There seems to be a deep tension between two aspects of aesthetic appreciation. On the one hand, we care about getting things right. On the other hand, we demand autonomy. We want appreciators to arrive at their aesthetic judgments through their own cognitive efforts, rather than deferring to experts. These two demands seem to be in tension; after all, if we want to get the right judgments, we should defer to the judgments of experts. The best explanation, I suggest, is (...) that aesthetic appreciation is something like a game. When we play a game, we try to win. But often, winning isn’t the point; playing is. Aesthetic appreciation involves the same flipped motivational structure: we aim at the goal of correctness, but having correct judgments isn’t the point. The point is the engaged process of interpreting, investigating, and exploring the aesthetic object. Deferring to aesthetic testimony, then, makes the same mistake as looking up the answer to a puzzle, rather than solving it for oneself. The shortcut defeats the whole point. This suggests a new account of aesthetic value: the engagement account. The primary value of the activity of aesthetic appreciation lies in the process of trying to generate correct judgments, and not in having correct judgments. -/- *There is an audio version available: look for the Soundcloud link, below.*. (shrink)

Benoit B. Mandelbrot, when discussing the global appeal of fractal patterns and designs, draws upon examples from across numerous world cultures. What may be missed in Mandelbrot's presentation is Immanuel Kant’s precedence in recognizing this sort of widespread beauty in art and nature, fractals avant la lettre. More importantly, the idea of the fractal may itself assist the aesthetic attitude which Kantian beauty requires. In addition, from a Kantian perspective, fractal patterns may offer a source for a sense of community (...) with humanity. I close with an excursus on the more sombre note of Kantian sublimity which fractals can also present. (shrink)

The principle of energy conservation is widely taken to be a se- rious difficulty for interactionist dualism (whether property or sub- stance). Interactionists often have therefore tried to make it satisfy energy conservation. This paper examines several such attempts, especially including E. J. Lowe’s varying constants proposal, show- ing how they all miss their goal due to lack of engagement with the physico-mathematical roots of energy conservation physics: the first Noether theorem (that symmetries imply conservation laws), its converse (that conservation (...) laws imply symmetries), and the locality of continuum/field physics. Thus the “conditionality re- sponse”, which sees conservation as (bi)conditional upon symme- tries and simply accepts energy non-conservation as an aspect of interactionist dualism, is seen to be, perhaps surprisingly, the one most in accord with contemporary physics (apart from quantum mechanics) by not conflicting with mathematical theorems basic to physics. A decent objection to interactionism should be a posteri- ori, based on empirically studying the brain. (shrink)

The paper addresses a problem for the unification of quantum physics with the new Aristotelianism: the identification of the members of the category of substance. I outline briefly the role that substance plays in Aristotelian metaphysics, leading to the postulating of the Tiling Constraint. I then turn to the question of which entities in quantum physics can qualify as Aristotelian substances. I offer an answer: the theory of thermal substances, and I construct a fivefold case for thermal substances, based on (...) the irreversibility of time, the definition of thermodynamic concepts, spontaneous symmetry breaking, phase transitions, and chemical form. (shrink)

The debate concerning the ontological status of spacetime is standardly construed as a dilemma between substantivalism and relationalism. I argue that a trilemma is more appropriate, emergent spacetime theories being the third category. Traditional philosophical arguments do not distinguish between emergent spacetime and substantivalism. It is arguments from physics that suggest giving up substantivalism in favour of emergent spacetime theories. The remaining new dilemma is between emergent spacetime and relationalism. I provide a list of questions, which one should consider when (...) discussing emergent spacetime theories, and apply them to a quantum superfluid toy model of emergent spacetime. (shrink)

