Gideon Yaffe presents a ground-breaking work which demonstrates the importance of philosophy of action for the law. Many people are serving sentences not for completing crimes, but for trying to. Yaffe's clear account of what it is to try to do something promises to resolve the difficulties courts face in the adjudication of attempted crimes.

This paper explores Saidiya Hartman's undertheorized account of 'redress' in conversation with the extensive uptake of her work on Black fungibility, subjection, and critiques of emancipation. Although Hartman uses the term in nearly all of her writing, little work has been done to clarify how Hartman conceptualizes redress as a response to the constitution of Black lives as abstract, exchangeable, and disposable. This paper offers an account of how Hartman theorizes redress, showing how it both resists, and acts as a (...) mechanism for, the constitution of Blackness as fungible. Consequently, I argue that Hartman's readers fundamentally skew her thinking in divorcing redress from her other key concepts. (shrink)

The standard of care in the United States favors stabilizing any adult who arrives in an emergency department after a failed suicide attempt, even if he appears decisionally capacitated and refuses life‐sustaining treatment. I challenge this ubiquitous practice. Emergency clinicians generally have a moral obligation to err on the side of stabilizing even suicide attempters who refuse such interventions. This obligation reflects the fact that it is typically infeasible to determine these patients’ level of decisional capacitation—among other relevant information—in (...) this unique setting. Nevertheless, I argue, stabilizing suicide attempters over their objection sometimes violates a basic yet insufficiently appreciated right of theirs—the right against bodily invasion. In such cases, it is at least prima facie wrong to stabilize a patient who wants to die even if they lack a contrary advance directive or medical order and suffer from no terminal physical illness. (shrink)

It is argued that the main problem with "the problem of the direction of time" is to figure out what the problem is or is supposed to be. Towards this end, an attempt is made to disentangle and to classify some of the many issues which have been discussed under the label of 'the direction of time'. Secondly, some technical apparatus is introduced in the hope of producing a sharper formulation of the issues than they have received in the (...) philosophical literature. Finally, some tentative suggestions about the central issues are offered. In particular, it is suggested that entropy and irreversibility are much less crucial to the central issues than most philosophers would have us believe. This suggestion is not made because of any firm conviction of its correctness but rather because it helps to focus the discussion on some basic but long neglected assumptions which underlie traditional approaches. (shrink)

This book reflects the belief that a careful study of the Law of Attempts should be both interesting in itself, as well as being a productive route into a number of larger and deeper issues in criminal law theory and in the philosophy of action. By identifying the legal doctrines which courts and legislatures have developed or adopted, the author goes on to ask whether and how they can be rationalized or rendered persuasive. Such an approach involves paying detailed attention (...) to cases. The book is also unusual in that it grapples with English, Scots and US law, showing great breadth of research as well as philosophical sophistication. This is a work which is likely to become a seminal study and a major contribution to the study of law and legal philosophy. (shrink)

The essay draws on two case studies from the photographic archive of British social anthropologist Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard (1902-73) on a fieldwork expedition to Kenya and South Sudan in 1936. The case studies reveal how connections can be made within an archive to articulate new narratives around often well-known photographs. The case studies explore the relationship between two different practices of looking: that involved in the act of photography, and that of looking at archival photographs as historical sources. Whilst the (...) abundance of visual information in the archive reveals photography's endless potential for recodability, the essay argues that the photographic archive is also characterised by obscurity and limitation, and that the small dramas that are sometimes fleetingly glimpsed in the photographic hinterland will for the most part remain partial, unintelligible, and unarticulable by historians. Although there is a visual abundance in the photographic archive with which we might engage, what is shown to us is not abundantly clear. The essay argues that the important historical connections between the concepts of visibility and knowledge in a discipline such as anthropology often break down when the archive is recalcitrant, revealing its own limits as much as its bounty. (shrink)

