Previous commentators on Plato’s Republic have relied on mistaken assumptions about the requirements for Plato’s theory of justice: that Plato establishes a bi-conditional between proper psychic rule and the performance of conventionally just acts. They believe that if Plato does not establish this bi-conditional, then his theory of justice as a virtue will succumb to the fallacy of irrelevance. I claim Plato need not meet that requirement. A novel interpretation of the arguments of Book IV concerning justice in the soul (...) suffices to dispense with one aspect of the bi-conditional – that conventional justice must imply justice as psychic harmony. Then, situating the theory of justice as psychic harmony in the context of the divided line, and in the dialectical ascent in the education of the philosopher-rulers, I show that the other conditional requirement – that justice in the soul must imply the performance of conventionally just actions – is also mistaken. (shrink)

Some modern cosmological models predict the appearance of Boltzmann Brains: observers who randomly fluctuate out of a thermal bath rather than naturally evolving from a low-entropy Big Bang. A theory in which most observers are of the Boltzmann Brain type is generally thought to be unacceptable, although opinions differ. I argue that such theories are indeed unacceptable: the real problem is with fluctuations into observers who are locally identical to ordinary observers, and their existence cannot be swept under the rug (...) by a choice of probability distributions over observers. The issue is not that the existence of such observers is ruled out by data, but that the theories that predict them are cognitively unstable: they cannot simultaneously be true and justifiably believed. (shrink)

We have a much better understanding of physics than we do of consciousness. I consider ways in which intrinsically mental aspects of fundamental ontology might induce modifications of the known laws of physics, or whether they could be relevant to accounting for consciousness if no such modifications exist. I suggest that our current knowledge of physics should make us skeptical of hypothetical modifications of the known rules, and that without such modifications it’s hard to imagine how intrinsically mental aspects could (...) play a useful explanatory role. Draft version of a paper submitted to Journal of Consciousness Studies, special issue responding to Philip Goff’s Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. (shrink)

Several scholars have recently entertained proposals for "epistocracy," a political regime in which decision-making power is concentrated in the hands of a society's most informed and competent citizens. These proposals rest on the claim that we can expect better political outcomes if we exclude incompetent citizens from participating in political decisions because competent voters are more likely to vote "correctly" than incompetent voters. We develop what we call the objection from selection bias to epistocracy: a procedure that selects voters on (...) the basis of their observed competence---as epistocracy does---will often be "biased" in the sense that competent voters will be, on average, more likely than incompetent voters to possess certain attributes that reduce the probability of voting correctly. Our objection generalizes the "demographic objection" discussed in previous literature, showing that the range of realistic scenarios in which epistocracy is vulnerable to selection bias is substantially broader than previous discussions appreciate. Our discussion also shows that previous discussions have obscured the force of the threat of selection bias. Since we lack reasons to believe that epistocratic proposals can avoid selection bias, we have no reason to seriously entertain epistocracy as a practical proposal. (shrink)

This paper argues that disabled people can be healthy. I argue, first, following the well-known ‘social model of disability’, that we should prefer a usage of ‘disabled’ which does not imply any kind of impairment that is essentially inconsistent with health. This is because one can be disabled only because limited by false social perception of impairment and one can be, if impaired, disabled not because of the impairment but rather only because of the social response to it. Second, I (...) argue that it is often wrong to use the term ‘healthy’ in a way that makes health inconsistent with any degree whatsoever of health-relevant bodily dysfunction. Whether someone is ‘healthy’ properly-so-called depends on standards of health presupposed in conversational context. Sometimes, I argue, these standards are or ought to be lax enough to allow some people with some health deficits still to count as ‘healthy’ per se. Taking inspiration from David Lewis and Mary Kate Mcgowan, I go on to argue that denying that someone is ‘healthy’ in a context typically succeeds in shifting going presuppositions to require standards strict enough to make that denial acceptable. And this, I conclude by arguing, often constitutes an abuse of conversational power. (shrink)

