Como asociado del Instituto de Investigación Social de Frankfurt durante la década de 1930, Herbert Marcuse produjo una serie de artículos que tendrían un impacto significativo en la agenda futura de la teoría crítica. Hizo contribuciones innovadoras, entre otras cosas, al desarrollo de la relación entre la teoría de la Escuela de Frankfurt y las nociones hegeliana y weberiana de desarrollo social, a la idea de la cultura como una limitación de la posibilidad humana y a la articulación de las (...) marcadas diferencias entre el liberalismo y la teoría emancipatoria. A diferencia de varios de sus pares en este periodo, en particular Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm y Theodor W. Adorno, Marcuse prestó poca atención a las posibles afinidades entre la teoría crítica y el psicoanálisis. (shrink)

An expansive, yet succinct, analysis of the Philosophy of Religion – from metaphysics through theology. Organized into two sections, the text first examines truths concerning what is possible and what is necessary. These chapters lay the foundation for the book’s second part – the search for a metaphysical framework that permits the possibility of an ultimate explanation that is correct and complete. A cutting-edge scholarly work which engages with the traditional metaphysician’s quest for a true ultimate explanation of the most (...) general features of the world we inhabit Develops an original view concerning the epistemology and metaphysics of modality, or truths concerning what is possible or necessary Applies this framework to a re-examination of the cosmological argument for theism Defends a novel version of the Leibnizian cosmological argument. (shrink)

This provocative book refurbishes the traditional account of freedom of will as reasons-guided "agent" causation, situating its account within a general metaphysics. O'Connor's discussion of the general concept of causation and of ontological reductionism v. emergence will specially interest metaphysicians and philosophers of mind.

An analysis of how Adorno's "pure" philosophy can be seen to provide a justification of the rationality required by critical theory.

Cailin O’Connor on power and the emergence of bargaining norms.

"Why should we care about having true beliefs? And why do demonstrably false beliefs persist and spread despite consequences for the people who hold them? Philosophers of science Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall argue that social factors, rather than individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the spread and persistence of false belief. It might seem that there’s an obvious reason that true beliefs matter: false beliefs will hurt you. But if that’s right, then why is it irrelevant to (...) many people whether they believe true things or not? In an age riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, the authors argue that social factors, not individual psychology, are what’s essential to understanding the persistence of false belief and that we must know how those social forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively."–Publisher’s description. (shrink)

O'Connor and Wyatt use more than 250 color photographs and illustrations to help us break out of the linear mode and see the world differently.

Many philosophers are persuaded by familiar arguments that free will is incompatible with causal determinism. Yet, notoriously, past attempts to articulate how the right type of indeterminism might secure the capacity for autonomous action have generally been regarded as either demonstrably inadequate or irremediably obscure. This volume gathers together the most significant recent discussions concerning the prospects for devising a satisfactory indeterministic account of freedom of action. These essays give greater precision to traditional formulations of the problems associated with indeterministic (...) accounts and to the range of theoretical avenues for pursuing resolutions. The first four essays set out different challenges (from both compatibilists and those skeptical of the possibility of free will) to the adequacy of standard indeterministic theories. The next seven essays meet one or more of these challenges. Each of the fundamental types of approach--simple indeterminism, causal indeterminism, and agent causation--is represented in these novel and sophisticated proposals. The collection finishes with two essays that debate whether compatibilism entails that freedom of choice is a comparatively rare phenomenon within an individual's life. Eloquently presenting some of the most compelling and accessible arguments surrounding this central philosophical issue, Agents, Causes, and Events makes a valuable contribution to courses in free will/action theory and metaphysics. (shrink)

In almost every human society some people get more and others get less. Why is inequity the rule in human societies? Philosopher Cailin O'Connor reveals how cultural evolution works on social categories such as race and gender to generate unfairness.

Timothy O’Connor and Philip Woodward defend a version of a compositional theory, according to which an incarnate deity has two natures, each of which is a distinct component of its being. They then extend this model to permit multiple incarnations. Finally, they consider an objection to this model based on the theological idea that Christ’s work is necessary for ushering in a united community of all divine-image-bearing creatures. In response, they speculate that no such all-encompassing community would be possible, (...) given the vast differences between such creatures. Accordingly, they speculate that each incarnation could help to bring about a unified community of the relevant sort of divine-image-bearing creatures, and that each of these communities would, in its own way, participate in the common goal of union with God. (shrink)

The case of Kafka stands at the very centre of Adorno’s articulation of modernist mimesis. His main study of Kafka is the long and complex essay “Notes on Kafka” (1953), which he republished in the collection Prisms (1955). But numerous references to Kafka are found throughout his unfinished masterpiece, Aesthetic Theory (first published in 1970) and in the four part collection of essays, Notes to Literature.

