This article reports the effects of gender proportions on the task activity and socioemotional participation of men and women in 85 four-person, decision-making groups. The analysis focuses on the changes in the highest and lowest levels of male and female participation. Results show that role entrapment occurs for both male and female numerical minorities. Role entrapment is a function of conformity to gender expectations rather than gender-role exaggeration, and is not limited to the extreme of the token. Both men and (...) women were affected by decreased numbers, but the effects were to the advantage of the men and to the disadvantage of the women. (shrink)

Robert Grosseteste was a prolific theological and scientific writer, a translator, bishop of Lincoln , and a candidate for sainthood. There have been several studies of his life and his works, the most recent being that of Richard Southern. Nevertheless, James McEvoy's comment in 1983 that “the course of Grosseteste's life up until 1225 is almost completely unknown” remains largely true. The problem is common in medieval history—there is a dearth of reliable sources for the subject's early life. I do (...) not intend to discuss here Grosseteste's youth, or even his life until 1198 . I will accept, with a few reservations, the model Southern presented for Grosseteste's life until 1198 — that Grosseteste came from an undistinguished family, acquired an education, and may have taught in local schools; after serving the bishop of Lincoln in a minor capacity, he managed to obtain an administrative position under Bishop de Vere in the diocese of Hereford. Unfortunately, Bishop de Vere died on Christmas Day 1198, and his household was disbanded. It is the period following 1198 until 1225 that needs scrutiny. The recent discovery of a reference to Robert Grosseteste in a thirteenth-century cartulary demands that we reconsider the way in which historians have structured Grosseteste's career, both because of what this manuscript records and because of the light it sheds upon the methodology that has underpinned Grosseteste scholarship. (shrink)

In his recent article Should Trees Have Standing? Revisited" Christopher D. Stone has effectively withdrawn his proposal that natural objects be granted legal rights, in response to criticism from the Feinberg/McCloskey camp. Stone now favors a weaker proposal that natural objects be granted what he calls legal "considerateness". I argue that Stone's retreat is both unnecessary and undesirable. I develop the notion of a "de facto" legal right and argue that species already have de facto legal rights as statutory beneficiaries (...) of the "Endangered Species Act of 1973." I conclude that granting certain nonhuman natural entities legal rights is both more important and less costly that Stone and his critics have realized, and that it is not Stone's original proposal which needs rethinking, but the concept of interests at work in the Feinberg/McCloskey position. (shrink)

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 4, April 2022. -/- In a moment where needs for care are acute and their provision precarious, feminist care ethics has gained new relevance as a framework for understanding and responding to necessary interdependence. This article reviews and evaluates two long-standing critiques of care ethics in light of this recent research. First, I assess what I call the pluralist feminist critique, or the dispute over the ability of care ethics to address the needs and histories (...) of a range of marginalized subjects. I identify two forms of this critique: the first disputes the biased starting points shaping the development of the theory, and the second concerns the weaponization of care in support of domination. Although these critiques are well-established, I draw attention to recent responses that move care theory in generative directions. I argue that the pluralist feminist critique demands both self-critical transformation in dialog with other feminist schools of thought and a robust account of care ethics' normative authority. I then take up critiques those levied by mainstream ethicists concerned with care theory's adequacy as an ethical approach. I show that recent work on normative authority, conceptual uniqueness, and the grounding of responsibility must be engaged before care theory can be dismissed as “under-theorized.” In articulating these two sets of critiques and evaluating recent rebuttals to them, I argue for a pluralist feminist theory of care within which strands informed by varying philosophical schools and methods can coexist. (shrink)

This article is a critical response to Concepción, Messineo, Wieten, and Homan’s “The State of Teacher Training in Philosophy.” In it, I utilize an epistemologies-of-ignorance framework to highlight the incentives we, as philosophers, have to ignore teaching and learning about teaching and learning. I argue that the problems are not merely about our individual desires, but rather, that there is a regime of ignorance that encourages us not to know. I argue therefore that real change requires more than a shift (...) in personal commitments; it requires a change to the system, including how and what we make public and how we evaluate and are evaluated by our peers. (shrink)

