Encounters in the Arts, Literature, and Philosophy focuses on chance and scripted encounters as sites of tensions and alliances where new forms, ideas, meanings, interpretations, and theories can emerge. By moving beyond the realm of traditional hermeneutics, Jérôme Brillaud and Virginie Greene have compiled a volume that vitally illustrates how reading encounters represented in artefacts, texts, and films is a vibrant and dynamic mode of encountering and interpreting. With contributions from esteemed academics such as Christie McDonald, Pierre Saint-Amand, (...) Susan Suleiman, and Jean-Jacques Nattiez, this book is a multidisciplinary collaboration between scholars from a range of disciplines including philosophy, literature, musicology and film studies. It uses examples chiefly from French culture and covers the Early Modern era to the twentieth century while providing a thorough and representative array of theoretical and hermeneutical approaches. (shrink)

Current models of delusion converge in proposing that delusional beliefs are based on unusual experiences of various kinds. For example, it is argued that the Capgras delusion (the belief that a known person has been replaced by an impostor) is triggered by an abnormal affective experience in response to seeing a known person; loss of the affective response to a familiar person’s face may lead to the belief that the person has been replaced by an impostor (Ellis & Young, 1990). (...) Similarly, the Cotard delusion (which involves the belief that one is dead or unreal in some way) may stem from a general.. (shrink)

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, new ways of storytelling and inventing fictions appeared in the French-speaking areas of Europe. This new art still influences our global culture of fiction. Virginie Greene explores the relationship between fiction and the development of neo-Aristotelian logic during this period through a close examination of seminal literary and philosophical texts by major medieval authors, such as Anselm of Canterbury, Abélard, and Chrétien de Troyes. This study of Old French logical fictions encourages a (...) broader theoretical reflection about fiction as a universal human trait and a defining element of the history of Western philosophy and literature. Additional close readings of classical Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and modern analytic philosophy including the work of Bertrand Russell and Rudolf Carnap, demonstrate peculiar traits of Western rationalism and expose its ambivalent relationship to fiction. (shrink)

There is a spectrum of identities: from the mathematical, through cases where specific criteria matter, to the complex or intuitive cases where we can recognize identity but don't know what the criteria should be. In a series of essays by senior figures in the sciences and humanities, this book examines what identity means across a number of academic disciplines. Topics range from mathematics, through the rules of recognition in biology and the law, to comprehending the individual in the visual, performing (...) and literary arts, and ultimately to notions of the philosophy of existence. Using the theme of identity to make new interdisciplinary connections, the contributors offer interested readers a glimpse into their specialist subjects and suggest new ways for students and scholars to think about identity in relation to their own work. (shrink)

Taking its point of departure in a childhood memory of Derrida around raising silkworms, this essay explores the urgency invoked in the same memory of ‘conjuring green’. Following the polysemy of the French verb ( conjurer means to ‘ward off’, ‘cause (a spirit or ghost) to appear’, ‘implore’, and literally, ‘swear together’), the conjured green binds the child and later the writer surreptitiously to both the community and language of Islam, in which the colour green evokes the gardens of paradise, (...) and the infinitely differentiated proliferation of plants whose anthology encroaches upon and undermines any ontology. Along the meandering lines of Derrida’s meditation on the conjured, warded-off, mourned and celebrated green, the Qur’anic Muslim’s joy and radiance whose roots are the same as those for ‘vividness’ and ‘flourishing’, are grafted onto Hildegard von Bingen’s viriditas, the greening power or force which the German mystic Hildegard von Bingen understood as the living soul of creation; and Darwin’s discovery of the movement of plans as ‘circumnutation’, a Derridian term avant la lettre, that captures the dynamic of plants in Derrida’s Glas. (shrink)

For the last 15 years, companies have extensively increased their environmental disclosure relative to their environmental strategy in response to institutional pressures. Based on a computerized content analysis of the annual reports of the 55 largest French industrial companies, we describe environmental disclosure with respect to the different strategies implemented by companies over a period of 6 years. The results show that environmental disclosure becomes more and more technical and precise for all the companies. Environmental innovations are presented as a (...) means of increasing energy efficiency and of obtaining a competitive advantage in green market products. The environmental management system implemented by proactive companies allows them to improve their environmental performance. However, the results show that the economic situation significantly influences the way environmental issues are addressed. (shrink)

