This essay rereads the Kantian sublime both as an epitome of humanism and as a lesson for posthumanist thought. First, I unfold “On the Dynamically Sublime” as a failed dialectic in which “reason” seeks to sublate the power of “nature.” But Kant’s sublime is irreducible to the “Analytic,” I argue: it exemplifies a quasi-dialectical relation between human and nonhuman that recurs across the third Critique and defines its humanist teleology as a whole. Rereading Kant against that telos, and heeding the (...) natural-historical concerns animating his project, I uncover paths towards a posthumanist or “natural-historical” sublime of “nature” as anarchic phusis. (shrink)

Arranges the work of Viola Cordova, presenting her understanding and interpretation of the interactions between people and nature.

Some argue that procreation is immoral due to its negative environmental impact. Since living an “eco-gluttonous” lifestyle of excessive resource consumption is wrong in virtue of the fact that it increases greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impact, then bringing another human being into existence must also be wrong, for exactly this same reason. I support this position. It has recently been the subject of criticism, however, primarily on the grounds that such a position (1) is guilty of “double-counting” environmental impacts, (...) and (2) that it over-generalizes to condemn other clearly permissible behaviors, such as saving lives, or certain instances of adoption and immigration. Here, I will defend the environmental argument against procreation from these criticisms. I will do this, first, under the assumption that our individual consumption and emissions cause significant harm. I will then address the problem of causal impotence, and argue that, even if our individual contributions to environmental problems ultimately make no difference to the amount of harm that occurs, procreation is still immoral for many, if not most, of those living in the developed world. (shrink)

In this book, Chad Jorgenson challenges the view that for Plato the good life is one of pure intellection, arguing that his last writings increasingly insist on the capacity of reason to impose measure on our emotions and pleasures. Starting from an account of the ontological, epistemological, and physiological foundations of the tripartition of the soul, he traces the increasing sophistication of Plato's thinking about the nature of pleasure and pain and his developing interest in sciences bearing on physical (...) reality. These theoretical shifts represent a movement away from a conception of human happiness as a purification or flight of the soul from the sensible to the intelligible, as in the Phaedo, towards a focus on the harmony of the individual as a psychosomatic whole under the hegemonic power of reason. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate a large-scale financial statement fraud to better understand the process by which individuals are recruited to participate in financial statement fraud schemes. The case reveals that perpetrators often use power to recruit others to participate in fraudulent acts. To illustrate how power is used, we propose a model, based upon the classical French and Raven taxonomy of power, that explains how one individual influences another individual to participate in financial statement fraud. We also provide propositions (...) for future research. (shrink)

This article begins with the notion that some modern philosophers have about human life, in order to make stand out the Aristotelian formulation about human life as unlimited growth. The Aristotelian inspiration is adopted by L. Polo, who proposes to go beyond the limit of knowledge and to see human life as an unlimited global reinforcement dependent of the personal esse.

Explores the embodied aspects of ownership and private property as these emerge in a range of American literary texts across the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

This book examines Philo’s understanding of the acquisition of virtues and the avoidance of vices using the Greek concept of piety as a central virtue in his ethical discourse. Naveros exceptionally shows how Philo construes his understanding of living ethically within both the Hellenistic Jewish and Greek traditions.

This study attempts to determine a correlation effect between people’s perception and awareness of the operationalization of artificial intelligence in their everyday lives and in the production, presentation, and publication of news media in the U.S. By looking at the effect individual characteristics may have on a person’s perception and awareness of AI operationalized for news media and looking at whether perception and/or awareness of AI operationalized in a person’s daily life affects their perception and awareness of AI operationalized for (...) news media, we seek to find correlation between these two factors. The research relies on Actor-network theory, the MAIN Model, and utilizes a convenience sample survey method using the MTurk participant platform. (shrink)

Although hierarchical approaches are evidently important to reinforcement learning, most existing hierarchical RL models either do not involve automatically developing hierarchies (i.e., using pre-determined hierarchies; e.g., Dayan and Hinton 1993, Sutton 1995, Pre-cup et al 1998, Parr and Russell 1997, Dietterich 1997), or involve only domain-speci c processes. Models in the latter category rely on domain-speci c knowledge or procedures and are thus not generic or autonomous; for example, Lin (1993), Moore and Atkeson (1994), and Singh (1994). The problems of (...) such hierarchies include in exibility (because the characteristics of the domain can change over time) and lack of generality (because domain-speci c hierarchies most likely vary from domain to domain). This is true even when limited learning is used to ne tune mostly pre-determined hierarchies (e.g., Parr and Russell 1997, Dietterich 1997). (shrink)