In 2008, Peter Felten, the founding director of Elon's Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, asked me to coordinate an inaugural two-year teaching and learning seminar for faculty, to focus on some element of engaged learning (Elon University's pedagogical focus). We titled the project the Elon Research Seminar on Engaged Undergraduate Learning. As a philosopher who works at the intersections of political philosophy and the scholarship of teaching and learning and as one interested in the relationships among democracy, (...) responsibility, and progressive social justice activism, I decided to ask Elizabeth Minnich, senior scholar for the Association of American Colleges and Universities Office of .. (shrink)

The treaty of Atlantis -- Legitimacy in history -- American encyclope-deism (revolutions and open societies I) -- The well of the Caliph (revolutions and open societies II) -- Paradise won -- Slouching toward Geneva -- Conclusion : academic counter-enlightenment and the recline of the West.

This is the second volume to appear in an edition that will be the first complete, critical, and annotated English translation of all of Nietzsche’s work. Volume 2: Unfashionable Observations, translated by Richard T. Gray, was published in 1995. The edition is a new English translation, by various hands, of the celebrated Colli-Montinari edition, which has been acclaimed as one of the most important works of scholarship in the humanities in the last quarter century. The original Italian edition was simultaneously (...) published in French, German, and Japanese. This volume of Human, All Too Human, the first of two parts, is the earliest of Nietzsche’s works in which his philosophical concerns and methodologies can be glimpsed. In this work Nietzsche began to establish the intellectual difference from his own cultural milieu and time that makes him our contemporary. Published in 1878, it marks both a stylistic and an intellectual shift away from Nietzsche’s own youthful affiliation with Romantic excesses of German thought and culture typified by Wagnerian opera. (shrink)

In the subsequent pages, I want to develop a distinction between wanting and valuing which will enable the familiar view of freedom to make sense of the notion of an unfree action. The contention will be that, in the case of actions that are unfree, the agent is unable to get what he most wants, or values, and this inability is due to his own "motivational system." In this case the obstruction to the action that he most wants to do (...) is his own will. It is in this respect that the action is unfree: the agent is obstructed in and by the very performance of the action. (shrink)

Descartes boldly claimed: "I think, therefore I am." But one might well ask: Why do we think? How? When and why did our human ancestors develop language and culture? In other words, what makes the human mind human? _Evolution of Mind, Brain, and Culture_ offers a comprehensive and scientific investigation of these perennial questions. Fourteen essays bring together the work of archaeologists, cultural and physical anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers, geneticists, a neuroscientist, and an environmental scientist to explore the evolution of the (...) human mind, the brain, and the human capacity for culture. The volume represents and critically engages major theoretical approaches, including Donald's stage theory, Mithen's cathedral model, Tomasello's joint intentionality, and Boyd and Richerson's modeling of the evolution of culture in relation to climate change. The volume contains chapters by: Peter Carruthers; Thierry Chaminade; Philip Chase; Merlin Donald; Peter Gardenfors; Gary Hatfield; Jody Hey; Steven Mithen; April Nowell; Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd; Theodore Schurr; Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney; Kim Sterelny; and Felix Warneken. ISBN 978-1-934536-49-0. (shrink)

In the mid-nineteenth century, Karl Marx issued several critiques of political economy writings stressing the exclusive duality of states and the national economies. He argued that capitalism had characteristic features quite apart from those shaped by the idiosyncrasies of national economies. In the first part of this article, we critique the contemporary state-centered explanations for the industrialization of East Asia on same grounds. We claim that most political economists misinterpret or entirely ignore the significance of export-led industrialization, which is a (...) characteristic feature of East Asian capitalism. In the second part of the article, we demonstrate the importance of the retail revolution in the US and Europe on Asian industrialization. In particular, we show that the development of the sequential ordering system that is an inherent feature of Western-based contract manufacturing differentially shaped the industrial organization of East Asian economies. The resulting path-dependent trajectories of development, in turn, encouraged government policy-makers to ‘buy into’ trends of global capitalism in different ways. The trajectories also led business people to privilege and adapt some social institutions and cultural patterns over other ones. (shrink)

