This paper is about the common thought that anger is “not worth it” because of the bad effects that it has on the angry person. It contends that this common thought is sometimes deeply puzzling, because although it looks to be a thought about anger’s unfittingness, it is hard to see what such bad effects have to do with fittingness. The paper gives an account of the elusive connection between bad effects and fit. In brief, it argues that the thought (...) that anger is “not worth it” has to do with the sense of “importance” that the anger manifests. That anger portrays its object as more important than it actually is shows it to be unfitting, but also shows why seemingly instrumental considerations like bad effects bear on fittingness, insofar as they bear on importance. The paper then shows how this account illuminates a kind of emotional dilemma often faced by oppressed people and closes with a brief discussion of some broader implications. (shrink)

Discrete choice experiments—selecting the best and/or worst from a set of options—are increasingly used to provide more efficient and valid measurement of attitudes or preferences than conventional methods such as Likert scales. Discrete choice data have traditionally been analyzed with random utility models that have good measurement properties but provide limited insight into cognitive processes. We extend a well-established cognitive model, which has successfully explained both choices and response times for simple decision tasks, to complex, multi-attribute discrete choice data. The (...) fits, and parameters, of the extended model for two sets of choice data (involving patient preferences for dermatology appointments, and consumer attitudes toward mobile phones) agree with those of standard choice models. The extended model also accounts for choice and response time data in a perceptual judgment task designed in a manner analogous to best–worst discrete choice experiments. We conclude that several research fields might benefit from discrete choice experiments, and that the particular accumulator-based models of decision making used in response time research can also provide process-level instantiations for random utility models. (shrink)

Karl Marx is the most important modern philosopher. His work has radically changed the course of world history, continental philosophy, political theory, literary criticism, and cultural studies. The sheer range of his achievements, and the depth of his critical insights, continue to speak to our present moment. This book places Marx's writings in their historical context, providing a clear guide to his key ideas and intellectual legacy. Written for both students and scholars, it illustrates Marx's ideas with examples drawn from (...) William Shakespeare, Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy, Bertolt Brecht, Theodor Dreiser, Thomas Pynchon, Toni Morrison, Sally Rooney, Claude McKay, Tennessee Williams, Mad Men, and Margin Call. Key ideas discussed in this guide include: Tracing historical contexts and developments in Marx's work over his lifetime; Focusing on Marxism as an interpretative strategy, paying special attention to its impact on literary criticism and cultural studies; Examining recent developments in Marxist theory, such as a stronger focus on the environment, climate crisis, and world ecology; Exploring the continued relevance of Marx and Marxism today. This Routledge Critical Thinkers guide will enable readers to critically assess and interpret Marx's major works, while also introducing his methods of critical analysis. Preparing readers to approach his original texts, this guide ensures that readers of all levels will find Marx accessible, challenging and of continued relevance. Andrew Rowcroft offers a comprehensive introduction to Marx's revolutionary ideas, examining the influence Marx had on literary studies, cultural studies, modernism, and philosophy. (shrink)

Introduction Sartre at One Hundred — a Man of the Nineteenth Century Addressing the Twenty-First? THOMAS R. FLYNN We are celebrating the centennial year of ...

In this essay I contrast Kant and Hegel on the so-called right of necessity, or distress. The contrast is significant because it summarizes succinctly the difference between their respective philosophies of right. Furthermore, I take the difference to indicate what in Hegel’s philosophy of right makes it preferable to Kant’s. In sum, the issue between the two is whether or not the concept of justice is determined in part by what I term in the paper the vicissitudes of making a (...) worthwhile living. (shrink)