Effective Field Theory (EFT) is the successful paradigm underlying modern theoretical physics, including the "Core Theory" of the Standard Model of particle physics plus Einstein's general relativity. I will argue that EFT grants us a unique insight: each EFT model comes with a built-in specification of its domain of applicability. Hence, once a model is tested within some domain (of energies and interaction strengths), we can be confident that it will continue to be accurate within that domain. Currently, the Core (...) Theory has been tested in regimes that include all of the energy scales relevant to the physics of everyday life (biology, chemistry, technology, etc.). Therefore, we have reason to be confident that the laws of physics underlying the phenomena of everyday life are completely known. (shrink)

We study the conservation of energy, or lack thereof, when measurements are performed in quantum mechanics. The expectation value of the Hamiltonian of a system changes when wave functions collapse in accordance with the standard textbook treatment of quantum measurement, but one might imagine that the change in energy is compensated by the measuring apparatus or environment. We show that this is not true; the change in the energy of a state after measurement can be arbitrarily large, independent of the (...) physical measurement process. In Everettian quantum theory, while the expectation value of the Hamiltonian is conserved for the wave function of the universe, it is not constant within individual worlds. It should therefore be possible to experimentally measure violations of conservation of energy, and we suggest an experimental protocol for doing so. (shrink)

From the publisher: "This book is a lucid and accessible companion to Plato’s Republic, throwing light upon the text’s arguments and main themes, placing them in the wider context of the text’s structure. In its illumination of the philosophical ideas underpinning the work, it provides readers with an understanding and appreciation of the complexity and literary artistry of Plato’s Republic. McAleer not only unpacks the key overarching questions of the text – What is justice? And Is a just life happier (...) than an unjust life? – but also highlights some fascinating, overlooked passages which contribute to our understanding of Plato’s philosophical thought.". (shrink)

I argue that explanations for time asymmetry in terms of a ‘Past Hypothesis’ face serious new difficulties. First I strengthen grounds for existing criticism by outlining three categories of criticism that put into question essential requirements of the proposal. Then I provide a new argument showing that any time-independent measure on the space of models of the universe must break a gauge symmetry. The Past Hypothesis then faces a new dilemma: reject a gauge symmetry and introduce a distinction without difference (...) or reject the time independence of the measure and lose explanatory power. (shrink)

Public reason liberals claim that legitimate rules must be justifiable to diverse perspectives. This Public Justification Principle threatens that failing to justify rules to reprehensible agents makes them illegitimate. Although public reason liberals have replies to this objection, they cannot avoid the challenge of powerful deceivers. Powerful deceivers trick people who are purportedly owed public justification into considering otherwise good rules unjustified. Avoiding this challenge requires discounting some failures of justification according to what caused people’s beliefs. I offer a conception (...) of public justification that accommodates these externalist considerations while positioning Public Reason Liberalism to provide insight into real cases of deception. (shrink)

The Pneumatist school of medicine has the distinction of being the only medical school in antiquity named for a belief in a part of a human being. Unlike the Herophileans or the Asclepiadeans, their name does not pick out the founder of the school. Unlike the Dogmatists, Empiricists, or Methodists, their name does not pick out a specific approach to medicine. Instead, the name picks out a belief: the fact that pneuma is of paramount importance, both for explaining health and (...) disease, and for determining treatments for the healthy and sick. In this paper, we re-examine what our sources say about the pneuma of the Pneumatists in order to understand what these physicians thought it was and how it shaped their views on physiology, diagnosis and treatment. (shrink)

Athenaeus of Attalia distinguishes two types of exercise or training (γυμνασία) that are required at each stage of life: training of the body and training of the soul. He says that training of the body includes activities like physical exercises, eating, drinking, bathing and sleep. Training of the soul, on the other hand, consists of thinking, education, and emotional regulation (in other words, 'philosophy'). The notion of 'training of the soul' and the contrast between 'bodily' and 'psychic' exercise is common (...) in the Academic and Stoic traditions Athenaeus is drawing from; however, he is the earliest extant medical author to distinguish these kinds of training and to treat them as equally important aspects of regimen. In this paper, I propose some reasons why he found this distinction useful, and I examine how he justified incorporating it into his writings on regimen, namely by attributing Plato's beliefs about regimen to Hippocrates, a strategy Galen would adopt well over a century later. (shrink)

