Smoke and Mirrors is a passionate, richly nuanced work that shows television as a circus, a wishing well, and a cure for loneliness. Ranging from Ed Sullivan to cyberspace, from kid shows to cable, and from the cheap thrills of "action adventure" to the solemn boredom of PBS pledge week, Leonard argues for a whole new way of thinking about television. For Leonard, the situation comedy is a socializing agency, the talk show is a legitimating agency, the made-for-television movie (...) is the last redoubt of social conscience, and television criticism itself is the last refuge of time-serving thugs and postmodernists. Instead of scapegoating television as the cause of crime in our streets, stupidity in our schools, and spectacle rather than substance in our government, Leonard sees something else inside the box: an echo chamber and a feedback loop, a medium neither wholly innocent of nor entirely responsible for the frantic disorder it brings into our homes. (shrink)

This volume brings together 14 classic papers by interpersonal pioneers. Collectively, these papers not only demonstrate the coherence and explanatory richness of interpersonal psychoanalysis; they anticipate the emphasis on relational patterns and analyst-analysand interaction that typifies much recent theorizing. Each paper receives a substantial introduction from a leading contemporary interpersonalist. The pioneers of interpersonal psychoanalysis are: H. Sullivan, F. Fromm-Reichmann, J. Rioch, C. Thompson, R. Crowley, E. Schachtel, E. Tauber, E. Fromm, H. Bone, E. Singer, D. Schecter, J. Barnett, (...) S. Arieti, and J.Schimel. (shrink)

The current research aims to answer the following question: “who will be held responsible for harm involving an artificial intelligence system?” Drawing upon the literature on moral judgments, we assert that when people perceive an AI system’s action as causing harm to others, they will assign blame to different entity groups involved in an AI’s life cycle, including the company, the developer team, and even the AI system itself, especially when such harm is perceived to be intentional. Drawing upon the (...) theory of mind perception, we hypothesized that two dimensions of mind: perceived agency—attributing intention, reasoning, pursuing goals, and communicating to AI, and perceived experience—attributing emotional states, such as feeling pain and pleasure, personality, and consciousness to AI—mediated the relationship between perceived intentional harm and blame judgments toward AI. We also predicted that people are likely to attribute higher mind characteristics to AI when harm is perceived to be directed to humans than when it is perceived to be directed to non-humans. We tested our research model in three experiments. In all experiments, we found that perceived intentional harm led to blame judgments toward AI. In two experiments, we found perceived experience, not agency, mediated the relationship between perceived intentional harm and blame judgments. We also found that companies and developers were held responsible for moral violations involving AI, with developers received the most blame among the entities involved. Our third experiment reconciles the findings by showing that perceived intentional harm directed to a non-human entity did not lead to increased attributions of mind to AI. These findings have implications for theory and practice concerning unethical outcomes and behavior associated with AI use. (shrink)

Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This book is not much of a forest, but its trees are quite lovely. The book comprises fifteen essays across two overall parts. The two parts are asymmetrical in length, with part one comprising three essays and part two twelve essays; section two is itself divided into two respective sections of five and seven essays. Aside from some very brief prefatory remarks before each section, everything in the book has been selected or adapted from a disparate set of previous publications (...) and conference presentations drawn from across several decades of Nagl's career. As with the book's sections, its essays also vary widely in length, ranging from five pages (for chapter 2.1.2, "A Brief Glance at Deconstruction: Derrida's... (shrink)

Remer offers the surprising conclusion that humanist thinking on toleration was actually founded on the classical tradition of rhetoric.

The circumstance that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour power costs only half a day's labor, while on the other hand the very same labor power can work during a whole day, that consequently the value which its use during one day creates is double what he [the capitalist] pays for that use, this circumstance is without a doubt a piece of good luck for the buyer but by no means an injustice [Unrecht] to the seller [the (...) worker].[T]he surplus product [is] the tribute annually exacted from the working class by the capitalist class. Though the latter with a portion of that tribute purchases the additional labor power even at its full price, so that equivalent is exchanged for equivalent, yet the transaction is for all that only the old dodge of every conqueror who buys commodities from the conquered with the money he has robbed them of. (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)

(2013). Two aspects of propositional unity. Canadian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 43, Essays on the Nature of Propositions, pp. 518-533.

Historical accounts of biological function are thought to have, as a point in their favour, their being able to accommodate malfunction. Recently, this has been brought into doubt by Paul Sheldon Davies’s argument for the claim that both selected malfunction (that of the selected functions account) and weak etiological malfunction (that of the weak etiological account), are impossible. In this paper I suggest that in light of Davies’s objection, historical accounts of biological function need to be adjusted to accommodate malfunction. (...) I propose a historical account which places two conditions on membership of a functional kind. My claim is that it is in virtue of a trait’s meeting these conditions that it is a member of a functional kind, and can thus malfunction. I suggest that a version of my proposal can be adopted by both the selected effects and weak etiological theorists, and so conclude that such a proposal meets Davies’s objection. (shrink)

Examines a range of issues related to the experience of close interpersonal friendship, including the nature of friendship and links between friendship and spirituality, ethics, and politics. Combines philosophical, religious, and social-scientific perspectives.

