Generative art theory involves any artistic practice where an artist uses external systems (rules, algorithms, organic processes) to complete an artwork. Commonly utilized in video game design, gen...

Benedict de Spinoza is one of the most controversial and enigmatic thinkers in the history of philosophy. His greatest work, Ethics (1677), developed a comprehensive philosophical system and argued that God and Nature are identical. His scandalous Theological-Political Treatise (1670) provoked outrage during his lifetime due to its biblical criticism, anticlericalism, and defense of the freedom to philosophize. Together, these works earned Spinoza a reputation as a singularly radical thinker. -/- In this book, Steinberg and Viljanen offer a concise and (...) up-to-date account of Spinoza’s thought and its philosophical legacy. They explore the full range of Spinoza’s ideas, from politics and theology to ontology and epistemology. Drawing broadly on Spinoza’s impressive oeuvre, they have crafted a lucid introduction for readers unfamiliar with this important philosopher, as well as a nuanced and enlightening study for more experienced readers. (shrink)

The overall moral status of an option—whether it is required, permissible, forbidden, or something we really should do—is explained by competition between the contributory reasons bearing on that option and the alternatives. A familiar challenge for accounts of this competition is to explain the existence of latitude: there are usually multiple permissible options, rather than a single required option. One strategy is to appeal to distinctions between reasons that compete in different ways. Philosophers have introduced various kinds of non-requiring reasons (...) that do not generate requirements, even if they win the competition. This paper rejects two familiar versions of this strategy, one appealing to merely justifying reasons and one appealing to merely commendatory reasons. It offers a new account of how reasons compete that instead appeals to a sharp distinction between the reasons against an option and the reasons for the alternatives to that option. (shrink)

This paper examines the state of the field of “science and values”—particularly regarding the implications of the thesis of transient underdetermination for the ideal of value-free science, or what I call the “ideal of epistemic purity.” I do this by discussing some of the main arguments in the literature, both for and against the ideal. I examine a preliminary argument from transient underdetermination against the ideal of epistemic purity, and I discuss two different formulations of an objection to this argument—an (...) objection that requires the strict separation of the epistemic from the practical. A secondary aim of the paper is to suggest some future directions for the field, one of which is to replace the vocabulary of values that is often employed in the literature with a more precise one. (shrink)

I introduce a new approach to fission puzzles called the Diversified Approach that proceeds by distinguishing different kinds of fission and assimilating each kind to a different ordinary phenomenon, such as breaking apart, replication, or part loss. To illustrate this approach, I apply it to the case of amoebic fission. The upshot is a novel account of amoebic fission according to which the dividing amoeba ceases to exist because it breaks apart. After developing this solution and highlighting some of its (...) advantages, I discuss briefly how the Diversified Approach can be extended to other varieties of fission. (shrink)

This article argues that governments in countries that currently permit intensive animal agriculture - especially but not exclusively high-income countries - are, in principle, morally justified in taking steps to restrict or even eliminate intensive animal agriculture to protect public health from the risk of zoonotic pandemics. Unlike many extant arguments for restricting, curtailing, or even eliminating intensive animal agriculture which focus on environmental harms, animal welfare, or the link between animal source food (ASF) consumption and noncommunicable disease, the argument (...) in this article appeals to the value of protecting populations from future global health emergencies and their broad social, economic, and health impacts, taking the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a particularly salient example. The article begins by identifying how intensive animal agriculture contributes to the outbreak (and risk of future outbreaks) of zoonotic diseases. Next, we explore three specific policy options: 1. Incentivizing plant-based and cell-based ASF alternatives through government subsidies; 2. Disincentivizing intensive ASF production through the adoption of a “zoonotic tax”; and 3. Eliminating intensive ASF production through a total ban. We argue that all three of these measures are permissible, although we remain agnostic as to whether these measures are obligatory. We argue for this conclusion on the grounds that each measure is justified by the same sorts of considerations that justify other widely accepted public health interventions, and each is compatible with a variety of theories of justice. We then address potential objections. Finally, we discuss how our novel argument relates to extant ethical arguments in favor or curtailing ASF production and consumption. (shrink)

