An overview of the latest interdisciplinary research on human morality, capturing moral sensibility as a sophisticated integration of cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms. Over the past decade, an explosion of empirical research in a variety of fields has allowed us to understand human moral sensibility as a sophisticated integration of cognitive, emotional, and motivational mechanisms shaped through evolution, development, and culture. Evolutionary biologists have shown that moral cognition evolved to aid cooperation; developmental psychologists have demonstrated that the elements that underpin (...) morality are in place much earlier than we thought; and social neuroscientists have begun to map brain circuits implicated in moral decision making. This volume offers an overview of current research on the moral brain, examining the topic from disciplinary perspectives that range from anthropology and neurophilosophy to justice and law. The contributors address the evolution of morality, considering precursors of human morality in other species as well as uniquely human adaptations. They examine motivations for morality, exploring the roles of passion, extreme sacrifice, and cooperation. They go on to consider the development of morality, from infancy to adolescence; findings on neurobiological mechanisms of moral cognition; psychopathic immorality; and the implications for justice and law of a more biological understanding of morality. These new findings may challenge our intuitions about society and justice, but they may also lead to more a humane and flexible legal system. Contributors Scott Atran, Abigail A. Baird, Nicolas Baumard, Sarah Brosnan, Jason M. Cowell, Molly J. Crockett, Ricardo de Oliveira-Souza, Andrew W. Delton, Mark R. Dadds, Jean Decety, Jeremy Ginges, Andrea L. Glenn, Joshua D. Greene, J. Kiley Hamlin, David J. Hawes, Jillian Jordan, Max M. Krasnow, Ayelet Lahat, Jorge Moll, Caroline Moul, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Alexander Peysakhovich, Laurent Prétôt, Jesse Prinz, David G. Rand, Rheanna J. Remmel, Emma Roellke, Regina A. Rini, Joshua Rottman, Mark Sheskin, Thalia Wheatley, Liane Young, Roland Zahn. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This essay defends a reading of Hegel as a metametaphysical antirealist. Metametaphysical antirealism is a denial that metaphysics has as its subject matter answers to theoretical questions about the mind-independent world. Hence, on this view, metaphysical questions are not, in principle, knowledge transcendent. I hold that Hegel presents a version of metametaphysical antirealism in the Science of Logic because he pursues his project by suspending reference to all supposed objects of metaphysical theory as practiced before him. Hegel introduces reference in (...) his theory only by the self-reference of thought to itself in the Doctrine of the Concept. I motivate the relevance of Hegel’s approach to metaphysics by comparing it to Kit Fine’s (2017) concept of “naïve metaphysics.” I argue that Hegel’s theory results from a comprehensively naïve metaphysics. (shrink)

Let S denote the variety of Sugihara algebras. We prove that the lattice (K) of subquasivarieties of a given quasivariety K S is finite if and only if K is generated by a finite set of finite algebras. This settles a conjecture by Tokarz [6]. We also show that the lattice (S) is not modular.

This paper, like many before it, aims to solve the “species problem” by declaring it a non-problem. It borrows its title from an earlier article by Jeff Lawrence and its philosophical concepts from Marc Ereshefsky, John Dupré, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Ken Waters, and Jody Hey. The emphasis is on bacteria, but my pragmatic species anti-realist conclusion may be a general one.

Airline pilots are attributed ultimate responsibility and final authority over their aircraft to ensure the safety and well-being of all its occupants. Yet, with the advent of automation technologies, a dissonance has emerged in that pilots have lost their actual decision-making authority as well as their ability to act in an adequate fashion towards meeting their responsibilities when unexpected circumstances or emergencies occur. Across the literature in human factor studies, we show how automated algorithmic technologies have wrestled control away from (...) airline pilots. The inter-related ethical and pragmatic consequences resulting from such a dissonance are presented. This includes pilots serving as ‘legal sponges’, being caught in ‘moral crumple zones’, as well as real impacts on safety and well-being of passengers and crew. One potential avenue presented in the literature involves a redistribution of responsibility towards all agential entities within the cockpit system. We discuss the possible pitfalls to this approach, including the reinforcement of pilot skills erosion as well as technology’s own limitations in adaptively dealing with unexpected circumstances. We justify our position by showing how algorithmic technology’s representational frames mask or severely limit the pilots’ natural reflex to ‘practically cope’ and gain an ‘optimal grip’ with a given context/situation at hand. Here, we present the concept of relevant or meaningful control, which pilots, when allowed to develop their natural brain-body reflexes, gain across gradual mastery of the aircraft. Finally, we propose a socio-technical design approach in which pilots can re-appropriate full human meaningful control of the aircraft, thus allowing them to meet their attributed responsibilities. (shrink)

This paper sketches an account that explains the elusive subjective quality of 'enduring substantiality' of the phenomenal self. It integrates a recent predictive processing account of the self by Chris Letheby and Philip Gerrans with key ideas of Michael Graziano's attention schema theory of consciousness. Similarly to the attention schema theory, the present account posits an internal model of ongoing attentional processing that supports attentional control. In terms of predictive processing, it is a dynamic model of precision estimates that represents (...) the salience of features, objects, and internal and external processes. The apparent substantiality of the self is then explained by a structural feature of this salience model: it binds different dimensions of salience by representations of higher-order dimensions of salience. The result of this salience binding is a phenomenally transparent 'salience object', which is represented as a cause of widespread changes in precision estimates, and results in a form of epistemic self-control. Phenomenologically, this goes along with the experience of the self as an attentional agent, and in this way creates the origin of our consciously experienced first-person perspective: I attend, I am. (shrink)

If I lead a life of virtue, that may well be good for you. But will it also be good for me? The idea that it will—or even must—is an ancient one, and its appeal runs deep. For if this idea is correct then we can provide everyone with a good reason—arguably the best reason—for being virtuous. However, for all the effort which has been invested in defending the idea, by some of the best minds in the history of philosophy, (...) it remains unproven. Worse, in this skeptical age hardly anyone really believes it. I don't really believe it either, at least not in its strongest forms, but I think that the question is nonetheless worth examining. Even if we cannot show that virtue and self-interest coincide, we can at least measure the breadth of the gap between them. (shrink)

Offers a reading of philosopher David Hume regarding his views on practical reason. Arguments of Hume for his conception of practical reason; View of Hume on the influencing motives of the will; Approach of Hume on the standards of practical reasoning.

