This paper compares two theories and their two corresponding computational models of human moral judgment. In order to better address psychological realism and generality of theories of moral judgment, more detailed and more psychologically nuanced models are needed. In particular, a motivationally based theory of moral judgment is developed in this paper that provides a more accurate account of human moral judgment than an existing emotion-reason conflict theory. Simulations based on the theory capture and explain a range of relevant human (...) data. They account not only for the original data that were used to support the emotion–reason conflict theory, but also for a wider range of data and phenomena. (shrink)

In addiction, apparently causally significant phenomena occur at a huge number of levels; addiction is affected by biomedical, neurological, pharmacological, clinical, social, and politico-legal factors, among many others. In such a complex, multifaceted field of inquiry, it seems very unlikely that all the many layers of explanation will prove amenable to any simple or straightforward, reductive analysis; if we are to unify the many different sciences of addiction while respecting their causal autonomy, then, what we are likely to need is (...) an integrative framework. In this paper, we propose the theory of “Externalist” or “4E” – for extended, embodied, embedded, and enactive – cognition, which focuses on the empirical and conceptual centrality of the wider extra-neural environment to cognitive and mental processes, as a candidate for such a framework. We begin in Section 2 by outlining how such a perspective might apply to psychiatry more generally, before turning to some of the ways it can illuminate addiction in particular: Section 3 points to a way of dissolving the classic dichotomy between the “choice model” and “disease model” in the addiction literature; Section 4 shows how 4E concepts can clarify the interplay between the addict’s brain and her environment; and Section 5 considers how these insights help to explain the success of some recovery strategies, and may help to inform the development of new ones. (shrink)

Shane Harwood and Richard Scheines. Genetic Algorithm Search Over Causal Models.

Shane Harwood and Richard Scheines. Learning Linear Causal Structure Equation Models with Genetic Algorithms.

A fundamental problem in artificial intelligence is that nobody really knows what intelligence is. The problem is especially acute when we need to consider artificial systems which are significantly different to humans. In this paper we approach this problem in the following way: we take a number of well known informal definitions of human intelligence that have been given by experts, and extract their essential features. These are then mathematically formalised to produce a general measure of intelligence for arbitrary machines. (...) We believe that this equation formally captures the concept of machine intelligence in the broadest reasonable sense. We then show how this formal definition is related to the theory of universal optimal learning agents. Finally, we survey the many other tests and definitions of intelligence that have been proposed for machines. (shrink)

At first glance, it might seem strange to consider Derrida as an environmental philosopher. There is still a sense with many that Derrida is primarily a thinker of poetry and texts rather than of “leaves or soil”. While this is still a common view, even a cursory glance at Derrida’s work and at this volume shows that it is based on a misunderstanding. What it ignores is the fact that ‘text’ for Derrida is “coextensive [at least, T.B.] with mortal life” (...) and indeed can be said to include every aspect of the world. Moreover, Derrida challenges the idea that we can understand culture independently from its material manifestations in the world and from its relations... (shrink)

In Politics VIII, Aristotle contends that music has some influence over character and the soul. Nevertheless, it is not entirely clear what sort of influence music has. Does appropriate music cause someone to become virtuous, as Socrates seems to suggest? And if that is Aristotle’s claim, then is it noteasily refuted by examples of vicious lovers of excellent music, such as the Nazi soldiers who forced imprisoned Jewish musicians to perform Mozart concertos?But if appropriate music is not the principal cause (...) of moral virtue, what sort of formative role does Aristotle think it has? In this paper, I investigate what Aristotlesays about music and the formation of character. I argue that, according to Aristotle, music is a universal, instrumental cause of moral virtue. (shrink)

In addition to the acrostic–telestic combination natu ceu aes ‘from birth like bronze’, Catullus poem 60 contains the earliest attested Latin mesostic (mi pia ‘dutiful to me’), which runs down its caesuras. The use of pius anticipates the language of aristocratic obligation that is used of Lesbia in the epigrams and is perhaps also a wordplay on the praenomen of Clodia’s father, Appius. The complex acrostics and the syntax of mi pia, along with the setting of poem 59 (in sepulcretis), (...) suggest that poem 60 can be read as a literary epitaph. Additional closural elements in the poem include an allusion to Callimachus and a sphragis in the form of a play on the author’s name. (shrink)