The more we spoke, the more we discovered disagreement behind our agreements and envisaged different implications for the same—or were they the same—ideas. “I suppose that’s what Bakhtin meant when he wrote that agreement, not just disagreement, is a dialogic relationship,” she reflected. “Agreement is never identity. It always presupposes or becomes the occasion for differences—which I guess may be one reason why it can be so profitable to agree.” I could detect Kuhn’s concept of a scientific consensus here but (...) agreed anyway.It turned out, in fact, that I had hidden disagreements with all the contributors to the collection. I had undertaken the project with the evidently quixotic hope that we could create, in imitation of Bakhtin’s eccentric circle of linguists, Marxists, Christians, biologists, and literary theorists, a circle of our own. “You want to be a living allusion,” she would say. By the end of that afternoon, however, neither she nor I were confident that we could—despite all the views we did share—ever sign both our names to the same introduction. “Not to be a Formalist,” she interrupted, “perhaps it’s a question of form…”Moi: …You know, the most appropriate form for an article introducing Bakhtin would be a dialogue, since dialogue is his central concept.Elle: Of course, if you can speak of a center in a writer so eccentric. How would it begin?Moi: Well, like Notes from Underground, on an ellipsis…That would illustrate his idea that all speech is a response to words that have been uttered before, that we never confront a linguistically virgin world, that each utterance is a response to other utterances and is formulated in expectation of a response to it—all that might be developed later on in the dialogue. Moi could explain it all to Elle. Gary Saul Morson, associate professor and chairman of Slavic languages at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Boundaries of Genre: Dostoevsky’s “Diary of a Writer” and the Traditions of Literary Utopia. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, “Tolstoy’s Absolute Language,” appeared in the Summer 1981 issue. (shrink)

I worked for many years constructing my version of the global case but, as I continued to try to strengthen it, I slowly began to lose confidence. My unease began with several personal experiences. One of our children had a common but annoying physical ailment, for which our pediatrician prescribed a very expensive nasal spray. When I inquired about its cost, the pharmacist informed me that it was a new, genetically engineered, product. The spray worked, and Karen and I never (...) batted an eye. (shrink)

With its unique combination of depth, clarity, and humor that has enchanted millions, this beloved classic by bestselling author Gary Zukav opens the fascinating world of quantum physics to readers with no mathematical or technical background. "Wu Li" is the Chinese phrase for physics. It means "patterns of organic energy," but it also means "nonsense," "my way," "I clutch my ideas," and "enlightenment." These captivating ideas frame Zukav's evocative exploration of quantum mechanics and relativity theory. Delightfully easy to read, (...) The Dancing Wu Li Masters illuminates the compelling powers at the core of all we know. (shrink)

Jeffrey King, Scott Soames, and others have recently challenged the familiar identification of a Russellian proposition, such as the proposition that Brutus stabbed Caesar, with an ordered sequence constructed out of objects, properties, and relations. There is, as they point out, a surplus of candidate sequences available that are each equally serviceable. If so, any choice among these candidates will be arbitrary. In this paper, I show that, unless a controversial assumption is made regarding the nature of nonsymmetrical relations, none (...) of the proffered candidate sequences are in fact adequate to the play the role. Moreover, as I argue, the most promising alternative theory of relations—one that avoids the problematic assumption and, in addition, fits most naturally into the sequentialist’s framework—fails to meet a basic requirement: it cannot distinguish between the proposition that Brutus stabbed Caesar and the proposition that Caesar stabbed Brutus. The upshot is that the conspicuously structured entities that are widely assumed to be up to the task of “playing the proposition role” shed no light on the very structure they are invoked to represent. (shrink)