By the start of the Victorian period the school of British economists acknowledging Adam Smith as its master was in the ascendancy. 'Political Economy', a catch-all title which ignored the diversity of viewpoints to be found amongst the discipline's leading proponents, became associated in the popular mind with moral and political forces held to be uniquely conducive to the progress of an increasingly industrialised and competitive society. 'Political Economy' served in turn as the focus for critics of equally diverse moral (...) and political persuasions, who sought to challenge the materialism of contemporary society and offer their own assessments of the profound social changes of the time. In the introductory essay to the collection of readings from such 'critics of capitalism', the editors review the principles of the early economists, the way in which these principles were appropriated and applied by their Victorian successors and the contrasting modes which critics of popular economic ideas assumed. Subsequent extracts from the writings of the Owenite Socialist John Bray, Carlyle, Marx and Engels, J. S. Mill, Ruskin, Arnold, T. H. Green, William Morris and G. B. Shaw, demonstrate both the breadth of the possible grounds for ideological opposition to the prevailing philosophy and the shifting nature of the debate as 'Political Economy' itself was revealed as incapable of explaining or responding to the changing conditions of the 1870s. Headnotes to the extracts describe the genesis of individual debate and discuss distinctive stylistic features. Annotation in the form of footnotes and endnotes has been designed to gloss obscure allusions and arguments. In making more accessible the socio-economic writings of those authors now better known for their imaginative work, this volume will enable readers to reach a more profound appreciation of the central role such work played in developing the moral vision embodied in their more lastingly popular books and essays. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"Everything is Breath":Critical Plant Studies' Metaphysics of MixtureElisabeth Weber (bio)In her book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin W. Kimmerer contrasts two creation stories that are thoroughly incompatible. One starts with an all-powerful male creator calling the world and its vegetation and animals into existence through words, and forming the first human beings from clay; the other starts with Skywoman tumbling through the (...) air with seeds in her fist from the Tree of Life growing in Skyworld. One ends with the condemnation of woman to give birth in "very severe" pains, with the cursing of the ground ordered to "produce thorns and thistles" as punishment for man who will eat his food only after "painful toil," and the expulsion from the garden; the other ends in gratitude for the collective caring of the animals, with the creation of "a garden for the well-being of all." One includes an original fall from grace whose burden will be passed down from generation to generation; the other acknowledges suffering without a trace of the burden of unearned guilt. One predicts death as a return to the dust from whence mankind was created; the other imagines death as becoming plant and fruit, as becoming gift, a rejoining the spirits of all ancestors, human and others, who surround the living in everything that is. The threat of one is the inexorability of a trajectory "from dust to dust" and the latter's association, with Plato, of something so diffuse that it doesn't merit a concept or idea; the promise of the other is an abiding relationship with all that is, the reciprocity of giving and gratitude, and the gladly assumed responsibility for the "inspirited" land.Kimmerer comments:Same species, same earth, different stories. Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness. One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. One woman is our ancestral gardener, a cocreator of the good green world that would be the home of her descendants. The other was an exile, just passing through an alien world on a rough road [...].1 [End Page 117]Cosmologies express collective imaginairies that have evolved over hundreds, even thousands of years. The Iroquois story recounted and rendered accessible by Kimmerer is one of countless creation stories that constitute an "important genre in many preliterate traditions" (Zolbrod 5). Kimmerer suggests that even though the Judeo-Christian creation story may have receded into the background of Western collective consciousness, it plays a role in the planet's devastation. What strikes the reader in the story of Skywoman is the centrality of reciprocity, of relation, and, as the woman's name indicates, the significance of the sky. While this might mean, on planet Earth, the atmosphere–the Earth's sky is blue because of the surrounding atmosphere–the implications of the sky's preponderance reach beyond the planetary into the cosmological. The "sky is not what is above. The sky is everywhere: it is the space and the reality of mixture and movement, the definite horizon starting from which everything has to draw itself" (Coccia 218-219) in order to breathe and live.In order to continue to breathe, breathe in the long-term, the long-term, that is, as Barbara Kingsolver put it in one of her poems, "from a tree's / way of thinking" (7), non-human kin's "way of thinking" will need to play a role in humans' self-understanding. Kyle Whyte underlines that it is not enough to respond with urgency to specific ecological crises (fires, flooding, etc.) alone, but, rather, "urgency must be aimed at addressing ecological and relational tipping points together":U.S. settler colonialism, for example, in a short period of time, inflicted displacement, drastic ecological changes, and lost or disrupted relationships with hundreds of species that indigenous peoples depended on through kinship ties for generations. These changes are more extreme than what many nonindigenous persons fear most about moving beyond... (shrink)