Political communities across the world have recently sought to tackle rising rates of vaccine hesitancy and refusal, by implementing coercive immunization programs, or by making existing immunization programs more coercive. Many academics and advocates of public health have applauded these policy developments, and they have invoked ethical reasons for implementing or strengthening vaccine mandates. Others have criticized these policies on ethical grounds, for undermining liberty, and as symptoms of broader government overreach. But such arguments often obscure or abstract away from (...) the diverse values that are relevant to the ethical justifications of particular political communities’ vaccine‐mandate policies. We argue for an expansive conception of the normative issues relevant to deciding whether and how to establish or reform vaccine mandates, and we propose a schema by which to organize our thoughts about the ways in which different kinds of vaccine‐mandate policies implicate various values. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss whether different interpretations of the ‘aim’ of belief—both the teleological and normative interpretations—have the resources to explain certain descriptive and normative features of suspended belief (suspension). I argue that, despite the recent efforts of theorists to extend these theories to account for suspension, they ultimately fail. The implication is that we must either develop alternative theories of belief that can account for suspension, or we must abandon the assumption that these theories ought to be able (...) to account for suspension. To close, I briefly consider some of the reasons we have in favour of pursing each of these options, and I suggest that it is worth exploring the possibility that suspension is best understood as its own attitude, independently of theories of belief’s ‘aim’. (shrink)

Different disciplines converge to trace language evolution from motor skills. The human ability to use tools has been advocated as a fundamental step toward the emergence of linguistic processes in the brain. Neuropsychological and neuroimaging research has established that linguistic functions and tool-use are mediated by partially overlapping brain networks. Yet, scholars still theoretically debate whether the relationship between tool-use and language is contingent or functionally relevant, since empirical evidence is critically missing. Here, we measured both linguistic production and tool-use (...) abilities in the same participants, as well as manual and linguistic motor skills. A path analysis ruling out unspecific contributions from manual or linguistic motor skills, showed that motor proficiency using a tool lawfully predicts differences in individual linguistic production. In addition, more complex tool-use reveals stronger association between linguistic production and tool mastery. These findings establish the existence of shared cognitive processes between tool-use and language. (shrink)

We examine when and how police officers may avoid costly errors under stress by leveraging theoretical and empirical work on the biopsychosocial (BPS) model of challenge and threat. According to the BPS model, in motivated performance contexts (e.g., test taking, athletics), the evaluation of situational and task demands in relation to one’s perceived resources available to cope with those demands engenders distinct patterns of peripheral physiological responding. Individuals experience more challenge-like states in which blood circulates more efficiently in the periphery (...) when they evaluate their coping resources as meeting or exceeding the task demands. Conversely, individuals experience more threat-like states in which blood circulates less efficiently in the periphery when they view the situation or task demands as exceeding their coping resources. Patterns of response consistent with challenge and threat states have been shown to predict important performance and decision-making outcomes in stressful contexts, and repeated experiences of threat-like patterns of physiological activity are thought to have detrimental effects on long-term cardiovascular health. To date, however, research has not used the biopsychosocial model to understand police decision-making under stress. Here, we review relevant empirical work from the perspective of the BPS model concerning how minority status and power can shape challenge and threat responding and contribute to decision making under stress. We then detail a research agenda aimed at improving the translational value of research being conducted within the BPS model for understanding complex performance and decision making in the real world, including among law enforcement personnel. (shrink)

Evolutionary game theory and public goods games offer an important framework to understand cooperation during pandemics. From this perspective, the COVID-19 situation can be conceptualized as a dilemma where people who neglect safety precautions act as free riders, because they get to enjoy the benefits of decreased health risk from others’ compliance with policies despite not contributing to or even undermining public safety themselves. At the same time, humans appear to carry a suite of evolved psychological mechanisms aimed at curbing (...) free riding in order to ensure the continued provision of public goods, which can be leveraged to develop more effective measures to promote compliance with regulations. We also highlight factors beyond free riding that reduce compliance rates, such as the emergence of conspiratorial thinking, which seriously undermine the effectiveness of measures to suppress free riding. Together, the current paper outlines the social dynamics that occur in public goods dilemmas involving the spread of infectious disease, highlights the utility and limits of evolutionary game-theoretic approaches for COVID-19 management, and suggests novel directions based on emerging challenges to cooperation. (shrink)

Proposed quantum experiments in deep space will be able to explore quantum information issues in regimes where relativistic effects are important. In this essay, we argue that a proper extension of quantum information theory into the relativistic domain requires the expression of all informational notions in terms of quantum field theoretic (QFT) concepts. This task requires a working and practicable theory of QFT measurements. We present the foundational problems in constructing such a theory, especially in relation to longstanding causality and (...) locality issues in the foundations of QFT. Finally, we present the ongoing Quantum Temporal Probabilities program for constructing a measurement theory that (i) works, in principle, for any QFT, (ii) allows for a first- principles investigation of all relevant issues of causality and locality, and (iii) it can be directly applied to experiments of current interest. (shrink)

