Spinoza's Political Psychology advances a novel, comprehensive interpretation of Spinoza's political writings, exploring how his analysis of psychology informs his arguments for democracy and toleration. Justin Steinberg shows how Spinoza's political method resembles the Renaissance civic humanism in its view of governance as an adaptive craft that requires psychological attunement. He examines the ways that Spinoza deploys this realist method in the service of empowerment, suggesting that the state can affectively reorient and thereby liberate its citizens, but only if (...) it attends to their actual motivational and epistemic capacities. His book will interest a range of readers in Spinoza studies and the history of political thought, as well as readers working in contemporary political theory. (shrink)

Abstract:Trust is important for a variety of social relationships. Trust facilitates trade, which increases prosperity and induces us to interact with people of different backgrounds on terms that benefit all parties. Trade promotes trustworthiness, which enables us to form meaningful as well as mutually beneficial relationships. In what follows, I argue that when we erect institutions that enhance trust and reward people who are worthy of trust, we create the conditions for a certain kind of moral progress.

It is generally acknowledged by proponents of ‘new mechanism’ that mechanistic explanation involves adopting a perspective, but there is less agreement on how we should understand this perspective-taking or what its implications are for practising science. This paper examines the perspectival nature of mechanistic explanation through the lens of the ‘mechanistic stance’, which falls somewhere between Dennett’s more familiar physical and design stance. We argue this approach implies three distinct and significant ways in which mechanistic explanation can be interpreted as (...) perspectival: ‘phenomenon perspectivism’, ‘pattern perspectivism’ and ‘hierarchy perspectivism’. We evaluate the strength of the perspective-dependency implied by each of these, and along the way, discuss their significance for wider debates within the new mechanism literature, such as the nature of function attribution and an ontic vs epistemic understanding of explanation. (shrink)

In recent years, the ‘mechanistic view’ has developed as a popular alternative to the ‘semantic view’ concerning the identity of physical computation. However, semanticists have provided powerful arguments that suggest the mechanistic view fails to deliver essential distinctions between paradigmatic computational operations. This article reviews responses on behalf of the mechanist and uses this opportunity to propose a type of pluralism about computational identity. This pluralism contends that there are multiple ‘levels’ of properties and relations pertaining to computation that can (...) inform different kinds of individuation. As such, for the pluralist, there are multiple legitimate ways of classifying computation, depending on the nature of the system in question, and one’s own epistemic priorities. (shrink)

Julian Schlöder (2018) examines Timothy Williamson's proposal that knowledge is the norm of assertion within the context of deontic logic. He argues for two claims, one concerning the formalisation of the thesis that knowledge is a norm of assertion and another concerning the formalisation of the thesis that knowledge is the only norm of assertion. On the basis of these claims, Schlöder goes on to raise a series of problems for Williamson's proposal. In response, I argue that both of Schlöder's (...) claims can—and should—be rejected. (shrink)

AI technologies hold great promise for addressing existing problems in organizational contexts, but the potential benefits must not obscure the potential perils associated with AI. In this article, we conceptually explore these promises and perils by examining AI use in organizational contexts. The exploration complements and extends extant literature on AI management by providing a typology describing four types of AI use, based on the idea of co-constitution of AI technologies and organizational context. Building on this typology, we propose three (...) recommendations for informed use of AI in contemporary organizations. First, explicitly define the purpose of organizational AI use. Second, define the appropriate level of transparency and algorithmic management for organizational AI use. Third, be aware of AI’s context-dependent nature. (shrink)

Kim & Drager (2018) provide new evidence confirming that socially‐indexed phonetic cues affect lexical access. They show that young listeners are faster and more accurate when responding to words associated with young people and spoken by younger talkers, compared with old‐associated words and older talkers. The effect of phonetic detail on lexical access is rapid and obtains even when the listener holds no expectations about the talker's age prior to the onset of the word.

