Volume 20, Issue 7, July 2020, Page 147-150.

Bergin, Helen Review of: Priest, poet and theologian: Essays in honour of Anthony Kelly CSSR, by Neil Ormerod and Robert Gascoigne, eds,, pp. 253, $36.95.

Neil Levy presents a new theory of freedom and responsibility. He defends a particular account of consciousness--the global workspace view--and argues that consciousness plays an especially important role in action. There are good reasons to think that the naïve assumption, that consciousness is needed for moral responsibility, is in fact true.

The extended mind thesis is the claim that mental states extend beyond the skulls of the agents whose states they are. This seemingly obscure and bizarre claim has far-reaching implications for neuroethics, I argue. In the first half of this article, I sketch the extended mind thesis and defend it against criticisms. In the second half, I turn to its neuroethical implications. I argue that the extended mind thesis entails the falsity of the claim that interventions into the brain are (...) especially problematic just because they are internal interventions, but that many objections to such interventions rely, at least in part, on this claim. Further, I argue that the thesis alters the focus of neuroethics, away from the question of whether we ought to allow interventions into the mind, and toward the question of which interventions we ought to allow and under what conditions. The extended mind thesis dramatically expands the scope of neuroethics: because interventions into the environment of agents can count as interventions into their minds, decisions concerning such interventions become questions for neuroethics. (shrink)

Introduction: The role of animals in philosophies of man -- Part I: What's wrong with animal rights? -- The right to remain silent -- Part II: Animal pedagogy -- You are what you eat : Rousseau's cat -- Say the human responded : Herder's sheep -- Part III: Difference worthy of its name -- Hair of the dog : Derrida's and Rousseau's good taste -- Sexual difference, animal difference : Derrida's sexy silkworm -- Part IV: It's our fault -- The (...) beaver's struggle with species-being : De Beauvoir and the praying mantis -- Answering the call of nature : Lacan walking the dog -- Part V: Estranged kinship -- The abyss between humans and animals : Heidegger puts the bee in being -- Strange kinship : Merleau-Ponty's sensuous stickleback -- Stopping the anthropological machine : Agamben's tick-tocking tick -- Psychoanalysis and the science of kinship -- Psychoanalysis as animal by-product : Freud's zoophilia -- Animal abjects, maternal abjects : Kristeva's strays -- Conclusion: Sustainable ethics. (shrink)

This article draws attention to a pattern of development within science and other intellectual research communities that has received virtually no mention. We propose that subsequent dominance of a research community by a figure responsible for significant innovation often delays progress in the field. During the period in which the revolutionary continues to influence research in a community, far too frequently the effect is to freeze progress within the limited directions which the revolutionary sanctions.

For at least the last twenty years, philosophers have attempted various strategies for reviving the Hegelian notion of recognition and redeploying it in discourses centered around social justice, including multiculturalism, feminism, race theory, and queer theory. Hegel’s master-slave dialectic may seem like an obvious place to start to analyze the oppression of one group by another. Given that Hegel is not literally talking about slaves, however, but a stage of consciousness, indeed the onset of self-consciousness, we might wonder why his (...) notion of recognition has become so important to these contemporary discourses on oppression. One reason is that the Hegelian model of recognition proposes that.. (shrink)

In 2015, in preparation for implementation of the California End of Life Option Act, the UCLA Workgroup dedicated scores of hours to exploring the ethical underpinnings of aid-in-dying and the guid...

Recent studies suggest that trust is culturally determined and that differentials in trust exist globally between cultures. The trusting culture may be an artifact given that there is little empirical support for such a notion. The results of an international survey of 122 business leaders failed to reveal significant differences in trust between cultures.

