As the coronavirus pandemic continues apace in the United States, the dizzying amount of data being generated, analyzed and consumed about the virus has led to calls to proclaim this the first ‘data-driven pandemic’. But at the same time, it seems that this plethora of data has not meant a better grasp on the reality of the pandemic and its effects. Even as we have the potential to digitally track and trace nearly every single individual who has contracted the virus, (...) we have no idea exactly how many people have had the virus, been hospitalized, or died because of it, largely due to a confluence of factors, particularly active obfuscation and mismanagement by public authorities and misinformation spread through social media and right-wing media channels. But beyond these dynamics, there also lies the less nefarious ways that the everyday, subjective practices of data collection, analysis and visualization have the potential to themselves produce these very same dynamics where data is at once valorized and ignored, preeminent and completely useless. That is, the pandemic has revealed only the general inadequacy of our data infrastructures and assemblages to solving pressing social issues, but also the more general shift towards a ‘post-truth’ disposition in contemporary social life. But, as this paper argues, it would be a mistake to see the centrality of data as being somehow the opposite from the larger post-truth apparatus, as the two are instead fundamentally intertwined and co-produced. (shrink)

Mackie famously argued for a moral error theory on the basis that objective moral values, if they existed, would be very queer entities. Unfortunately, his argument is very brief and it is not totally obvious from what he says exactly where the queerness of moral values is supposed to lie. In this paper I will firstly show why a typical interpretation of Mackie is problematic and secondly offer a new interpretation. I will argue that, whether or not we have reason (...) to live in the morally correct way, what seems queer about moral properties is that there is a morally correct way in which to live in the first place. This interpretation makes sense of Mackie’s claim that theism might be able to solve the queerness problem; the notion of an objectively correct way to live may make sense if theism is true, but not otherwise. (shrink)

Jacqueline Taylor presents an original reconstruction of Hume's social theory, which examines the passions and imagination in relation to institutions such as government and the economy. She goes on to examine Hume's system of ethics, and argues that the principle of humanity is the central concept of Hume's Enlightenment philosophy.

Gabriele Taylor presents a philosophical investigation of the "ordinary" vices traditionally seen as "death to the soul": sloth, envy, avarice, pride, anger, lust, and gluttony. In the course of a richly detailed discussion of individual and interrelated vices, which complements recent work by moral philosophers on virtue, she shows why these "deadly sins" are correctly so named and grouped together.

This valuable reference work synthesizes and elucidates traditional themes and issues in Islamic philosophy as well as prominent topics emerging from the last twenty years of scholarship. Written for a wide readership of students and scholars, The Routledge Companion to Islamic Philosophy is unique in including coverage of both perennial philosophical issues in an Islamic context and also distinct concerns that emerge from Islamic religious thought. This work constitutes a substantial affirmation that Islamic philosophy is an integral part of the (...) Western philosophical tradition. Featuring 33 chapters, divided into seven thematic sections, this volume explores the major areas of philosophy: Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy in the Sciences, Philosophy of Mind/Epistemology, and Ethics/Politics as well as philosophical issues salient in Islamic revelation, theology, prophecy, and mysticism. Other features include: •A focus on both the classical and post-classical periods •A contributing body that includes both widely respected scholars from around the world and a handful of the very best younger scholars •"Reference" and "Further Reading" sections for each chapter and a comprehensive index for the whole volume The result is a work that captures Islamic philosophy as philosophy. In this way it serves students and scholars of philosophy and religious studies and at the same time provides valuable essays relevant to the study of Islamic thought and theology. (shrink)

