When making consumption choices, people often fail to meet their own standards of both ethics and frugality. People also generally tend to demand more of others than they do of themselves. But little is known about how these different types of hypocrisy interact, particularly in relation to attitudes toward ethical consumption. In three experiments, we integrate research methods using anchoring and hypocrisy within the context of ethical consumption. Across three experiments, we find a default expectation that people should spend less (...) on consumer items than they actually do. This default position can be inverted by making the ethical context of consumption salient, whereby the expectation is then that people should spend more on consumer items than they actually do. Experiments 2 and 3 show that a moderate price anchor for ethical consumption is sufficient to shift expected standards for other people, but a higher price anchor is required to shift expected standards in personal behaviour. We discuss the countervailing roles of frugality and ethical consumption in understanding hypocrisy and ethical decision-making. (shrink)

In What the Body Commands, Colin Klein proposes and defends a novel theory of pain. Klein argues that pains are imperative; they are sensations with a content, and that content is a command to protect the injured part of the body. He terms this view "imperativism about pain," and argues that imperativism can account for two puzzling features of pain: its strong motivating power and its uninformative nature. Klein argues that the biological purpose of pain is homeostatic; like hunger (...) and thirst, pain helps solve a challenge to bodily integrity. It does so by motivating you to act in ways that help the body recover. If you obey pain's command, you get better. He develops his account to handle a variety of pain phenomena and applies it to solve a number of historically puzzling cases. Klein's intent is to defend the imperativist view in a pure form -- without requiring pain to represent facts about the world.Klein presents a model of imperative content showing that intrinsically motivating sensations are best understood as imperatives, and argues that pain belongs to this class. He considers the distinction between pain and suffering; explains how pain motivates; addresses variations among pains; and offers an imperativist account of maladaptive pains, pains that don't appear to hurt, masochism, and why pain feels bad. (shrink)

According to the logical pluralism of Beall and Restall, there are several distinct relations of logical consequence. Some critics argue that logical pluralism suffers from what I call the collapse problem: that despite its intention to articulate a radically pluralistic doctrine about logic, the view unintentionally collapses into logical monism. In this paper, I propose a contextualist resolution of the collapse problem. This clarifies the mechanism responsible for a plurality of logics and handles the motivating data better than the original (...) view. It is a major improvement that should be embraced by all logical pluralists. (shrink)

Consider the distinctive qualitative property grass visually appears to have when it visually appears to be green. This property is an example of what I call sensuous color. Whereas early modern mechanists typically argue that bodies are not sensuously colored, Margaret Cavendish (1623–73) disagrees. In cases of veridical perception, she holds that grass is green in precisely the way it visually appears to be. In defense of her realist approach to sensuous colors, Cavendish argues that (i) it is impossible to (...) conceive of colorless bodies, (ii) the very possibility of color experience requires that bodies are sensuously colored, and (iii) the attribution of sensuous colors to bodies provides the best explanation of color constancy. Although some passages might suggest that Cavendish endorses a reductive account of sensuous color, according to which sensuous color reduces to a body's microscopic surface texture (or some other mechanistically respectable property), I argue that she accepts a nonreductive account, on which sensuous color is not thus reducible. (shrink)

In this article, I respond to Augustin Fragnière's recent attempt to understand the demandingness of individual climate duties by appealing to the difference between “concentrated” harm and “spread” harm and the importance of “moral thresholds”. I suggest his arguments don't succeed in securing the conclusion he is after, even from within his own commitments, which themselves are problematic. As this is primarily a critical project, the upshot of this discussion is that if there is a defensible way to justify the (...) intuition that the duty to reduce emissions can't be overly demanding, it has to be found elsewhere. (shrink)

In this chapter, McGinn begins with a study of the meaning of monstrosity, in which he considers the view set out in the previous chapters that evil is ugliness of soul. Monsters seem to be visible embodiments of evil: however, the connection between physical ugliness and ugliness of soul is not logically necessary. To pursue this point, McGinn presents a close study of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. McGinn interprets the novel as a metaphorical depiction of the human condition. He argues that (...) the life of Frankenstein's monster can be understood as a model of human life. (shrink)