I begin with the view that the usual property‐based epiphenomenalist challenges to anomalous monism are unconvincing in light of Davidson's reluctance to analyze causation in terms of properties. I argue, however, that the challenges against Davidson do hold in the weaker sense that although mental events have causal efficacy the identification of an agent's reasons does not causally explain behaviour. I then show that in light of Davidson's commitment to psychophysical supervenience this does not constitute a serious problem for anomalous (...) monism. (shrink)

This textually well-supported book takes seriously Kant’s corpus as a system, claiming that devoted attention to the whole makes each individual work in turn more intelligible, consistent, and compelling. Wuerth claims that a key to Kant’s system is Kant’s account of the self or soul. For Wuerth, Kant’s self is a simple, noumenal substance that possesses powers by which it effects accidents. This is against the familiar interpretation, associated with Patricia Kitcher, Henry Allison, Robert Pippin, Karl Ameriks, and Béatrice Longuenesse, (...) that Kant in the critical period rejects any and all ontologically significant claims about the self. Wuerth says this.. (shrink)

This article focuses on the account of disrespect found in Honneth’s theory of recognition. In it, I am particularly interested in the form of misrecognition or disrespect which is the negation of respect , and which is clearly represented by statelessness. Respect, for Honneth, is closely connected to legal recognition. Guided by Honneth’s view of critical theory as ‘not entirely without a foundation in social reality’, the article puts together an analysis of the political dynamics of his model of disrespect. (...) This analysis is used to challenge certain aspects of Honneth’s political theory and in particular the implications of his conception of the state. The article argues that the way in which the state is used has the effect of obscuring significant political obstacles to recognition, and in particular, the way in which the state limits respect. (shrink)

Kevin T. Kelly, Cory Juhl and Clark Glymour. Reliability, Realism, and Relativism.

Both Kant and James claim to limit the role of knowledge in order to make room for faith. In this paper, we argue that despite some similarities, their attempts to do this come apart. Our main claim is that, although both Kant and James justify our adopting religious beliefs on practical grounds, James believes that we can—and should—subsequently assess such beliefs on the basis of evidence. We offer our own account of this evidence and discuss what this difference means for (...) their accounts of religious belief. (shrink)

I argue that Frank Jackson's knowledge argument cannot succeed in showing that qualia are epiphenomenal. The reason for this is that there is, given the structure of the argument, an irreconcilable tension between his support for the claim that qualia are non-physical and his conclusion that they are epiphenomenal. The source of the tension is that his argument for the non-physical character of qualia is plausible only on the assumption that they have causal efficacy, while his argument for the epiphenomenal (...) character of qualia is plausible only on the assumption that they are non-physical. Since these two arguments cannot be combined coherently, the most Jackson's argument can establish is that qualia are non-physical. (shrink)

Editor's introduction -- Author's introduction -- Interrelational subjects and social sublimation -- The gestation of the other in phenomenology -- The look of love and ecological subjectivity -- Social melancholy, shame and sublimation -- Responsible subjects and witnessing -- Witnessing subjectivity and testimony -- Witnessing, recognition, and response ethics -- Between ethics and politics -- Response ethics and the nonhumans -- Animal ethics: toward an ethics of responsiveness -- Service dogs: between animal studies and disability studies -- Earth ethics and (...) creaturely cohabitation -- Witnessing in the age of spectacle -- Death as a penalty and instant death -- Rape as spectator sport and creepshot entertainment -- The spectacle of war -- Bibliography -- Index. (shrink)

For decades, aesthetics has been subjected to a variety of critiques, often concerning its treatment of beauty or the autonomy of art. Collectively, these complaints have generated an anti-aesthetic stance prevalent in the contemporary art world. Yet if we examine the motivations for these critiques, Michael Kelly argues, we find theorists and artists hungering for a new kind of aesthetics, one better calibrated to contemporary art and its moral and political demands. Following an analysis of the work of Stanley (...) Cavell, Arthur Danto, Umberto Eco, Susan Sontag, and other philosophers of the 1960s who made aesthetics more responsive to contemporary art, Kelly considers Sontag's aesthetics in greater detail. In _On Photography_ (1977), she argues that a photograph of a person who is suffering only aestheticizes the suffering for the viewer's pleasure, yet she insists in _Regarding the Pain of Others_ (2003) that such a photograph can have a sustainable moral-political effect precisely because of its aesthetics. Kelly considers this dramatic change to be symptomatic of a cultural shift in our understanding of aesthetics, ethics, and politics. He discusses these issues in connection with Gerhard Richter's and Doris Salcedo's art, chosen because it is often identified with the anti-aesthetic, even though it is clearly aesthetic. Focusing first on Richter's Baader-Meinhof series, Kelly concludes with Salcedo's enactments of suffering caused by social injustice. Throughout _A Hunger for Aesthetics_, he reveals the place of critique in contemporary art, which, if we understand aesthetics as critique, confirms that it is integral to art. Meeting the demand for aesthetics voiced by many who participate in art, Kelly advocates for a critical aesthetics that confirms the limitless power of art. (shrink)