From the publication of _Growing Up Absurd_ in 1960 until his death in 1972, Paul Goodman had the ear of the young radicals of the New Left, pouring forth books and articles on education, technology, decentralization, and of course, the war in Vietnam. Yet Goodman saw himself primarily as an artist rather than a political thinker or sociologist, and many of his books, even during the 1960s, were works of poetry, drama, and fiction. He had also practiced as a psychotherapist (...) and joined with Frederick Perls and Ralph Hefferkine in producing a new synthesis in psychological thought, Gestalt therapy, which has since become an international movement. In an age of specialization, few writers have taken on so braod a range of concerns. _Crazy Hope and Finite Experience_ is the final summing up of the thought and life of a self-described "old-fashioned man of letters." This book brings together for the first time five personal essays, all written near the end of his life, in which Goodman discusses his sense of the world and how he was "in" it, his politics, his spiritual and religious attitude, his sexuality, and his calling as a literary artist. For those already familiar with one or another aspect of his work, Goodman's self-assessment will provide new insight into the credo that underlies his whole career. For those learning about him for the first time, it offers a vivid sense of the man and his perspective. And for psychotherapists - especially Gestalt therapists - the book will fill in the picture of Goodman as a theorist whose work was crucial to the development of a new approach to therapy. (shrink)

This paper examines attention as a scientific concept, and argues that it has a patchwork structure. On this view, the concept of attention takes on different meanings, depending on the scientific context. I argue that these different meanings vary systematically along four dimensions, as a result of the epistemic goals of the scientific programme in question and the constraints imposed by the scientific context. Based on this, I argue that attention is a general reasoning strategy concept: it provides general, non-specific (...) guidance that aids scientific work. As well as shedding light on attention as a scientific concept, this theory has two wider consequences. First, it demonstrates that the patchwork approach is a fruitful way to think about psychological concepts. Second, it provides novel resources to resist eliminativism about attention. (shrink)

Explores the strategies of design, contrast, and resonance in the works of Hezel, Heidegger, Bataille, Blanchot, Derrida, and Kierkegaard The history of society and culture is, in large measure, a history of the struggle with the endlessly ...

Some philosophers argue that we should eschew cross-explanatory integrations of mechanistic, dynamicist, and psychological explanations in cognitive science, because, unlike integrations of mechanistic explanations, they do not deliver genuine, cognitive scientific explanations. Here I challenge this claim by comparing the theoretical virtues of both kinds of explanatory integrations. I first identify two theoretical virtues of integrations of mechanistic explanations—unification and greater qualitative parsimony—and argue that no cross-explanatory integration could have such virtues. However, I go on to argue that this is (...) only a problem for those who think that cognitive science aims to specify one fundamental structure responsible for cognition. For those who do not, cross-explanatory integration will have at least two theoretical virtues to a greater extent than integrations of mechanistic explanations: explanatory depth and applicability. I conclude that one’s views about explanatory integration in cognitive science cannot be segregated from one’s views about the explanatory task of cognitive science. (shrink)

William James is best known for his Pragmatism , his Varieties of Religious Experience , and his Principles of Psychology , but little is known about his excursions into depth psychology, meaning a dynamic psychology of inner experience, despite the fact that he claimed in The Varieties that the subconscious was the primary avenue through which ultimately transforming mystical experiences occur. A survey of James's evolving conceptions of consciousness thorough the stages of his career reveals that his theories about the (...) subconscious emerged in the 1890s and became crystallized in his 1896 Lowell Lectures on Exceptional Mental States. While these lectures were never published, their content found a major place in various chapters in The Varieties, in addition to launching the so-called Boston School of Psychotherapy, experimental psychopathology at Harvard, and the popular era of psychotherapeutics that followed. As such, the Exceptional Mental States Lectures can be considered a bridge between the cognitive psychology in James's Principles and his emphasis on the primacy of the mystical experience in The Varieties . Finally, some of the more important implications of James's metaphysics of pure experience are broached for current directions in neuroscience today, regarding just what constitutes an adequate science of consciousness in light of what James had to say about depth psychology. (shrink)

Conventionalists about promising believe that it is wrong to break a promise because the promisor takes advantage of a useful social convention only to fail to do his part in maintaining it. Anti-conventionalists claim that the wrong of breaking a promise has nothing essentially to do with a social convention. Anti-conventionalists are right that the social convention is not necessary to explain the wrong of breaking most promises. But conventionalists are right that the convention plays an essential role in any (...) satisfactory account of promising. A new conventionalism can explain this by appealing to special features of social conventions. Two of these special features have important implications for any moral requirements they mediate, such as the requirement to keep one's promises and the moral requirements attached to social or occupational roles. First, these requirements will not depend on features of a situation that are inaccessible to typical participants in the convention. Second, these requirements often cannot be tailored to fit the overly unusual circumstances of participants. (shrink)