The goal of perceptual systems is to allow organisms to adaptively respond to ecologically relevant stimuli. Because all perceptual inputs are ambiguous, perception needs to rely on prior knowledge accumulated over evolutionary and developmental time to turn sensory energy into information useful for guiding behavior. It remains controversial whether the guidance of perception extends to cognitive states or is locked up in a “cognitively impenetrable” part of perception. I argue that expectations, knowledge, and task demands can shape perception at multiple (...) levels, leaving no part untouched. The position advocated here is broadly consistent with the notion that perceptual systems strive to minimize prediction error en route to globally optimal solutions :181–204, 2013). On this view, penetrability should be expected whenever constraining lower-level processes by higher level knowledge is minimizes global prediction error. Just as Fodor feared cognitive penetration of perception threatens theory-neutral observation and the distinction between observation and inference. However, because theories themselves are constrained by the task of minimizing prediction error, theory-laden observation turns out to be superior to theory-free observation in turning sensory energy into useful information. (shrink)

This article marshals the known evidence for the political relations between the Seljuk sultan of Anatolia or Rūm, Kay Kāʾūs I (r. 608–616/1211–1220), and the Assassins or Ismailis in Iran and Syria. This evidence indicates that the sultan corresponded with the grand master of the Assassins in Iran, was aware of their activities in western Iran and of their coreligionists in Syria, paid protection money to them, and included them in his political calculations.

There is disagreement over the notion of representation in cognitive science. Many investigators equate representations with symbols, that is, with syntactically defined elements in an internal symbol system. In recent years there have been two challenges to this orthodoxy. First, a number of philosophers, including many outside the symbolist orthodoxy, have argued that "representation" should be understood in its classical sense, as denoting a "stands for" relation between representation and represented. Second, there has been a growing challenge to orthodoxy under (...) the banner of connectionism. Although this connectionist challenge has evoked emotionally-charged rebukes from the symbolist camp, connectionists as a group have not articulated a conception of representation to replace the symbolist view. Nonetheless, most agree on the need for a nonsymbolic notion of representation. This paper advances a "stands for" sense of representation as primary by incorporating it into a general approach to cognitive science consonant with the connectionism. The idea is to marry connectionism to a particular version of functionalism, viz., one that builds its notion of "function" on the similarity between functional analysis in biology and in psychology. It builds on my earlier work adapting and revising Marr's tri-level approach to cognition. My proposal frees Marr's analysis from its moorings in the orthodox symbolic view of representation and allies it with a notion of functional analysis akin to that proposed by Cummins, developed further by Haugeland, and invoked by Millikan and Dretske. Unlike these authors, however, I do not wed representation to a general belief-desire analysis of behavior. Rather, I follow what I take to be the lesson of psychological practice, according to which the investigator does not seek to explain behavior in general but seeks to analyze the cognitive capacities that underlie behavior, such as vision, memory, learning, and linguistic capacities. Accordingly, ascriptions of representational content are made not by working back from belief-desire ascriptions, but in the context of forming psychological models to account for specific cognitive capacities. Because conceptions of representation in cognitive science typically are embedded in a general approach to the study of cognition, arguments for the comparative plausibility of a particular conception of representation must scout these larger frameworks. I therefore begin by characterizing the interlocking set of assumptions that gave life to the orthodox symbolist approach, paying special attention to the complementarity between representation and process that naturally arises from those assumptions. I then consider two versions of an alternative approach to representation: Dretske's and my own. Finally, I urge the merits of the "cognitive capacities" over the "belief-desire" approach to the subject-matter of cognitive science. (shrink)

“Care robots” offer technological solutions to increasing needs for care just as economic imperatives increasingly regulate the care sector. Ethical critiques of this technology cannot succeed without situating themselves within the crisis of social reproduction under neoliberal capitalism. What, however, constitutes “care” and its status as a potential critical resource, and how might care robots damage this potential? Although robots might threaten norms of care, I argue that they are by no means necessarily damaging. Critiques of care robots must not (...) entrench exclusionary images of the ideal carer. Instead, critical reflection on their use should trouble dominant paradigms of care. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss two kinds of attempts to qualify incompatibilist and compatibilist conceptions of freedom to avoid what have been thought to be incredible commitments of these rival accounts. One attempt -- which I call soft libertarianism -- is represented by Robert Kane''s work. It hopes to defend an incompatibilist conception of freedom without the apparently difficult metaphysical costs traditionally incurred by these views. On the other hand, in response to what I call the robot objection (that if (...) compatibilism is true, human beings could be the products of design), some compatibilists are tempted to soften their position by placing restrictions on the origins of agency. I argue that both of these attempts are misguided. Hard libertarianism and hard compatibilism are the only theoretical options. (shrink)

