The aim of this study was to investigate if children’s early responsiveness toward social partners is developmentally related to their growing concept of self, as reflected in their mirror self-recognition (MSR) and delayed self-recognition (DSR). Thus, a longitudinal study assessed infants’ responsiveness (e.g., smiling, gaze) toward social partners during the still-face (SF) task and a social imitation game and related it to their emerging MSR and DSR. Thereby, children were tested at regular time points from 9 months to 4 years (...) of age. Results revealed significant predictive relations between children’s responsiveness toward a social partner in the SF task at 9 months and their MSR at 24 months. Further, interindividual differences in children’s awareness of and responsiveness toward being imitated in a social imitation game at 12 months proved to be the strongest predictor of children’s DSR at 4 years, while some additional variance was explained by MSR at 24 months and verbal intelligence. Overall, findings suggest a developmental link between children’s early awareness of and responsiveness toward the social world and their later ability to form a concept of self. (shrink)

I defend the normativity of meaning against recent objections by arguing for a new interpretation of the ‘ought’ relevant to meaning. Both critics and defenders of the normativity thesis have understood statements about how an expression ought to be used as either prescriptive or semantic. I propose an alternative view of the ‘ought’ as conveying the primitively normative attitudes speakers must adopt towards their uses if they are to use the expression with understanding.

Although Hannah Arendt is considered one of the major contributors to social and political thought in the twentieth century, this is the first general anthology ...

The essence of the correspondence between Arendt and Scholem can be said to lie in three things. Above all it provides an intimate account of how two great intellectuals try to come to terms with being both German and Jewish, and how to think about Germany before, during, and after the Holocaust. They also debate the issue of what it means to be Jewish in the post-Holocaust world whether in New York or in Jerusalem. Finally, the specter of Benjamin haunts (...) the work and in a sense the letters are as much about Benjamin as the other two questions since his life and tragic death epitomize them both. Arendt and Scholem's letters on these weighty questions are lightened by more routine exchanges: on travel itineraries, lunch or dinner parties where important people were present, and so forth. These daily details are woven throughout the correspondence and provide vivid biographical information about Arendt and Scholem that is unavailable in any other source. (shrink)

We address the issue of whether, why and under what conditions, quarantine and isolation are morally justified, with a particular focus on measures implemented in the developing world. We argue that the benefits of quarantine and isolation justify some level of coercion or compulsion by the state, but that the state should be able to provide the strongest justification possible for implementing such measures. While a constrained form of consequentialism might provide a justification for such public health interventions, we argue (...) that a stronger justification is provided by a principle of State Enforced Easy Rescue: a state may permissibly compel individuals to engage in activities that entail a small cost to them but a large benefit to others, because individuals have a moral duty of easy rescue to engage in those activities. The principle of State Enforced Easy Rescue gives rise to an Obligation Enforcement Requirement: the state should create the conditions such that submitting to coercive or compulsive measures becomes a fundamental moral duty of individuals, i.e. a duty of easy rescue. When the state can create such conditions, it has the strongest justification possible for implementing coercive or compulsive measures, because individuals have a moral duty to temporarily relinquish the rights that such measures would infringe. Our argument has significant implications for how public health emergencies in the developing world should be tackled. Where isolation and quarantine measures are necessary, states or the international community have a moral obligation to provide certain benefits to those quarantined or isolated. (shrink)

Auf den ersten Blick haben Hannah Arendt und Michel Foucault kaum etwas gemein. Tatsächlich beziehen sie sich jedoch auf die identischen Topoi der Philosophiegeschichte - wenn ihre Auslegungen der Quellen auch denkbar verschieden sind. Als Grund hierfür bestimmt Hannah Holme die komplementären Perspektiven der beiden, die sie als Aneignungen des heideggerschen Sorgebegriffs deutet: die ethische Sorge um sich Foucaults und die politische Sorge um die Welt Arendts. Am Ende steht ein Plädoyer für eine Verbindung des machtkritischen Ethos der (...) Sorge um sich mit der Macht des politischen Handelns, das der Sorge um die Welt unterstellt ist. (shrink)