When conversing and collaborating in everyday situations, people naturally and interactively align their behaviors with each other across various communication channels, including speech, gesture, posture, and gaze. Having access to a partner's referential gaze behavior has been shown to be particularly important in achieving collaborative outcomes, but the process in which people's gaze behaviors unfold over the course of an interaction and become tightly coordinated is not well understood. In this paper, we present work to develop a deeper and more (...) nuanced understanding of coordinated referential gaze in collaborating dyads. We recruited 13 dyads to participate in a collaborative sandwich-making task and used dual mobile eye tracking to synchronously record each participant's gaze behavior. We used a relatively new analysis technique—epistemic network analysis—to jointly model the gaze behaviors of both conversational participants. In this analysis, network nodes represent gaze targets for each participant, and edge strengths convey the likelihood of simultaneous gaze to the connected target nodes during a given time-slice. We divided collaborative task sequences into discrete phases to examine how the networks of shared gaze evolved over longer time windows. We conducted three separate analyses of the data to reveal (1) properties and patterns of how gaze coordination unfolds throughout an interaction sequence, (2) optimal time lags of gaze alignment within a dyad at different phases of the interaction, and (3) differences in gaze coordination patterns for interaction sequences that lead to breakdowns and repairs. In addition to contributing to the growing body of knowledge on the coordination of gaze behaviors in joint activities, this work has implications for the design of future technologies that engage in situated interactions with human users. (shrink)

When are inequalities in political power undemocratic, and why? While some writers condemn any inequalities in political power as a deviation from the ideal of democracy, this view is vulnerable to the simple objection that representative democracies concentrate political power in the hands of elected officials rather than distributing it equally among citizens, but they are no less democratic for it. Building on recent literature that interprets democracy as part of a broader vision of social equality, I argue that concentrations (...) of political power are incompatible with democracy, and with a commitment to social equality more generally, when they consist in some having greater arbitrary power to influence decisions according to their idiosyncratic preferences. A novel account of the relationship between power and social status clarifies the role of social equality in the justification of democracy, including a representative democracy in which public officials have more political power than ordinary citizens. (shrink)

Prior research has demonstrated a strong relationship between team performance and team members’ team efficacy beliefs and perceptions of social integration. Performing well increases the feelings of collective ability that comprise team efficacy and the feelings of psychological connectedness that make up social integration, while performing poorly erodes them. In this article, we draw from the social cognitive base of ethical leadership theory to argue that ethical leadership moderates the relationship between team performance and team efficacy beliefs, and between team (...) performance and social integration, such that these important team attitudes are buffered against the negative effects of poor performance when leaders act ethically. Alternatively, when leaders act less ethically, team efficacy and social integration break down following poor performance. We test our hypotheses in a field study of U.S. military teams actively engaged in competition. The data support our arguments. We find that ethical leadership weakens the relationships among team performance and team efficacy and social integration, respectively, such that ethical leaders preserve team efficacy and social integration when their teams do not perform well. (shrink)

Platonic love is a concept that has profoundly shaped Western literature, philosophy and intellectual history for centuries. First developed in the Symposium and the Phaedrus, it was taken up by subsequent thinkers in antiquity, entered the theological debates of the Middle Ages, and played a key role in the reception of Neoplatonism and the etiquette of romantic relationships during the Italian Renaissance. In this wide-ranging reference work, a leading team of international specialists examines the Platonic distinction between higher and lower (...) forms of eros, the role of the higher form in the ascent of the soul and the concept of Beauty. They also treat the possibilities for friendship and interpersonal love in a Platonic framework, as well as the relationship between love, rhetoric and wisdom. Subsequent developments are explored in Plutarch, Plotinus, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Eriugena, Aquinas, Ficino, della Mirandola, Castiglione and the contra amorem tradition. (shrink)