Buchanan highlighted the inconsistencies that arise when public services are financed by general taxation. Citizens increase their demand for services, even though citizens are reticent to increase taxation. Buchanan invited readers to explore the impact of different assumptions of politicians’ behaviour. In this chapter, attention focuses on the way that vote maximising governments are likely to respond to the divorce between receipt and payment for services. Buchanan illustrated his analysis with reference to the National Health Service in the UK. Predictions (...) are tested with reference to the pattern of excess demand in the National Health Service between 1970 and 2012. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Katharine Jane Tait, 1923–2021Andrew Bone and Sheila Turcon Click for larger view View full resolutionIt was with great sadness that the Bertrand Russell Research Centre learned of the death on 26 July 2021 of Katharine Tait, Bertrand Russell’s daughter. Dr. Tait was a founder of the Bertrand Russell Society, attended several of its annual meetings, and was always strongly supportive of, and involved in, research and inquiry into the (...) life, times and writings of her father. She attended McMaster’s Russell Centenary Celebrations in 1972. Her scholarly interests and commitments extended to the McMaster edition of Russell’s Collected Papers, of whose Advisory Editorial Board she was a longstanding member. Kate herself wrote an important and poignant memoir, My Father Bertrand Russell; she was an always charming and friendly visitor to McMaster on those occasions she undertook work in the Russell Archives, which included an annotated, as yet unpublished edition of her correspondence with her father. She contributed articles and reviews to this journal. Several members of the McMaster community cherish her personal letters, notes and greeting cards to them.— Andrew Bone; photo by Sheila Turcon [End Page 98]Copyright © 2021 McMaster University... (shrink)

"Featuring seventeen original essays on the ethics of Artificial Intelligence by some of the most prominent AI scientists and academic philosophers today, this volume represents the state-of-the-art thinking in this fast-growing field and highlights some of the central themes in AI and morality such as how to build ethics into AI, how to address mass unemployment as a result of automation, how to avoiding designing AI systems that perpetuate existing biases, and how to determine whether an AI is conscious. As (...) AI technologies progress, questions about the ethics of AI, in both the near-future and the long-term, become more pressing than ever. Should a self-driving car prioritize the lives of the passengers over the lives of pedestrians? Should we as a society develop autonomous weapon systems that are capable of identifying and attacking a target without human intervention? What happens when AIs become smarter and more capable than us? Could they have greater than human moral status? Can we prevent superintelligent AIs from harming us or causing our extinction? At a critical time in this fast-moving debate, thirty leading academics and researchers at the forefront of AI technology development come together to explore these existential questions, including Aaron James, Allan Dafoe, Andrea Loreggia, Andrew Critch, Azim Shariff, Carrick Flynn, Cathy O'Neil, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Eric Schwitzgebel, Frances Kamm, Francesca Rossi, Hanna Gunn, Iyad Rahwan, Jessica Taylor, JF Bonnefon, K. Brent Venable, Kate Devlin, Mara Garza, Nicholas Mattei, Nick Bostrom, Patrick LaVictoire, Peter Asaro, Peter Railton, S. Matthew Liao, Shannon Vallor, Stephen Wolfram, Steve Petersen, Stuart Russell, Susan Schneider, Wendell Wallach "--. (shrink)

This volume examines an often taken for granted concept-that of the concept itself. How do we picture what concepts are, what they do, how they arise in the course of everyday life? Challenging conventional approaches that treat concepts as mere tools at our disposal for analysis, or as straightforwardly equivalent to signs to be deciphered, the anthropologists and philosophers in this volume turn instead to the ways concepts are already intrinsically embedded in our forms of life and how they constitute (...) the very substrate of our existence as humans who lead lives in language. Attending to our ordinary lives with concepts requires not an ascent from the rough ground of reality into the skies of theory, but rather acceptance of the fact that thinking is congenital to living with and through concepts. The volume offers a critical and timely intervention into both contemporary philosophy and anthropological theory by unsettling the distinction between thought and reality that continues to be too often assumed and showing how the supposed need to grasp reality may be replaced by an acknowledgement that we are in its grip. Contributors: Jocelyn Benoist, Andrew Brandel, Michael Cordey, Veena Das, Rasmus Dyring and Thomas Schwarz Wentzer, Michael D. Jackson, Michael Lambek, Sandra Laugier, Marco Motta, Michael J. Puett, and Lotte Buch Segal. (shrink)