A unique selection of the most significant interviews given by Hannah Arendt, including the last she gave before her death in 1975. Some are published here in English for the first time. Arendt was one of the most important thinkers of her time, famous for her idea of "the banality of evil" which continues to provoke debate. This collection provides new and startling insight into Arendt's thoughts about Watergate and the nature of American politics, about totalitarianism and history, and (...) her own experiences as an emigre. Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview and Other Conversations is an extraordinary portrait of one of the twentieth century's boldest and most original thinkers. As well as Arendt's last interview with French journalist Roger Errera, the volume features an important interview from the early 60s with German journalist Gunter Gaus, in which the two discuss Arendt's childhood and her escape from Europe, and a conversation with acclaimed historian of the Nazi period, Joachim Fest, as well as other exchanges. These interviews show Arendt in vigorous intellectual form, taking up the issues of her day with energy and wit. She offers comments on the nature of American politics, on Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, on Israel; remembers her youth and her early experience of anti-Semitism, and then the swift rise of the Hitler; debates questions of state power and discusses her own processes of thinking and writing. Hers is an intelligence that never rests, that demands always of her interlocutors, and her readers, that they think critically. As she puts it in her last interview, just six months before her death at the age of 69, "there are no dangerous thoughts, for the simple reason that thinking itself is such a dangerous enterprise.". (shrink)

Speakers’ perception of a visual scene influences the language they use to describe it—which objects they choose to mention and how they characterize the relationships between them. We show that visual complexity can either delay or facilitate description generation, depending on how much disambiguating information is required and how useful the scene's complexity can be in providing, for example, helpful landmarks. To do so, we measure speech onset times, eye gaze, and utterance content in a reference production experiment in which (...) the target object is either unique or non-unique in a visual scene of varying size and complexity. Speakers delay speech onset if the target object is non-unique and requires disambiguation, and we argue that this reflects the cost of deciding on a high-level strategy for describing it. The eye-tracking data demonstrate that these delays increase when speakers are able to conduct an extensive early visual search, implying that when speakers scan too little of the scene early on, they may decide to begin speaking before becoming aware that their description is underspecified. Speakers’ content choices reflect the visual makeup of the scene—the number of distractors present and the availability of useful landmarks. Our results highlight the complex role of visual perception in reference production, showing that speakers can make good use of complexity in ways that reflect their visual processing of the scene. (shrink)

The authors argue in favor of the “nonconciliation” (or “steadfast”) position concerning the problem of peer disagreement. Throughout the paper they place heavy emphasis on matters of phenomenology—on how things seem epistemically with respect to the net import of one’s available evidence vis-à-vis the disputed claim p, and on how such phenomenology is affected by the awareness that an interlocutor whom one initially regards as an epistemic peer disagrees with oneself about p. Central to the argument is a nested goal/sub-goal (...) hierarchy that the authors claim is inherent to the structure of epistemically responsible belief-formation: pursuing true beliefs by pursuing beliefs that are objectively likely given one’s total available evidence; pursuing this sub-goal by pursuing beliefs that are likely true (given that evidence) relative to one’s own deep epistemic sensibility; and pursuing this sub-sub-goal by forming beliefs in accordance with one’s own all-in, ultima facie, epistemic seemings. (shrink)

Recent advances in stem cell research suggest that in the future it may be possible to create eggs and sperm from human stem cells through a process that we term in vitro gametogenesis (IVG). IVG would allow treatment of some currently untreatable forms of infertility. It may also allow same-sex couples to have genetically-related children. For example, cells taken from one man could potentially be used to create an egg, which could then be fertilised using naturally produced sperm from another (...) man to create a genetically-related child with half of its DNA from each of the men. In this chapter, we consider whether this technology could justifiably be denied to same-sex couples if it were made available as a fertility treatment to different-sex couples. We argue that it could not. (shrink)