In this article, I explore how efficacious film can be in countering propaganda in film. To set up the discussion, I first sketch out a simple theory of propaganda, under which propaganda can be ranked from completely rational to very irrational, on six different dimensions. These are the degrees to which the propaganda is: evidence-based; truthful; broadly logical; transparent; properly targeted; and transparent. I then review in detail the main propaganda film, Gasland. This film was a highly successful documentary that (...) attacked the production of natural gas by hydrofracturing, called in America “fracking.” Gasland succeeded in organizing domestic opposition to fracking, actually blocking it in the Delaware River Basin system. The film was also influential abroad, leading to fracking bans in France, Bulgaria, and elsewhere in Europe. Next, I review in detail two counter-propaganda films—that is, in this case, two pro-fracking documentaries: Truthland and FrackNation. Truthland is a short documentary that aims at rebutting many of Gasland’s major claims. It was funded by the fracking industry and had limited distribution but it succeeded in refuting much of the longer and better-funded anti-fracking film. A much more successful film in terms of both general distribution and efficacy of rebuttal was the much longer pro-fracking documentary FrackNation. It critiques all of Gasland’s major points, in vivid detail. Since it was crowdfunded, it couldn’t be dismissed on the grounds that it was biased because of being industry-backed. I conclude by explaining why the pro-fracking documentaries did not result in a major change in public opinion. (shrink)

My concern in this paper will be to explore and develop a version of nonsocratic skepticism about weakness of will. In my view, socratism is incorrect, but like Socrates, I think that the common understanding of weakness of will raises serious problems. Contrary to socratism, it is possible for a person knowingly to act contrary to his or her better judgment. But this description does not exhaust the common view of weakness. Also implicit in this view is the belief that (...) actions which are contrary to one's better judgment are free in the sense that the agent could have done otherwise. To take seriously the possibility of acting contrary to one's better judgment is at the same time to raise problems about the distinction between weakness and compulsion. I argue that the common view, according to which the differentiating feature is that the weak are able to conform their behavior to their practical judgments, is unjustified. Instead, I have proposed that weakness of will involves the failure to develop certain normal capacities of self-control, whereas compulsion involves desires which even the possession of such capacities would not enable one to resist. (shrink)

Christopher Johnson has put forward in this journal the view that ad hominem reasoning may be more generally reasonable than is allowed by writers such as myself, basing his view on virtue epistemology. I review his account, as well as the standard account, of ad hominem reasoning, and show how the standard account would handle the cases he sketches in defense of his own view. I then give four criticisms of his view generally: the problems of virtue conflict, vagueness, conflation (...) of speech acts, and self-defeating counsel. I then discuss four reasons why the standard account is superior: it better fits legal reality, the account of other fallacies, psychological science, and political reality. (shrink)

Like most aestheticians today I begin by firmly separating the concept of art from the concept of the aesthetic; unlike them, I conclude by reuniting these concepts in the thesis that the function of art is to promote the aesthetic. I understand the existence of artworks and of artists to be “institutional facts” (though the institution of art is an informal one, not to be confused with formal institutions to which it has given rise, such as museums, academies, etc.), while (...) I take “aesthetic situations,” involving appreciators and objects made, at least in part, to be appreciated, to constitute something approaching a natural kind. Rather than dealing directly with the concept of a function I argue for three theses closely related to the idea that the function of art is aesthetic: that art is better than any other institution at promoting the aesthetic; that art is better at promoting the aesthetic than it is at doing anything else; and that art was intended by its instituters to promote the aesthetic. (shrink)

When social issues involve questions as momentous as global survival, ethicists should do more than analyze arguments and formulate principles. They should help us find stories to put our values into practice. In the essays collected here, I have tried to tell my story in the hope that others might find it instructive.