A growing number of companies are implementing proactive environmental strategies with the objective of gaining competitive advantage through an enhanced reputation, the reduction in production costs, and a first-mover advantage in the green product market. Yet according to the natural-resource-based view, the development and maintenance of unique and valuable environmental capabilities are the central elements allowing companies to gain financial benefit from their proactive environmental strategy. In this context, management control systems can contribute to the development of environmental capabilities by (...) focusing attention on strategic priorities and stimulating dialogue. Through a single case study, and building on Simons’ four levers of control, we propose a conceptual framework of management control levers that show how companies can enhance stakeholder integration capability through the joint use of belief, boundary, and diagnostic control systems; shared vision capability through the joint use of the belief and boundary systems; organizational learning capability through the use of interactive control systems and to a lesser extent diagnostic control systems; and continuous innovation capability through the use of interactive control systems, belief systems and to a lesser extent diagnostic control systems. (shrink)

In philosophy, a debate can live forever. Nowhere is this more evident than in ethics, a field that is fueled by apparently intractable dilemmas. To promote the wellbeing of many, may we sacrifice the rights of a few? If our actions are predetermined, can we be held responsible for them? Should people be judged on their intentions alone, or also by the consequences of their behavior? Is failing to prevent someone’s death as blameworthy as actively causing it? For generations, questions (...) like these have provoked passionate arguments and counterarguments, but few clear answers. Here, we offer a psychological account of why philosophical dilemmas arise, why they resist resolution, and why scientists should pay attention to them. Building on a family of recent proposals (Cushman & Young, 2009; Greene, 2008; Sinnott- Armstrong, 2008), we argue that dilemmas result from conflict between dissociable psychological processes. When two such processes yield different answers to the same question, that question becomes a “dilemma”. No matter which answer you choose, part of you walks away dissatisfied. This explanation of philosophical dilemmas has an important payoff for psychological research, and we discuss two specific cases in which it has yielded promising results. In each case, social neuroscience has played an important role in distinguishing the psychological processes responsible for producing a dilemma. This, we suggest, is no accident; cognitive neuroscientific methods are particularly well-suited to dissociating independent psychological processes (Henson, 2006). Consequently, philosophers’ dilemmas provide a reliable guide toward productive cognitive neuroscience by identifying the contours of distinct psychological process. The research we review below focuses particularly on moral dilemmas, which is our own area of expertise. The psychological processes that contribute to moral judgment are of interest in their own right, and play a central role in social cognition.. (shrink)

Many philosophers have assumed that our preferences regarding hedonic events exhibit a bias toward the future: we prefer positive experiences to be in our future and negative experiences to be in our past. Recent experimental work by Greene et al. (ms) confirmed this assumption. However, they noted a potential for some participants to respond in a deviant manner, and hence for their methodology to underestimate the percentage of people who are time neutral, and overestimate the percentage who are future (...) biased. We aimed to replicate their study using an alternative methodology that ensures there are no such deviant responses, and hence more accurately tracks future bias and time neutrality. Instead of finding more time neutrality than Greene et al., however, we found vastly more past bias. Our explanation for this surprising finding helps to reveal the rationale behind both future and past biased preferences, and undermines the generalisability of one of the most influential motivations for the rationality of hedonic future bias: Parfit’s My Past or Future Operations. (shrink)

It has widely been assumed, by philosophers, that our first-person preferences regarding pleasurable and painful experiences exhibit a bias toward the future (positive and negative hedonic future-bias), and that our preferences regarding non-hedonic events (both positive and negative) exhibit no such bias (non-hedonic time-neutrality). Further, it has been assumed that our third-person preferences are always time-neutral. Some have attempted to use these (presumed) differential patterns of future-bias—different across kinds of events and perspectives—to argue for the irrationality of hedonic future-bias. This (...) paper experimentally tests these descriptive hypotheses. While as predicted we found first-person hedonic future-bias, we did not find that participants were time-neutral in all other conditions. Hence, the presumed asymmetry of hedonic/non-hedonic and first/third-person preferences cannot be used to argue for the irrationality of future-bias, since no such asymmetries exist. Instead, we develop a more fine-grained approach, according to which three factors—positive/negative valence, first/third-person, and hedonic/non-hedonic—each independently influence, but do not determine, whether an event is treated in a future-biased or time-neutral way. We discuss the upshots of these results for the debate over the rationality of future-bias. (shrink)

Most of us display a bias toward the near: we prefer pleasurable experiences to be in our near future and painful experiences to be in our distant future. We also display a bias toward the future: we prefer pleasurable experiences to be in our future and painful experiences to be in our past. While philosophers have tended to think that near bias is a rational defect, almost no one finds future bias objectionable. In this essay, we argue that this hybrid (...) position is untenable. We conclude that those who reject near bias should instead endorse complete temporal neutrality. (shrink)