This paper is about the history of a question in ancient Greek philosophy and medicine: what holds the parts of a whole together? The idea that there is a single cause responsible for cohesion is usually associated with the Stoics. They refer to it as the synectic cause (αἴτιον συνεκτικόν), a term variously translated as ‘cohesive cause,’ ‘containing cause’ or ‘sustaining cause.’ The Stoics, however, are neither the first nor the only thinkers to raise this question or to propose a (...) single answer. Many earlier thinkers offer their own candidates for what actively binds parts together, with differing implications not only for why we are wholes rather than heaps, but also why our bodies inevitably become diseased and fall apart. This paper assembles, up to the time of the Stoics, one part of the history of such a cause: what is called ‘the synechon’ (τὸ συνέχον) – that which holds things together. Starting with our earliest evidence from Anaximenes (sixth century BCE), the paper looks at different candidates and especially the models and metaphors for thinking about causes of cohesion which were proposed by different philosophers and doctors including Empedocles, early Greek doctors, Diogenes of Apollonia, Plato and Aristotle. My goal is to explore why these candidates and models were proposed and how later philosophical objections to them led to changes in how causes of cohesion were understood. (shrink)

In Morality & Mathematics, Justin Clarke-Doane argues that it is hard to imagine being "a realist about, for example, the standard model of particle physics, but not about mathematics." I try to explain how that seems very possible from the perspective of a physicist. What is real is the physical world; mathematics starts from descriptions of the natural world and extrapolates from there, but that extrapolation does not imply any independent reality. -/- Submitted to an Analysis Reviews symposium on Clarke-Doane's (...) Morality & Mathematics. (shrink)

The not-self teaching is one of the defining doctrines of Buddhist philosophical thought. It states that no phenomenon is an abiding self. The not-self doctrine is central to discussions in contemporary Buddhist philosophy and to how Buddhism understood itself in relation to its Brahmanical opponents in classical Indian philosophy. In the Pāli suttas, the Buddha is presented as making statements that seem to entail that there is no self. At the same time, in these texts, the Buddha is never presented (...) as saying explicitly that there is no self. Indeed, in the one discourse in which he is asked point blank whether there is a self, he refuses to answer. Thus, the suttas present us with a fundamental philosophical and interpretive problem: if the Buddha denies the existence of the self, why does he not state this denial explicitly? This paper resolves the problem by explaining why and how the Buddha can argue in a way that entails metaphysical anti-realism about the self while also refusing to state explicitly that there is no self. (shrink)

Holography exploded on the scientific world in 1964, but its slow fuse had been burning much longer. Over the next four decades, the echoes of that explosion reached scientists, engineers, artists and popular culture. Emerging from classified military research, holography evolved to represent the power of post-war physics, an aesthetic union of art and science, the countercultural meanderings of holism, a cottage industry for waves of would-be entrepreneurs and a fertile plot device for science fiction. New working cultures sprang up (...) to mutate holography, redefining its products, reshaping its audiences and reconceiving its applications. The outcomes included ever more sublime holograms and exquisitely sensitive measuring techniques - but also priority disputes, prurience and poisonous business rivalries. New subjects cross intellectual borders, and so do their explanations. This book draws on the history and philosophy of science and technology, social studies, politics and cultural history to trace the trajectory of holography. The result is an in-depth account of how new science emerges. Based on unprecedented interviews with pioneer holographers and extensive archival research, it reveals how science, technology, art and wider culture are entwined in the modern world. (shrink)

Building a high school philosophy program from scratch requires vision, creativity, determination, and patience. I recount the steps my colleagues and I took to implement philosophy courses at The Stony Brook School and discuss the challenges that arose along the way. I also offer general outlines of the three courses we have implemented (Critical Reading and Reasoning, History of Philosophy, and Ethics and Politics), discuss pedagogical approaches that we have found to work with high school students, and share feedback on (...) the courses from my students. (shrink)

This article asks whether personal ventilators should be redistributed to maximize lives saved in emergency condition, like the COVID-19 pandemic. It begins by examining extant claims that items like ventilators are literally parts of their user’s bodies. Arguments in favor of incorporation for ventilators fail to show that they meet valid sufficient conditions to be body parts, but arguments against incorporation also fail to show that they fail to meet clearly valid necessary conditions. Further progress on this issue awaits clarification (...) of difficult normative, conceptual, and metaphysical questions about the possible boundaries of a person’s body. Rather than relying solely on incorporation arguments, we propose an argument against reallocation from widely accepted anti-discrimination principles. Possession of a personal ventilator is an obvious marker of disability identity; thus, reallocating ventilators from those that already possess them discriminates on the basis of a stigmatized trait – a paradigm case of presumptively wrongful discrimination. This discrimination claim, taken together with uncertainty about the bodily status of ventilators, yields a strong presumption against personal ventilator reallocation. (shrink)