Though it did not yet exist as a discrete field of scientific inquiry, biology was at the heart of many of the most important debates in seventeenth-century philosophy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of G. W. Leibniz. In Divine Machines, Justin Smith offers the first in-depth examination of Leibniz's deep and complex engagement with the empirical life sciences of his day, in areas as diverse as medicine, physiology, taxonomy, generation theory, and paleontology. He shows how (...) these wide-ranging pursuits were not only central to Leibniz's philosophical interests, but often provided the insights that led to some of his best-known philosophical doctrines.Presenting the clearest picture yet of the scope of Leibniz's theoretical interest in the life sciences, Divine Machines takes seriously the philosopher's own repeated claims that the world must be understood in fundamentally biological terms. Here Smith reveals a thinker who was immersed in the sciences of life, and looked to the living world for answers to vexing metaphysical problems. He casts Leibniz's philosophy in an entirely new light, demonstrating how it radically departed from the prevailing models of mechanical philosophy and had an enduring influence on the history and development of the life sciences. Along the way, Smith provides a fascinating glimpse into early modern debates about the nature and origins of organic life, and into how philosophers such as Leibniz engaged with the scientific dilemmas of their era. (shrink)

This collection of 22 newly-commissioned essays presents cutting-edge work on skeptical theistic responses to the problem of evil and the persistent objections that such responses invite.

Volume 20, Issue 10, October 2020, Page 5-6.

It is well-known that people will adjust their first-order beliefs based on observations of others. We explore how such adjustments interact with second-order beliefs regarding universalism and relativism in a population. Across a range of simulations, we show that populations where individuals have a tendency toward universalism converge more quickly in coordination problems, and generate higher total payoffs, than do populations where individuals have a tendency toward relativism. Thus, in contexts where coordination is important, belief in universalism is advantageous. However, (...) we also show, across a range of simulations, that universalism will enshrine inequalities and eliminate diversity, and in these cases it seems that relativism has its own advantages. (shrink)

This paper is about two proposals endorsed by Xunzi. The first is that there is such a thing as a moral expert, whose moral advice we should adopt even when we cannot appreciate for ourselves the considerations in favor of it. The second is that certain political authorities should be treated as moral experts. I identify three fundamental questions about moral expertise that contemporary philosophy has yet to address in depth, explicate Xunzi’s answers to them, and then give an account (...) of politically authorized moral expertise as Xunzi understands it. The three questions at the heart of this study are these: how should we distinguish between knowing the correct course of action on another’s authority and knowing it for oneself? What exactly are the underlying considerations that the expert grasps and the novice does not? Who are the experts and in what spheres of life can they legitimately claim expertise? (shrink)

_The first unabridged English translation of the correspondence between Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Georg Ernst Stahl detailing their opposing philosophies_ The correspondence between the eighteenth-century mathematician and philosopher G. W. Leibniz and G. E. Stahl, a chemist and physician at the court of King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia, known as the Leibniz-Stahl Controversy, is one of the most important intellectual contributions on theoretical issues concerning pre-biological thinking. Editors François Duchesneau and Justin E. H. Smith offer readers the first (...) fully annotated English translation of this fascinating exchange of philosophical views on divine action, the order of nature, causality and teleology, and the soul-body relationship. (shrink)

This article examines Lyman Sargent's article “The American Cockaigne” alongside the 2017 novel Sourdough by Robin Sloan. Both Sargent and Sloan examine modern approaches to food and utopianism that build on earlier Cockaigne tales—medieval “peasant utopias” imagining abundant magical foods and satisfying laziness. Sargent contends that similar stories remained prevalent in America among socially marginalized groups. Sourdough imagines how a group of inventors might create a utopian community by blending food traditions with innovative technologies. Both Sargent and Sloan suggest that (...) Cockaigne stories and their later antecedents should be seen as part of the utopian tradition and that visions of unusual foods demonstrate the importance of social communities. (shrink)

:Strict liability in tort law is thought by some to have a moral counterpart. In this essay I attempt to determine whether there is, in fact, strict liability in the moral domain. I argue that there is, and I critically evaluate several accounts of its normative foundations before suggesting one of my own.