All else being equal, most of us typically prefer to have positive experiences in the future rather than the past and negative experiences in the past rather than the future. Recent empirical evidence tends not only to support the idea that people have these preferences, but further, that people tend to prefer more painful experiences in their past rather than fewer in their future (and mutatis mutandis for pleasant experiences). Are such preferences rationally permissible, or are they, as time-neutralists contend, (...) rationally impermissible? And what is it that grounds their having the normative status that they do have? We consider two sorts of arguments regarding the normative status of future-biased preferences. The first appeals to the supposed arbitrariness of these preferences, and the second appeals to their upshot. We evaluate these arguments in light of the recent empirical research on future-bias. (shrink)

In this essay, I draw on Haidt’s and Baron’s respective insights in the service of a bit of philosophical psychoanalysis. I will argue that deontological judgments tend to be driven by emotional responses, and that deontological philosophy, rather than being grounded in moral reasoning, is to a large extent3 an exercise in moral rationalization. This is in contrast to consequentialism, which, I will argue, arises from rather different psychological processes, ones that are more “cognitive,” and more likely to involve genuine (...) moral reasoning. These claims are strictly empirical, and I will defend them on the basis of the available evidence. Needless to say, my argument will be speculative and will not be conclusive. Beyond this, I will argue that if these empirical claims are true, they may have normative implications, casting doubt on deontology as a school of normative moral thought. (shrink)

In recent years, a disagreement has erupted between two camps of philosophers about the rationality of bias toward the near and bias toward the future. According to the traditional hybrid view, near bias is rationally impermissible, while future bias is either rationally permissible or obligatory. Time neutralists, meanwhile, argue that the hybrid view is untenable. They claim that those who reject near bias should reject both biases and embrace time neutrality. To date, experimental work has focused on future-directed near bias. (...) The primary aim of this paper is to shed light on the debate by investigating past-directed near bias. If people treat the past and future differently with respect to near bias, by being future-directed but not past-directed near biased, then this supports a particular version of the hybrid view: temporal metaphysic hybridism. If people treat the past and future the same with respect to near bias, then this supports a simple version of time neutralism, which explains both future bias and near bias in terms of the functioning of a single mechanism: the anticipatory/retrospectory mechanism. Our results undermine the claim that people are future-directed, but not past-directed, near biased, and hence do not support temporal metaphysic hybridism. They also fail to support simple time-neutralism; instead, they suggest that there are multiple mechanisms that differently shape future- and past-directed preferences. (shrink)

In philosophy, a debate can live forever. Nowhere is this more evident than in ethics, a field that is fueled by apparently intractable dilemmas. To promote the wellbeing of many, may we sacrifice the rights of a few? If our actions are predetermined, can we be held responsible for them? Should people be judged on their intentions alone, or also by the consequences of their behavior? Is failing to prevent someone’s death as blameworthy as actively causing it? For generations, questions (...) like these have provoked passionate arguments and counterarguments, but few clear answers. Here, we offer a psychological account of why philosophical dilemmas arise, why they resist resolution, and why scientists should pay attention to them. Building on a family of recent proposals (Cushman & Young, 2009; Greene, 2008; Sinnott- Armstrong, 2008), we argue that dilemmas result from conflict between dissociable psychological processes. When two such processes yield different answers to the same question, that question becomes a “dilemma”. No matter which answer you choose, part of you walks away dissatisfied. This explanation of philosophical dilemmas has an important payoff for psychological research, and we discuss two specific cases in which it has yielded promising results. In each case, social neuroscience has played an important role in distinguishing the psychological processes responsible for producing a dilemma. This, we suggest, is no accident; cognitive neuroscientific methods are particularly well-suited to dissociating independent psychological processes (Henson, 2006). Consequently, philosophers’ dilemmas provide a reliable guide toward productive cognitive neuroscience by identifying the contours of distinct psychological process. The research we review below focuses particularly on moral dilemmas, which is our own area of expertise. The psychological processes that contribute to moral judgment are of interest in their own right, and play a central role in social cognition.. (shrink)

In this article I explain why cognitive science (including some neuroscience) matters for normative ethics. First, I describe the dual-process theory of moral judgment and briefly summarize the evidence supporting it. Next I describe related experimental research examining influences on intuitive moral judgment. I then describe two ways in which research along these lines can have implications for ethics. I argue that a deeper understanding of moral psychology favors certain forms of consequentialism over other classes of normative moral theory. I (...) close with some brief remarks concerning the bright future of ethics as an interdisciplinary enterprise. (shrink)