This is an Element surveying the most important literature using game theory and evolutionary game theory to shed light on questions in the philosophy of biology. There are two branches of literature that the book focuses on. It begins with a short introduction to game theory and evolutionary game theory. It then turns to working using signaling games to explore questions related to communication, meaning, language, and reference. The second part of the book addresses prosociality - strategic behavior that contributes (...) to the successful functioning of social groups - using the prisoner's dilemma, stag hunt, and bargaining games. (shrink)

This paper describes a class of idealized models that illuminate minimal conditions for inequity. Some such models will track the actual causal factors that generate real world inequity. Others may not. Whether or not these models do track these real-world factors is irrelevant to the epistemic role they play in showing that minimal commonplace factors are enough to generate inequity. In such cases, it is the fact that the model does not fit the world that makes it a particularly powerful (...) argumentative tool. As I will argue, this epistemic role is a particularly important one when it comes to modeling inequity, because such models are often also aimed at interventions to stop it. Given this, it is crucial to know if we intervene on the current causes of inequity, what other, common social factors might continue to contribute to it. (shrink)

One familiar affirmative answer to this question holds that these facts suffice to entail that Descartes' picture of the human mind must be mistaken. On Descartes' view, our mind or soul (the only essential part of ourselves) has no spatial location. Yet it directly interacts with but one physical object, the brain of that body with which it is, 'as it were, intermingled,' so as to 'form one unit.' The radical disparity posited between a nonspatial mind, whose intentional and conscious (...) properties are had by no physical object, and a spatial body, all of whose properties are had by no mind, has prompted some to conclude that, pace Descartes, causal interaction between the two is impossible. Jaegwon Kim has recently given a new twist to this old line of thought.(1) In the present essay, I will use Kim's argument as a springboard for motivating my own favored picture of the metaphysics of mind and body and then discussing how an often vilified account of freedom of the will may be realized within it. (shrink)

In response to those who argue for ‘property cluster’ views of natural kinds, I use evolutionary models of similarity-maximizing games to assess the claim that linguistic terms appropriately track sets of objects that cluster in property spaces. As I show, there are two sorts of ways this can fail to happen. First, evolved terms that do respect property structure in some senses can be conventional nonetheless. Second, and more crucially, because the function of linguistic terms is to facilitate successful action (...) in the world, when such success is based on something other than property clusters, we should not expect our terms to track those clusters. The models help make this second point salient by highlighting a dubious assumption underlying some versions of the cluster kinds view—that property clusters lead to successful generalization and induction in a straightforward way. As I point out, those who support property cluster kinds as natural can revert to a promiscuous realism in response to these observations. 1 Introduction2Cluster Kinds3Models and Results 3.1Similarity-maximizing games3.2Voronoi languages, clusters, and categories4Conventionality and Functionality in Kind Terms 4.1Conventional categories4.2Functionality and categories5Unnatural Perceptual Categories6The Payoff Relevance of Property Space7Conclusion. (shrink)

In recent years, as the enterprise of speculative metaphysics has attained a newfound measure of respectability, incompatibilist philosophers who are inclined to think that freedom of action is not only possible, but actual, have re-emerged to take on the formidable task of providing a satisfactory indeterministic account of the connections among an agent's freedom to do otherwise, her reasons, and her control over her act. In this paper, I want to examine three of these proposals, all of which give novel (...) twists to familiar themes. I will argue that despite the considerable ingenuity these philosophers evince, their attempts do not succeed. A common criticism of these theories will be that they fail to give a satisfactory account of what I term "agent-control," a certain feature of actions whose presence I take to be a central requirement for any workable model of responsible agency. I believe that the general notion I try to capture under this label is implicit in much of the voluminous discussion of the problem of free will (especially in compatibilist criticisms of libertarianism), although I am unaware of any explicit formulations of it in just the way I have in mind. Simply put, agent-control is that feature of the process of agency that accounts for how a particular piece of behavior is connected to, or an 'outflowing of, the agent, i.e., that which allows us properly to assert that the action was controlled by the agent. (shrink)