The Cognitive Decathlon is a proposed set of tasks that can be tested on both human and artificially intelligent agents, and which constitutes a modern specification for the Turing Test. In this paper, a partial implementation of the Cognitive Decathlon is described using the Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL). The tasks focus not simply on generic human abilities, but on critical skills that highlight aspects of human performance that are at odds with common artificial intelligence approaches. The differences between human (...) and algorithmic behavior in such tasks can reveal properties of the human cognitive architecture, and production of similar behavior by artificial systems can help constrain and validate biologically-inspired systems. (shrink)

One of the most significant ways in which much late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature and philosophy may be distinguished from their predecessors is in their reliance upon the notion of ‘inexpressibility’ and the limits of the sayable. In this article, I seek not only to chart the history of this tradition, but also to reflect critically upon the use it makes of the concept of ‘the nothing’. For all their differences, in both Wittgenstein and Heidegger one encounters deployments of this (...) concept in ways that determine these thinkers’ conceptions of language and literature. My aim here is to initiate a new critical reflection upon the fate of the concept of ‘the nothing’ in modern philosophy and literary theory. (shrink)

Shane Epting illustrates that the problem of “moral prioritization” rests at the heart of problems with city transportation systems. To overcome such challenges, he develops a multitiered assessment system that shows how to evaluate complicated affairs in urban mobility.

Mackinlay, Shane The opening of the legal year is marked by many events, including a range of religious celebrations. These celebrations are part of a long tradition, dating back nearly eight hundred years. The first religious ceremony recorded as marking the start of the legal year was a Mass celebrated in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1245. Then, it would have been a completely obvious thing to do, as it was unquestioned that those holding civic authority did so (...) only because it had been entrusted to them from God, and that they exercised it on his behalf. A range of powerful symbols made this relation very evident. The religious character of weighty ceremonies such as coronations was complemented by the integral place of faith in the broader culture; religious belief was not so much chosen as an expression of individual commitment, but was simply one characteristic among many others of national culture and identity. (shrink)

While the disability community has long argued convincingly that disability is not a negative condition, academic and popular discourses on environmental justice routinely refer to disability as a prima facie harm to be avoided. This perpetuates the harms of ableism, and it is, furthermore, unnecessary in order to advance environmental justice. It is possible to demand an investigation into the state of an environment, to object to toxic environmental conditions and to hold polluting parties accountable without assuming any overall difference (...) in value or desirability between disabled and non-disabled lives. (shrink)

A search for traces of the voice before the phonograph, reconstructing a series of ancient soundscapes from Aristotle to Augustine. Long before the invention of musical notation, and long before that of the phonograph, the written word was unrivaled as a medium of the human voice. In The Ancient Phonograph, Shane Butler searches for traces of voices before Edison, reconstructing a series of ancient soundscapes from Aristotle to Augustine. Here the real voices of tragic actors, ambitious orators, and singing (...) emperors blend with the imagined voices of lovesick nymphs, tormented heroes, and angry gods. The resonant world we encounter in ancient sources is at first unfamiliar, populated by texts that speak and sing, often with no clear difference between the two. But Butler discovers a commonality that invites a deeper understanding of why voices mattered then and why they have mattered since. With later examples that range from Mozart to Jimi Hendrix, Butler offers an ambitious attempt to rethink the voice—as an anatomical presence, a conceptual category, and a source of pleasure and wonder. He carefully and critically assesses the strengths and limits of recent theoretical approaches to the voice by Adriana Cavarero and Mladen Dolar and makes a rich and provocative range of ancient material available for the first time. The Ancient Phonograph will appeal not only to classicists and to voice theorists but to anyone with an interest in the verbal arts—literature, oratory, song—and the nature of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

The current linkages between ethical theory and management behavior are investigated. The vignettes used in this investigation represent ethical dilemmas in the areas of coercion and control, conflict of interest, physical environment, and personal integrity. Overall, even with heightened ethical awareness the link between ethical philosophy and management behavior remains similar to that of the early 1990s. Generally, practitioners still rely heavily on the utilitarian ethical philosophy when making business decisions. However, more managers are now likely to select ethically appropriate (...) actions either because it is ethical to do so, or because the consequences or risk of not doing so are too great. This shift could positively impact the ethical climate of business decision-making. (shrink)

