Did you know that Hillary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS? Or that Mike Pence called Michelle Obama “the most vulgar First Lady we’ve ever had”? No, you didn’t know these things. You couldn’t know them, because these claims are false.1 But many American voters believed them.One of the most distinctive features of the 2016 campaign was the rise of “fake news,” factually false claims circulated on social media, usually via channels of partisan camaraderie. Media analysts and social scientists are still (...) debating what role fake news played in Trump’s victory.2 But whether or not it drove the outcome, fake news certainly affected the choices of some individual voters.Why were people willing to believe easily... (shrink)

Many of our cognitive capacities are shaped by enculturation. Enculturation is the acquisition of cognitive practices such as symbol-based mathematical practices, reading, and writing during ontogeny. Enculturation is associated with significant changes to the organization and connectivity of the brain and to the functional profiles of embodied actions and motor programs. Furthermore, it relies on scaffolded cultural learning in the cognitive niche. The purpose of this paper is to explore the components of symbol-based mathematical practices. Phylogenetically, these practices are the (...) result of concerted organism-niche interactions that have led from approximate number estimations to the emergence of discrete, symbol-based mathematical operations. Ontogenetically, symbol-based mathematical practices are associated with plastic changes to neural circuitry, action schemata, and motor programs. It will be suggested that these practices rely on previously acquired capacities such as subitizing and counting. With these considerations in place, I will argue that computations, understood in the sense of Turing (1936), are a specific kind of symbol-based mathematical practices that can be realized by human organisms, machines, or by hybrid organism-machine systems. In sum, this paper suggests a new way to think about mathematical cognition and computation. (shrink)

This paper examines the scholarship, evidence, and assumptions that place the origins of Chinese drama in shamanic ritual. The paper is roughly divided in two parts: the first contextualizes the use of shamanism within the theories of art and literature of one of the first scholars to link the origins of Chinese theatre to shamanism, Wang Guowei, to show that Wang’s view of the relationship between shamanism and drama differs from mainstream interpretations. The second part assesses the views of modern (...) ethnographers and historians of China on the role of shamanism in theater, with a focus on the work of the scholar Piet van der Loon. (shrink)

Deepfakes are algorithmically modified video and audio recordings that project one person’s appearance on to that of another, creating an apparent recording of an event that never took place. Many scholars and journalists have begun attending to the political risks of deepfake deception. Here we investigate other ways in which deepfakes have the potential to cause deeper harms than have been appreciated. First, we consider a form of objectification that occurs in deepfaked ‘frankenporn’ that digitally fuses the parts of different (...) women to create pliable characters incapable of giving consent to their depiction. Next, we develop the idea of ‘illocutionary wronging’, in which an individual is forced to engage in speech acts they would prefer to avoid in order to deny or correct the misleading evidence of a publicized deepfake. Finally, we consider the risk that deepfakes may facilitate campaigns of ‘panoptic gaslighting’, where many systematically altered recordings of a single person's life undermine their memory, eroding their sense of self and ability to engage with others. Taken together, these harms illustrate the roles that social epistemology and technological vulnerabilities play in human ethical life. (shrink)

Deepfake technology uses machine learning to fabricate video and audio recordings that represent people doing and saying things they've never done. In coming years, malicious actors will likely use this technology in attempts to manipulate public discourse. This paper prepares for that danger by explicating the unappreciated way in which recordings have so far provided an epistemic backstop to our testimonial practices. Our reasonable trust in the testimony of others depends, to a surprising extent, on the regulative effects of the (...) ever-present possibility of recordings of the events they testify about. As deepfakes erode the epistemic value of recordings, we may then face an even more consequential challenge to the reliability of our testimonial practices themselves. (shrink)

Slips of the tongue, unwitting favoritism and stereotyped assumptions are just some examples of microaggression. Nearly all of us commit microaggressions at some point, even if we don’t intend to. Yet over time a pattern of microaggression can cause considerable harm by reminding members of marginalized groups of their precarious position. The Ethics of Microaggression is a much needed and clearly written exploration of this pervasive yet complex problem. What is microaggression and how do we know when it is occurring? (...) Can we be held responsible for microaggressions and if so, how? How has social media affected the problem? What role can philosophy play in understanding microaggression? Regina Rini explores these highly topical and controversial questions in an engaging and fair-minded way, arguing that an event is a microaggression precisely because it causes a marginalized person to experience an ambiguous encounter with oppression. She illustrates her argument with compelling examples from media, politics and psychology and explains the significance of essential concepts, such as media representation, reparative renaming, and safe spaces. The Ethics of Microaggression explains what microaggression is and offers strategies for combating it. Assuming no prior knowledge of the topic or philosophy, it demystifies a controversial and extremely important topic in clear language. It is ideal for anyone coming to the topic for the first time and for students in philosophy, gender studies, race theory, disability theory and social and political philosophy. (shrink)