ABSTRACT: I argue that Socrates employs both elenchus and the method of hypothesis in the examination of the slave. I show that the elenchus is a necessary step of the inquiry. Being reduced to ignorance, Socrates tacitly uses the method of hypothesis to move the slave from ignorance to correct opinion. I tease this out from the questions Socrates asks. Although the method of hypothesis begins from a question distinct from elenchus, the solution to the problem leads the slave to (...) answer the original question. The examination shows that the two methods can be employed in a sustained inquiry. (shrink)

To Live in the Spirit provides a detailed examination of πνεῦμα in Paul’s teaching about virtues in his seven undisputed letters. Naveros Córdova shows how Paul’s understanding of πνεῦμα as a foundational concept in his ethical teaching is construed within both the Hellenistic Jewish and Greek traditions.

Ostension is bodily movement that manifests our engagement with things, whether we wish it to or not. Gestures, glances, facial expressions: all betray our interest in something. Ostension enables our first word learning, providing infants with a prelinguistic way to grasp the meaning of words. Ostension is philosophically puzzling; it cuts across domains seemingly unbridgeable -- public--private, inner--outer, mind--body. In this book, Chad Engelland offers a philosophical investigation of ostension and its role in word learning by infants. Engelland discusses (...) ostension (distinguishing it from ostensive definition) in contemporary philosophy, examining accounts by Quine, Davidson, and Gadamer, and he explores relevant empirical findings in psychology, evolutionary anthropology, and neuroscience. He offers original studies of four representative historical thinkers whose work enriches the understanding of ostension: Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, Augustine, and Aristotle. And, building on these philosophical and empirical foundations, Engelland offers a meticulous analysis of the philosophical issues raised by ostension. He examines the phenomenological problem of whether embodied intentions are manifest or inferred; the problem of what concept of mind allows ostensive cues to be intersubjectively available; the epistemological problem of how ostensive cues, notoriously ambiguous, can be correctly understood; and the metaphysical problem of the ultimate status of the key terms in his argument: animate movement, language, and mind. Finally, he argues for the centrality of manifestation in philosophy. Taking ostension seriously, he proposes, has far-reaching implications for thinking about language and the practice of philosophy. (shrink)

El desarrollo de la argumentación en el proceso de alfabetización académica cobra especial importancia debido a que el conocimiento académico es esencialmente argumentativo. Por esto, el objetivo de esta investigación es, por un lado, relevar, a partir del discurso de los docentes en un programa de Biología e Historia, las representaciones sociales acerca de la enseñanza-aprendizaje de la argumentación y, por otro, generar un modelo explicativo de este fenómeno. La recolección de datos se realizó por medio de entrevistas a docentes (...) de ambas disciplinas y el análisis de ellos, mediante la técnica de análisis de contenido, la que busca formular inferencias reproducibles y válidas que puedan aplicarse a un contexto determinado. The development of argumentation in the process of academic literacy is particularly important because scientific knowledge is essentially argumentative. For this reason, the purpose of this research is to elicit social representations about teaching and learning of argumentation from the discourse of teachers in a program of Biology and History, as well as to generate an explanatory model for this phenomenon. The data collection instrument used was an interview to teachers in both disciplines, and the data was analyzed using content analysis, a technique that seeks to develop replicable and valid inference that can be applied to a given context. (shrink)

It is widely held that for a life to be conferred meaning it requires the appropriate type of agency. Call this the agency requirement. The agency requirement is primarily motivated in the philosophical literature by the assumption that there is a widespread pre-theoretical intuition that humans have the capacity for meaning whereas animals do not; and that difference must come down to their agency or lack thereof. This paper aims to undercut the motivation for the agency requirement by arguing our (...) pre-theoretical intuitions actually run opposite; that animals, and even objects, can have meaningful lives/existences. The argument is twofold. First, I extend an existing argument for animals as having a capacity for meaning to objects. Second, I argue maintaining that only humans have the capacity for meaning results in the more counterintuitive upshot that all animals and objects have, by definition, meaningless existences. Since we pre-theoretically believe that anything can be meaningful—even things which by definition lack agency—then we have strong reason for being sceptical about an agency requirement for meaning in life. (shrink)