This book chapter is a work of popular philosophy that offers general readers an opportunity to reimagine their relationship to non-human creatures by living vicariously through the experience of Jasmin--a hypothetical college student whose encounters with a cow, goat, and rooster on a visit to a local farm trigger a transformation in her views and actions toward other animals, allowing her to see them for the first time as subjects of their own lives rather than as objects for human use. (...) Though the chapter is written from the perspective of Jasmin's own Christian religious heritage, her awakening to the importance of the lives of other animals and the practices she undertakes in order to live out that new vision resonate with other religious and non-religious traditions, implicitly engaging the traditions of philosophical hermeneutics (Hans-Georg Gadamer) and philosophy as a way of life through the practice of spiritual exercises (Pierre Hadot, Martha Nussbaum). This chapter would be appropriate for use in introduction to philosophy courses or first-year writing seminars that seek to offer students an invitational introduction to some of the big ideas in animal and environmental ethics without getting philosophically technical in ways that can alienate beginners. (shrink)

The objective of this study was to develop and determine the psychometric properties of an instrument designed to detect traits and behavior that are associated with predatory violent behavior, which is defined as a determined, planned, controlled, and proactive aggression. The sample was comprised of 546 students, mostly in their last year of high school or in their first year of college. The initial instrument had 78 items, ultimately resulting in 15 with good internal consistency (α =.825). Factor analysis showed (...) four factors: anger-in, appeal for weapons, suicidal ideation, and the tendency to take justice into one’s own hands. Said factors showed significant correlations of convergent validity. Data shown here allows inferring that the instrument is a novel and concise tool that evaluates and detects the potential of predatory violent behavior. (shrink)

Several readers of Kierkegaard have proposed that his works are a good source for contemporary investigations of virtues, especially theistic and Christian ones. Sylvia Walsh has recently offered several arguments to cast doubt on the thesis that Kierkegaard can be profitably read as a “virtue ethicist.” Examination of her arguments helps to clarify what virtues, as excellent traits of human character, can be in a moral outlook that ascribes deep sin and moral helplessness to human beings and their existence and (...) salvation entirely to God’s grace. The examination also clarifies the relationship between virtues and character and between the practices of virtue ethics and character ethics. Such clarification also may provide a bridge of communication between Kierkegaard scholarship and scholars of virtue ethics beyond the theistic communities. In particular, I’ll argue that a character ethics that is not a virtue ethics would be suboptimal as an aid to the formation of Christian wisdom and sanctification. Kierkegaard’s character ethics is a virtue ethics. (shrink)

Most psychological literature on gaslighting focuses on it as a dyadic phenomenon occurring primarily in marriage and family relationships. In my analysis, I will extend recent fruitful philosophical engagement with gaslighting by arguing that gaslighting, particularly gaslighting that occurs in more public spaces like the workplace, relies upon external reinforcement for its success. I will ground this study in an analysis of the film Gaslight, for which the phenomenon is named, and in the course of the analysis will focus on (...) a paradox of this kind of gaslighting: it wreaks significant epistemic and moral damages largely through small, often invisible actions that have power through their accumulation and reinforcement. (shrink)

This essay argues that the difference between philosophy and sophistical rhetoric that Plato presents in the Gorgias turns most fundamentally on different conceptions of the nature of language. After presenting some of the decisive moments in the debate between Socrates and Polus, Gorgias, and Callicles, this essay draws on the discussion of technē in Republic I to elucidate the “precise” sense of technē: namely, technē is ordered to the benefit of that over which it is set. The essay also draws (...) on the discussion of names in the Cratylus to show that the technē that is language, considered most precisely, is ordered to the manifestation of the truth of being more basically than to communication. Sophistry, by contrast, presumes what the essay calls a “technological” interpretation of language, which is essentially indifferent to being, and is ordered instead simply to communication, now understood principally in the mode of manipulative persuasion. (shrink)