One of the ways in which Heidegger characterised his philosophical project was as ‘overcoming metaphysics.’ This was a way of expressing the task of destruction—or, in Derrida’s version, deconstruction—of the tradition of western philosophy. One of the consequences of Heidegger’s critique of traditional western metaphysics is that, in the decades since, there has been a reluctance to engage in anything that might be called ‘metaphysics’. This is somewhat ironic, given that one of the branches of metaphysics is ontology, and that (...) Heidegger explicitly describes his own work as phenomenological ontology. This essay sketches some ontological implications of the thought of Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion, then outlines some of the ways in which that ontology might be modified in light of hermeneutic critiques of Levinas and Marion, and concludes by suggesting that an ontology informed by these hermeneutic insights can be traced in the thought of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the eco-religious “God’s Gardeners” group as they appear in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood as a possible model of capitalist “non-existence,” exploring the alternative potentials at which they arrive in relation to waste throughout the text. The Gardeners present an affective mode of consumer non-participation as a possible first step toward a reflexive awareness of the role trash plays in our subjective experiences of the world. Through a process of symbolic embodiment, (...) the Gardeners exist in marginalized space and so re-situate waste for themselves as objects and spaces with new potential boundaries. This leads to a confrontation with social reality itself, piercing the reality-building project of capitalist logic in order to uncover the fabricated “antagonism between the Excluded—the ‘animals’ according to global capital—and the Included—the ‘political animals’ proper, those participating in capitalism” that structures characters’ experiences. The focus here is not only on re-situating waste but re-inscribing it in the domain of social discourse in a way that subverts consumer expectations and challenges the limits of desire. In these texts, enjoyment is displaced onto waste objects as a point of psychological investment transmitted from subject to subject. In building reality through these kinds of direct relations, Atwood implies, one may challenge the imposition of ideology and expand its apparent limits in order to re-symbolize the spaces and objects marginalized as waste, proceeding in the end to a renewed interconnection between subject, object, and excess. (shrink)

Maybe God isn't who you think He is. Maybe He's much better. Pastor and speaker Shane Pruitt guides readers in identifying the Christian cliches we've all heard that are actually unbiblical lies. He then counters with the truths about God as presented in the Bible, truths that bring encouragement and freedom for our lives. God won't give you more than you can handle. Really? Pastor and speaker Shane Pruitt shines a light on this and other Christian cliches that (...) upon further inspection are actually unbiblical lies that keep far too many believers stuck in spiritual immaturity. (shrink)

Requirements for business ethics education and organizational ethics trainings mark an important step in encouraging ethical behavior among business students and professionals. However, the lack of specificity in these guidelines as to how, what, and where business ethics should be taught has led to stark differences in approaches and content. The present effort uses meta-analytic procedures to examine the effectiveness of current approaches across organizational ethics trainings and business school courses. to provide practical suggestions for business ethics interventions and research. (...) Thus, the primary questions driving this research are as follows: what course characteristics moderate the effectiveness of ethics instruction?, and have ethics education and training efforts improved? Findings suggest that professional, focused, and workshop-based training programs are especially effective for improving business ethics. However, results also reveal considerable problems with many of the criteria used to evaluate the effectiveness of business ethics interventions. Practical suggestions for course design and evaluation in business ethics efforts are discussed along with future research needs. (shrink)

Introduction -- Marion's claims -- The hermeneutic structure of phenomenality -- The theory of saturated phenomena -- Events -- Dazzling idols and paintings -- Flesh as absolute -- The face as irregardable icon -- Revelation : the phenomenon of God's appearing -- Conclusion: Revising the phenomenology of givenness.

This paper investigates the plausibility of one aspect of animism, namely the experience of other-than-human beings as exhibiting a kind of inaccessible interiority. I do so by developing a parallel between Husserl’s account of our experience of other conscious beings and our experience of non-conscious as well as so-called inanimate beings. I establish this parallel based on Derrida’s insistence on the irreducibility of context. This allows me to show how the structure of presence qua absence characteristic of our experience of (...) conscious others emerges in our experience of non-conscious beings as well. (shrink)

"Lesbian feminism began and has fueled itself with the rejection of liberalism.... In this rejection, lesbian feminists were not alone. They were joined by the New Left, by many blacks in the civil rights movement, by male academic theorists.... What all these groups shared was an intense awareness of the ways in which liberalism fails to account for the social reality of the world, through a reliance upon law and legal structure to define membership, through individualism, through its basis in (...) a particular conception of rationality." In tracing how lesbian feminism came to be defined in uneasy relationships with the Women’s Movement and gay rights groups, Shane Phelan explores the tension between liberal ideals of individual rights and tolerance and communitarian ideals of solidarity. The debate over lesbian sado-masochism—an expression of individual choice or pornographic, anti-feminist behavior?—is considered as a test case. Phelan addresses the problems faced by "the woman-identified woman" in a liberal society that presumes heterosexuality as the biological, psychological, and moral standard. Often silenced by laws defining their sexual behavior as criminal and censured by a medical establishment that persists in defining homosexuality as perversion, lesbians, like blacks and other groups, have fought to have the same rights as others in their communities and even in their own homes. Lesbian feminists have also sought to define themselves as a community that would be distinctly different, a community that would disavow the traditional American obsession with individual advancement in the world as it is. In this controversial study of political philosophy and the women’s movement, Phelan argues that "the failure to date to produce a satisfying theory and program for lesbian action is reflective of the failure of modern political thinking to produce a compelling, nonsuspect alternative to liberalism." In the series Women in the Political Economy, edited by Ronnie J. Steinberg. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship of various trait emotions to the ethical choices of 189 college students who completed a managerial decision-making task as part of an in-basket exercise in a laboratory setting. Prior research regarding emotion influences on ethical decision-making and linkages between emotions and cognition informed hypotheses about how different types of emotions impact ethical choices. Findings supported our expectations that positive and negative emotions classified as active would be more strongly related to interpersonally-directed ethical choices than to (...) organizationally-directed ones, and that passive emotions would be less related to ethical choices than active emotions. Implications for ethical decision-making research and organizational practices are discussed. (shrink)