Attempting art: an essay on intention-dependenceIt is a truism among philosophers that art is intention-dependent—that is to say, art-making is an activity that depends in some way on the maker's intentions. Not much thought has been given to just what this entails, however. For instance, most philosophers of art assume that intention-dependence entails concept-dependence—i.e. possessing a concept of art is necessary for art-making, so that what prospective artists must intend is to make art. And yet, a mounting body of anthropological (...) and art-historical evidence and philosophical argument suggests that not only is such a criterion unsatisfied by most of the art-historical canon, but it also rests on a false premise: concepts of 'art' are not shared between cultures, nor even in the same culture across time. My dissertation aims to rectify this error by first exploring what our commitment to art's intention-dependence actually entails, and then showing that, properly understood, intention-dependence sets a number of important constraints on theories of art with respect to explanatory desiderata such as the success- and failure-conditions of art-attempts, the cross-cultural identification of art, and the reference of 'art' and art-kind terms. I begin by situating art's intention-dependence in the philosophical literature on intentional action, arguing that, properly conceived, intention-dependence is a weak criterion which can be satisfied either directly or indirectly. It therefore does not necessarily entail concept-dependence. I then use this distinction to motivate a new treatment of the success- and failure-conditions for art-attempts, arguing that the extant model's emphasis on compliance with 'the manner intended' is far too restrictive to capture actual artistic practices. I go on to show that Ruth Millikan's model of linguistic conventions supplies an independently plausible explanation of art's concept-independent origins in terms of the development of a system of indirectly intention-dependent conventions called an 'artworld'. I argue that this account of artworld development supplies us with the tools we need to distinguish art-kinds from other artifactual kinds. Finally, I turn my attention to methodological issues, arguing that even though 'art' is a social kind with its roots in arbitrary and historically-contingent networks of conventions, the philosophy of art is not merely an exercise in bare conceptual analysis. In fact, there is now a great deal of evidence to show that the ways we think about 'art' are inconsistent, incomplete, imperialistic, and largely unprincipled. Yet I argue that this does not mean that the artworld data have no bearing on theories of art. Instead, I argue that our best reflective understanding of our artworld practices sets the constraints on the reference of 'art' and art-kind terms. I argue that we have no privileged epistemic access to the ontology of social kinds; our only privilege lies in our ability to determine the proper subject of our inquiries. (shrink)

Third in a cognitive science series, this peer-reviewed textbook critically surveys historical, current and futuristic attempts to expand the human mind. Areas covered include artificial intelligence, health and medicine, mystical experiences and spirituality, eugenics, brain-computer interfaces, Eastern versus Western psychological approaches and brain studies, virtual reality and implants. The book covers key philosophical, psychological and practical issues.

In most penal systems, success is punished more than failure. For example, murder is punished more severely than attempted murder. But success or failure is often determined by luck. It thus appears that punishment is allotted on the basis of arbitrary factors. The problem of criminal attempts is the question of how to best resolve this apparent tension. One particularly sophisticated attempt at resolution, first developed by David Lewis, holds that such differential punishment is not unjust when understood as (...) a natural penal lottery. What is most interesting about this view is that it does not appear to involve a commitment to resultant moral luck. I argue that the natural penal lottery fails to deliver justice. Upon analysis, it carries the same implication that it sought to avoid—namely, a commitment to resultant moral luck. I then argue that there can be, in principle, no penal lottery that delivers justice, natural or otherwise. (shrink)

Transcript of papers presented in a seminar and meetings.

Couples should not be allowed to select either for or against deafnessRecently, a US couple deliberately attempted to ensure the birth of a deaf child via artificial insemination.1 In opposing this action, I wish to focus on one argument they employ to support it, namely that in trying to have a deaf child, the women see themselves as no different from parents trying to have a girl. Girls can be discriminated against the same as deaf people and “black people have (...) harder lives”, one of them argues. They compare themselves to a minority group.2In using this argument to justify their attempt to secure the birth of a deaf child, they make four claims: It is not wrong to deliberately try to have a child who is expected to experience harm when the harms the child will experience are socially imposed. As a group experiencing socially imposed harms, the deaf are to be understood as a minority group. Women and people of colour also experience social harms, and are to be understood as minority groups. Because the deaf, women, and people of colour are all groups experiencing socially imposed harms, distinctions should not be made between attempts to have a child who will be a member of one of these groups.In reply, I will advance two arguments. First, I will argue that this couple’s decision is inherently just. Here I will acknowledge that this couple’s position draws a great deal of strength from its appeal to the experiences of women. My second argument will contend, however, that despite the reasonableness of this choice, the intentional selection of deaf children is indefensible. Granting this couple’s contestable assertion that the deaf ought to be understood as a minority cultural group, allowing individuals to secure the birth of deaf …. (shrink)