In IVP50S, Spinoza claims that “one who is moved to aid others neither by reason nor by pity is rightly called inhuman. For (by IIIP27) he seems to be unlike a man” (IVP50S). At first blush, the claim seems implausible, as it relies on the dubious assumption that beings will necessarily imitate the affects of conspecifics. In the first two sections of this paper, I explain why Spinoza accepts this thesis and show how this claim can be made compatible with (...) his account of representation. In the third and final section I offer an auxiliary defense of the thesis, showing that, according to Spinoza, to be human is to sociable, and sociability depends on the imitation of the affects. (shrink)

Kant's Incorporation Thesis states that inclinations do not determine the will independently of reason. But do inclinations represent objects as desirable independently of reason? Or, is reason involved in the very constitution of an inclination so that inclinations without reason are impossible? The former interpretation is held by Christine Korsgaard and Tamar Schapiro. The latter is given by Janelle DeWitt and Allen Wood. I argue for a novel version of the latter interpretation by appealing to Kant's hylomorphism. On my interpretation, (...) reason makes inclinations possible in the way that form does matter. Reason orders the objects of our possible inclinations amongst all our ends in a system. Rather than these relations being consequent to or dependent upon the contents of our inclinations, I argue that these relations are a priori conditions of the possibility of our inclinations. For, we come to have particular inclinations only by their objects coming to occupy places in our system of ends, where such places are antecedently marked out by reason's determination of the interrelations among all our ends. (shrink)

In this article I develop a new problem for the doctrine of the Trinity that I call the Problem of Triunity. Rather than proceeding from the fact that God is one and the persons are many, as the traditional problem of the Trinity does, the problem of triunity proceeds from the fact that, in one sense or another, God is many, and yet each divine person on his own is just one.

This work presents two theoretical challenges to Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT). The first argument shows CMT’s foundational _Conceptual Claim—_that abstract concepts are necessarily structured by concrete concepts—entails the blurring of the literal–figurative distinction, which calls into question the legitimacy of standard methods of metaphor identification used in CMT. The second argument aims at the _Linguistic Claim—_that conceptual metaphors are necessary for metaphorical language—by showing that conceptual metaphors are neither necessary nor sufficient for linguistic metaphors and that, therefore, the existence of (...) conceptual metaphors cannot be validly inferred from the presence of their linguistic counterparts. In light of the arguments put forward, the CMT theorist is forced to accept one of four options: (A) hold on to both the Conceptual Claim and Linguistic Claim, by adequately addressing problems presented here, (B) discard the Conceptual Claim and give up the theory, (C) discard both claims and give up the theory, or (D) accept the Conceptual Claim but reject the Linguistic Claim and abandon the methods of discovering conceptual metaphors through analysis of figurative language. I argue that the only tenable option is D. (shrink)

The controversies unleashed by psychoanalysis never seem to stop repeating themselves. If what psychoanalysis has to say is true, then, by its own lights, it has to be controversial. Controversies are thus a privileged place to see this truth and this resistance in violent and lurid action. Take infant experience and bastardry. Every kid is a bit of a bastard, and the establishment of this infantile bastardry conditions subsequent repetitions of the organism: that breast is persecuting me, these are not (...) my real parents, I did not borrow your kettle. Just how much of a bastard is this baby? The answers psychoanalysis comes up with depend on how it formulates the vicissitudes of differential repetitions, formations of the unconscious. Yet there remains something puzzling about repetition: if eros is constantly getting itself into nasty situations as a matter of course, are there still other factors (perhaps even more sinister) at work? Because of his refusal to dismiss his own puzzlement, Jacques Lacan persistently returned to the relation between desire and drive, reformulating his own theory as he went. At one moment, as we shall see, he comes to discriminate between a surprising number of (at least 3!) kinds of death. (shrink)

For the philosopher, the most critical and fundamental question in the project of Artificial Intelligence is the question of intelligence or cognition in general. From the beginning of the research in “thinking Machining”, or Artificial Intelligence as it later became known, the key question is: What makes a thing intelligent or what constitutes intelligence? Since, intelligence, is a fundamental activity of the mind, the question, has been: Whether the mind is a computer or is the computer a mind? Many philosophers (...) who have and are engaging and interrogating these problematics, do it from the perspective of modern and contemporary philosophy of mind, consciousness and language. The objective of this work is to interrogate the question of “intelligence” in Artificial Intelligence from the perspective of the Scholastics’ notion of Intellectus. (shrink)