Contemporary political philosophers often take for granted that for political purposes all humans are to be considered of equal worth. The difficulty, as Bernard Williams observed, is to find an interpretation of this claim that does not collapse into absurdity or triviality. I show that the principal attempts to solve this problem all beg the question against an Aristotelian proponent of natural hierarchy. I then explore existing proposals for dissolving the problem of basic equality, whether by denying the need for (...) justification altogether or by reframing justification in either ostensive or coherentist fashion, showing that each fails to account for our sense that basic equality is objectively true. In response, I outline a Hegelian approach that treats the commitment to basic equality as a social fact that constrains philosophical reasoning in contemporary liberal democracies. By itself that might suggest complacent conservatism or cultural relativism, but I argue that practices and institutions that reflect and foster a commitment to basic equality have a distinct value in permitting reciprocal recognition and thereby enabling us to make a distinct class of normative claims on one another. This Hegelian resolution of the problem is dialectically superior to its rivals and therefore warrants further development. (shrink)

See "What's Wrong with Factory Farming?" (2015) for an updated treatment of these issues.

Probability can be used to measure degree of belief in two ways: objectively and subjectively. The objective measure is a measure of the rational degree of belief in a proposition given a set of evidential propositions. The subjective measure is the measure of a particular subject’s dispositions to decide between options. In both measures, certainty is a degree of belief 1. I will show, however, that there can be cases where one belief is stronger than another yet both beliefs are (...) plausibly measurable as objectively and subjectively certain. In ordinary language, we can say that while both beliefs are certain, one belief is more certain than the other. I will then propose second, non probabilistic dimension of measurement, which tracks this variation in certainty in such cases where the probability is 1. A general principle of rationality is that one’s subjective degree of belief should match the rational degree of belief given the evidence available. In this paper I hope to show that it is also a rational principle that the maximum stake size at which one should remain certain should match the rational weight of certainty given the evidence available. Neither objective nor subjective measures of certainty conform to the axioms of probability, but instead are measured in utility. This has the consequence that, although it is often rational to be certain to some degree, there is no such thing as absolute certainty. (shrink)

Debates over the privatization of formerly public industries and services are common in contemporary politics. The overall goal of this paper is to suggest a normative framework within which deliberations over public ownership might take place. I draw this framework from Plato's Republic, which I claim justifies public ownership as a means for ensuring that citizens labour as craftsmen rather than moneymakers; according to Plato's social ontology, only craftsmen can constitute a genuine society and hence enjoy access to the full (...) array of goods for the sake of which society comes into existence. This justificatory structure implies that public ownership is only a means for ensuring the appropriate teleology of labour; if there turn out to be better means, so be it. But what does turn out to be indispensable on this view, as G. A. Cohen understood, is an ethos of justice, especially among those in charge of regulating social institutions. (shrink)

The battle over the proper place of mental representation in cognitive science is often portrayed as a clash between realism and eliminativism. But this simple dichotomy belies the variety of different ontological positions available. This article investigates the various stances that one can adopt toward the ontology of mental representation, and in so doing, shows that eliminativism is in fact best understood as two distinct positions: a posteriori eliminativism and a priori eliminativism. Furthermore, I show that a priori eliminativism faces (...) two crippling challenges. I argue that once we put a priori eliminativism aside, determining the ultimate ontological status of representation can be postponed while we assess its utility across different domains of cognitive science—something all remaining positions can agree on. (shrink)

On most accounts, beliefs are supposed to fit the world rather than change it. But believing can have social consequences, since the beliefs we form underwrite our actions and impact our character. Because our beliefs affect how we live our lives and how we treat other people, it is surprising how little attention is usually given to the moral status of believing apart from its epistemic justification. In what follows, I develop a version of the harm principle that applies to (...) beliefs as well as actions. In doing so, I challenge the often exaggerated distinction between forming beliefs and acting on them.1 After developing this view, I consider what it might imply about controversial research the goal of which is to yield true beliefs but the outcome of which might include negative social consequences. In particular, I focus on the implications of research into biological differences between racial groups. (shrink)