I criticize recent nonconceptualist readings of Kant’s account of perception on the grounds that the strategy of the Deduction requires that understanding be involved in the synthesis of imagination responsible for the intentionality of perceptual experience. I offer an interpretation of the role of understanding in perceptual experience as the consciousness of normativity in the association of one’s representations. This leads to a reading of Kant which is conceptualist, but in a way which accommodates considerations favoring nonconceptualism, in particular the (...) primitive character of perceptual experience relative to thought and judgment. (shrink)

This article provides an account of a collaborative teaching and learning project conducted in the English programme at the University of Tasmania in 2015. The project, Blended English, involved the development, implementation, and evaluation of learning and teaching activities using online and mobile technologies for undergraduate English units. The authors draw on the project’s findings from survey and focus group data, and staff reflective practice and peer review, to make the case for increasing technology-enhanced teaching and learning in English literary (...) studies. The blended approach described in this article has the capacity to enhance disciplinary learning; increase accessibility for students in remote and regional areas; facilitate deeper scholarly enquiry; and encourage staff to develop innovative, collaborative, and flexible teaching and learning practices. Appendix 1 presents examples of the project’s practical outcomes, as well as outlines of and reflections on three of the activities develop... (shrink)

While previous research has established that virtual reality (VR) can be successfully used in the treatment of anxiety disorders, including phobias and PTSD, no research has examined changes in brain patterns associated with the use of VR for generalized anxiety management. In the current study, we compared a brief nature-based mindfulness VR experience to a resting control condition on anxious participants. Self-reported anxiety symptoms and resting-state EEG were recorded across intervals containing quiet rest or the VR intervention. EEG activity was (...) analyzed as a function of global power shifts in Alpha and Beta activity, and with sLORETA current source density estimates of cingulate cortex regions of interest. Results demonstrated that both a quiet rest control condition and the VR meditation significantly reduced subjective reports of anxiety and increased Alpha power. However, the VR intervention uniquely resulted in shifting proportional power from higher Beta frequencies into lower Beta frequencies, and significantly reduced broadband Beta activity in the anterior cingulate cortex. These effects are consistent with a physiological reduction of anxiety. This pilot study provides preliminary evidence supporting the therapeutic potential of VR for anxiety management and stress reduction programs. (shrink)

Rule violations have usually been studied from a third-person perspective, identifying situational factors that render violations more or less likely. A first-person perspective of the agent that actively violates the rules, on the other hand, is only just beginning to emerge. Here we show that committing a rule violation sensitises towards subsequent negative stimuli as well as subsequent authority-related stimuli. In a Prime-Probe design, we used an instructed rule-violation task as the Prime and a word categorisation task as the Probe. (...) Also, we employed a control condition that used a rule inversion task as the Prime. Probe targets were categorised faster after a violation relative to after a rule-based response if they related to either, negative valence or authority. Inversions, however, primed only negative stimuli and did not accelerate the categorisation of authority-related stimuli. A heightened sensitivity towards authority-related targets thus seems to be specific to rule violations. A control experiment showed that these effects cannot be explained in terms of semantic priming. Therefore, we propose that rule violations necessarily activate authority-related representations that make rule violations qualitatively different from simple rule inversions. (shrink)

In a famous passage from the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein describes a pupil who has been learning to write out various sequences of numbers in response to orders such as “+1” and “+2”. He has shown himself competent for numbers up to 1000, but when we have him continue the “+2” sequence beyond 1000, he writes the numerals 1004, 1008, 1012. As Wittgenstein describes the case: We say to him, “Look what you’re doing!” — He doesn’t understand us. We say “You (...) should have added two; look how you began the series!” — He answers: “Yes! Isn’t it right? I thought that’s how I should [sollen] do it. — Or suppose he were to say, pointing to the series, “But I went on in the same way!”1The passage continues:— It would now be no use to us to say “But don’t you see…?” — and repeat for him the old explanations and examples. — In such a case, we might perhaps say: this person naturally understands our order, once given our explanations, as we would understand the order “Add 2 up to 1000, 4 up to 2000, 6 up to 3000, and so on.”. (shrink)