The academy is in a mess. The cultural theorist Bill Readings claimed that it is in ruins, while the political scientist Michael Oakeshott suggested that it has all but ceased to exist. At the very least, we might argue that the current financial squeeze has distorted the University into a shape that would be all but unrecognizable to Oakeshott and others writing in the 1950s and 1960s. I will begin this paper by tracing the development of the modern Enlightenment University (...) over the past 200 years from its roots in late 18th century Berlin to its current predicament. I will then turn my attention to the introduction during the 1990s of nursing education into the University, and examine the particular difficulties and tensions encountered at the interface between a professional practice and an academic discipline. Finally, I will propose philosophy as a way of dwelling in the ruins of the Enlightenment University and of reconciling the corporate demands of the University with the obligations of the nursing profession. (shrink)

Spiritualist mediums are sought out from a variety of cultures for their advanced spirit communication healing techniques. Otherworldly spirits use mediums to create spirit art, which guides an individual to discover their authentic self and work through self‐limiting beliefs. To serve as a bridge for the spirit world, the medium develops an ability to enter an altered state of consciousness and use a multisensory embodied language to communicate with spirits. I describe this language as “dancing with spirits.” To investigate this (...) language, I use my own spirit art as an innovative experiential ethnographic tool that blends auto‐ethnographic perceptions of spirits with sensory and artistic ethnography, and cultural healing techniques. I provide three case studies of how my spirit art provides unique insights into the less explored experiential dimensions of spirit communication. I layer my experimental ethnographic approach with Deleuze and Guattari's “rhizome” to show that spirit communication overcomes limitations of normal linguistic models. The spirit language serves as a rupture for unconscious forces to offer individually tailored healing and insight to a recipient through heightened sensory and physiological phenomena. Art, altered states of consciousness, and anomalous sensory experiences may offer insights to address a pressing global challenge, mental ill‐health. (shrink)

Collingwood statement in his autobiography that he became convinced of the need for the rapprochement between philosophy and history as early as 1919 must be taken seriously. The aim of this dissertation is to demonstrate the nature, soundness and continuity of Collingwood's conception of that rapprochement and to show how that rapprochement develops, and is based upon, the idea of progress. The themes of the rapprochement and the idea of progress are traced through all of Collingwood's major works in chronological (...) order. ;Part I elaborates how Speculum Mentis and An Essay on Philosophical Method complement each other as the springboard for Collingwood's later writings. In Speculum Mentis, Collingwood appeals to the dialectic of experience to explain the unique yet imprecisely defined interdependence of history and philosophy. An Essay on Philosophical Method is mainly an attempt to state the logic behind the earlier work. ;Part II covers The Idea of Nature, The Idea of History and The Principles of Art. In The Idea of Nature, Collingwood attempts to follow the method outlined in An Essay on Philosophical Method. The method used is significant, but even more telling is his conclusion that science turns into history. In The Idea of History, Collingwood attempts to define history and begins to fill in the details of the desired rapprochement and the notion of progress. In The Principles of Art, he explains his philosophy of mind, effectively moving from 'experience' to 'consciousness'. ;Part III focuses on the relationship between philosophy and history as articulated in An Autobiography and An Essay on Metaphysics. An Autobiography contains the most complete rendering of the logic of question-and-answer, a philosophical method which links philosophy to progress. In the work on metaphysics, Collingwood develops the culminating idea that the subject matter of metaphysics, absolute presuppositions, is historically grounded. The result is that a philosopher cannot simply study a theory, but must study its development as well. ;In Collingwood's view, philosophy is the only inquiry in which, from start to finish, history is self-consciously both studied and made. In coming to terms with history, philosophy must also come to terms with the notion of progress. Collingwood's presentation of the notion of progress goes far toward dispelling the notion that philosophy and history can only provide knowledge for its own sake. His dialectical philosophy shows how the recognition of the historical character of philosophy makes possible the original vocation of philosophy, the love of wisdom. (shrink)

Pickering & Garrod (P&G) consider the possibility that inner speech might be a product of forward production models. Here I consider the idea of inner speech as a forward model in light of empirical work from the past few decades, concluding that, while forward models could contribute to it, inner speech nonetheless requires activity from the implementers.