The law has taken a long-standing interest in the mind. Cognitive neuroscience, the study of the mind through the brain, has gained prominence in part as a result of the advent of functional neuroimaging as a widely used tool for psychological research. Existing legal principles make virtually no assumptions about the neural bases of criminal behavior, and as a result they can comfortably assimilate new neuroscience without much in the way of conceptual upheaval: new details, new sources of evidence, but (...) nothing for which the law is fundamentally unprepared. Neuroscience challenges ultimately reshape our intuitive sense of justice. It draws a familiar distinction between the consequentialist justification for state punishment, according to which punishment is merely an instrument for promoting future social welfare, and the retributivist justification for punishment, according to which the principal aim of punishment is to give people what they deserve based on their past actions. (shrink)

This paper empirically investigates whether people’s implicit decision theory is more like causal decision theory or more like a non-causal decision theory (such as evidential decision theory). We also aim to determine whether implicit causalists, without prompting and without prior education, make a distinction that is crucial to causal decision theorists: preferring something _as a news item_ and preferring it _as an object of choice_. Finally, we investigate whether differences in people’s implicit decision theory correlate with differences in their level (...) of _future bias_: the preference for positively valenced events to be located in the future and not the past, and negatively valenced events to be located in the past and not the future. We find that people are overwhelmingly non-causalists. We also find that implicit causalists _do not_ make the distinction between news items and objects of choice, and that there is little to no correlation between people’s future bias and their implicit decision theory. We end by discussing the philosophical upshots of this work. (shrink)

Philosophers working on time-biases assume that people are hedonically biased toward the future. A hedonically future-biased agent prefers pleasurable experiences to be future instead of past, and painful experiences to be past instead of future. Philosophers further predict that this bias is strong enough to apply to unequal payoffs: people often prefer less pleasurable future experiences to more pleasurable past ones, and more painful past experiences to less painful future ones. In addition, philosophers have predicted that future-bias is restricted to (...) first-person preferences, and that people’s third-person preferences are time-neutral. Philosophers disagree vigorously about the normative status of these preferences—i.e., they disagree about whether first-person future-bias is rationally permissible. Time-neutralists, for example, have appealed to the predicted asymmetry between first- and third-person preferences to argue for the rational impermissibility of future-bias. We empirically tested these predictions, and found that while people do prefer more past pain to less future pain, they do not prefer less future pleasure to more past pleasure. This was so in both first and third-person conditions. This suggests that future-bias is typically non-absolute, and is more easily outweighed in the case of positive events. We connect this result to the normative debate over future-bias. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Instinct of Nature: Natural Law, Synderesis, and the Moral SenseRobert A. Greene“Instinct is a great matter.”—Sir John FalstaffThis essay traces the evolution of the meaning of the expression instinctus naturae in the discussion of the natural law from Justinian’s Digest through its association with synderesis to Francis Hutcheson’s theory of the moral sense. The introduction of instinctus naturae into Ulpian’s definition of the natural law by Isidore of (...) Seville in the seventh century posed a problem of definition for medieval commentators. Some said that it meant a universal and providential natura naturans; some defined it as the urge to self and species preservation in animals, degenerating in man into sensual and shameful impulses; some advanced the humanistic and paradoxical notion that it referred to a unique exercise of human reason in coming to know the natural law. The contemporaneous revival in the twelfth century of St. Jerome’s puzzling new term “synderesis,” and its gradual definition as the immediate apprehension of the first practical moral principles of the natural law, brought the two terms into proximity and loose association.A half-century later St. Bonaventure made explicit what had remained latent in the thinking of Thomas Aquinas by relocating synderesis in the affective rather than the intellectual part of man’s nature. Accordingly the moral discoveries of synderesis came to be spoken of as not only non-discursive but instinctive in nature—apprehensions for which no reason could be given, apprehensions somehow rooted in affective human experience. During the bilingual early modern period an increasingly secularized, internalized, and reified instinctus [End Page 173] naturae, together with its abbreviated vernacular cognate, “instinct,” came to serve as a substitute and synonym for the obsolescent synderesis. Edward Herbert’s attention to instinctus naturae in his De Veritate (1624), Sir Matthew Hale’s speculations about the place of rational instinct in the natural law, and Francis Hutcheson’s theory of a moral sense all exemplify this semantic legacy.The first entry in Justinian’s Digest has had a disproportionate influence on later speculation about the natural law. It begins a chapter that gives pride of place to general definitions of justice, law, jus naturale and jus gentium, and it is drawn from the writings of the Roman jurisconsult Domitius Ulpianus (d. 223), whose work constitutes forty percent of the Digest. Ulpian defines the natural law, with insistent repetition, as that which nature has taught to, or is common to, all animals:Jus naturale is that which nature has taught to all animals; for it is not a law specific to mankind but is common to all animals—land animals, sea animals, and the birds as well. Out of this comes the union of man and woman [male and female] which we call marriage, and the procreation of children, and their rearing. So we can see that the other animals, wild beasts included, are rightly understood to be acquainted with this law. Jus gentium, the law of the nations, is that which all human peoples observe. That it is not coextensive with natural law can be grasped easily, since this latter is common to all animals whereas jus gentium is common only to human beings among themselves. 1Justinian’s compilers gave Ulpian’s definition striking prominence at the beginning of the Digest and then in the same short chapter quoted the incompatible and more traditional definitions of his contemporaries Gaius and Paulus. They confined the operation of the natural law to mankind and spoke of reason as its source. 2 The compilers had been charged to eliminate just such conflicts; yet here at the very outset they set a conundrum that perplexed commentators [End Page 174] and invited explanation from Isidore of Seville to Hugo Grotius. Their selection of quotations suggests that as lawyers they regarded such general definitions as “for legal purposes no more than ornament to discussion.” 3 For those of a more speculative bent, however, the dilemmas could not have been more fundamental. How was the natural law to be defined in relation to those appetitive and self-preservative urges that man seemed to share with animals? Or did the term law apply only... (shrink)