What did God mean to F.H. Bradley? Bradley’s style and subtle philosophical approach makes it difficult to ascertain precisely what his settled thoughts were on this issue. He does say, for example, quite a lot as to what God is not. This essay will initially follow out this negative reading. This latter enterprise entails comparisons, first, with philosophy, or more appropriately the ‘metaphysical impulse’, second, with morality, and third, with history. Having followed out the more negative arguments, the essay turns (...) to what religion is for Bradley. This is intrinsically more difficult. The discussion elicits here some help from the other idealist thinkers who were close readers of Bradley. Almost surprisingly, Bradley does comment substantively, if briefly, on issues of faith, miracle, atonement, prayer, church going, and clerics. The most significant theological point to arise in both Bradley is the significance of St. Paul’s writings. The Pauline ‘justification by faith’ becomes a repeated motif. However, there still remains an ambiguous relation of God and religion to ‘social life’ or ‘sociality’, which is explored more carefully at the conclusion of the essay. The essay finally argues that Bradley’s highly nuanced response to religion and God embodies paradoxical and unresolved elements which encapsulate, unwittingly, a dilemma at the heart of the Idealist conception of religion. (shrink)

Most readers of Sellars' philosophy learn about a Manifest-Scientific Image distinction, and because apparently nothing significant hinges on what at first sight seems just a neologistic labeling of a familiar distinction, it is henceforth wrongly associated with a pre-systematic commonsense/scientific framework distinction. The Manifest Image is not identical to the commonsense framework; nor is the Scientific Image identical to the scientific framework. In this paper I will concern myself only with arguing that the Manifest Image is not identical to the (...) commonsense framework. (shrink)

De fato 35 is part of Cicero's argument against the Stoic theory of causation. He claims in general that the Stoic chain of causes consists of antecedent but not efficient causes. To the examples cited in the previous chapter he adds verses from the opening of Ennius’ Medea exul (lines 208–11 Jocelyn = FRL 2 and TRF 89.1–4) containing the Nurse's lamentation over the origins of the Argonautic expedition that led, ultimately, to Medea's current mental distress. Then follows the question (...) quorsum haec praeterita? and the answer quia sequitur illud, ‘nam numquam era errans mea domo ecferret pedem | Medea, animo aegro, amore saeuo saucia’, non ut eae res causam adferrent amoris, citing Ennius, Medea exul 215–16 Jocelyn = FRL 2 and TRF 89.8–9. Editors and commentators have struggled to explain the relation of the answer to the question. Here it is argued that the relation becomes clear if one adopts non for non and punctuates with a query after amoris. The sense will be: ‘Why have these past events been cited? In view of the sequel … was it not so that they bring on the cause of love?’ In other words, the Nurse, like the Stoics in Cicero's view, cites antecedent events as if they were efficient causes. (shrink)

Prologue: Narratives of faith, doubt, and unbelief -- Dialogue: virtues and contexts -- Harmony and the global ecosystem of belief -- Courage and the existential leap -- Humility through dogs and Dickens -- Curiosity: dialogues within dialogues -- Being honest about our differences -- Compassion (of God and outlaws) -- Honor and the holy -- Conclusion: Dublin and Fresno: an epistolary exchange.

This thesis is a critique of functionalism in the philosophy of mind. I distinguish three tenets, or 'dogmas' of functionalism, viz: Mental states are causes of behaviour; Mental states can, in principle, be defined in non-mental terms; We understand everything, or at least everything of importance, about the mental states of people, by subsuming token mental states under one or other mental state type. ;The first dogma is rejected in the form which identifies mental state types with physical types, on (...) the ground that it commits us to the doubtful possibilities of mental states without any relevant behaviour, and behaviour without a relevant mental state . It is found to be not mandatory in the form which identifies mental state types with functional types, on the ground that the phenomena appealed to in support of the dogma is consistent with a view of mental states which endorses the dogma in at best a trite and philosophically uninteresting sense . The second dogma is rejected on the ground that cannot account for what I call the 'affective animation' of the behaviour of creatures with mental states . I develop a concept I call personal response---the kind of response we have to other human beings as opposed to inanimate nature---and defend principle which says: Commonsense understanding that someone is in a mental state requires proneness to a personal response in relation to that person. ;Certain implications are drawn from for reductionism, for meta-ethics, and for the third dogma . I argue that the third dogma is false on the around that it cannot account for our sense of the individuality of persons, unless that very notion of individuality, which comes from quite outside functionalism, is used to gloss the idea of subsumption under a type. (shrink)

