show that much of the transhumanist analysis is a reformulation of the Andersian thesis, now (...) under scientific terminology. Finally, we will approach the transhumanist proposal of moral enhancement, explaining and confronting some critics raised on the grounds of freedom and moral responsibility. (shrink)