Haeckels theory of recapitulation shall be extended by the following rule: During the ontogenetical recapitulation of the phenotypical effects, the recapitulation of the phylogenetical natural selection factors according to the genotypical potentials is a condition of manifestation. The phylogenetical natural selectionfactor produces the activation of the gen as ontogenetical manifestation-stimulus. Factor of natural selection is the one of the extern or intern environment to which has happened the adaption in the phylogenesis. Concerning the intern environments the phenotypical effect of the (...) preliminary phase of development is not only the phylogenetical factor of natural selection according to the genotypical potential of the following phase of development, but also the ontogenetical stimulus of manifestation for the phenotypical effect of the following phase of development. Phenotypical effects can present themselves as stimulus-dependencial modifications, which are bound to the manifestation-stimulus and cease after its disappearence. They can also present themselves as stimulus-independencial lasting modifications, which become independent from the manifestation-stimulus and remain preserved after its ceasing, because the gen once activated by the stimulus reproduces itself in the state of being activated and is so transmitted during the multiplication of cells from cell to cell and during the multiplication of organisms from generation to generation. This view gives new chances for interpretating causal connections of the phylogenetical evolution and involution as well as new possibilities for an explanation of evolutionary mechanism of maturation and of involutionary mechanism of ageing in the ontogenesis and also the occuring appearences of acceleration and retardation.DieHaeckel'sche Rekapitulationstheorie wird durch die folgende Rekapitulationsregel erweitert: Bei der ontogenetischen Rekapitulation der erscheinungsbildlichen Leistungen ist die Rekapitulation der phylogenetischen Auslesefaktoren der entsprechenden erbildlichen Fähigkeiten Manifestationsbedingung. Der phylogenetische Auslesefaktor bewirkt als ontogenetischer Manifestationsreiz die Genaktivierung. Auslesefaktor ist derjenige Faktor der äusseren oder inneren Umwelt, an den in der Phylogenese die Anpassung erfolgt ist. Im Bereich der inneren Umwelt ist daher die erscheinungsbildliche Leistung der vorhergehenden Entwicklungsstufe sowohl der phylogenetische Auslesefaktor für die erbbildliche Fähigkeit der nachfolgenden Entwicklungsstufe als auch der ontogenetische Manifestationsreiz für die erscheinungsbildliche Leistung der nachfolgenden Entwicklungsstufe. Die erscheinungsbildlichen Leistungen können als reizabhängige Modifikation auftreten, die also vom Manifestationsreiz abhängig bleibt und nach seinem Aufhören auch wieder verschwindet, sie können aber auch als reizunabhängige Dauermodifikation auftreten, die also vom Manifestationsreiz unabhängig wird und nach seinem Aufhören erhalten bleibt, weil das durch den Reiz einmal aktivierte Gen sich im Status des Aktiviertseins bei der Zellvermehrung von Zelle zu Zelle und bei der Vermehrung der Organismen von Generation zu Generation fortpflanzt. Damit ergeben sich neue Möglichkeiten einer Deutung der Kausalzusammenhänge bei der phylogenetischen Evolution und Involution, sowie neue Ansätze einer Erklärung des Evolutionsmechanismus der Reifung und des Involutionsmechanismus des Alterns in der Ontogenese, sowie der dabei auftretenden Erscheinungen der Acceleration und der Retardation. (shrink)

Via a reading of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and a critical appraisal of Foucault’s break with historical materialism, W. Oliver Baker finds, at the limits of the new materialisms, space for a new post-humanist critical materialism that sees utopia not in post-human assemblages, but in the abolition of colonial and capitalist structures that condition those assemblages in the first place.

In a paper recently published in this quarterly I argued that modern quantum physics, as an integrated system of laws, supplements and completes in purely quantitative terms the fragmentary order of first-person experience, removing in a unique way ambiguities otherwise encountered at the level of common-sense things; and I contended that the choice of a different selective operator—purpose or value, let us say, rather than quantity—might entail an entirely different range and system of order. It is now my intention to (...) follow up this contention and to indicate at least in outline form some of the implications and possibilities of such a program; for it is possible that this undertaking may bring into new perspective some of the crucial problems which have vexed philosophers at all times when they have dealt with normative propositions and moral judgments. (shrink)

In our times of social eruptions not only the hierarchies of life but also those of coralled knowledge have become floating and therefore, papers presenting ideas of a certain generality must become accustomed to forsaking the habit of defining at the start the basic concepts. Renouncing a definition of the Webster type we will start with a very provisional definition of psychotherapy, hopeful that once more it might prove true that lifting one's eyes to the general will be more fruitful, (...) if it is preceded by a stage of intimate knowledge of the particulars. Moreover, it is hoped that from such at the same time intimate and “philosophical” knowledge of one particular field a wholesome criticism, nay enriching effect might arise. It is the problems of detail that in our times have definitely turned to philosophy and it is these same problems which philosophy should delve into in its own interest. (shrink)