Each of the books that Hannah Arendt published in her lifetime was unique, and to this day each continues to provoke fresh thought and interpretations. This was never more true than for Eichmann in Jerusalem, her account of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, where she first used the phrase “the banality of evil.” Her consternation over how a man who was neither a monster nor a demon could nevertheless be an agent of the most extreme evil evoked derision, outrage, (...) and misunderstanding. The firestorm of controversy prompted Arendt to readdress fundamental questions and concerns about the nature of evil and the making of moral choices. Responsibility and Judgment gathers together unpublished writings from the last decade of Arendt’s life, as she struggled to explicate the meaning of Eichmann in Jerusalem. At the heart of this book is a profound ethical investigation, “Some Questions of Moral Philosophy”; in it Arendt confronts the inadequacy of traditional moral “truths” as standards to judge what we are capable of doing, and she examines anew our ability to distinguish good from evil and right from wrong. We see how Arendt comes to understand that alongside the radical evil she had addressed in earlier analyses of totalitarianism, there exists a more pernicious evil, independent of political ideology, whose execution is limitless when the perpetrator feels no remorse and can forget his acts as soon as they are committed. Responsibility and Judgment is an essential work for understanding Arendt’s conception of morality; it is also an indispensable investigation into some of the most troubling and important issues of our time. (shrink)

I distinguish two senses in which organisms are mechanically inexplicable for Kant. Mechanical inexplicability in the first sense is shared with artefacts, and consists in their exhibiting regularities irreducible to the regularities of matter. Mechanical inexplicability in the second sense is peculiar to organisms, consisting in the reciprocal causal dependence of an organism's parts. This distinction corresponds to two strands of thought in Aristotle, one supporting a teleological conception of organisms, the other supporting a conception of organisms as natural. Recognizing (...) this distinction helps us to see how a teleological conception of organisms is compatible with recent advances in biology. (shrink)

In this book she describes the perplexing crises which modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice ...

Discusses the nature of thought and volition, examines past philosophical theories, and clarifies the relation between will and freedom.

Is 50 considered “old”? When do we stop being considered “young”? If individuals could choose to be any age, what would it be? In a sample of 502,548 internet respondents ranging in age from 10 to 89, we examined age differences in aging perceptions (e.g., how old do you feel?) and estimates of the timing of developmental transitions (e.g., when does someone become an older adult?). We found that older adults reported older perceptions of aging (e.g., choosing to be older, (...) feeling older, being perceived as older), but that these perceptions were increasingly younger than their current age. The age to which individuals hope to live dramatically increased after age 40. We also found that older adults placed the age at which developmental transitions occurred later in the life course. This latter effect was stronger for transitions involving middle-age and older adulthood compared to transitions involving young adulthood. The current study constitutes the largest study to date of age differences in age perceptions and developmental timing estimates and yielded novel insights into how the aging process may affect judgments about the self and others. (shrink)

Kripke’s thesis that meaning is normative is typically interpreted, following Boghossian, as the thesis that meaningful expressions allow of true or warranted use. I argue for an alternative interpretation centered on Wittgenstein’s conception of the normativity involved in “knowing how to go on” in one’s use of an expression. Meaning is normative for Kripke because it justifies claims, not to be saying something true, but to be going on as one ought from prevous uses of the expression. I argue that (...) this represents a distortion of Wittgenstein’s conception of the normativity of meaning, and that Wittgenstein’s conception is preferable. (shrink)

The present volume brings Arendt's notes for these lectures together with other of her texts on the topic of judging and provides important clues to the likely direction of Arendt's thinking in this area.