This book is a collection of essays on logic and philosophy. In the first section, the essays address issues in informal logic, including whether fallacies are common, and the nature of the ad baculum and ad hominem fallacies. The section also includes essays on formal dialogue logic and its applications in computer science. The second section contains articles on epistemology and philosophy of science, including issues surrounding induction, the role of error in computer science, the relation between science and common (...) sense, and the concept of discovery. In the third section, I take up ethical issues. I sketch out an ethical theory and discuss a variety of ethical issues, such as the ethics of organ sales, tort reform, free trade, and computer ethics. The final section includes essays on a number of miscellaneous issues, such as using thought experiments to teach philosophy, the soul-making defense against the problem of free will, and the limitations of postmodern philosophy. (shrink)

In this article, I set forth a theory of propaganda explaining what it is, how it relates to marketing, and the nature and types of ideology. I discuss the criteria by which we can judge the rationality or deceitfulness of propaganda. I defend the view that while propaganda can be perfectly rational, it rarely is, and I explain why that is the case. I finish by explaining why the question of the rationality or deceitfulness of propaganda is different from the (...) question of the morality of propaganda. I give two quick examples of how an ethicist might argue that deceptive propaganda might be ethical to use, and perfectly rational propaganda might be immoral to use. I conclude with the notion that the question of the ethics of marketing and propaganda is complex, and should be handled in a separate paper. (shrink)

As is reasonably well-appreciated, Quine struggled with his definition of the all-important notion of an observation sentence; especially in order to make them bear out his commitment to language’s being a ‘social art’. In an earlier article (_Mind_ 131(523):805–825, 2022), I proposed a certain repair, which here I will explain, justify and articulate further. But it also infects the definition of observation categoricals, and furthermore makes it a secondary matter, a seeming afterthought, that evidence, science and knowledge generally are shared—are (...) joint, social and collaborative products. Without forsaking Quine’s strict naturalism, I try to make the necessary adjustments to Quine’s scheme. (shrink)

There are two main parts to this article: (1) Quine's view of truth is substantive in a way that is not generally recognized. There are elements in the view of deflationism, minimalism, and of course disquotationalism to be sure, but from Quine's perspective the capacity for generalization - ascribing truth not to explicitly given sentences but to kinds of sentences - requires a full-bore Tarskian apparatus. This is necessary in order for truth to play what for Quine are its vital (...) roles in science, philosophy (epistemology and those parts of metaphysics that Quine recognizes), and crucially in logic itself. (These points have not been made with adequate care in the literature). (2) But is Tarskianism sufficient for playing all of those roles? Contrary to an interesting article by Lars Bergström - I argue that it is indeed sufficient, at least from Quine's point of view, and to see the point is to appreciate how thoroughgoing and powerful the notion of truth is, despite its being, 'in itself', only a device of sentential generalization. This dovetails with Quine's famous naturalism, a connection which I bring out at the end. (shrink)

I attempt to define the concept of ‘living organism’. Intuitively, a living organism is a substantial entity with a capacity for certain relevant activities. But biology has discovered that living organisms have a particular compositional or microstructural nature. This nature includes carbon-based macromolecules and water molecules. I argue that such living organisms belong to a natural kind of compound physical object, viz., carbon-based living organism. My definition of a living organism encompasses both the intuitively relevant activities and the empirically discovered (...) compositional nature. The definition is designed to deal with a variety of problem cases, e.g., viruses, proteinoid microspheres, sterile organisms, suspended animation cases, and living parts of organisms. (shrink)