While there is much evidence for the influence of automatic emotional responses on moral judgment, the roles of reflection and reasoning remain uncertain. In Experiment 1, we induced subjects to be more reflective by completing the Cognitive Reflection Test prior to responding to moral dilemmas. This manipulation increased utilitarian responding, as individuals who reflected more on the CRT made more utilitarian judgments. A follow-up study suggested that trait reflectiveness is also associated with increased utilitarian judgment. In Experiment 2, subjects considered (...) a scenario involving incest between consenting adult siblings, a scenario known for eliciting emotionally driven condemnation that resists reasoned persuasion. Here, we manipulated two factors related to moral reasoning: argument strength and deliberation time. These factors interacted in a manner consistent with moral reasoning: A strong argument defending the incestuous behavior was more persuasive than a weak argument, but only when increased deliberation time encouraged subjects to reflect. (shrink)

Future-biased individuals systematically prefer pleasures to be in the future and pains to be in the past. Empirical research shows that negative future-bias is robust: people prefer more past pain to less future pain. Is positive future-bias robust or fragile? Do people only prefer pleasures to be located in the future, compared to the past, when those pleasures are of equal value, or do they continue to prefer that pleasures be located in the future even when past pleasures outweigh future (...) ones? Some arguments against the rationality of future-bias require positive future-bias to be robust, while others require it to be fragile. We empirically investigate and show that positive future-bias is robust. (shrink)

Until recently, philosophers debating the rationality of time-biases have supposed that people exhibit a first-person hedonic bias toward the future, but that their non-hedonic and third-person preferences are time-neutral. Recent empirical work, however, suggests that our preferences are more nuanced. First, there is evidence that our third-person preferences exhibit time-neutrality only when the individual with respect to whom we have preferences—the preference target—is a random stranger about whom we know nothing; given access to some information about the preference target, third-person (...) preferences mirror first-person preferences. As a result, the simulation hypothesis has been proposed, according to which third-person preferences will mirror first-person preferences when we can simulate the mental states of the preference target. Second, there is evidence that we prefer negative hedonic events to be in our past (we are first-person negatively hedonically future-biased) only when we view future events as fixed and in no way under our control. By contrast, when we perceive it to be within our power to mitigate the badness of future events, we are first-person negatively hedonically past-biased. This is the mitigation hypothesis. We distinguish two versions of the mitigation hypothesis, the squirrelling version and the heuristic version. We ran a study which tested the simulation hypothesis, and which aimed to determine whether the squirrelling or the heuristic version of the mitigation hypothesis enjoys more empirical support. We found support for the heuristic version of the hypothesis, but no support for the squirrelling version. (shrink)

Using a longitudinal case study design, we have tracked the recovery of motor function following severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) through a multimodal neuroimaging approach. In 2006, Canadian Soldier Captain (retired) Trevor Greene (TG) was attacked with an axe to the head while on tour in Afghanistan. TG continues intensive daily rehabilitation, which recently included the integration of physical therapy (PT) with neuromodulation using translingual neurostimulation (TLNS) to facilitate neuroplasticity. Recent findings with PT+TLNS demonstrated that recovery of motor function (...) occurred beyond conventional time limits, currently extending past 14-years post-injury. To investigate whether PT+TLNS similarly resulted in associated cognitive function improvements, we examined event-related potentials (ERPs) with the brain vital signs framework. In parallel with motor function improvements, brain vital signs detected significant increases in basic attention (as measured by P300 response amplitude) and cognitive processing (as measured by contextual N400 response amplitude). These objective cognitive improvements corresponded with TG’s self-reported improvements, including a noteworthy and consistent reduction in ongoing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The findings provide valuable insight into the potential importance of non-invasive neuromodulation in cognitive rehabilitation, in addition to initial indications for physical rehabilitation. (shrink)