Supposition is frequently invoked in many fields within philosophy, including aesthetics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and epistemology. However, there is a striking lack of consensus about the nature of supposition. What is supposition? Is supposition a sui generis type of mental state or is it reducible to some other type of mental state? These are the main questions Margherita Arcangeli explores in this book. She examines the characteristic features of supposition, along the dimensions of phenomenology and emotionality, (...) among others, in a journey through the imaginative realm. An informed answer to the question “What is supposition?” must involve an analysis of imagination, since supposition is so often defined in opposition to the latter. She assesses rival explanations of supposition putting forward a novel view, according to which the proper way of seeing supposition is as a primitive type of imaginative state. Supposition and the Imaginative Realm: A Philosophical Inquiry will be of great interest to students of philosophy of psychology, aesthetics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and epistemology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by Sextus, Montaigne, Hume: Pyrrhonizers by Brian C. Ribeiro Donald C. Ainslie Brian C. Ribeiro. Sextus, Montaigne, Hume: Pyrrhonizers. Brill: Leiden, 2021. Pp. 165. Hardback, $154.00. Brian C. Ribeiro’s Sextus, Montaigne, Hume: Pyrrhonizers is a charming and quirky investigation of his three titular skeptics. It is perhaps best understood as a skeptical investigation of skepticism. By that I mean that, like a good Pyrrhonist, Ribeiro explains how (...) things appear to him without claiming to lay down a doctrine or dogma. His topic is how and why skepticism still matters (7). And he suggests that those who are moved by skeptical arguments can learn intellectual modesty from them and thereby achieve a degree of philosophical “calmness of soul” (141).Ribeiro approaches his three figures by taking the cogency of their skeptical arguments for granted. There is little investigation of why these philosophers call various beliefs into question, and his concern is rather what remains once the skeptical doubts are taken on board. Because what he calls “Pyrrhonizing” philosophers reveal that large swaths of our beliefs lack epistemic merit, they also show us how we are not fully rational creatures in our everyday lives. In the case of Sextus, Ribeiro’s focus is on the famous question of whether skeptics can live their skepticism once they have actually suspended all belief. With Sextus, as with Montaigne and Hume, Ribeiro opts for the more radical of the interpretive options; he is not persuaded by Michael Frede’s suggestion that Pyrrhonists restrict their suspension only to abstruse matters, not the everyday (51). But even if we follow the “four-fold way” (20–23) that Sextus offers us as guides for life—the directives of nature, feelings, custom, and expertise—Ribeiro still thinks we will inevitably fall back into belief. He concludes that the original Pyrrhonists should be read aspirationally: insofar as we develop our capacities [End Page 517] to argue on both sides of every question and thus are able to suspend judgment, to that extent we will achieve tranquility. In the case of Montaigne, Ribeiro focuses on his Christian fideism. Once he recognizes the incapacity of reason to resolve intellectual problems, he falls back on faith. And Ribeiro argues that the Catholic flavor of this faith is simply a reflection of Montaigne’s surroundings. In a different community, he could just as easily have embraced a different faith. The heart of the book concerns Hume, whom Ribeiro discusses in three chapters, as opposed to the one each devoted to Sextus and Montaigne. In keeping with his interpretive preferences, Ribeiro’s Hume is a radical skeptic, though he acknowledges the significant yet “utterly perplexing” (95n22) naturalist strains that are also present. Ribeiro takes the resulting tension to be insoluble (98), though I was not convinced. Consider that, in both the Treatise and the Enquiry, Hume uses causal reasoning to investigate causal reasoning. He learns that our ideas are caused by prior impressions; that repeated experience of conjoint events causes us to associate our ideas of similar events; and so on. In the Treatise, he concludes the argument that association is at the root of such causal reasoning by presenting a set of rules, a “logic,” for it. The argument is not as such skeptical, though when Hume “recasts” it in the first Enquiry, he does so in terms of “sceptical doubts” and a “sceptical solution.” In the Treatise, “total” and “extravagant” skepticism come into play only as “systems of philosophy” that Hume uses to shed light on his own core commitments. The problem, I think, is that Ribeiro tends to read Hume a little too literally, as if he is himself falling prey to the skeptical upheaval of the conclusion to the first book of the Treatise, or the final section of the first Enquiry. But I would suggest that Hume is rather deploying the rhetoric of skepticism in these discussions, using it for his ultimate philosophical ends (a point that is especially clear in Ribeiro’s favorite of Hume’s works, the Dialogues). He is showing his reader how his naturalistic philosophical project is itself rooted in human nature, and thus does not yield insight into the intrinsic structure of... (shrink)