This new translation is an extremely welcome addition to the continuing Cambridge Edition of Kant’s works. English-speaking readers of the third Critique have long been hampered by the lack of an adequate translation of this important and difficult work. James Creed Meredith’s much-reprinted translation has charm and elegance, but it is often too loose to be useful for scholarly purposes. Moreover it does not include the first version of Kant’s introduction, the so-called “First Introduction,” which is now recognized as indispensable (...) for an understanding of the work. Werner Pluhar’s more recent translation, which does include the First Introduction, is highly accurate when it confines itself to rendering Kant’s German. However, it is often more of a reconstruction than a translation, containing so many interpretative interpolations that it is often difficult to separate out Kant’s original text from the translator’s contributions. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews have provided a translation that compares to or exceeds Pluhar’s in its literal approach to the German, but that confines all interpretative material to footnotes and endnotes, so that the text itself, with all its unclarities and ambiguities, lies open to view. In addition, Guyer, as editor of the volume, has provided a great deal of valuable supplementary material. This includes an introduction with an outline of the work and details of the history of its composition and publication, and a wealth of endnotes offering clarifications of the text, background information, and, most strikingly, many references to related passages in Kant’s voluminous writings, particularly in connection with Kant’s earlier writings related to aesthetics. The edition also records differences among the first three editions of the work, and—of particular interest—erasures from and additions to Kant’s manuscript of the First Introduction. Although the introduction and endnotes reflect interpretative views that are sometimes disputable, this supplementary material makes the present edition into a valuable resource even for those able to read the text in German. (shrink)

The view that the content of experience is conceptual is often felt to conflict with the empiricist intuition that experience precedes thought, rather than vice versa. This concern is explicitly articulated by Ayers as an objection both to McDowell and Davidson, and to the conceptualist view more generally. The paper aims to defuse the objection in its general form by presenting a version of conceptualism which is compatible with empiricism. It proposes an account of observational concepts on which possession of (...) such a concept involves more than the ability for perceptual discrimination, but less than the capacity to employ the concept in inferences: it consists in the capacity to perceptually discriminate objects with the awareness that one is discriminating as one ought. This understanding of concept-possession allows us make sense of experiences' having conceptual content without supposing that the subject must grasp the relevant concepts prior to having those experiences. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:738 Feminist Studies 42, no. 3. © 2016 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Hannah Baker Saltmarsh Notice When I read people’s necks, waiting on the same wheels: make out the names, Rabbit, Omar, Tiny, Mark, Deedy, Soulja, like characters on a new Netflix series that uses people’s real names; or say, trace up to the teardrop on the cheek, either you murdered someone or was someone’s little b in (...) prison (the difference as slight as pushing on the door bell or tapping the door knocker); or stray to the stains on the forearm, hand, calf. Above his stab wounds in all caps: LAUGH NOW and SILENT; beneath the life-saving laser’s scar, FUCK THE WORLD. The skulls, keys, infringed-upon peacock, grim reaper, the crescent city, fire: am I really to identify the latest sex offender, crimes expired for a decade now like a plastic rack of eggs in the bachelor’s trash, by his tattoos listed on this postcard notice, mass-mailed to the surrounding neighborhoods, and angrily shredded by mothers who wouldn’t let near their child a grown man with a kite? The last time you saw a man at a bar with some woman’s name across his neck like an exaggerated noose a diamond can’t touch, you wondered how he hits on other women. If you Google your friend’s date, some pictures check out with his baseball stats. Or your other friend, Googling her landlord, sees he was arrested at a protest, the tousled, enlightened 36-hour criminal who ends up in a Michael Moore movie, and becomes her lover without end, buying her black Prada sheath dresses and a holster of antique cream Hannah Baker Saltmarsh 739 and vintage pink carnations. Every new man in anyone’s life you know makes you paranoid of dirt: even the pages not found become suspicious in your paranoia: Humvees shot to fossils by Sahara sands. What if the postcard notice had a face you knew, a man you actually knew before his mugshot.com photo op, before the teardrop tat? Him and his puppet-friend, purple, called Homer, who said Do good and share, but don’t share your underwear, showing up in the mail. Are the allegations true: the church retreat, the elementary-class sleepover, the partner in the frazzled chicken costume, the puppet as witness, gang-raping the girl with plastic teal jewelry who then peed herself? I weep, reading the file, thinking of the older girl being returned to her sleeping bag beside all of ours. We didn’t know she went anywhere but the bathroom. When the news breaks, my mother and I have the same nightmare about the underwear song. My parents remembered he liked plain M&M’s, not peanut. He told us after years of buying the wrong ones. And I felt so bad we got the wrong ones. How could we get it wrong? I can’t Google my way to knowing, or ask his wife at Starbucks, but every notice reminds me of the IZOD alligators he tickled on boys’ shirts. So ill now, and confused, what would he even say for himself, and who would care longer than the blurb’s echo? All you can do is wait for the late bus. Two hours late, the usual, and we’re still jammed into the covered bench. A goose, built like a hanger, born in the gated university’s pond, shot out so far as the university bus stop, body just out of the sheltered wait, as if anxious to start somewhere. 740 Hannah Baker Saltmarsh Index of Jobs for Women I would have been a confectioner, not Shakespeare’s sister, whirring a dozen egg whites into soft collapsible peaks for baked rice pudding with black-blue currants, stirring yeasty sourdough starter a few times a day until it ferments vigorously, quicker in summer: a week to evolve. I would have tried to find a way to the youngest Saltmarsh who lives by the brackish waters, tall sea grasses, canals by crocodiles, and sedges with their edges, whose heart is bigger than his head, whose narrow bikeway of a torso might have said, on the last... (shrink)