Malebranche holds that visual experience represents the size of objects relative to the perceiver's body and does not represent objects as having intrinsic or nonrelational spatial magnitudes. I argue that Malebranche's case for this body-relative thesis is more sophisticated than other commentators—most notably, Atherton and Simmons —have presented it. Malebranche's central argument relies on the possibility of perceptual variation with respect to size. He uses two thought experiments to show that perceivers of different sizes—namely, miniature people, giants, and typical human (...) beings—can experience the very same objects as having radically different sizes. Malebranche argues that there is no principled reason to privilege one of these ways of experiencing size over the others and, more specifically, that all three kinds of perceivers experience size veridically. From the possibility of this kind of veridical perceptual variation, Malebranche infers that visual experience represents only body-relative size. (shrink)

Abstract:The author considers the Eleatic Stranger's account of being as communing (κοινωνεῖν), an under-recognized aspect of the well-known "dunamis proposal" and Plato's unfolding of the notion of being in the Sophist. The Stranger calls being "the power to act upon or be affected" (247d7-e3), and shortly thereafter describes "being affected or acting upon from a certain power" (248b6) as "communing" (248b2). This marks a shift away from understanding being as capacity toward understanding it as activity. The author identifies two functions (...) of the "being-as-communion" account: (1) a critical response to the previous competing quantitative and qualitative ontologies, and (2) a new ontological notion that plays a key role in the great kinds discussion and what follows, capturing the sense in which to be is to engage actively in relations with structuring, causal kinds. He conclude by speaking to the account's valuable insight into the meaning of being as being-with and being-through. (shrink)

This book focuses on the important work of Karl Mannheim by demonstrating how his theoretical conception of a reflexive sociology took shape as a collaborative empirical research programme. The authors show how contemporary work along these lines, whether derived from Foucault, Bourdieu or other theorists, can benefit from the insights of Mannheim and his students into both morphology and genealogy.

Imagination and idealism are particularly important creative epistemic virtues for the medical sciences if we hope to improve the health of the world’s ageing population. To date, imagination and idealism within the medical sciences have been dominated by a paradigm of disease control, a paradigm which has realised significant, but also limited, success. Disease control proved particularly successful in mitigating the early-life mortality risks from infectious diseases, but it has proved less successful when applied to the chronic diseases of late (...) life (like cancer). The time is ripe for the emergence and prominence of a supplementary medical research paradigm, the paradigm of ‘healthy ageing’ which prioritises the goal of rate (of ageing) control rather than disease control. This is the difference between extending the human healthspan versus extending survival by managing (or trying to eliminate) the multi-morbidities, frailty and disability currently prevalent in late life. The idealism of the disease control paradigm is myopic because it ignores the health constraints imposed by the inborn ageing process itself, a biological reality which is already inflicting significant economic and disease burdens on the world’s ageing populations. Unless the medical sciences retard the rate of biological ageing, these problems will continue to be amplified as larger numbers of persons survive into late life. (shrink)

Many beginning students in philosophy of language find themselves grappling with dense and difficult texts not easily understood by someone new to the field. This book offers an introduction to philosophy of language by explaining ten classic, often anthologized, texts. Accessible and thorough, written with a unique combination of informality and careful formulation, the book addresses sense and reference, proper names, definite descriptions, indexicals, the definition of truth, truth and meaning, and the nature of speaker meaning, as addressed by Frege, (...) Kripke, Russell, Donnellan, Kaplan, Evans, Putnam, Tarski, Davidson, and Grice. The explanations aim to be as simple as possible without sacrificing accuracy; critical assessments are included with the exposition in order to stimulate further thought and discussion. Philosophy of Language will be an essential resource for undergraduates in a typical philosophy of language course or for graduate students with no background in the field. It can be used in conjunction with an anthology of classic texts, sparing the instructor much arduous exegesis. ContentsFrege on Sense and Reference • Kripke on Names • Russell on Definite Descriptions • Donnellan's Distinction • Kaplan on Demonstratives • Evans on Understanding Demonstratives • Putnam on Semantic Externalism • Tarski's Theory of Truth • Davidson's Semantics for Natural Language • Grice's Theory of Speaker Meaning. (shrink)

Richard Rorty's pragmatism is a distinctively doubled philosophy formed at the twain of a rigorous antifoun‐dational philosophical perspective and a committed postmetaphysical cultural criticism. Rorty instead rigorously held to the line that no particular politics follows from anti‐foundational philosophy. Rorty's arguments against representationalism, foundationalism, and metaphysics‐first philosophy in Mirror are complex and not always easy to navigate without careful guidance. The risk of the approach in Mirror is that it could implicate Rorty in a foundationalist critique of foundationalism, or a (...) metaphysical critique of metaphysics. For ironism is the studied denial not of metaphysics itself, but only of strong forms of pro‐metaphysical argument. Rorty uses liberalism to avoid the metaphysical forbidding of metaphysics – substituting for it instead a liberal, perhaps even a critical, limiting of metaphysics. The most important insight of Contingency boils down to this: liberalism and ironism together give us something to strive for that the metaphysician would otherwise take as settled. (shrink)