This book rethinks the discussion of sport as a cinematic subject. Arguing for the vitality of the sports film as distinctively 'modern' genre, the book looks at its innovative potential to capture twentieth- and twenty-first-century sport in all its complexity. Written in an accessible style and illustrated throughout, the book integrates work and ideas from film studies with thinking from sports psychology, philosophy, data theory and ecocriticism. In its detailed analyses of a wide-ranging group of films, the book shows how (...) film, from fictional works to biopics to experimental documentaries, can illuminate individual sporting experience, as well as sport's wider place in modern life. (shrink)

Introduction: The many faces of human nature / Agustín Fuentes and Aku Visala Chapter 1. Off human nature / Jonathan Marks. Response I. On your marks... get set, we’re off human nature / James M. Calcagno ; Response II. Rethinking human nature : comments on Jonathan Marks’s anti-essentialism / Phillip R. Sloan ; Response III. Off human nature and on human culture : the importance of the concept of culture to science and society / Robert Sussman and Linda Sussman Chapter (...) 2. "To human" is a verb / Tim Ingold. Response I. Free and easy wandering : humans, humane education, and designing in harmony with the nature of the way / Susan D. Blum ; Response II. On human natures : anthropological and Jewish musings / Richard Sosis ; Response III. The humanifying adventure : a response to Tim Ingold / Markus Mühling ; Response IV. The ontogenesis of human moral becoming / Darcia Narvaez Chapter 3. Recognizing the complexity of personhood : complex emergent developmental linguistic relational neurophysiologicalism / Warren Brown and Brad D. Strawn. Response I. "Self-organizing personhood" and many loose ends / Lluis Oviedo ; Response II. A last hurrah for dualism? / Kelly James Clark ; Response III. Why the foundational question about human nature is open and empirical / Carl Gillett Chapter 4. Human origins and the emergence of a distinctively human imagination : theology and the archaeology of personhood / J. Wentzel van Huyssteen. Response I. Constructing the face, creating the collective : Neolithic mediation of personhood / Ian Kuijt ; Response II. Imago Dei and the glabrous ape / Douglas Hedley Chapter 5. What is human nature for? / Grant Ramsey. Response I. The difficulties of forsaking normativity / Neil Arner ; Response II. Some remarks on human nature and naturalism / Aku Visala Epilogues. Putting evolutionary theory to work in investigating human nature / Agustín Fuentes ; Moving us forward? / Celia Deane-Drummond. (shrink)

A liberal state based on propositions about the desirability of individual autonomy is bound to be committed to educational programmes which are incompatible with the beliefs and values of parents from non- liberal religious and cultural minorities. One response to this has been support for public funding of those separate schools which offer an education culturally congruent with the values of parents in non- liberal communities. To resolve the potential threat to liberal individualist ideals a condition of support for individual (...) autonomy is usually attached to liberal acceptance of this solution. This condition is in conflict with the motivation which underpins the setting up of such schools. Despite the growing literature on this debate surprisingly little attention has been given to the work of Isaiah Berlin. This article draws on Berlin's version of liberalism developed within the context of a commitment to value pluralism in order to seek clarification of this liberal dilemma. (shrink)

I argue that Jaegwon Kim’s supervenience argument does not generalize to all special science properties by undermining his central intuition, employed in stage 1 of the argument, that there is a tension between horizontal causation and vertical determination. First, I challenge Kim’s treatment of the examples he employs to support this intuition, then I appeal to Kim’s own work on the metaphysics of explanation in order to dissipate the alleged tension.