The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze repeatedly referred to a wide range of sports and games throughout his career. This article assembles a comprehensive view of the philosophy of sport seen from Deleuze’s perspective. By studying the development of how he discussed different sports and games, and by pinpointing the concepts he constructed with reference to them, the article attests to the merits of a Deleuzian philosophy of sports. His term athleticism is utilised as a node to overview his allusions to (...) sports and games in general. Special attention is paid to sport as a companion to the creative domains of science, philosophy, and art. Thus, it is concluded that what athletes create are moves, which amounts to inventing new styles which may alter the sport and attest to new ways of thinking through bodies in motion. (shrink)

What is the best possible society? How would its rulers govern and its citizens behave? Such questions are sometimes dismissed as distractions from genuine political problems, but in an era when political idealism seems a relic of the past, says Jonny Thakkar, they are more urgent than ever. A daring experiment in using ancient philosophy to breathe life into our political present, Plato as Critical Theorist takes seriously one of Plato’s central claims: that philosophers should rule. What many accounts (...) miss is the intimate connection between Plato’s politics and his metaphysics, Thakkar argues. Philosophy is the activity of articulating how parts and wholes best fit together, while ruling is the activity that shapes the parts of society into a coherent whole conducive to the good life. Plato’s ideal society is thus one in which ideal theory itself plays a leading role. -/- Today’s liberal democracies require not philosopher-kings legislating from above but philosopher-citizens willing to work toward a vision of the best society in their daily lives. Against the claim that such idealism is inherently illiberal, Thakkar shows that it is fully compatible with the liberal theories of both Popper and Rawls while nevertheless pushing beyond them in providing a new vantage point for the Marxian critique of capitalism. (shrink)

Can one be cruel to an inanimate object? In the following I argue that one can in fact be cruel to an inanimate object, defining cruelty as taking pleasure in intentionally causing suffering to another person, animal or inanimate object, whether such suffering be genuine, mistakenly believed, or sincerely hoped for. I label the conception of cruelty in question ‘agent-subjective, possible mistake of fact’, and touch upon some implications of this.

A promising strategy for defending the role that representation plays in explanations of cognition frames the concept in terms of internal models or map‐like mechanisms. “Structural representation” offers an account of representation that is grounded in well‐specified, empirical criteria. However, anti‐representationalists continue to press the issue of how to account for the paradigmatic semantic properties of representation at the subpersonal level. In this paper, I offer an account of how the proponent of structural representation should think about content. There are (...) really two problems of content any account of representation must overcome: the “hard problem of content” and the “content determination problem.” I argue that the structural representation account has the resources to provide a naturalistically respectable notion of content that overcomes both problems. (shrink)

Modern political conflict characteristically reflects and represents deep-seated but also unacknowledged and un-analyzed disagreements about what it means to be 'objective'. In defending this proposition, Peter J. Steinberger seeks to reaffirm the idea of rationalism in politics by examining important problems of public life explicitly in the light of established philosophical doctrine. The Politics of Objectivity invokes, thereby, an age-old, though now widely ignored, tradition of western thought according to which all political thinking is inevitably embedded in and underwritten by (...) larger structures of metaphysical inquiry. Building on earlier studies of the idea of the state, and focusing on highly contested practices of objectivity in judgement, this book suggests that political conflict is an essentially discursive enterprise deeply implicated in the rational pursuit of theories about how things in the world really are. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that dispositions cannot be analyzed in terms of simple subjunctive conditionals (because of what are called “masked dispositions” and “finkish dispositions”). I here defend a qualified subjunctive account of dispositions according to which an object is disposed to Φ when conditions C obtain if and only if, if conditions C were to obtain, then the object would Φ ceteris paribus . I argue that this account does not fall prey to the objections that have been raised (...) in the literature. (shrink)