Climate change, rising energy costs, and other dilemmas raise the prospect for major change in energy-ecology-society relations. Two prominent proposals for change include: a nuclear power renaissance; and mega-scale renewable energy development. Both suggest that modern society will receive a rising stream of less CO2-rich kilowatt-hours, so that increased energy consumption and economic growth can continue. The article doubts these CO2 claims and finds both options lead to deepening unsustainability and environmental injustice. A third approach is proposed. A new institutional (...) and community strategy called a Sustainability Energy Utility. The SEU looks to reduce energy use and seeks to support remaining energy needs by community-scale renewables. To accomplish deep energy change, the authors show how an SEU can move society from an energy commodity to energy commons regime. Commonwealth economy and community trusts are key means to significant change: a future commons is offered as the more appropriate strategy. (shrink)

This article discusses the concept of spiritual assets or spiritual capital in community development and social transformation. It argues that much of the existing discourse on the subject tends to be reductionist in its approach, often limiting discussion of spiritual assets to the social and cultural capital of religious organizations. The study proposes an understanding of spiritual assets which acknowledges the creative and sustaining work of the Spirit in enabling and motivating communities to envision, and discern paths of renewal and (...) social transformation. (shrink)

We study companies that do not produce a sustainability report in contexts where institutionalisation is assumed. Based on a careful analysis of interaction patterns between non-reporting companies, sustainability interest groups, and peer organisations, we find patterns of discursive and material isomorphism that suggest sustainability reporting is confined to an issues-based field, rather than spreading as an institutionalised practice across the business community. We argue that the issues-based field exerts only weak pressure for sustainability reporting, and that encouraging more firms to (...) report rests on understanding what influences companies to interact more widely to become part of this field. (shrink)

Explains Popper's views on natural and social science, ranging in Part I from metaphysical considerations to his interpretation of the formalism of quantum mechanics, and in Part II from the errors of historicism and holism to the roles of theoretical models, institutions, traditions and history.

Plato’s Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman exhibit several related dialectical methods relevant to Platonic education: maieutic in Theaetetus, bifurcatory division in Sophist and Statesman, and non-bifurcatory division in Statesman, related to the ‘god-given’ method in Philebus. I consider the nature of each method through the letter or element paradigm, used to reflect on each method. At issue are the element’s appearances in given contexts, its fitness for communing with other elements like it in kind, and its own nature defined through its (...) relations to others. These represent stages of inquiry for the Platonic student inquiring into the sources of knowledge. (shrink)

The epistemic position of an agent often depends on their position in a larger network of other agents who provide them with information. In general, agents are better off if they have diverse and independent sources. Sullivan et al. [19] developed a method for quantitatively characterizing the epistemic position of individuals in a network that takes into account both diversity and independence; and presented a proof-of-concept, closed-source implementation on a small graph derived from Twitter data [19]. This paper reports on (...) an open-source reimplementation of their algorithm in Python, optimized to be usable on much larger networks. In addition to the algorithm and package, we also show the ability to scale up our package to large synthetic social network graph profiling, and finally demonstrate its utility in analyzing real-world empirical evidence of ‘echo chambers’ on online social media, as well as evidence of interdisciplinary diversity in an academic communications network. (shrink)

Paradoxically, the rise of neoliberal economic thinking and its rejection of concepts of both state intervention in the economy and the pursuit of purposes bybusiness that are not directly related to profit maximization, has been accompanied by intensified social criticism of business and concerns about sustainability. The article explores the implications of these paradoxes and relates them to active consumerism and to the issue of market externalities.