A standard objection to a market in political votes is that it will enable the rich politically to dominate the poor. If a market in votes was allowed then the poor would be the most likely sellers and the rich the most likely buyers. The rich would thus accumulate the votes of the poor, and so the candidates elected and the policies passed would represent only their interests and not those of the electorate as a whole. To ensure that the (...) poor do not become de facto disenfranchised, then, markets in votes should be disallowed. This objection seems so straightforward and compelling that it has received almost no critical scrutiny. This is unfortunate, for close examination reveals that this argument is not as straightforward as it initially appears. Indeed, there are four different ways of understanding this objection. It could be understood as expressing: the concern that markets in votes would enable candidates to win elections who would otherwise lose them; the concern that they would enable the election of candidates opposed by the majority of the electorate; the concern that they would lead to the poor having disproportionately low political influence; and the concern that they would lead to the rich having disproportionately high political influence. I will argue in this paper that only and could plausibly ground objections to markets in votes. Moreover, these will only plausibly ground objections to unrestricted markets in votes; they will not ground objections to markets in votes per se. Thus, if we are to continue to object to markets in political votes we will have to do this on grounds other than that were they to be allowed the rich will politically dominate the poor. (shrink)

Philosophers of language have lavished attention on names and other singular referring expressions. But they have focused primarily on what might be called lexicalsemantic character of names and have largely ignored both what I call the lexicalsyntactic character of names and also what I call the pragmatic significance of the naming relation. Partly as a consequence, explanatory burdens have mistakenly been heaped upon semantics that properly belong elsewhere. This essay takes some steps toward correcting these twin lacunae. When we properly (...) distinguish that which belongs to the lexical-syntactic character of names, from that which belongs to the lexical semantic character of names, from that which rests on the pragmatics of the naming relation, we lay to rest many misbegotten claims about names and their presumed semantic behavior. For example, though many believe that Frege’s puzzle about the possibility of informative identity statements motivates a move away from a referentialist semantics for names, I argue that the very possibility of Frege cases has its source not in facts about the lexical-semantic character of names but in facts about the lexical-syntax of the naming relation. If I am right, Frege cases as such are insufficient to justify the introduction of the distinction between sense and reference. In a similar vein, I offer a new diagnosis of the widely misdiagnosed felt invalidity of the substitution of coreferring names within propositional attitude contexts. That felt invalidity has been taken 1 to justify the conclusion that an embedded referring expression must be playing some semantic role either different from or additional to its customary semantic role of standing for its reference. I argue, to the contrary, that failures of substitutivity have their source not in the peculiar semantic behavior of embedded expressions but entirely in certain pragmatic principles. (shrink)

This chapter examines the case for natural properties made by David Lewis. Section 5.1 looks at the role such properties play in Lewis’s system. Section 5.2 sets out his reasons for believing in them: that they are required to accommodate Moorean facts about the similarity of objects; and that they are indispensable to philosophical theorizing. Section 5.3 proposes an alternative to natural properties: these are the T-cosy predicates, defined by the role predicates play in theories. Section 5.4 argues that T-cosy (...) predicates can be used to accommodate the Moorean facts as well as natural properties can do; and section 5.5 that where natural properties have an uncontroversially legitimate role to play in philosophical theory, T-cosy predicates will once again do the job. The conclusion is that natural properties constitute unnecessary metaphysical baggage, to be rejected along with the Eliteness Constraint they underpin. (shrink)

In this article, I argue for a new theological conception of grace in which I examine the evolutionary roots of cognitive error, focusing on its relationship to prejudice. Contrary to traditional views, I articulate grace as neural plasticity, the possibility for profound neuronal changes within the brain. In this manner, grace is an immanent component of being evidenced by our cognitive capacities for moral reflection and behavioral adjustment. By defining original sin in relation to cognitive error and reimagining God as (...) a collaborative metaphor for the interdependent processes in nature that produce and shape creation, I identify grace as both a new way of understanding the ontological reality of “sin” and a... (shrink)