This ambitious book presents a new interpretation of Chinese thought guided both by a philosopher's sense of mystery and by a sound philosophical theory of meaning. That dual goal, Hansen argues, requires a unified translation theory. It must provide a single coherent account of the issues that motivated both the recently untangled Chinese linguistic analysis and the familiar moral-political disputes. Hansen's unified approach uncovers a philosophical sophistication in Daoism that traditional accounts have overlooked. The Daoist theory treats the imperious intuitionism (...) that alienates critical thinkers as a feature of Confucianism alone. Freed from the view that Confucianism is the core of Chinese thought and from myopic Confucian interpretations, Chinese thinkers emerge as unmistakably philosophical. (shrink)

Modern analytical political philosophy—characterized most notably by the work of John Rawls—has had very little to say about how punishment in particular and criminal law more generally might be justified. This is a puzzling omission, as punishment can be seen as the most serious use of coercive state power and therefore the one in greatest need of philosophical justification. With the idea of filling this gap, this chapter analyzes several major political theories of recent decades and examines how criminal justice (...) might fit into their thought. After discussing the various political theories of libertarianism, liberalism, communitarianism, Marxism, and republicanism, I offer a limited defense of one such theory, Rawls’s “political liberalism,” as offering a suitable way to approach issues of criminal justice and punishment in modern society. More broadly, my chapter invites political philosophers to speak more often and more specifically about how criminal justice fits within their theories. (shrink)

Two principles in epistemology are apparent examples of the close connection between rationality and truth. First, adding a disjunct to what it is rational to believe yields a proposition that’s also rational to believe. Second, what’s likely if believed is rational to believe. While these principles are accepted by many, it turns out that they clash. In light of this clash, we must relinquish the second principle. Reflecting on its rationale, though, reveals that there are two distinct ways to understand (...) the connection between rationality and truth. Rationality is fundamentally a guide to the belief-independent truth, rather than a guide to acquiring true beliefs. And this in turn has important implications for current discussions of permissivism, epistemic reasons, and epistemic consequentialism. (shrink)

En este trabajo se señalan dos aportaciones antropológicas elaboradas por Leonardo Polo en escritos dirigidos a iluminar la acción humana, social, económica y empresarial, en particular su trabajo Ricos y pobres. Igualdad y desigualdad. Allí se ve una importante crítica a la visión antropológica que hay tras la concepción del homo oeconomicus con la que se apoyó el nacimiento y desarrollo de la economía como ciencia y que se caracteriza por la pobreza ontológica de un ser que es un maximizador (...) pleno de recursos. Ésta, homo oeconomicus, es una noción que desde distintas disciplinas se está criticando reiteradamente, por la limitación de este modelo al entender la acción humana, que resultan insuficientes sin un marco antropológico radical. (shrink)

El artículo busca revelar como resultado el papel de la comunicación de la innovación social en el comportamiento del usuario, si este modifica su intención de consumir un producto o servicio, cuando conoce que la empresa que oferta el bien o servicio tiene una práctica de innovación social implementada. Para responder al objetivo se formularon dos hipótesis que fueron testeadas mediante la aplicación de una encuesta basada en una muestra de conveniencia, que recolectó 300 respuestas en toda América Latina. Los (...) resultados obtenidos permiten suponer que el consumidor en Latinoamérica, en general, no solo quiere tener más información disponible y accesible (tanto en términos de accesibilidad de medios como de lenguaje), sino que quiere involucrarse, ser escuchado y poder intervenir en la comunidad; ya sea por iniciativa propia o alentado por las marcas y empresas en general. (shrink)

The normative politics of Rorty’s Achieving Our Country are inextricably related to the political-philosophical principles of Contingency,irony, and solidarity, yet the nature of this relation is not explicit, particularly regarding Rorty’s earlier public/private sphere distinctionand renunciation of metavocabularies. This paper argues that Rorty’s call for patriotism as a necessary condition for political practiceand a romantic historicism that replaces intersubjectively recognized history, leads to a privatized conception of the nation, betraying the most promising principles of Contingency, irony, and solidarity, and threatening (...) the necessary conditions of democratic and solidaristic practices. This critique also accounts for the theoretical lacunas in Rorty’s most recent essays attempting to elucidate American Empire. (shrink)

This book examines Philo’s understanding of the acquisition of virtues and the avoidance of vices using the Greek concept of piety as a central virtue in his ethical discourse. Naveros exceptionally shows how Philo construes his understanding of living ethically within both the Hellenistic Jewish and Greek traditions.