The evidential value of moral intuitions has been challenged by psychological work showing that the intuitions of ordinary people are affected by distorting factors. One reply to this challenge, the expertise defence, claims that training in philosophical thinking confers enhanced reliability on the intuitions of professional philosophers. This defence is often expressed through analogy: since we do not allow doubts about folk judgments in domains like mathematics or physics to undermine the plausibility of judgments by experts in these domains, we (...) also should not do so in philosophy. In this paper I clarify the logic of the analogy strategy, and defend it against recent challenges by Jesper Ryberg. The discussion exposes an interesting divide: while Ryberg’s challenges may weaken analogies between morality and domains like mathematics, they do not affect analogies to other domains, such as physics. I conclude that the expertise defence can be supported by analogical means, though care is required in selecting an appropriate analog. I discuss implications of this conclusion for the expertise defence debate and for study of the moral domain itself. (shrink)

Since at least 2016, many have worried that social media enables authoritarians to meddle in democratic politics. The concern is that trolls and bots amplify deceptive content. In this chapter I argue that these tactics have a more insidious anti-democratic purpose. Lies implanted in democratic discourse by authoritarians are often intended to be caught. Their primary goal is not to successfully deceive, but rather to undermine the democratic value of testimony. In well-functioning democracies, our mutual reliance on testimony also generates (...) a distinctively democratic value: decentralized testimonial networks evade control by the state or powerful actors. The deliberate exposure of deception in democratic testimonial networks undermines this value by implicating citizens in their own epistemic corruption, weakening the resilience of democratic society against authoritarian pressure. In this chapter I illustrate that danger through a close reading of recent Russian social media interference operations, showing both their epistemic underpinnings and their ongoing political threat. (shrink)

A microaggression is a small insulting act made disproportionately harmful by its part in an oppressive pattern of similar insults. How should you respond when made the victim of a microaggression? In this paper I survey several morally salient factors, including effects upon victims, perpetrators, and third parties. I argue, contrary to popular views, that ‘growing a thicker skin’ is not good advice nor is expressing reasonable anger always the best way to contribute to confronting oppression. Instead, appropriately responding to (...) microaggression involves difficult application of practical wisdom that does not easily fall under a simple prescription. (shrink)

Generative AI systems like ChatGPT and Midjourney can produce prose or images. But can they produce art? I argue that this question, though natural and intriguing, is the wrong one to ask. A better question is this: can generative AI yield distinct or novel forms of aesthetic value? And I argue that the answer is yes. Generative AI can be used to put us in contact with the artificial sublime – a type of aesthetic value that Kant famously argues is (...) impossible. Kant claims that sublimity (a fusion of trepidation and wonderment) can only arise from encounters with nature, or perhaps close artistic depiction of natural scenes. I show how generative AI can yield encounters both with incalculable profundity (Kant’s mathematical sublime) as well as overwhelming moral chaos (Kant’s dynamical sublime). There are lessons not only for art criticism, but also for the philosophical theory of value. (shrink)

The debate between proponents and opponents of a role for empirical psychology in ethical theory seems to be deadlocked. This paper aims to clarify the terms of that debate, and to defend a principled middle position. I argue against extreme views, which see empirical psychology either as irrelevant to, or as wholly displacing, reflective moral inquiry. Instead, I argue that moral theorists of all stripes are committed to a certain conception of moral thought—as aimed at abstracting away from individual inclinations (...) and toward interpersonal norms—and that this conception tells against both extremes. Since we cannot always know introspectively whether our particular moral judgments achieve this interpersonal standard, we must seek the sort of self-knowledge offered by empirical psychology. Yet reflective assessment of this new information remains a matter of substantive normative theorizing, rather than an immediate consequence of empirical findings themselves. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Giubilini and Minerva argue for the moral permissibility of what they call ‘after-birth abortion’, or infanticide. Here I suggest that they actually employ a confusion of two distinct arguments: one relying on the purportedly identical moral status of a fetus and a newborn, and the second giving an independent argument for the denial of moral personhood to infants (independent of whatever one might say about fetuses). After distinguishing these arguments, I suggest that neither one is capable (...) of supporting Giubilini and Minerva's conclusion. The first argument is at best neutral between permitting infanticide and prohibiting abortion, and may in fact more strongly support the latter. The second argument, I suggest, contains an ambiguity in its key premise, and can be shown to fail on either resolution of that ambiguity. Hence, I conclude that Giubilini and Minerva have not demonstrated the permissibility of infanticide, or even great moral similarity between abortion and infanticide. (shrink)