Russellian monists argue that non-structural properties, or a combination of structural and non-structural properties, necessitate phenomenal properties. Different Russellian monists offer varying accounts of the structural/non-structural distinction, leading to divergent forms of Russellian monism. In this paper, I criticise Derk Pereboom’s characterisation of the structural/non-structural distinction proposed in his Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism and further work. I argue that from Pereboom’s characterisation of structural and non-structural properties, one can formulate general metaphysical principles concerning what structural and non-structural properties (...) necessitate. These principles undermine the claim that non-structural properties – either alone or in combination with structural properties – necessitate phenomenal properties. Moreover, these principles are not affected by our supposed inability to conceive of non-structural properties in a manner conducive to the success of conceivability arguments. (shrink)

The consequence argument is among the most influential arguments for the conclusion that free will and determinism are incompatible. Recently, however, it has become increasingly clear that the argument fails to establish that particular incompatibilist conclusion. Even so, a version of the argument can be formulated that supports a different incompatibilist conclusion, according to which free will is incompatible with our behavior being predetermined by factors beyond our control. This conclusion, though not equivalent to the traditional incompatibilist thesis that determinism (...) strictly precludes free will, is something many incompatibilists have had in mind all along and, indeed, is arguably the more central incompatibilist position. The consequence argument thus remains philosophically important, even if, as several of its critics have argued, it can't be used to establish the strict incompatibility of free will and determinism. (shrink)

Libertarianism about free will conjoins the thesis that free will requires indeterminism with the thesis that we have free will. Here the claim that we have experiential evidence for the libertarian position is assessed. It is argued that, on a straightforward reading, the claim is false, for our experiences as agents don't support the claim that free will requires indeterminism. However, our experiences as agents may still have a role to play in an overall case for libertarianism, insofar as they (...) give us some (defeasible) reason to think that we have free will. This latter claim is defended against a pair of objections that have been leveled against it. (shrink)

One challenge to creating realistic cognitive models of memory is the inability to account for the vast common–sense knowledge of human participants. Large computational knowledge bases such as WordNet and DBpedia may offer a solution to this problem but may pose other challenges. This paper explores some of these difficulties through a semantic network spreading activation model of the Deese–Roediger–McDermott false memory task. In three experiments, we show that these knowledge bases only capture a subset of human associations, while irrelevant (...) information introduces noise and makes efficient modeling difficult. We conclude that the contents of these knowledge bases must be augmented and, more important, that the algorithms must be refined and optimized, before large knowledge bases can be widely used for cognitive modeling. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It’s often assumed, especially in discussions of free will and moral responsibility, that unavoidable actions are possible. In recent years, however, several philosophers have questioned that assumption. Their views are considered here, and the possibility of unavoidable actions is defended and then applied to issues in action theory and in the literature on moral responsibility.

I develop a model of providence on which God brings about good states of affairs by means of evil states of affairs, but without intending the latter. The model's key ingredient is a backward-looking counterpart of the distinction between intended and merely foreseen consequences of an action: namely, a distinction between intended and merely foreseen means to an end. The model enables greater-good theodicies to avoid worries about whether a perfect being could intend evil.

More than any other thinker, Giorgio Agamben shows us that philosophy is also a matter of style and politics a matter of poetics. This book explores the unexpected and illuminating paths that his work traces across the territories of law and literature, linguistics, dance or cinema, in search of a new idea and practice of the community. It offers an irreplaceable introduction to one of the most fascinating thinkers of our time.'Jacques RanciereGathering some of the most important established and emerging (...) scholars to examine his body of work, this collection of essays seeks to explore Agamben's thought from these broader philosophical and literary concerns, underpinning its place within larger debates in continental philosophy. Including a contribution by Agamben himself, it is essential reading for anyone interested in his work.In the past five years, Giorgio Agamben has emerged as one of the most important continental philosophers. This burgeoning popularity of his work has largely been confined to a study of the homo sacer series. Yet these later 'political' works have their foundation in Agamben's earlier works on the philosophy of language, aesthetics and literature. From a philosophy of language and linguistics that leads to a broader theory of representation, Agamben develops a critical theory that attempts to explore the hiatuses and paradoxes that govern discursive practice across a broad range of disciplines. (shrink)