It’s generally assumed that, if an agent x acts by ϕ-ing, then there occurs an event which is x’s ϕ-ing. But what about when an agent tries to do something? Are there such things as attempts? The standard answer is ‘Yes’. But in a series of articles, and now a book, David-Hillel Ruben has argued that the answer is ‘No’: what happens when x tries to ϕ isn’t that an attempt occurs; rather, what happens is simply that a certain (...) subjunctive conditional fact obtains; x tries to ϕ just in case, had all the necessary conditions for success obtained, x would have intentionally ϕ-ed. I defend the existence of attempts. Following Ruben, I frame the issue in terms of the logical form of trying sentences. Against Ruben’s view that such sentences express subjunctive conditionals, I argue that they express existential quantifications over attempts qua events. Thus, trying sentences are true only if attempts qua events exist. (shrink)

This paper reports some attempts undertaken in Poland in the 1930s to modernize Thomism by means of modern logic. In particular, it concerns J.M. Bocheski and J. Salamucha, the leading members of the CracowCircle. They attempted to give precise logical form to the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. Other works concerned the concept of transcendentals, the levels of abstraction, and the concept of essence.

This paper reports some attempts undertaken in Poland in the 1930s to modernize Thomism by means of modern logic. In particular, it concerns J.M. Bocheński and J. Salamucha, the leading members of the CracowCircle. They attempted to give precise logical form to the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. Other works concerned the concept of transcendentals, the levels of abstraction, and the concept of essence.

Drawing on data from 100 qualitative interviews with the recently unemployed, this study examines how participants made decisions about attempting to return to work and identifies how class and gender shape these decisions. Middle-class men were most likely to take time to attempt to return to work, middle-class women were most likely to begin a deliberate job search, working-class men were most likely to report an urgent search, and working-class women were most likely to have diverted searches. Financial resources, (...) gendered labor force attachments, and family responsibilities shaped decision making. Ultimately, those in the middle-class appear doubly advantaged—both in their financial capabilities and in their ability to respond to the crisis with greater gender flexibility. (shrink)

The Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation was the first published work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the founder of the German idealist movement in philosophy. It predated the system of philosophy which Fichte developed during his years in Jena, and for that reason - and possibly also because of its religious orientation - later commentators have tended to overlook the work in their treatments of Fichte's philosophy. It is, however, already representative of the most interesting aspects of Fichte's (...) thought. It displays an affinity with his later moral psychology, introduces Fichte's distinctively 'second-person' conception of moral requirements, and employs the 'synthetic method' which is crucial to the transcendental systems Fichte developed during his Jena period. This volume offers a clear and accessible translation of the work by Garrett Green, while an introduction by Allen Wood sets the work in its historical and philosophical contexts. (shrink)

Courts and commentators have struggled for years to identify rules to explain and justify certain widely-shared intuitions about impossibility attempts, and they have proposed rules variously based upon (1) what mistakes actors make, (2) what intentions actors possess, and (3) what conduct actors perform. None of the proposals fully succeeds, however, and none is able to explain the widely-shared intuition, which underlies Sandy Kadish's inventive hypothetical regarding Mr. Law and Mr. Fact, that some attempts based upon mistakes of law are (...) just as blameworthy as attempts based upon mistakes of fact. I propose an alternative rule that, I believe, not only explains where and why people possess widely-shared intuitions regarding impossibility attempts (including regarding Mr. Law and Mr. Fact), but also explains where and why people have conflicting intuitions. I argue that widely-shared intuitions of blameworthiness and non-blameworthiness regarding impossibility attempts are a function, respectively, of whether informed citizens of the jurisdiction that enacted the statutory offense that the defendant allegedly attempted to commit widely believe or disbelieve that he would have been a threat to interests that the statute seeks to protect - a determination, in turn, that is a function of whether they widely believe or disbelieve that he would have committed the offense under counterfactual circumstances that they fear could have obtained. (shrink)