The standard formulation of Newcomb's problem compares evidential and causal conceptions of expected utility, with those maximizing evidential expected utility tending to end up far richer. Thus, in a world in which agents face Newcomb problems, the evidential decision theorist might ask the causal decision theorist: "if you're so smart, why ain’cha rich?” Ultimately, however, the expected riches of evidential decision theorists in Newcomb problems do not vindicate their theory, because their success does not generalize. Consider a theory that allows (...) the agents who employ it to end up rich in worlds containing Newcomb problems and continues to outperform in other cases. This type of theory, which I call a “success-first” decision theory, is motivated by the desire to draw a tighter connection between rationality and success, rather than to support any particular account of expected utility. The primary aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive justification of success-first decision theories as accounts of rational decision. I locate this justification in an experimental approach to decision theory supported by the aims of methodological naturalism. (shrink)

Historically, the hypothesis that our world is a computer simulation has struck many as just another improbable-but-possible “skeptical hypothesis” about the nature of reality. Recently, however, the simulation hypothesis has received significant attention from philosophers, physicists, and the popular press. This is due to the discovery of an epistemic dependency: If we believe that our civilization will one day run many simulations concerning its ancestry, then we should believe that we are probably in an ancestor simulation right now. This essay (...) examines a troubling but underexplored feature of the ancestor-simulation hypothesis: the termination risk posed by both ancestor-simulation technology and experimental probes into whether our world is an ancestor simulation. This essay evaluates the termination risk by using extrapolations from current computing practices and simulation technology. The conclusions, while provisional, have great implications for debates concerning the fundamental nature of reality and the safety of contemporary physics. (shrink)

In “Modern Abstract Sacrifice in Robespierre’s Terror and Hitler’s Holocaust,” I use Hegel’s analysis of Robespierre’s Terror in the Phenomenology and Adorno and Horkheimer’s analysis of the Nazi Holocaust in the Dialectic of Enlightenment to identify what I term “modern abstract sacrifice” as the dominant kind of instrumental destruction that took place during these nation-building mass-sacrifices. As I show, these events relied upon a justificatory instrumental logic—a sacrificial story—even if that sacrificial story broke down or was abandoned in practice, in (...) which case the destruction became indiscriminate rather than targeted. First, I analyze Hegel’s critique of the Reign of Terror, which he sees as a product of the immediate identity of the general will and the individual will: the revolutionaries collapsed the will of all and the will of each, rendering individuality as such logically impossible. As a result, all individuals became objects of suspicion worthy of sacrifice by guillotine, for the sake of guaranteeing the triumph of the state based on reason. Next, I analyze Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of the fascist sacrifice of the Jewish people using their political-economic and pathological theories of antisemitism. Adorno and Horkheimer see fascist antisemitism as a manifestation of the logic of substitution, operative in both liberal capitalist ideology—in which the Jewish people represent the forces of capital, obsolete pre-modern tradition, and statelessness—as well as fascist ideology—in which the Jewish people represent the metaphysical forces of evil and “negativity as such.” Finally, I assert that the principal commonality between modern abstract sacrifice in the Terror and the Holocaust is the fact that the victims were all reduced to exchangeable representatives of an abstract category, in spite of the fact that their unique identities were indispensable for the ideological justification of these mass-sacrifices. (shrink)

De Neys makes a compelling case that the sacrificial moral dilemmas do not elicit competing “fast and slow” processes. But are there even two processes? Or just two intuitions? There remains strong evidence, most notably from lesion studies, that sacrificial dilemmas engage distinct cognitive processes generating conflicting emotional and rational responses. The dual-process theory gets much right, but needs revision.

In this paper I defend Max Weber's concept of political legitimacy as a standard for the moral evaluation of states. On this view, a state is legitimate when its subjects regard it as having a valid claim to exercise power and authority. Weber’s analysis of legitimacy is often assumed to be merely descriptive, but I argue that Weberian legitimacy has moral significance because it indicates that political stability has been secured on the basis of civic alignment. Stability on this basis (...) enables all the goods of peaceful cooperation with minimal state violence and intimidation, thereby guarding against alienation and tyranny. Furthermore, I argue, since Weberian legitimacy is empirically measurable in terms that avoid controversial value judgments, its adoption would bridge a longstanding divide between philosophers and social scientists. (shrink)