With respect to climate change, what is wanted is an account that morally condemns the production of ‘luxury’ greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., joyriding in an SUV), but not ‘subsistence’ emissions (e.g., cooking meals). Now, our individual greenhouse gas emissions either cause harm, or they do not—and those who condemn the production of luxury emissions generally stake their position on the grounds that they do cause harm. Meanwhile, those seeking to defend the moral permissibility of luxury emissions generally do so by (...) arguing that our individual emissions do not cause harm. Here, I argue that, if our individual emissions do cause harm, then this entails too much. For, it entails not only that our luxury emissions are morally impermissible, but that our subsistence emissions are too. This is an undesirable result. Therefore, I propose that we embrace our other option. Namely, I propose that we accept that our individual emissions do not cause harm; or at least, that they make no perceptible difference with respect to the harms associated with climate change. The result of this admission is not as bad as you might think. For, I argue, even if we are individually causally impotent with respect to the harms of climate change, there remains a plausible route toward the moral condemnation of our individual luxury emissions—contrary to what others have argued. What is more, only by accepting our individual causal impotence can we successfully ground the permissibility of our individual subsistence emissions. (shrink)

At its heart, Buddhism blossoms from one source: the words and life of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. Chad Mercree, a lifetime student of Buddhist philosophy and meditation, reveals in simple language how Buddhism can yield personal growth in the modern world. Because every journey is unique, Mercree relates his own story, as well as the experiences of famous Buddhists throughout history, to help you apply Buddha's principles to your personal path.

There are a number of cases where, collectively, groups cause harm, and yet no single individual’s contribution to the collective makes any difference to the amount of harm that is caused. For instance, though human activity is collectively causing climate change, my individual greenhouse gas emissions are neither necessary nor sufficient for any harm that results from climate change. Some (e.g., Sinnott-Armstrong) take this to indicate that there is no individual moral obligation to reduce emissions. There is a collective action (...) problem here, to which I offer a solution. My solution rests on an argument for a (sometimes) bare moral difference between intending harm and foreseeing with near certainty that harm will result as an unintended side-effect of one’s action. I conclude that we have a moral obligation to reduce our individual emissions; and, more broadly, an obligation to not participate in many other harmful group activities (e.g., factory-farming). (shrink)

In “Is Philosophy Exceptional? A Corpus-Based, Quantitative Study” (2022), Moti Mizrahi and Michael Adam Dickinson use corpus methods to determine the kinds of arguments that turn up in philosophical writing. They use the results to contribute to debates on philosophy’s “specialness” or “exceptionality”. To what extent is philosophy interestingly unlike other knowledge-making disciplines? Specifically, does it deploy different forms of argument than the sciences or other disciplines? -/- These questions are interesting, and Mizrahi and Dickinson’s methodological approach is impressive. Nonetheless, (...) we have concerns about the approach. In this short reply, we argue there are reasons to worry about the accuracy of the results that the authors report and reasons to wonder how their results, even if accurate, shed light on questions about philosophy’s specialness. We end with some thoughts about the strengths and weaknesses of the project and some suggestions for next steps for those interested in moving this project (and others of its ilk) forward. (shrink)

Some propositions are not likely to be true overall, but are likely to be true if you believe them. Appealing to the platitude that belief aims at truth, it has become increasingly popular to defend the view that such propositions are epistemically rational to believe. However, I argue that this view runs into trouble when we consider the connection between what’s epistemically rational to believe and what’s practically rational to do. I conclude by discussing how rejecting the view bears on (...) three other epistemological issues. First, we’re able to uncover a flaw in a common argument for permissivism. Second, we can generate a problem for prominent versions of epistemic consequentialism. Finally, we can better understand the connection between epistemic rationality and truth: epistemic rationality is a guide to true propositions rather than true beliefs. (shrink)

Pragmatism has been called "the chief glory of our country's intellectual tradition" by its supporters and "a dog's dinner" by its detractors. While acknowledging pragmatism's direct ties to American imperialism and expansionism, Chad Kautzer, Eduardo Mendieta, and the contributors to this volume consider the role pragmatism plays, for better or worse, in current discussions of nationalism, war, race, and community. What can pragmatism contribute to understandings of a diverse nation? How can we reconcile pragmatism's history with recent changes in (...) the country's racial and ethnic makeup? How does pragmatism help to explain American values and institutions and fit them into new national and multinational settings? The answers to these questions reveal pragmatism's role in helping to nourish the fundamental ideas, politics, and culture of contemporary America. (shrink)