This chapter offers a general outline of Schopenhauer’s peculiarly named concept of the 'acquired character’ and explains its basic function in his ethical thought. For Schopenhauer, a person of acquired character is someone who knows the ways of acting (Handlungsweise) that are most expressive of their individuality and who allows that self-knowledge to structure their practical and emotional life. In keeping with certain elements of his psychological determinism, acquired character is not the acquisition of a ‘new’ character; rather, it is (...) the acquisition of self-knowledge of one’s essentially fixed empirical character. It is part of the argument of this chapter that by introducing the acquired character into his reflections on human action and agency Schopenhauer weaves a certain view of individual flourishing (eudaimonia) into his ethics. There are two central ingredients of Schopenhauer’s conception of eudaimonia, and both are linked to the acquired character. The first is self-knowledge; the second is a sense of personal autonomy that follows in the wake of the first. The chapter ends with a brief attempt to connect Schopenhauer’s concept of acquired character to contemporary debates in ethics concerning autonomy, practical identity, and what some call the ‘normative significance of self’. (shrink)

Commonsense psychological explanation of action upon objects seems to require not only reference to agents’ demonstrative beliefs about the objects acted upon but also the de re ascription of these demonstrative beliefs. There is an influential objection, however, to the de re component: since de re ascriptions permit the attribution to agents of inconsistent attitudes about the objects acted upon, they cannot explain (or predict) agents’ actions upon those objects. This paper answers the objection by presenting a contextualist theory of (...) de re action explanation according to which agents’ beliefs about objects are logically fragmented. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article focuses on issues of gender identity and bodily integrity in the context of profound desires to modify the body. It contends that, while hormonal and surgical interventions in treating gender dysphoria must continue to be considered medically necessary for many people, we do not yet fully understand why it is justified as medically necessary for this condition and not for others with similar features. The article discusses the difference between the medical classification of “gender dysphoria” and “body (...) dysmorphic disorder” and the notion of mental distress in embodiment. It discusses the role that gender essentialism may have played in the medical sanction of hormonal interventions and gender reassignment surgeries. Finally, it proffers the alternative justificatory criterion, following Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, of “propriodescriptive authority” and explains why this justification, though highly subjective, provides better rational grounds for adjudicating which types of body modification can be considered medically necessary, grounds that can include, but also go well beyond, cases of gender dysphoria. (shrink)

The chapter explores the symmetry thesis, which holds that departures from or variations on the paradigms of forgiveness and gratitude are conceptually and evaluatively symmetrical or parallel: where one makes sense and is praiseworthy, the other should be too. So if third-party forgiveness makes sense, so too should third-party gratitude; if propositional gratitude makes sense, so too should propositional forgiveness; if self-gratitude makes sense, so too should self-forgiveness. The symmetry thesis fares reasonably well, initially; both third- party forgiveness and third-party (...) gratitude turn on the quasi-legal notion of standing, and thus rise or fall together; though propositional forgiveness seems at first not even coherent, I argue that it is as coherent and appropriate as its counterpart, propositional gratitude. The symmetry thesis falters, however, at self-forgiveness and self-gratitude, since the former but not the latter is conceptually problematic because of doubts that one can wrong oneself, strictly speaking. (shrink)

Cicero's general interest in Dicaearchus’ ethical and political thought can be detected in his letters to Atticus and De legibus. One can also infer from De divinatione that Dicaearchus was a source for Cicero’s De republica. At present, however, we do not possess a clear and detailed picture of Dicaearchus’ influence on Cicero’s own ethical and political thought. Scholars have been hindered by a lack of explicit evidence concerning the nature of Dicaearchus’ philosophical arguments as well as Cicero’s failure to (...) mention Dicaearchus by name in the extant parts of De republica. In this paper I argue that, despite these obstacles, we can construct a positive account of the nature and extent of Dicaearchus’ influence that offers new insights into key aspects of Cicero’s philosophical thought and practice. (shrink)