As relações entre Brasil e França quanto às dimensões de consideração sobre o racismo são semelhantes. No Brasil o mito da democracia racial impediu a percepção das injustiças e desigualdades pautadas na dimensão racializada. Na França o mesmo acontece com o mito da Republica – igualdade, liberdade e fraternidade. Porém estas insígnias são para os franceses não negros. A psicologia brasileira e a produção em saúde mental na França possuem suas diferenças. No Brasil o alheamento dos psicólogos na dimensão das (...) relações étnicas é emblemático em pleno século 21. Na França, as discussões de Lacan sobre a psicanalise promoveram a expansão do campo psicológico a desbravar a dimensão étnica considerando Frantz Fanon e outros na compreensão do sofrimento psíquico e as relações étnicas na contemporaneidade. Neste mundo globalizado, com fluxos migratórios constantes, a discussão étnica é pauta primeira para a contemporaneidade. Lembrando que as populações negras, neste contexto, são as mais violentadas. Seja na Europa, nas Américas e na África, as experiências da vivência da diáspora africana trazem experiências importantes para serem compartilhadas. Abordar parte destas imbricações e reflexões sobre os avanços e limites da psicologia no Brasil e na França no campo das relações étnicas e as relações com a atualidade nacional e global é o objetivo deste texto. (shrink)

This article argues that the reduction of the morality of killing in war to the morality of killing in self-defense by ‘reductive-individualist’ revisionist just war theories is inconsistent, because when those theories apply the moral notion of self-defense to the morality of killing in war, they do not preserve the two conceptions of the “individual” inherent in this notion. The article demonstrates this inconsistency in two steps: First, it disentangles the two conceptions of the individual inherent to the notion of (...) self-defense, namely (1) that the individual is an “entity” potentially bearing a right to self-defense (unlike, e.g., groups) and (2) that the individual is a “particular,” where “particular” signifies that every human is different from every other human. The conception of the individual as a “particular” is tied to the idea that a justification grounded in a rule of self-defense is necessarily “concrete,” in the sense of referring to individually given and specific perceptions or cases, as opposed to “abstract,” in the sense of being detached from specific perceptions or cases. The article then demonstrates that reductive individualism reflects the first notion of the individual, but not the second. Due to the “loss” of the individual as a “particular”, the reductive-individualist reduction of the morality of killing in war to the morality of killing in self-defense is inconsistent, and hence its justification of killing in war grounded in self-defense is not concrete. Since such a justification must be concrete, reductive individualism cannot offer a justification for belligerent killing. (shrink)

This study explores the reflective processes of Scottish artist, Norman Gilbert, as he created twenty-five drawings depicting his wife, Pat Gilbert, as she lay dying following an Alzheimer’s-related stroke. Norman, ninety-one, had drawn Pat regularly over their sixty-five-year marriage. One week after Pat died, Norman was interviewed by a family friend to chronicle his reflections on the drawings. The drawings along with the interview transcript are analyzed qualitatively as a case study. Norman’s Hospital Drawings of Pat transform what was initially (...) a private experience into a shared comprehension of end of life and bereavement. (shrink)

Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT were trained on human conversation, but in the future they will also train us. As chatbots speak from our smartphones and customer service helplines, they will become a part of everyday life and a growing share of all the conversations we ever have. It’s hard to doubt this will have some effect on us. Here I explore a specific concern about the impact of artificial conversation on our capacity to deliberate and hold ourselves accountable (...) to reason – that is, to be autonomous, in Kant’s sense of the term. I develop ideas from psychologist Jean Piaget to show how chatbots are autonomy traps: their deference to our commands tempts us into venting authoritarian whims, ultimately weakening our own self-control. I argue that the Kantian tradition, including Piaget and sociologist Emile Durkheim, offers powerful conceptual resources for resisting this slide. But it will require us to do something that may seem bizarre: we will need to treat mindless chatbots as if they are autonomous persons too. (shrink)