The following reflections are intended as a preliminary to a more extended and in-depth series of case studies, focused analyses of actual artworks, and the issues arising from their particularity within what will be described here as a Heideggerian post-aesthetic aesthetics. The essay is not written from the perspective of a professional or academic philosopher or of a practising artist (even though I am one), neither fields of which have sufficiently engaged with the existential and aesthetic predicament sketched out below. (...) Thus, the attraction of both Heidegger and Blanchot is not just related to their well-known discussions of inbetween-ness, but, more essentially, to the peculiarly in-between location of their own thought and trajectory of thinking: Heidegger from "out of" philosophy "drawn" towards art; Blanchot from within the space ofliterature towards the exteriority of ontological thinking. The intention is to identify similarities and differences in their thought, but this is only perceived as relevant to the extent that it allows an initial reassessment of a de-subjectivized existential and aesthetic mode of thinking that has been largely abandoned by academic philosophy and art practice alike (albeit for very different reasons). If nothing else, the hope is that a different voice might be heard in the clamorous exchange between philosopher and artists, one that is sensitive to the complex predicament of the artist in a post-Heidegerrian world, and which above all remains faithful to the project of the artist and the artwork in the face of the philosophical valorization of "Art". Las siguientes reflexiones se presentan como preliminares a una serie de estudios de caso mas extensos y profundos, analisis focalizados de obras de artes reales, y los temas que surgen de sus particularidades dentro de lo que se describira aqui como una estetica heideggeriana post-estetica. El ensayo no esta escrito desde la perspectiva de un filosofo profesional o academico ni de un artista operante (aunque yo lo soy), ninguno de cuyos campos se ha comprometido suficientemente con el dilema bosquejado mas adelante. Asi pues, la atraccion de Heidegger y Blanchot no solo tiene que ver con sus bien conocidas discusiones sobre la inbetween-ness, sino, mas esencialmente, con la ubicacion particularmente in-between de su propio pensamiento y trayectoria del pensar: Heidegger desde "fuera de" la filosofia "sacado" hacia el arte; Blanchot desde dentro del espacio de la literatura hacia la exterioridad del pensar ontologico. La intencion es identificar similitudes y diferencias en su pensamiento, pero esto solo es percibido como relevante en la medida en que permite una reevaluacion de un modo de pensar existencial y estetico des-subjetivado, que ha sido ampliamente abando-nado por la filosofia academica y la practica del arte (aunque por razones distintas). Sin mas pretensiones, la esperanza es que se pueda escuchar una voz diferente en el intercambio clamoroso entre el filosofo y los artistas; voz que es sensible al complejo dilema del artista en un mundo post-heideggeriano, y que sobre todo permanece fiel al proyecto del artista y a la obra de arte frente a la valorizacion filosofica del "Arte". (shrink)

In this essay, I review two earlier anti-Semitic propaganda films of 1939, to wit, Robert and Bertram, and Linen from Ireland. I begin by rehearsing some of Abram de Swann’s analysis of genocide and then discuss in greater detail a classic sociological analysis written during WWII by Hans Speier. Speier distinguished three broad kinds of war of increasing ferocity: instrumental war, agonistic war, and absolute war. While the first two sorts of war are relatively constrained, in absolute war the in-group (...) regards the out-group as inherently evil, and consequently the goal of such a war is to exterminate the out-group, with no limitation on methods. I suggest in the piece that the focus of these films is precisely to get the audience to view Jews as three different things: different (not Germans as “Aryans” are supposed to be); disgusting (loathsome, somehow degenerate); and dangerous (a threat to Aryan Germans by their very nature). I cover both films, pointing to the scenes that are crafted to engender in the audience exactly these feelings. To help explain how the various scenes manipulate the audience to push the regime’s Anti-Semitic narrative, I use Robert Cialdini’s theory of the use of psychological mechanisms in marketing. (shrink)

Hilary Putnam observes that a typical competent English speaker who cannot tell an elm tree from a beech tree may nevertheless use the word “elm” to make assertions and ask questions about elm trees. Putnam also observes that scientists may be wrong about the phenomena they investigate, while still being able to use their words to identify and raise research questions about it. This prompts him to ask what “language use” means in these contexts. He proposes two closely related methods (...) for answering this question. The first method is to investigate and clarify the uses of sentences and words in a given linguistic practice from the point of view of a participant in the practice. The second is to explain our applications of ‘is true’ and ‘refers’ to sentences and words whose uses are described in accord with the first method. In this paper I raise several problems for Putnam’s applications of these methods and sketch a different way of applying the methods that avoids the problems. (shrink)