This dissertation, consisting of three hundred and eighty-four pages of text, with multiple citations of the works of Heidegger and Aquinas, and of one hundred and ten pages of notes and bibliography, compares the phenomenological Seinsdenken of Heidegger with the metaphysics of esse of Aquinas. The perspective is Thomistic; however, the greater emphasis is on understanding Heideggerian Sein. ;Chapter I contains an extensive survey of the literature on the relationship between the two thinkers. Different commentators suggest various points of intersection (...) between the two thinkers and disagree as to who is guilty of Seinsvergessenheit. ;Chapter II is a study of Heidegger's Seinsfrage which emphasizes the centrality of this question in the thinker's work, the phenomenological formulation of this question, and the limits of the thinking which the phenomenological formulation of this question predetermines. ;Chapter III contains a study of Heideggerian Sein in terms of: the Nothing, Truth, Presencing, Concealing, Clearing, Language, Thinking, Time, Ereignis-Austrag, and the Numinous. ;Chapter IV contains a review of those objects of Aquinas' thought to which the author believes Heideggerian Sein may be related: ipsum esse creatum, Ipsum Esse Subsistens, the transcendental Verum, the agent intellect, esse intentionale, esse as the verbal copula, and Ly Verbum. ;Chapter V contains the author's conclusions: Heideggerian Sein is in some respects like and in other respects unlike each of the objects of Aquinas' thought considered in Chapter IV. Sein is a conflation of really distinct principles which Aquinas is careful to distinguish, most fundamentally of esse reale and esse intentionale. Inasmuch as Aquinas can distinguish intentions from real things and can reason from the sensible beings which surround us up to a pure and real Being Itself he is more truly recollective of Being than is Heidegger. (shrink)

“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives. Which sort is the free will sort is what all the fuss is about. (And what a fuss it has been: philosophers have debated this question for over two millenia, and just about every major philosopher has had something to say about it.) Most philosophers suppose that the concept of free will is very (...) closely connected to the concept of moral responsibility. Acting with free will, on such views, is just to satisfy the metaphysical requirement on being responsible for one's action. (Clearly, there will also be epistemic conditions on responsibility as well, such as being aware—or failing that, being culpably unaware—of relevant alternatives to one's action and of the alternatives' moral significance.) But the significance of free will is not exhausted by its connection to moral responsibility. Free will also appears to be a condition on desert for one's accomplishments (why sustained effort and creative work are praiseworthy); on the autonomy and dignity of persons; and on the value we accord to love and friendship. (See Kane 1996, 81ff. and Clarke 2003, Ch.1.). (shrink)

Finding Time for the Old Stone Age explores a century of colourful debate over the age of our earliest ancestors. In the mid nineteenth century curious stone implements were found alongside the bones of extinct animals. Humans were evidently more ancient than had been supposed - but just how old were they? There were several clocks for Stone-Age time, and it would prove difficult to synchronize them. Conflicting timescales were drawn from the fields of geology, palaeontology, anthropology, and archaeology. Anne (...) O'Connor draws on a wealth of lively, personal correspondence to explain the nature of these arguments. The trail leads from Britain to Continental Europe, Africa, and Asia, and extends beyond the world of professors, museum keepers, and officers of the Geological Survey: wine sellers, diamond merchants, papermakers, and clerks also proposed timescales for the Palaeolithic. This book brings their stories to light for the first time - stories that offer an intriguing insight into how knowledge was built up about the ancient British past. (shrink)

Across the world, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are being more widely employed in public sector decision-making and processes as a supposedly neutral and an efficient method for optimizing delivery of services. However, the deployment of these technologies has also prompted investigation into the potentially unanticipated consequences of their introduction, to both positive and negative ends. This paper chooses to focus specifically on the relationship between gender bias and AI, exploring claims of the neutrality of such technologies and how its understanding (...) of bias could influence policy and outcomes. Building on a rich seam of literature from both technological and sociological fields, this article constructs an original framework through which to analyse both the perpetuation and mitigation of gender biases, choosing to categorize AI technologies based on whether their input is text or images. Through the close analysis and pairing of four case studies, the paper thus unites two often disparate approaches to the investigation of bias in technology, revealing the large and varied potential for AI to echo and even amplify existing human bias, while acknowledging the important role AI itself can play in reducing or reversing these effects. The conclusion calls for further collaboration between scholars from the worlds of technology, gender studies and public policy in fully exploring algorithmic accountability as well as in accurately and transparently exploring the potential consequences of the introduction of AI technologies. (shrink)