In “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” Camap drew his famous distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ questions of existence, pronouncing the former meaningful and the latter meaningless. In The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Barry Stroud understands Carnap to be applying the verification criterion of meaningfulness in order to refute Cartesian skepticism. I suggest that Stroud misrepresents both Carnap's aim and method. Camap was responding to critics who suggested that his willingness to quantify over abstract entities in his work in semantics violated his (...) commitment to empiricism. He rejected that criticism as presupposing a super‐scientific standpoint from which constraints on the admissible domain of entities of science could be delivered. Carnap wanted to insulate science from the imposition of first‐philosophical metaphysical prejudice, not to defuse scepticism by appeal to verificationism. (shrink)

:In this essay I identify two burdens for eliminativist accounts of moral responsibility. I first examine an underappreciated logical gap between two features of eliminativism, the gap between descriptive skepticism and full-blown prescriptive eliminativism. Using Ishtiyaque Haji’s luck-based skepticism as an instructive example, I argue that in order to move successfully from descriptive skepticism to prescriptive eliminativism one must first provide a comparative defense of the conflicting principles that motivate the former. In other words, one must fix the skeptical spotlight. (...) I then present and assess a second burden for eliminativists, they must meet what I call the motivational challenge. In order to meet this second burden, eliminativists must motivate their prescriptive account over preservationist competitors, and I assess two potential strategies for doing so. The first is to offer arguments that appeal to the gains and losses of abandoning our responsibility-related attitudes and practices, and the second is to offer direct arguments that we cannot retain these attitudes and practices. I conclude that the adequacy of either strategy remains at best an open question, but that making these burdens explicit might better position eliminativists to meet their competitors on more equal ground. (shrink)

Dans deux articles récents, Jaegwon Kim aborde le problème de l’explication de l’action d’une façon qui est centrée sur l’agent et fondée sur les raisons. Je soutiens que, bien qu’il prétende le contraire, la proposition de Kim ouvre la voie à une vision pluraliste de l’explication qui pourrait résoudre le problème de l’exclusion explicative et fournir un moyen permettant au physicalisme non réductionniste de se soustraire à l’argument de la survenance, aussi appelé argument de l’exclusion.

The following dissertation is an examination of arguments against physicalism. Physicalism is a thesis in the philosophy of mind that is constituted by two central claims: the ontological claim that everything that exists is ontologically physical and that human beings are among such things; the explanatory claim that all facts about human beings and all explanations of their behaviour are dependent on and determined by physical facts and explanations. It has frequently been asserted that there are properties that escape capture (...) in physicalist accounts of human behaviour, thereby undermining . Such properties are usually thought to be lacking causal powers, and hence have been called "epiphenomenal." The epiphenomenalist objections have long been thought to represent a serious obstacle to physicalism. My aim is to show that the objections that are motivated by epiphenomenal properties are unconvincing. ;My discussion proceeds in two stages. In the first stage I examine the epiphenomenalist objections in detail and show that in their most persuasive forms they demonstrate that physicalism has certain explanatory inadequacies. The critics of physicalism believe that these shortcomings lead to the denial of the explanatory completeness of physicalism, and I try to make their case as charitably as I can. In the second stage of the argument I invoke the relation of psycho-physical supervenience and show that the desired conclusion does not follow, even if we admit that physicalism has certain explanatory failings. The overall conclusion of this dissertation is that the epiphenomenalist objections to physicalism are completely undermined and hence that properties which were thought to be epiphenomenal do not represent a serious obstacle to physicalism as was previously thought. My intention is that this discussion push forward work in the philosophy of mind and point the way to a more adequate articulation of physicalism. (shrink)

Our stereotypes of maternity and paternity as manifest in the history of philosophy and psychoanalysis interfere with the ability to imagine loving relationships. The associations of maternity with antisocial nature and paternity with disembodied culture are inadequate to set up primary love relationships. Analyzing the conflicts in these associations, I reformulate the maternal body as social and lawful, and I reformulate the paternal function as embodied, which enables imagining our primary relationships as loving.

Libertarianism in all its varieties is widely taken to be vulnerable to a serious problem of present luck, inasmuch as it requires indeterminism somewhere in the causal chain leading to action. Genuine indeterminism entails luck, and lack of control over the ensuing action. Compatibilism, by contrast, is generally taken to be free of the problem of present luck, inasmuch as it does not require indeterminism in the causal chain. I argue that this view is false: compatibilism is subject to a (...) problem of present luck. Taken by itself, the compatibilist problem with present luck is less serious than the analogous problem confronting libertarianism. However, its effects are just as devastating for the entire account of freedom: the present luck confronting compatibilism is sufficient to undermine the compatibilist response to distant – constitutive – luck. (shrink)