Mircea Eliade has contributed immense scholarship to the study of religion. His theories have been analyzed, utilized, and critiqued by many. This paper will apply Eliade’s concept of axis mundi in an interpretation of the North Indian classical dance form of Kathak. A foundational understanding of axis mundi will be established before applying the theory in interpreting Kathak. The foundation will be built by defining terms and ideas integral in Eliade’s writings and by examining his interpretation of Barabudur as an (...) axis mundi. By discussing the consecration of space, the positioning of the body, the intention of the performer, and the role of the art form in society, this paper will argue that a Kathak dancer also functions as an axis mundi—a point of communication between the profane and the Divine. While acknowledging various critiques of Eliade’s approach, this paper will also address the need for practitioner perspectives in developing a multi-faceted interpretation of religious phenomena. (shrink)

Critics currently argue that applied ethics approaches to artificial intelligence (AI) are too principles-oriented and entail a theory–practice gap. Several applied ethical approaches try to prevent such a gap by conceptually translating ethical theory into practice. In this article, we explore how the currently most prominent approaches of AI ethics translate ethics into practice. Therefore, we examine three approaches to applied AI ethics: the embedded ethics approach, the ethically aligned approach, and the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) approach. We analyze each (...) of these three approaches by asking how they understand and conceptualize theory and practice. We outline the conceptual strengths as well as their shortcomings: an embedded ethics approach is context-oriented but risks being biased by it; ethically aligned approaches are principles-oriented but lack justification theories to deal with trade-offs between competing principles; and the interdisciplinary Value Sensitive Design approach is based on stakeholder values but needs linkage to political, legal, or social governance aspects. Against this background, we develop a meta-framework for applied AI ethics conceptions with three dimensions. Based on critical theory, we suggest these dimensions as starting points to critically reflect on the conceptualization of theory and practice. We claim, first, that the inclusion of the dimension of affects and emotions in the ethical decision-making process stimulates reflections on vulnerabilities, experiences of disregard, and marginalization already within the AI development process. Second, we derive from our analysis that considering the dimension of justifying normative background theories provides both standards and criteria as well as guidance for prioritizing or evaluating competing principles in cases of conflict. Third, we argue that reflecting the governance dimension in ethical decision-making is an important factor to reveal power structures as well as to realize ethical AI and its application because this dimension seeks to combine social, legal, technical, and political concerns. This meta-framework can thus serve as a reflective tool for understanding, mapping, and assessing the theory–practice conceptualizations within AI ethics approaches to address and overcome their blind spots. (shrink)

A work of striking originality bursting with unexpected insights, _The Human Condition_ is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then—diminishing human agency and political freedom, the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences (...) of our actions—continue to confront us today. This new edition, published to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of its original publication, contains an improved and expanded index and a new introduction by noted Arendt scholar Margaret Canovan which incisively analyzes the book's argument and examines its present relevance. A classic in political and social theory, _The Human Condition_ is a work that has proved both timeless and perpetually timely. Hannah Arendt was one of the leading social theorists in the United States. Her _Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy_ and _Love and Saint Augustine_ are also published by the University of Chicago Press. (shrink)