This article presents an analytic critique of the predominant revisionist theoretical paradigm of just war (henceforth: revisionism). This is accomplished by means of a precise description and explanation of the practicability problem that confronts it, namely that soldiers that revisionism would deem “unjust” are bound to fail to fulfil the duties that revisionism imposes on them, because these duties are overdemanding. The article locates the origin of the practicability problem in revisionism’s overidealized conception of a soldier as an individual rational (...) agent analogous to the aggressor or defender in a case of lethal self-defense, who is capable of reflecting on the morality of his status in war and of the killing he performs and thus of recognizing his revisionist duties. Revisionism, however, ignores the following fact: Killing in war is not a natural human behavior. This is why training soldiers to kill is—and arguably always has been—a necessity for the existence of war and the killing that occurs in it. Moreover, this training involves a certain level of moral desensitization to violence whose goal is to prevent soldiers from thoroughly reflecting on the morality of the killing they engage in. Hence, war and killing can only exist if soldiers are trained in such a way that they do not reflect on whether they could be addressees of revisionist duties in the first place. This means that military training is a “constitutive condition” of soldiers and war, which is why it cannot excuse their noncompliance with revisionist duties, thus making these duties categorically overdemanding. The argument here draws on the paradigmatic example of modern US military killing conditioning (MC), but embeds it into a broader military-historical perspective that describes how soldiers have always needed to be mentally and morally influenced in order to enable war and killing. The article’s explanation of revisionism’s practicability problem has a constructive consequence for future theory-building in the ethics of war: It implies that a potentially revised ethical theory of war must necessarily analyze the institutions that allocate belligerent resources, if it aims to morally assess battlefield behavior in a practicable manner. (shrink)

Recent empirical work appears to suggest that the moral intuitions of professional philosophers are just as vulnerable to distorting psychological factors as are those of ordinary people. This paper assesses these recent tests of the ‘expertise defense’ of philosophical intuition. I argue that the use of familiar cases and principles constitutes a methodological problem. Since these items are familiar to philosophers, but not ordinary people, the two subject groups do not confront identical cognitive tasks. Reflection on this point shows that (...) these findings do not threaten philosophical expertise—though we can draw lessons for more effective empirical tests. (shrink)

This short piece draws on political philosophy to show how social media interference operations can be used by hostile states to weaken the apparent legitimacy of democratic governments. Democratic societies are particularly vulnerable to this form of attack because democratic governments depend for their legitimacy on citizens' trust in one another. But when citizen see one another as complicit in the distribution of deceptive content, they lose confidence in the epistemic preconditions for democracy. The piece concludes with policy recommendations for (...) how democratic governments should protect themselves. (shrink)

This paper presents a regress challenge to the selective psychological debunking of moral judgments. A selective psychological debunking argument conjoins an empirical claim about the psychological origins of certain moral judgments to a theoretical claim that these psychological origins cannot track moral truth, leading to the conclusion that the moral judgments are unreliable. I argue that psychological debunking arguments are vulnerable to a regress challenge, because the theoretical claim that ‘such-and-such psychological process is not moral-truth-tracking’ relies upon moral judgments. We (...) must then ask about the psychological origins of these judgments, and then make a further evaluative judgment about these psychological origins… and so on. This chain of empirical and evaluative claims may continue indefinitely and, I will argue, proponents of the debunking argument are in a dialectical position where they may not simply call a halt to the process. Hence, their argument cannot terminate, and its debunking conclusion cannot be upheld. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to argue against the semiotic reading of Husserl’s theory of depiction according to which depiction [Abbildung] must necessarily involve symbolic function. I aim to show that Husserl’s notes on depiction can be divided into two parts: those that deal with internal depiction and those concerned with external depiction. This division provides a constructive way to explain Husserl’s asemiotic view on depiction, but it has not received proper attention from Husserlian scholars. Accordingly, I aim to (...) show that it is internal depiction that is clearly deprived of any symbolic function. (shrink)

We consider the theory Thprin of Boolean algebras with a principal ideal, the theory Thmax of Boolean algebras with a maximal ideal, the theory Thac of atomic Boolean algebras with an ideal where the supremum of the ideal exists, and the theory Thsa of atomless Boolean algebras with an ideal where the supremum of the ideal exists. First, we find elementary invariants for Thprin and Thsa. If T is a theory in a first order language and α is a linear (...) order with least element, then we let Sentalg be the Lindenbaum-Tarski algebra with respect to T, and we let intalg be the interval algebra of α. Using rank diagrams, we show that Sentalg ⋍ intalg, Sentalg ⋍ intalg ⋍ Sentalg, and Sentalg ⋍ intalg. For Thmax and Thac we use Ershov's elementary invariants of these theories. We also show that the algebra of formulas of the theory Tx of Boolean algebras with finitely many ideals is atomic. (shrink)