Shakespeare was easily the most inventive writer using the English language. His plays give us intricacies of vocabulary and usage that have enriched us immeasurably. This book provides a series of analytical essays on the marginalia relating to the plays. Each of them is a searching and authoritative account, packed with details, of some of the more peculiar conditions under which Shakespeare and his peers composed their playbooks. Among the essays are two completely new contributions. Altogether they reveal fresh details (...) about the input of the playing companies, playhouses, individual players and even their controller, the Revels Office, to the complex fragments that we now have of the Shakespearean world. Gurr examines Shakespeare's own choice between playwriting and poetry, the requirements of working in a playhouse that wraps itself around the stage, and its impact on the creation of such figures as Henry V, Shylock, Isabella, King Lear and Coriolanus. (shrink)

This essay provides an overview of some recent issues in criticism of early modern English literature. For some scholars the early modern period can only be understood if we accept its irreducible difference; for others, people have always been more or less the same and so reading the past involves knowledge but not a vast leap of faith. Often these differences result in scholars using exactly the same material to reach diametrically opposed conclusions, as examples drawn from the study of (...) early sixteenth-century literature demonstrate. Debates about love and allegory also reveal significant differences between scholars who want to see erotic language in allegorical terms and those who point out that there is a danger is missing the literal reading. Debates about the nature of print and publishing, how writers perceived their careers, how texts should be edited and what methods are appropriate for the study of early modern literature are also discussed. The article does not attempt to resolve all these important debates but shows that differences often stem from diverse conceptions of what literature actually is and what it does, indicating that the importance of such arguments ranges beyond the immediate object of study. (shrink)

This collision explores ecological aesthetics through two encounters with dead whales: one literary and one osseous . The literary animal is the taxidermied whale that drives the narrative of László Krasznahorkai’s 1989 novel The Melancholy of Resistance, and the osseous encounter involves a bench made of one jawbone and one rib from a baleen whale. Considered together, the immense totality of the taxidermied whale and the metonymic bones provide unsettling aesthetic insights into ecological matters of interconnectedness – of the relationships (...) between parts and wholes and amongst parts within a whole or wholes. Through analyses of the visual, literary, and haptic aspects of these encounters, this paper raises questions about what it means to perceive and think about ecology through aesthetic encounters with non-human animal bones and taxidermied bodies. (shrink)

This paper considers further evidence that five comic poets as opposed to three competed at the Lenaia and City Dionysia festivals in Athens during the Peloponnesian War. Aristophanes’ abuse of his comic rivals Phrynichos, Ameipsias and Lykis in the opening scene ofFrogs, produced at the Lenaia of 405, is interpreted as a response to his immediate competitors at the dramatic contest that year. A survey of the evidence elsewhere in comedy suggests that comic poets usually reserved such attacks on rival (...) poets for occasions when all were in direct competition at the same festival. Further analysis of Aristophanes’ competitive strategies also suggests these poets immediate participation in the festival and therefore that five poets competed at the Lenaia that year. (shrink)

This paper suffers from a disconcerting generality. I need an excuse for wandering from Wittgenstein's Tractatus to Picasso's drawing of a Weeping Woman, via the philosophy of science and the theory of sense data. The thesis of the paper is that I have such an excuse. These are all areas where the concept of representation either exists in its own right, or has been found to be illuminating by philosophers. An important question is whether it could be the same concept (...) in all these cases. I wish to claim that there is an illuminating common concept, even though to find it may require some fairly drastic modifications of some of the philosophical theses that are involved. (shrink)