The ‘aesthetic theory of virtue’ or ATV, is the thesis, partly inspired by Thomas Reid, that virtue coincides with beauty of soul and vice with ugliness of soul. The basic idea of ATV is that for a person to be virtuous is for his soul to have certain aesthetic properties, which are necessary and sufficient conditions for personal goodness. The relation between morally aesthetic properties and moral attributes is one of supervenience of the former upon the latter. McGinn cites the (...) film Brief Encounter to illustrate the concept of the beautiful soul, and he also draws upon Nabokov's discussion of the aesthetic in Lolita. A morally bad character, McGinn argues, cannot have a beautiful soul, nor can a morally good character have an ugly soul. (shrink)

Physical atomism, as proposed by Democritus, was a speculative theory, without much empirical support or explanatory success, which much later received serious confirmation. Comparisons are drawn between some ancient Greek responses to puzzling phenomena and modern reductionist responses to the mind-body problem. It is conjectured that atomism with regard to the mental is true in advance of there being any particular evidence for it. According to this theory, conscious states consist of unobserved underlying states, which combine to produce the states (...) that we do observe. If such a theory could be produced, it is argued that it might contribute to a solution to the mind-body problem. (shrink)

In the conclusion, McGinn distinguishes the ‘commandment’ paradigm and the ‘parable’ paradigm of ethical reflection, and argues that analytical moral philosophy, despite its emphasis on moral language, tends to follow the former. In this book, McGinn has argued that the latter, as exemplified in fictional narrative, with its appeal to our aesthetic sensibility, is the true vehicle of moral thought and persuasion. The fictional world is ideal for the exploration of ethical questions and the acquisition of ethical knowledge.

Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, McGinn argues, presents in an extreme and exemplary form, the power of the aesthetic to conceal and to express evil; it shows us what happens if the aesthetic is allowed to dominate over the moral. The character of Dorian has an exterior beauty, which is taken as a sign of virtue, but he has an inner ugliness or an ugliness of soul, which is identified as moral depravity. The lesson of Dorian Gray, McGinn (...) argues, is that the aesthetic and the moral are inseparable, and it is only the concept of the beautiful soul that can keep the aesthetic impulse under control. (shrink)

Pruss uses an example of Lester Dubins to argue against the claim that appealing to hyperreal-valued probabilities saves probabilistic regularity from the objection that in continuum outcome-spaces and with standard probability functions all save countably many possibilities must be assigned probability 0. Dubins’s example seems to show that merely finitely additive standard probability functions allow reasoning to a foregone conclusion, and Pruss argues that hyperreal-valued probability functions are vulnerable to the same charge. However, Pruss’s argument relies on the rule of (...) conditionalisation, but I show that in examples like Dubins’s involving nonconglomerable probabilities, conditionalisation is self-defeating. (shrink)

This paper argues that the passage of time cannot be understood in a certain ‘objective’ manner: it is not something comprehensible as from no one and nowhen by means of generalizations over times, properties, subjects, events etc. This does not mean, however, that its reality should be denied, that we should lower our sights to explaining instead ‘the experience of time as passing’. Rather, time’s passage is to be elaborated within a metaphysics of time of a rather different kind, one (...) which might be presented as an articulation of being in time. (shrink)

This paper shows how Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit criticizes Kant for positing a realm beyond the scope of finite cognition, a “supersensible” realm of things in-themselves. Hegel not only rejects Kant’s attempt to ground the supersensible through his theoretical philosophy, but also criticizes Kant’s attempt to provide a practical basis for the sensible-supersensible divide. In the second Critique, Kant claims that practical reason extends theoretical reason by showing that the supersensible is more than a “merely problematic thought” since we can (...) populate this realm with the moral postulates of God and the immortality of the soul. Hegel rejects Kant’s attempt to posit a realm beyond theoretical cognition. The moral postulates, Hegel claims, are an “unnecessary hypothesis.” Kant imagines [vorstellt] supersensible realm populated with moral postulates, yet Hegel argues this is a dissemblance [Verstellung] that hides a whole “nest of contradictions” by shifting thoughtlessly between a finite and infinite perspective. (shrink)

First published in 1976, this is a volume of studies on the problems of theory-appraisal in the physical sciences - how and why important theories are developed, changed and are replaced, and by what criteria we judge one theory an advance on another. The volume is introduced by a classic paper of Imre Lakatos's, which sets out a theory for tackling these problems - the methodology of scientific research programmes. Five contributors then test this theory against particular and celebrated case-studies (...) in the history of the physical sciences. The volume ends with a characteristically forceful and original critique of the whole enterprise by Paul Feyerabend. the book is a companion volume to Method and Appraisal in Economics. Both are natural sequels to Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge and attempt to work out in particular cases the implications of some of the theories presented in that book. (shrink)