Cancer has long been a cultural touchstone: a metaphor of devastation and a spectre of social as well as bodily anomie and loss. Yet recent years have witnessed significant transformations in perceptions of cancer, particularly in perceptions of the cancer patient. This paper is concerned with the ‘struggles of subjectivity’ emergent in this transvalued cancer culture. Explored from the standpoint of the ‘bad patient’, and drawing on media and cultural methodologies, the paper will consider the convergence of medicine, morality and (...) popular iconography as they are embedded in the imageries, imaginaries and representational economies of the cancer culture industry. Of particular concern in this context are the (re)composures of the patient, as liminal figure, caught between clinical imperative and cultural fantasy. (shrink)

Priority monism is the view that the cosmos is the only independent concrete object. The paper argues that, pace its proponents, Priority monism is in conflict with the dependence of any whole on any of its parts: if the cosmos does not depend on its parts, neither does any smaller composite.

Logic has traditionally been construed as a normative discipline; it sets forth standards of correct reasoning. Explosion is a valid principle of classical logic. It states that an inconsistent set of propositions entails any proposition whatsoever. However, ordinary agents presumably do — occasionally, at least — have inconsistent belief sets. Yet it is false that such agents may, let alone ought to, believe any proposition they please. Therefore, our logic should not recognize explosion as a logical law. Call this the (...) ‘normative argument against explosion’. Arguments of this type play — implicitly or explicitly — a central role in motivating paraconsistent logics. Branden Fitelson, in a throwaway remark, has conjectured that there is no plausible ‘bridge principle’ articulating the normative link between logic and reasoning capable of supporting such arguments. This paper offers a critical evaluation of Fitelson’s conjecture, and hence of normative arguments for paraconsistency and the conceptions of logic’s normative status on which they repose. It is argued that Fitelson’s conjecture turns out to be correct: normative arguments for paraconsistency probably fail. (shrink)

It is argued, first, that although Spinoza's early Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect does show evidence of a foundationalist approach to the justification of knowledge, there are good reasons to think he came to find such an approach unsatisfactory; and second, that the Ethics notion of certainty as adequate knowledge of one's knowledge is a justificational concept which is holistic in that any instance of such certainty depends on knowledge of the entire basic metaphysical system. Finally it is (...) shown that Spinoza's having come to hold a nonlinear view regarding the justificational structure of knowledge explains why he chose to present his philosophy in the geometric form, and why he never succeeded in formulating a method of discovery. (shrink)

In their recent article "Ideology in Action" in this journal, Alan Fine and Kent Sandstrom (1993) offer a theoretical account of ideology informed by pragmatism and symbolic interactionism. The authors provide compelling reasons for understanding ideology not simply as beliefs but as situated social action. Their effort to retrieve the analysis of ideology from the realm of the noosphere is a welcome departure from more traditional conceptions. Moreover, they provide a convincing case for bringing ideological analysis back into many of (...) our analyses of social life. In the following pages I wish to engage the authors on the terrain they have laid out. Drawing on the linguistic turn in recent social theory, I offer a few friendly critiques of their interactionist conception of ideology. After reviewing these problems I discuss how a dialogic analysis of ideology can build on Fine and Sandstrom's important account of ideology, as well as offering additional insights into its nature and dynamics. I begin, however, with a capsule review of the authors' conception of ideology in action. (shrink)

Recent developments in the literature suggest cognitive representation can be conceived of as a kind of mechanism that meets the functional profile set out by the S-representation account. However, this approach is threatened by worries that the S-representation account cannot tell a satisfactory story about content determination at the subpersonal level. One solution is to complement the S-representation account with a traditional etiological theory of content determination. This paper argues such a move is unwarranted and threatens the broader project of (...) understanding representation in mechanism-friendly terms. Once properly situated within a mechanistic framework, the S-representation account can address the issue of content determination without supplementing it with an etiological theory. In turn, this strengthens the notion that combing a mechanistic framework with the S-representation account provides a robust and comprehensive defense of representation’s positive role in cognitive science. (shrink)