The observation that concepts used by social scientists are often problematic is not new; they have been described as Ballung concepts, cluster concepts, essentially contested, and reflexive; however, the need to work with these concepts remains. This article addresses the problem of variable choice in the social sciences by exploring and extending Woodward’s recommendations. This article demonstrates why Woodward’s criteria are difficult to apply in the social sciences and proposes an alternative, but complementary, framework for assessing variables.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric and Capitalism:Rhetorical Agency as Communicative LaborRonald Walter GreeneIt is a commonplace to describe rhetorical agency as political action. From such a starting point, rhetorical agency describes a communicative process of inquiry and advocacy on issues of public importance. As political action, rhetorical agency often takes on the characteristics of a normative theory of citizenship; a good citizen persuades and is persuaded by the gentle force of the better (...) argument. More radical visions of argument might include strikes, sit-ins, and boycotts in the rhetorical arsenal of good citizenship, and some might even flirt with violence as rhetorical action. This model of rhetorical agency requires a translation of the conceptual apparatus of rhetoric and its alignment with the problematics of democratic theory and actually existing democratic regimes. Classical models that hoped to harness rhetorical agency to the making of the "orator-statesman" (sic) must reimagine political participation in terms of publics and counterpublics, social movements, electoral campaigns, communication media and technologies, as well as supra- and sub-national institutional settings. As the classical norms of citizenship rub against (post) modern realities, a permanent anxiety over the meaning and potential of rhetorical agency seems destined to be lodged in the critical imagination of rhetorical studies. If politics today is, in Jodi Dean's words, "a domain of financially mediated and professionalized practices centered on advertising, public relations, and the means of mass communication," then actually existing rhetorical agency manifests itself in efforts to "raise the money, buy the television time, register the domain names, build the website, and craft the accessible, user-friendly, spectacular message" (2003, 96).If we recognize Dean's description of the political as an accurate description of the rhetorical situation today, rhetorical studies is left with three strategies: It can refashion a deliberative vision of rhetorical agency into a normative ideal for critiquing the structural conditions (capital, media [End Page 188] concentration) of political participation. Second, it can enlarge the field of normatively acceptable ways and means of political participation, for example, by embracing the more spectacular politics associated with visual and body rhetorics. Finally, rhetorical studies can work on the "demand" side and design new strategies and tactics for activating the rhetorical participation of citizens, for example, by encouraging the creation of communicative norms necessary for reinvigorating voluntary and civic organizations. However, while each of these approaches provides a research agenda, none of them gets at the root cause of the anxiety over agency: the attachment of rhetorical agency to a vision of political change. The anxiety over agency pushes rhetorical critics and theorists into becoming moral entrepreneurs scolding, correcting, and encouraging the body politic to improve the quality and quantity of political participation.The purpose of this paper is to offer an escape route from theorizing rhetorical agency as a model of political communication.1 In opposition to a political-communicative vision of rhetorical agency, this paper suggests a different materialist ontology, one that imagines rhetorical agency as a form of living labor. I will argue that rhetorical agency belongs to the domain of communicative labor, a form of labor increasingly necessary to the workings of contemporary capitalist production. In other words, I want to replace a political-communicative model of rhetorical agency with a materialist-communicative model. To highlight the similarities and differences between the two models, I will focus on how the interface between politics, communication, and economics plays out in the Marxist tradition of rhetorical studies. I will organize this tradition into two sections: the first, represented by James Aune, advocates a hermeneutic approach to rhetorical agency, and the second, represented by Dana Cloud, argues for imagining rhetorical agency as a class-based social movement. By focusing on the work of my comrades, the paper risks being received as a "left sectarian" polemic.2 As I will demonstrate in each section, the problem with these two approaches has less to do with Marxism and more to do with how they turn to hermeneutics and social movements to imagine rhetorical agency in the idiom of communication theory. In the third section of the paper I will resituate rhetorical agency into a materialist ontology of labor and capitalist production. In so... (shrink)

Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness, which affects sense of identity. While the ability to have a coherent vision of the self relies partly on its reciprocal relationships with autobiographical memories, little is known about how memories ground “self-images” in schizophrenia. Twenty-five patients with schizophrenia and 25 controls were asked to give six autobiographical memories related to four self-statements they considered essential for defining their identity. Results showed that patients’ self-images were more passive than those of controls. Autobiographical memories underlying (...) self-images were less thematically linked to these self-images in patients. We also found evidence of a weakened sense of self and a deficient organization of autobiographical memories grounding the self in schizophrenia. These abnormalities may account for the poor cohesiveness of the self in schizophrenia. (shrink)

Traces the mysterious motif of the castle defined by women across several centuries, regions, and cultural expressions.