Debates about obesity are really about the meaning of responsibility. The trend toward local foods reflects the changing nature of space due to new communication technologies. Vegetarian theory capitalizes on biotechnology’s challenge to the meaning of species. And food politics, as this book makes powerfully clear, is actually about the political anxieties surrounding globalization. In _Eating Anxiety_, Chad Lavin argues that our culture’s obsession with diet, obesity, meat, and local foods enacts ideological and biopolitical responses to perceived threats to (...) both individual and national sovereignty. Using the occasion of eating to examine assumptions about identity, objectivity, and sovereignty that underwrite so much political order, Lavin explains how food functions to help structure popular and philosophical understandings of the world and the place of humans within it. He introduces the concept of digestive subjectivity and shows how this offers valuable resources for rethinking cherished political ideals surrounding knowledge, democracy, and power. Exploring discourses of food politics, _Eating Anxiety_ links the concerns of food—especially issues of sustainability, public health, and inequality—to the evolution of the world order and the possibilities for democratic rule. It forces us to question the significance of consumerist politics and—simultaneously—the relationship between politics and ethics, public and private. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2602\REVIEWS.262 : 2007-01-24 01:12 Reviews 187 NUCLEAR WAR AND WORLD CITIZENSHIP Chad Trainer 1006 Davids Run Phoenixville, pa 19460, usa stratoflampsacus@aol.com Robert Hinde and Joseph Rotblat. War No More: Eliminating Conflict in the Nuclear Age. London and Sterling, Va.: Pluto P., 2003. Pp. x, 228. £40.00; us$50.00; isbn 0745321925 (hb). £11.99; us$17.95 (pb). ast year marked the 50th anniversary of the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, Lwhich (...) sought to put the world on guard against the hydrogen bomb’s dangers. The last surviving signatory to the manifesto was Joseph Rotblat, who died on 31 August 2005. In 1995, Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences were awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. During World War ii, Joseph Rotblat participated in the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb. An Encyclopaedia Britannica article on his Nobel prize explains that “Although he was uncomfortable about participating in the creation of an atomic bomb, Rotblat initially believed that the weapon would be used only to deter a German threat. After learning in 1944 that it would be used to contain the Soviet Union, a World War ii ally, he left the project….” Upon returning to England in 1945, Rotblat left defence work for medical research. He served as founding secretary-general and later as president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, which began in 1957 and at which key scientists and others from different countries could confer about the peril of nuclear weapons facing the world. As a medical physicist at London University’s St. Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College (1950–76), Rotblat directed attention toward the biological hazards of nuclear radiation and the severity of fallout from atmospheric testing. He worked closely with Russell in the 1950s and early ’60s and still visited him in his last years. (See his “Personal Reminiscences”, Russell, 18 [1998]: 5–24.) The book’s co-author, Robert Hinde, is the author of numerous books and articles in psychology. The book addresses the planet’s current state in terms of weapons of mass destruction. It features many tables and charts on matters ranging from the varying levels of the super-powers’ nuclear warhead stockpiles to the principal nuclear arms control treaties to estimates of military deaths in individual wars during the last 60 years. Since this book is an earnest endeavour to address the issue of weapons of mass destruction, many of its most fundamental prescriptions sound basic, even _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2602\REVIEWS.262 : 2007-01-24 01:12 188 Reviews somewhat banal. To be sure, the authors acknowledge that “Any attempt to discuss ways of preventing war must address very basic issues, and in so doing lays itself open to accusations of mushy idealism” (pp. 214–15). In War No More the authors opt to err in the direction of moral truisms as a small price to pay if there is a chance of contributing to a discussion eventually compelling the world’s political leaders to heed such moral considerations. In the prevention of conflict, “Often the success of such efforts may be unknown to the wider world just because the criterion of success is simply that nothing happens” (p. 198). Hinde and Rotblat urge their readers to understand the absolute need to abolish war if humanity is to endure in this nuclear age. Their position is that “the very possession of nuclear weapons is immoral. Their enormous destructive power, inflicted on civilians even more than on the military, would make their use unforgiveable” (p. 139). The authors expressly credit Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein with having taken the initiative for international action on this front (p. 189). And as was the view of Russell and Einstein 50 years earlier, Hinde and Rotblat proclaim in their book that “The only solution is international agreement on the total abolition of nuclear weapons” (p. 139). Hinde and Rotblat concede the ease with which people can be pessimistic about the prospects of abolishing war. However, the formidable challenge posed by such a task is deemed “no excuse for inaction”. They cite historic instances in which humanity has... (shrink)