Contemporary societies are often “polarized”, in the sense that sub-groups within these societies hold stably opposing beliefs, even when there is a fact of the matter. Extant models of polarization do not capture the idea that some beliefs are true and others false. Here we present a model, based on the network epistemology framework of Bala and Goyal, 784–811 1998), in which polarization emerges even though agents gather evidence about their beliefs, and true belief yields a pay-off advantage. As we (...) discuss, these results are especially relevant to polarization in scientific communities, for these reasons. The key mechanism that generates polarization involves treating evidence generated by other agents as uncertain when their beliefs are relatively different from one’s own. (shrink)

Bruner shows that in cultural interactions, members of minority groups will learn to interact with members of majority groups more quickly—minorities tend to meet majorities more often as a brute fact of their respective numbers—and, as a result, may come to be disadvantaged in situations where they divide resources. In this paper, we discuss the implications of this effect for epistemic communities. We use evolutionary game theoretic methods to show that minority groups can end up disadvantaged in academic interactions like (...) bargaining and collaboration as a result of this effect. These outcomes are more likely, in our models, the smaller the minority group. They occur despite assumptions that majority and minority groups do not differ with respect to skill level, personality, preference, or competence of any sort. Furthermore, as we will argue, these disadvantaged outcomes for minority groups may negatively impact the progress of epistemic communities. (shrink)

Freedom and moral responsibility have one foot in the practical realm of human affairs and the other in the esoteric realm of fundamental metaphysics—or so we believe. This has been denied, especially in the metaphysics-bashing era occupying the first two-thirds or so of the twentieth century, traces of which linger in the present day. But the reasons for this denial seem to us quite implausible. Certainly, the argument for the general bankruptcy of metaphysics has been soundly discredited. Arguments from Strawson (...) and others that our moral practices are too deeply embedded in human life to rest on anything as tenuous as a metaphysical doctrine far from the thoughts of ordinary people would seem to prove too much: we can easily imagine fantastic scenarios far from the thoughts of ordinary people—involving, say, alien manipulation or massive deception—that, if true, would clearly undermine claims to freedom and responsibility. For still other philosophers, the separation of the moral life from (some) metaphysical issues is prescriptive, not descriptive: it is a recommendation that we revise ordinary moral thought by severing its allegedly problematic links to metaphysics. (Some philosophers appear to hover undecided between such a prescriptive project and a Strawsonian descriptive claim.) We suspect that the prospects of retaining the binding force of ordinary moral thought, were such a reconceived moral practice widely embraced, are bleak. A transition to something closer to moral nihilism seems at least as likely. In any case, our interest here is in descriptive metaphysics, not revisionary. -/- To say as we do that freedom and moral responsibility have a partly metaphysical character is not to suggest that they can be had only if some highly specific version of a particular metaphysical framework is correct. Instead, we suggest in what follows, it is a broadly neo-Humean metaphysics that is not hospitable to freedom (for reasons distinctive to the metaphysics), while a broadly neo-Aristotelian metaphysics is. But we also think (and it is the main aim of our paper to show) that different versions of the neo- Aristotelian metaphysics lead to rather different metaphysical accounts of free and responsible action. Specifically, we will argue that (1) the most satisfactory account of human freedom within the broadly neo-Aristotelian metaphysics is agent-causal, but that (2) two different versions of the general metaphysics will lead to important differences in the agent-causal account of freedom. Adjust the details of your general metaphysics, and the details of your account of freedom are transformed in significant ways. Action theory cannot properly be pursued in isolation from general metaphysics. (shrink)

All organised bodies are composed of parts, similar to those composing inorganic nature, and which have even themselves existed in an inorganic state; but the phenomena of life, which result from the juxtaposition of those parts in a certain manner, bear no analogy to any of the effects which would be produced by the action of the component substances considered as mere physical agents. To whatever degree we might imagine our knowledge of the properties of the several ingredients of a (...) living body to be extended and perfected, it is certain that no mere summing up of the separate actions of those elements will ever amount to the action of the living body itself. (shrink)

This work aims to clarify the nature of the philosophy of education, intending to indicate both the limits and the uses of philosophical criticism of educational aims and concepts. It is based upon the fact that education is a subject full of unexamined presumptions.