In his recent work, David DeGrazia (2020) explores the possibility of insect sentience, focusing on bees as a case study. He advances a novel evolutionary approach, arguing that, from an evolutionary perspective, it’s more likely that bees are sentient than insentient., insofar as bees (allegedly) would have a selective advantage if they are motivated—in the form of feeling—to achieve their aims. His argument assumes two questionable claims: (1) if X is a selective advantage for an organism, then the organism likely (...) has X, and (2) conscious creatures would have a selective advantage if they are sentient. I challenge both claims, and consequently call into question DeGrazia’s claim that we have an evolutionary-based reason to attribute sentience to bees (and other insects). (shrink)

Стаття С. Присухіна «Іван Павло ІІ про логіку діалогу між Католицькою Церквою та ісламом» присвячена філософськобогословським напрацюванням Папи Римського Івана Павла ІІ щодо аналізу змістовних характеристик поняття «діалог між католицизмом і ісламом», а також логіки його здійснення в непростому й суперечливому сьогоденні.

Abstract:This article is about how a very specific section of the Rio Grande was transformed through human intervention over the course of the twentieth century. Geographically, I focus on the stretch of river between and around the twin border towns of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. This is an important area of analysis not only because of the historic importance of the urban complex to U.S.-Mexico relations, but also because it is a desert. I analyze two major river (...) engineering projects, one in the 1930s, the other in the 1960s, as well as the transformation of the water itself due to increased toxicity beginning in the 1990s. In sum, the river was straightened, completely relocated, lined in concrete, and poisoned. No other place on the entire international divide underwent such extreme changes. I explain this by arguing that both political forces and environmental conditions combined to produce such totalizing interventions in the riverine ecosystem. I also argue that these processes reversed the age-old meaning of water in the desert. Historically, water in the desert has been associated with life and biodiversity, but over the course of the twentieth century the desert section of the Rio Grande border was converted into a deadened zone. (shrink)

This PhD responds to a two fold problem with the philosophy of design and the practice of design. The philosophical problem is stated as the discrepancy between a dominant philosophical framework that orders the world according to eternal essences and the actual conditions of the world in which we exist: the conditions of becoming and of flux. Commencing with a critique of the western metaphysical tradition of statics this research project proposes that we need to find a way of describing (...) an evolutionary model of practice, and by so doing to provide a revitalised narration of process. Consequently, the PhD explores the meanings of process through a critical examination of an ensemble of projects created by the author. Within this framework, a number of questions are posed in order to explore the proposition of a process practice. These questions are: What is process? How does one think process? Indeed, how do we get to grasp change? What are the consequences of process thinking on the practices of design, their fields of operation, and their productions? And, how can the thematising of process contribute to the design of the constructed environment, as well as reconfigure the practices of design? This thematising of process is argued to involve a necessary address to the constitutive and interrelated characteristics of process: space/time, movement, change, form and matter. Such an address is also seen to problematise the status of the object, the paradigms of representation, the modes of creation, the economies of exchange, and the structures of community, and to offer a modality of practice which would re-imagine the forms of social exchange to offer an ethical alternative to the tyranny of supply and demand, and thereby reconfigure the potential for dwelling. Making an overview of the discourses and practices engaging with theories of becoming, this thesis argues that almost all of these re-inscribe statics and that consequently the practice of design seems to drag behind our understanding of the world. Through a meditation on dis/appearance, in which the dynamics of being and becoming and the restless ambiguity of the gap are examined, the work establishes a process vocabulary, and makes clear through a material practice, the domains of process thinking, its inclinations, and the kinds of operations and procedures that flourish there. Foregrounding the fertile character of process practice, the PhD then proceeds to introduce notions of the movement-form, the duration-form, the transformational-form, the geometry of encounter, and to argue for physical form as an in-movement poise. Advocating new modes of approach and of attentiveness, and demonstrating new generative methods, this PhD argues that process thinking is not simply an operational stance, but an ethical position that identifies a field of care, and that consequently the design practices be expanded by taking seriously the relationship between process thinking and place making. Thus, this thesis concludes by advocating a mode of place making which, rather than reproduce planned environments as systems of control, configures place as the discursive contested place of encounter and exchange. (shrink)