I draw a connection between the question, raised by Hume and Kant, of how aesthetic judgments can claim universal agreement, and the question, raised in recent discussions of nonconceptual content, of how concepts can be acquired on the basis of experience. Developing an idea suggested by Kant's linkage of aesthetic judgment with the capacity for empirical conceptualization, I propose that both questions can be resolved by appealing to the idea of "perceptual normativity". Perceptual experience, on this proposal, involves the awareness (...) of its own appropriateness with respect to the object perceived, where this appropriateness is more primitive than truth or veridicality. This means that a subject can take herself to be perceiving an object as she (and anyone else) ought to perceive it, without first recognizing the object as falling under a corresponding concept. I motivate the proposal through a criticism of Peacocke's account of concept-acquisition, which, I argue, rests on a confusion between the notion of a way something is perceived, and that of a way it is perceived as being. Whereas Peacocke's account of concept-acquisition depends on an illicit slide between these two notions, the notion of perceptual normativity allows a legitimate transition between them: if someone's perceiving something a certain way involves her taking it that she ought to perceive it that way, then she perceives the thing as being a certain way, so that the corresponding concept is available to her in perceptual experience. (shrink)

In a 2020 article in Analysis, Lippert-Rasmussen argues that the moral equality account of the hypocrite’s lack of standing to blame fails. To object to this account, Lippert-Rasmussen considers the contrary of hypocrisy: hypercrisy. In this article, I show that if hypercrisy is a problem for the moral equality account, it is also a problem for Lippert-Rasmussen’s own account of why hypocrites lack standing to blame. I then reflect on the hypocrite’s and hypercrite’s standing to self-blame, which reveals that the (...) challenge hypercrisy poses for accounts of standing is different from the challenge Lippert-Rasmussen articulates. (shrink)

Hannah Ginsborg presents fourteen essays which establish Kant's Critique of Judgment as a central contribution to the understanding of human cognition. The papers bring out the significance of Kant's philosophical notion of judgment, and use it to address interpretive issues in Kant's aesthetics, theory of knowledge, and philosophy of biology.

Davidson claims that nothing can count as a reason for a belief except another belief. This claim is challenged by McDowell, who holds that perceptual experiences can count as reasons for beliefs. I argue that McDowell fails to take account of a distinction between two different senses in which something can count as a reason for belief. While a non-doxastic experience can count as a reason for belief in one of the two senses, this is not the sense which is (...) presupposed in Davidson's claim. While I focus on McDowell's view, the argument generalizes to other views which take experiences as reasons for belief. (shrink)

So many of us believe that we are free to shape our own destiny. But what if free will doesn't exist? What if our lives are largely predetermined, hardwired in our brains - and our choices over what we eat, who we fall in love with, even what we believe are not real choices at all? Neuroscience is challenging everything we think we know about ourselves, revealing how we make decisions and form our own reality, unaware of the role of (...) our unconscious minds. Leading neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow draws vividly from everyday life and other experts in their field to show the extraordinary potential, as well as dangers, which come with being able to predict our likely futures - and looking at how we can alter what's in store for us. (shrink)

Imagination comes with varying degrees of sensory accompaniment. Sometimes imagining is phenomenologically lean (cognitive imagining); at other times, imagining involves or requires sensory presentation such as mental imagery (sensory imagining). Philosophers debate whether contradictions can obtain in fiction and whether cognitive imagining is robust enough to explain our engagement with fiction. In this paper, I defend the Principle of Poetic License by arguing for the Permissive View of fictional truth: we can have fictions in which a contradiction is true, everything (...) is true, or nothing is true. I show that imagination-based worries about impossible, unlimited, and empty fictions can be shown to be about sensory imagination and that sensory imagination isn’t necessary for fictional truth. (shrink)