The chapter places Kant's discussions of empirical and rational psychology in the context of previous discussions in Germany. It also considers the status of what might be called his "transcendental psychology" as an instance of a special kind of knowledge: transcendental philosophy. It is divided into sections that consider four topics: the refutation of traditional rational psychology in the Paralogisms; the contrast between traditional empirical psychology and the transcendental philosophy of the Deduction; Kant's appeal to an implicit psychology in his (...) taxonomy and theory of cognitive faculties throughout the Critique of Pure Reason; and his new definitions of and support for empirical and rational psychology in the Doctrine of Method. (shrink)

For more than 20 years, Western science education has been incorporated into Tibetan Buddhist monastics’ training. In this time, there have been a number of fruitful collaborations between Buddhist monastics and neuroscientists, neurologists, and psychologists. These collaborations are unsurprising given the emphasis on phenomenological exploration of first-person conscious experience in Buddhist contemplative practice and the focus on the mind and consciousness in Buddhist theory. As such, Tibetan monastics may have underappreciated intuitions on the intersection of science, medicine, and ethics. Yet (...) despite their overlapping interests, Buddhist perspectives are largely absent in contemporary neuroethical analysis, apart from conceptual arguments for their relevance. This article attempts to fill this gap by presenting the results of eleven semi-structured interviews with Tibetan Buddhist monastics in India on three issues in neuroethics: identity and authenticity, enhancement, and disorders of consciousness. The results of this empirical study reinforce the conclusions of theoretical work on Buddhism and neuroethics while also identifying future areas of inquiry, including the importance of community, the challenges in acting from compassion, and the value of self-directed mental cultivation. (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)

Prior research on ethics codes has suggested, but rarely tested, the effects of code design alternatives on the impact of codes. This study considers whether the presence of explanatory rationales and descriptions of sanctions in ethics codes affects recipients'' responses to a code. Theories of organizational justice and persuasive communication support an expectation that rationales and sanctions will be positively related to code recipients'' recall of code content and perceptions of organizational justice. Content recall is an obvious precondition of code (...) compliance; justice perceptions have multiple implications for the attitudes and actions of organizational members. Results show that explanatory rationales are associated with a statistically significant increase in perceptions of organizational procedural justice, but that rationales and sanctions generally show no relationship to distributive justice perceptions and accurate content recall. These results suggest that common prescriptions regarding ethics code design are of uncertain value apart from further research which unearths the relationships among the intended and perceived purposes of codes, the organizational settings in which they are applied, and a wide variety of code designs. (shrink)

This book is a critical examination of John Rawls's account of the normative grounds of international law, arguing that Rawls unjustifiably treats groups - rather than particular persons - as foundational to his model of international justice.

Examines various aspects of anarchism relevant to or illuminated by legal theory.

The project of “religious epistemology,” as it has developed and thrived among certain analytic philosophers over the last thirty years, has seldom exhibited a strong historical sensibility. Nonetheless, contemporary discussions of the rationality of religious belief obviously have important antecedents in the history of modern philosophy, particularly in the history of the Enlightenment project that so strongly challenged traditional religious belief. This paper develops two themes from this history that I will try to show are particularly important for understanding contemporary (...) issues about the rationality of religious belief: the affirmation of ordinary life, and the question of radical evil in human nature. (shrink)

Agricultural-technology (ag-tech) and agroecology both promise a better farming future. Ag-tech seeks to improve the food system through the development of high-tech tools such as sensors, digital platforms, and robotic harvesters, with many ag-tech start-ups promising to deliver increased agricultural productivity while also enhancing food system sustainability. Agroecology incorporates diverse cropping systems, low external resource inputs, indigenous and farmer knowledge, and is increasingly associated with political calls for a more just food system. Recently, demand has grown for the potentially groundbreaking (...) benefits of their convergence, with the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) attempting just such a union. Building on its combined expertise in engineering and agroecology, as well as a longstanding reputation as a socially progressive institution, university administrators believe that UCSC could produce a unique, socially just form of ag-tech designed for small, low-resource farmers—a rare contribution given ag-tech’s tendency to cater primarily to large-scale agribusiness. This paper examines the complexities of uniting agroecology and ag-tech through interviews with agroecologists, engineers, and social scientists involved in UCSC’s ag-tech initiative. Within the setting of a historically radical yet neoliberalizing university, I find that significant epistemic and structural barriers exist for agroecology and ag-tech to come together on an even playing field. This case study contributes to broader discussions of the future of food and farming by focusing on the contours and challenges of a widely called-for agricultural collaboration, highlighting its difficulty but also areas of possibility in a particularly rich, contested context. (shrink)