This article offers a new reading of Pankrates’ poem on Hadrian’s and Antinoos’ hunt of a lion in 130 AD, examining both its intertextual dialogue with Homer and its evocation of Egyptian imagery. I first show how the raging lion, which emerges directly out of a Homeric simile, has been transformed fromcomparatumtocomparandum: he no longer serves to illustrate a warrior’s force, but has himself become part of the main narrative and the subject of analogy. Contemplating theaitionin which the text culminated (...) I argue that the Antinoeian lotus, which grew out of the lion’s blood, ought to be read against the backdrop of Egyptian mythology and iconography as an emblem of rebirth. Both Pankrates’ allusions to Homer, which subtly evoke Achilles’ loss of Patroklos, and the symbolic function of the lotus strongly suggest that the poem was composed in the aftermath of Antinoos’ death and conceived as a celebration of the youth’s apotheosis. (shrink)

O presente artigo visa destacar como se instaurou o processo de construção da cidadania junto ao jovem trabalhador, no período de 1971 a 1994, através de práticas assistenciais operacionalizadas pela instituição PROMENOR, possibilitando a formação e a inserção desses jovens no espaço social florianopolitano. Tal investigação partiu do pressuposto de que a descontinuidade verificada, tanto na trajetória da Instituição PROMENOR quanto nas possibilidades de construção da cidadania, junto ao jovem trabalhador, tem-se articulado de forma conflitiva e/ou interativa com à dinâmica (...) estrutural dos campos econômico, político e social, com base em relações de disputa, no decorrer do tempo. (shrink)

Drawing on the fifteenth century theology of Saint Joseph, classical visual sources, Ficino’s commentary on the _Phaedrus_ and _Symposium_, and Dante’s _rime petrose_, this book interprets Michelangelo’s Tondo Doni as a model of Ephesians’ ‘great sacrament’ of marriage for the new Florentine republic.

Cognitive innovation has shaped and transformed our cognitive capacities throughout history. Until recently, cognitive innovation has not received much attention by empirical and conceptual research in the cognitive sciences. This paper is a first attempt to help close this gap. It will be argued that cognitive innovation is best understood in connection with cumulative cultural evolution and enculturation. Cumulative cultural evolution plays a vital role for the inter-generational transmission of the products of cognitive innovation. Furthermore, there are at least two (...) important functions of enculturation for cognitive innovation. First, enculturation is responsible for the ontogenetic acquisition of cognitive practices governing the interaction with innovative products. Second, successful processes of enculturation provide opportunities for subsequent innovative processes. The trans-generational trajectory of calculation from mathematical symbol systems to the first digital computers will serve as a paradigm example of the delicate interplay of cognitive innovation, cumulative cultural evolution, and enculturation. (shrink)

We ought to treat others’ moral views with respect, even when we disagree. But what does that mean? This paper articulates a moral obligation to make ourselves open to sincere moral persuasion by others. Doing so allows us to participate in valuable relationships of reciprocal respect for agency. Yet this proposal can sound tritely agreeable. To explore its full implications, the paper applies the general obligation to one of the most challenging topics of moral disagreement: the morality of abortion. I (...) consider and reject arguments that abortion decisions have special features exempting them from the obligation to be open to moral persuasion. Further, I argue that viewing fetal ultrasound images can accomplish morally persuasion. Accordingly, in at least some cases a woman seeking abortion has an obligation to view fetal ultrasound images as a means of being open to moral persuasion. However, this conclusion does not support recent laws compelling women seeking abortion to view ultrasound images; such laws are in fact incompatible with the respect for agency that underwrites the obligation to be open to persuasion. (shrink)

It is a philosophical truism that we must think of others as moral agents, not merely as causal or statistical objects. But why? I argue that this follows from the best resolution of an antinomy between our experience of morality as necessarily binding on the will and our knowledge that all moral beliefs originate in contingent histories. We can address this antinomy only by understanding moral deliberation via interpersonal relationships, which simultaneously vindicate and constrains morality’s bind on the will. This (...) means that moral agency is fundamentally social. I model an attitude toward our causal nature on sociologist Erving Goffman’s concept of ‘civil inattention’; our social practice of agency requires that we give minimal attention to the contingent origins of moral judgments in ourselves and others. Understood this way, seeing ourselves as moral agents requires avoiding appeal to causal aetiology to settle substantive moral disagreement. (shrink)