This essay some first steps toward the naturalization of what I call rational intentionality or alternatively type II intentionality. By rational or type II intentionality, I mean that full combination of rational powers and content-bearing states that is paradigmatically enjoyed by mature intact human beings. The problem I set myself is to determine the extent to which the only currently extant approach to the naturalization of the intentional that has the singular virtue of not being a non-starter can be aggregated (...) up into an account of rational intentionality. I have in mind a broadly defined family of accounts whose main members are the indicator/information-theoretic approach of Dretske (1988), the asymmetric dependence theory of Jerry Fodor (1987, 1990, 1994) and the teleo-semantics of Ruth Millikan (1984, 1993). Somewhat inaccurately, I will call this family of approaches the information-theoretic family. To be sure, there is only a rough family resemblance among the members of the information-theoretic family. Indeed, several intense quarrels divide the members of that family one from another, but the precise outcome of those internecine struggles is not directly relevant to the aims of this essay. ² Taken collectively, the information-theoretic family yields a compelling picture of the place of at least a crude form of intentionality -- what I call frog-like or type I intentionality -- in the natural order. Though frog-like or type I intentionality is, I think, a genuine species of intentionality, it may subsist in the absence of rational powers. It is that species of intentionality enjoyed by irritable creatures who, following Brandom (1994). (shrink)

The UCLA Medical Center has initiated a “voucher program” under which a person who donated a kidney would receive a voucher that she could provide to someone of her choosing who could then use it to move to the top of the renal transplantation waiting list. If the use of such vouchers as incentives for donors is morally permissible, then cash payments for kidneys are also morally permissible. But, that argument faces five objections. First, there are some goods whose nature (...) allows them to be exchanged for similar goods but renders them monetarily inalienable. Hence, kidneys might be exchanged for kidneys but not sold for cash. Second, voucher programs respect donor autonomy, whereas the offer of cash payments does not. Third, the burden of proof lies with the advocates of cash payments for kidneys to show that their benefits would outweigh the costs of their legalization. Fourth, allowing cash payments for kidneys would stifle medical innovation. Fifth, allowing cash payments for kidneys would result in these organs being used as collateral to secure loans—and that this would disadvantage potential borrowers who did not want to risk their kidneys in this way. This paper will rebut all these objections. (shrink)

This paper is a critical reflection on the concepts of Responsible Innovation (RI) and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI). We offer an account of the emergence of these related but different accounts of responsible innovation that have recently been adopted by funders. We further report on our exploration of the knowledge and understanding of these concepts through the views of senior scientists involved in synthetic biology research projects. Though most of our respondents struggled to provide a clear account of RI/RRI (...) we identified that existing “practices of responsibility” include many aspects of RI/RRI but that this often went unrecognized as such. Most respondents associated RI/RRI with risk avoidance. While some visions of RI/RRI see scientists as taking an active role in shaping the future of innovation, we suggest that it is not for such individuals to take decisions alone on the types of futures a society should have available to it. (shrink)

Bernard Williams distinguishes moral incapacities – incapacities that are themselves an expression of the moral life – from mere psychological ones in terms of deliberation. Against Williams I claim there are examples of such moral incapacity where no possible deliberation is involved – that an agent's incapacity may be a primitive feature or fact about their life. However Michael Clark argues that my claim here leaves the distinction between moral and psychological incapacity unexplained, and that an adequate understanding of the (...) kind of examples I suggest must involve at least some implicit reference to deliberation. In this paper I attempt to meet Clark's objection and further clarify my account of primitive moral incapacities by considering an example from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. What this example shows, I argue, is how our characterization of an agent's response as a moral incapacity turns not on the idea of deliberation but on the way certain primitive incapacities for action are connected to a larger pattern of response in an agent's life, a pattern of response that itself helps to constitute our conception of that agent's character and the moral life more generally. (shrink)