The time taken to react voluntarily to a stimulus is far longer than can be accounted for by ordinary processes of nerve conduction and synaptic delay, and varies unpredictably from trial to trial. Though random, the distribution of reaction times usually follows a relatively simple law, which in turn can be explained by the LATER model, in which a decision signal, representing belief in the existence of the target, rises in response to incoming sensory evidence from an initial value to (...) a criterion level at which action is initiated. But the rate of rise fluctuates randomly from trial, to an extent that cannot be explained by sensory noise at the input. These conclusions, confirmed by recording from neurons in the frontal eye fields, suggest that the randomness of reaction time is due to a deliberate, gratuitous, neural process which confers certain biological advantages as well as having implications for general ideas about the nature of ‘free will'. (shrink)

I argue that despite the merits of Jefferson’s account of a brain disorder, which are many, the notion of function she deploys is unsuitable to the overall goals of that account. In particular, Jefferson accepts Cummins’ causal role theory of function and dysfunction. As the causal role view, in its standard elaborations, is wedded to human interests, goals, and values, it cannot serve as a value-neutral anchor for her hybrid “harm-dysfunction” account of disorder. I argue that the selected effects theory, (...) or some comparably value-neutral account, would serve her purposes better. (shrink)

This volume examines the implications of developments in the science of ethics for philosophical theorizing about moral psychology and human agency. These ten new essays in empirically informed philosophy illuminate such topics as responsibility, the self, and the role in morality of mental states such as desire, emotion, and moral judgement.

In the opening paragraph of “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” Alan Turing famously notes that “if the meaning of the words ‘machine’ and ‘think’ are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, ‘Can machines think?’ is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll.” He then immediately responds, “But this is absurd.” But why is this absurd, if indeed (...) it is? We think that the suggested method is absurd because the answer to the question might not follow from the meaning of the words alone—it might critically depend on what machines can be built to do. Further, the ordinary use of the terms might display shallow biases or superstitions that we want to set aside, or overcome, in pursuing a science or philosophy of mind. However, we do not think that the method is absurd insofar as we are interested in getting clear on “the normal use of the words,” as Turing puts it. And we believe that getting clear on the normal use of words like “machine” and “think” is relevant even if we then want to move beyond the ordinary usage in our theorizing. But the best way to figure out how ordinary people use language is via empirical investigation. (shrink)

Dieser Band stellt Abhandlungen von Udo Müllges (1926-1985), Universitätsprofessor an der RWTH Aachen, vor, die in ihrer Gesamtheit ein pädagogisches Programm spiegeln, das auf der geisteswissenschaftlichen Tradition fußt und sich dieser verpflichtet weiß. Der Bogen ist von der konstitutiv-kritischen Frage nach dem Wissenschaftscharakter der Pädagogik bis hin zu aktuellen schulpolitischen Problemen gespannt. In ihrer Gesamtheit bieten die Beiträge einen Einblick in das breite Feld pädagogischer Forschung und eröffnen die Möglichkeit zur produktiven Auseinandersetzung mit den von Udo Müllges erarbeiteten Konzepten zur (...) Klärung gegenwärtiger theoretischer und praktischer Fragen. Das Buch bietet gleichermaßen Anregungen für Fachkollegen, Studierende und Praktiker des pädagogischen Bereiches. (shrink)

Contact Info: Paul Pietroski Department of Linguistics University of Maryland Marie Mount Hall College Park, MD 20742 USA Email: [email protected] Phone: +1 301-395-1747..

Nonreductive physicalists have a causal exclusion problem. Given certain theses all physicalists accept, including psychophysical supervenience and the causal closure of the physical realm, it is difficult to see how irreducible mental phenomena could make a causal difference to the world. The upshot, according to those who push the problem, is that we must embrace reductive physicalism. Only then is mental causation saved. -/- Grant the argument, at least provisionally. Here our focus is the conditional question: What form should one's (...) reductionism take if it is motivated in part by the exclusion problem? Must one be a type identity theorist, or are alternative reductive views available, as Jaegwon Kim has suggested more than once? (shrink)