The university today finds itself in a global state of emergency, at once financial, military and ecological. Teaching must assume this emergency as premise and responsibility: it must consider the grounds of the classroom, both figurative and literal, and generate emergent lines of inquiry that address the pressing global and local situation. For us, that means that teaching must take the university’s grounds of supposedly universal knowledge to be constitutively unstable and to require a reflexive teaching method that puts in (...) question disciplinary fields and discursive modalities of knowledge. And it must take in the physical grounds of the university too—because local space is increasingly articulated by technocapital interests that are fully implicated in this global state of emergency. Thus, we do not seek stability amidst such turbulence, but rather a seismotic overturning of the grounds of the university or, rather, a returning to its ground, through the deepened sense of purpose and place that ‘teaching the emergency’ provides. (shrink)

Although body alterations, including body art, sexual alteration, technological enhancements, and cosmetic surgery, usually are evaluated separately, they also can be approached by identifying common cultural trends. Because a person’s conception of identity lies at the core of many body alterations, any change to the body must pursue sincere authenticity, the virtue that fulfills one’s true identity.

Exploration of immune systems in prokaryotes, such as restriction‐modification or CRISPR‐Cas, shows that both innate and adaptive systems possess programmed cell death (PCD) potential. The key outstanding question is how the immune systems sense and “predict” infection outcomes to “decide” whether to fight the pathogen or induce PCD. There is a striking parallel between this life‐or‐death decision faced by the cell and the decision by temperate viruses to protect or kill their hosts, epitomized by the lysis‐lysogeny switch of bacteriophage Lambda. (...) Immune systems and temperate phages sense the same molecular inputs, primarily, DNA damage, that determine whether the cell lives or dies. Because temperate (pro)phages are themselves components of prokaryotic genomes, their shared “interests” with the hosts result in coregulation of the lysis‐lysogeny switch and immune systems that jointly provide the cell with the decision machinery to probe and predict infection outcomes, answering the life‐or‐death question. (shrink)

Moritz Schlick, Rudolf Carnap and Herbert Feig are the most prominent of the positivists to formulate views on the mind-body problem (aside from Hempel’s one-off treatment in 1935). While their views differed from each other and changed over time they were all committed to some form of scientific physicalism, though a linguistic or conceptual rather than ontological form of it. In focus here are their views during the heyday of logical positivism and its immediate aftermath, though some initial scene-setting of (...) Schlick’s and Carnap’s pre-positivist views will help to understand the final opposing positions of Carnap and Feigl. (shrink)

In Making it Explicit Robert Brandom claims that perspectivally hybrid de re attitude ascriptions explain what an agent actually did, from the point of view of the ascriber, whether or not that was what the agent intended to do. There is a well-known problem, however, first brought to attention by Quine, but curiously ignored by Brandom, that threatens to undermine the role of de re ascriptions in the explanation of action, a problem that stems directly from the fact that, unlike (...) de dicto ascriptions, they permit the attribution of inconsistent attitudes to agents. I propose a solution to the problem which I believe is consistent with Brandom’s approach to the nature of intentionality and the explanation of action. (shrink)

In 1826 Americans witnessed the spectacle of President John Quincy Adams and Vice-President John C. Calhoun taking to the press to debate the nature of power and liberty under the pseudonyms "Patrick Henry" and "Onslow". In the course of this exchange some of the most salient issues within American politics and liberty are debated, including the nature of political order, democracy, and the diffusion of political power.

This study examines the idea of consciousness as a phenomenal reality in the writings of legendary civil rights figures, Howard W. Thurman and Huey P. Newton. Thurman is best known for his 1949 title, Jesus and the Disinherited, which is said to have inspired Dr. Martin Luther King, while Newton is best known for his work with The Black Panthers.

The central thesis of this paper is that Corporate Community Involvement (CCI) is not a neutral activity with positive and mutual benefits for all involved. Rather, it is a much more complex activity which may also have negative impacts. Using Donaldson and Preston’s (1995) explanatory model of the stakeholding concept as a framework, this paper explores: (1) the practice of CCI in the UK (with some reference to US experience from which UK firms have drawn extensively), (2) the grounds on (...) which it is justified, and (3) the material consequences of such activity for corporate governance. It concludes by arguing that there is a case for a review of the law on CCI to assess the need for fuller public disclosure so as to allow shareholders and other interested groups the opportunity to assess the impact and effectiveness of CCI more thoroughly. (shrink)