This chapter examines some of Stone and Parker's “seepage,” looking at episodes that provide excellent cases of the core ideas of libertarianism. One reason for rejecting paternalism is that it causes unintended bad consequences. Libertarians argue that by legalizing illicit substances, supply will increase and, as a result, crime will decrease. Another way to argue in favor of libertarianism is based on the idea that each individual is a rational agent and, because of this, their decisions should be respected. One (...) must be clear when discussing what it means to “respect an individual's agency.” We must respect people because they are autarchic, but not necessarily because of their autonomy. We don't hold non‐autarchic people fully responsible for their actions, nor should we allow them to be fully free from paternalistic influence. (shrink)

Through staged photographs in which she herself is often the lead actor or through appropriation of historical photographs, contemporary African American artist Carrie Mae Weems deconstructs the shaming of the black female body in American visual culture and offers counter-hegemonic images of black female beauty. The mirror has been foundational in Western theories of subjectivity and discussions of beauty. In the artworks I analyze in this article, Weems tactically employs the mirror to engage the topos of shame in order to (...) reject it as a way of seeing the self and to offer a new way of lovingly seeing the self. I use the work of Kelly Oliver, Helen Block Lewis, and bell hooks to articulate the relationships among the mirror, shame, and black female subjectivity in Weems's work. Weems's subjects often reckon with what Oliver calls “social melancholy” as they experience shame while standing before the mirror. However, Weems also shows that by looking again—a critical strategy I explain using Oliver's model of “the loving eye”—her subjects can use the mirror as a corrective to the social shaming gaze and make it a stage for establishing black female subjectivity, a gaze of self-love, and beauty. (shrink)

I motivate and develop a normative framework for undertaking work in applied epistemology. I set out the framework, which I call epistemic environmentalism, explaining the role of social epistemology and epistemic value theory in the framework. Next, I explain the environmentalist terminology that is employed and its usefulness. In the second part of the paper, I make the case for a specific epistemic environmentalist proposal. I argue that dishonest testimony by experts and certain institutional testifiers should be liable to the (...) sanction of inclusion on a register of epistemic polluters. In doing so, I explain the special role that experts and the relevant institutional testifiers play in the epistemic environment and how the proposal is justified on the basis of that special role. (shrink)

Due to the historic separation of cognition and emotion, the affective aspects of learning are often seen as trivial in comparison to the more ‘essential’ cognitive qualities—particularly in science. We are taught that science should objectively scrutinize the world in search of answers, and science educators have been taught to look to scientists to guide their teaching of content and processes.2 As a result, science pedagogy characteristically instructs students to step back from objects and events in order to dispassionately observe (...) and analyze them. In an attempt to guide students towards thinking like scientists, the process of scientific inquiry is typically the focus in science. What is left out, of course .. (shrink)

The need for the comingling of theory and practice in food justice is particularly striking in the context of the built environment, where reactive policies without a theoretical framework and theories which do not take into account the surprises found in application have both failed many times in the past. Shane Epting calls for transdisciplinary collaboration to find paths toward food justice.

Hobbes advocates 'thin absolutism'; a system of authority that merely ensures respect of the core concepts of sovereignty – hierarchy and normative closure. This new interpretation of Hobbes's absolutism shows that the concerns regarding sovereign tyranny are not fatal to his account of political authority. With thin absolutism, the sovereign is neither necessarily ineffective nor inherently dangerous. This, then, leaves Hobbesian absolutism in the position of being a 'reasonable contender'– a system of political authority that might require our allegiance, but (...) at the very least requires serious attention. (shrink)