This chapter attempts to analyse the shift in the Adriatic policy of the Ottoman Empire in the Napoleonic period. The focus is on the formation of the Republic of the Seven United Islands — the Ionian islands of Corfu, Paxos, Leucada, Cephalonia, Ithaca, Zante and Cythera — through active Ottoman and Russian intervention. Ottoman-Russian quarrels over the status of the Republic as well as the conflict between imperial realities versus local interests are integral to the understanding of the delicacies of (...) running the Adriatic frontier in the Napoleonic period. When the Russo-Ottoman alliance shattered and the Ionian Islands were abandoned to the French together with the four coastal towns, the Ottomans once again resorted to the good old policy of cautious diplomacy; that is to say, the provisioning of the occupying force in Corfu. (shrink)

Lateral gene transfer, the exchange of genetic information between lineages, not only makes construction of a universal Tree of Life difficult to achieve, but calls into question the utility and meaning of any result. Here I review the science of prokaryotic LGT, the philosophy of the TOL as it figured in Darwin’s formulation of the Theory of Evolution, and the politics of the current debate within the discipline over how threats to the TOL should be represented outside it. We could (...) encourage a more realistic and supportive public understanding of evolution by admitting that what we believe in is not a unified meta-theory but a versatile and well-stocked explanatory toolkit. (shrink)

Deviant causal chain problems arise in many settings. The most famous instance of the problem is the Gettier problem, but the problem also arises in the philosophy of action and perception. Usually, attempts to tackle these problems try to solve them individually. This paper takes a different approach: I propose a general solution to the problem. I begin by providing a solution to the deviant causal chain problem for skillful performance, and I argue that the solution can be extended to (...) solve the Gettier problem and the deviant causal chain problems for perception and intentional action. As I develop my solution to these problems, I also compare it with other solutions to bring out the advantages of my approach. I then explain why the solution generalizes: my solution provides us with an analysis of disposition manifestation, which is the key to ruling out deviance. I conclude by considering objections and giving my replies. (shrink)

Anti-racist education within the Academy holds the potential to truly reflect the cultural hybridity of our diverse, multi-cultural society through the canons of knowledge that educators celebrate, proffer and embody. The centrality of Whiteness as an instrument of power and privilege ensures that particular types of knowledge continue to remain omitted from our curriculums. The monopoly and proliferation of dominant White European canons does comprise much of our existing curriculum; consequently, this does impact on aspects of engagement, inclusivity and belonging (...) particularly for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) learners. This paper explores the impact of a dominant Eurocentric curriculum and the Decolonising the Curriculum agenda within higher education and its influence upon navigating factors such as BAME attainment, engagement and belonging within the Academy. This paper draws on a Critical Race Theory (CRT) theoretical framework to centralize the marginalized voices of fifteen BAME students and three academics of colour regarding this phenomena. Aspects examined consider the impact of a narrow and restrictive curriculum on BAME students and staff and how the omission of diverse histories and multi-cultural knowledge canons facilitates marginalization and discriminatory cultures. (shrink)

The notion of aesthetic experience attempts to account for an important part of human experience and, although it embraces an immense and multifaceted variety, the complexity and vagueness of which have been an authentic challenge to its definition (to the point that some suggest its conceptual uselessness), it is still crucial and decisive for an entire philosophical discipline: aesthetics-which is not to be confused with the philosophy of art, although it often intersects with it. This chapter considers the case of (...) the city-which is not so much an object as a multifaceted and fragmented environment where aesthetic experiences can occur-in order to attempt to elucidate (or at least to make a contribution to the elucidation of) the meaning and scope of this philosophical topic. (shrink)

I consider a problem for Kant’s transcendental idealism if one construes it as a claim that human beings know from a particular, human perspective. Namely: ordinarily, when we speak someone seeing from a perspective, we understand other people to have other perspectives, and think that people can change their perspectives by moving away from them, to a different one. So one may recognize that one’s own perspective is a perspective: by comparing to others, by seeing a former perspective from a (...) new vantage point. But Kant denies such plurality and variability for his human cognitive perspective. Thus one may worry that Kant’s view is incoherent: Kant claims that we can know only from one perspective, yet, in order to recognize that perspective as such, he himself must stand "outside" of it. I consider a potential Kantian response to this charge, by way of interpreting the Dialectic of the first Critique. When one attempts to know things that lie beyond experience, one attempts to exit the human perspective; in the Dialectic, Kant argues that in doing so, one falls into contradictions and empty thinking. These failed attempts, I suggest, allow human knowers (and Kant describing them) to recognize the human perspective as such – by taking up a different vantage point, as it were – but also, as failures, do not constitute a true alternative to the universally shared, necessary human cognitive perpsective. So, I propose, can one interpret Kant’s claim in the B Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason that the Dialectic is a confirming result – a “splendid touchstone” -- in an a priori experiment: it is an experimental, failed attempt to exit the human perspective. (shrink)

The Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation was the first published work of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the founder of the German idealist movement in philosophy. It predated the system of philosophy which Fichte developed during his years in Jena, and for that reason - and possibly also because of its religious orientation - later commentators have tended to overlook the work in their treatments of Fichte's philosophy. It is, however, already representative of the most interesting aspects of Fichte's (...) thought. It displays an affinity with his later moral psychology, introduces Fichte's distinctively 'second-person' conception of moral requirements, and employs the 'synthetic method' which is crucial to the transcendental systems Fichte developed during his Jena period. This volume offers a clear and accessible translation of the work by Garrett Green, while an introduction by Allen Wood sets the work in its historical and philosophical contexts. (shrink)

Whether attempts should be punished as severely as the completed crime poses fundamental problems concerning the proper goals of the criminal law and the philosophy of punishment. An answer to this question would require an assessment of the significance of the fact that harm occurs as a result of conduct. Does the occurrence of harm give us any reason for distinguishing between completed offenses and attempts? Contemporary theory is almost united in the view that the occurrence of harm does not (...) mark a moral distinction. Yet, there does seem to be a common intuition that a person is somehow more blameworthy if his conduct results in harm than if it does not. This distinction in gravity between attempts and the completed crime is also recognized in the law; most United States’ jurisdictions provide a lesser punishment for attempts. (shrink)

Most empirical studies of corporate social responsibility (CSR) focus on variables at the company level. In this article, I focus on the sector level: I consider features of the international clothing business and of the global economy in general, that may influence the CSR potential. There is high ‘CSR potential’ when sector-specific features indicate that the risk of violating CSR standards is high. Thus, ‘high CSR potential’ indicates that there is a potential for positive influence through CSR-related actions. Based on (...) several empirical studies of the clothing business, I identify six features that indicate a high CSR potential. These features are shown to be consistent with more general features of the global economy. This holds whether we emphasize asymmetric relations and unequal distribution, the product cycle, or transnationalization. Thus, the CSR potential of the international clothing business seems not only to be a product of sector-specific properties, but also of more systemic and general features of the global economy. This suggests that the CSR performance of individual companies may enhance their social and environmental impact, but will probably have little effect on the features that determine the CSR potential. In order to affect these features I argue, we rely on other institutions to act – mainly governments. Finally, I conclude that this study shows that it is useful to identify the CSR potential of a business sector. We get a picture of which part of the international CSR standards companies run the greatest risk of violating and of which structural issues intergovernmental actions should address to reduce the potential for violating CSR standards. (shrink)

Criminal attempts, it is often said, are crimes of intention. While many complete crimes can be committed recklessly, criminal attempts require “purposive conduct”; in attempts “the intent is the essence of the crime.” But what kind of intention is required; what must be intended, or purposed, by someone who is to be guilty of a criminal attempt?

Criminal attempts, it is often said, are crimes of intention. While many complete crimes can be committed recklessly, criminal attempts require “purposive conduct”; in attempts “the intent is the essence of the crime.” But what kind of intention is required; what must be intended, or purposed, by someone who is to be guilty of a criminal attempt?

Contemporary philosophers have overall studied intentional actions that agents attempt to perform in the world. However, logicians of action have tended to neglect the intentionality proper to human action. I will present here the basic principles and laws of a logic of action where intentional actions are primary as in contemporary philosophy of action. In my view, any action that an agent performs unintentionally could in principle have been attempted. Moreover any unintentional action of an agent is an effect (...) of intentional actions of that agent. So my logic of action contains a theory of attempts. As Belnap pointed out, action, branching time and historic modalities are logically related. There is the liberty of voluntary action. I will then work out a logic of action that is compatible with indeterminism. In classical philosophical logic, propositions with the same truth-conditions are identified. However it is clear that strictly equivalent propositions are not the contents of the same attitudes of human agents. For that reason I will first present a non-classical propositional logic capable of distinguishing the contents of intentional actions which are different. Next I will enrich earlier logics of action so as to characterize adequately intentional actions, attempts and purposes of agents and the different kinds of generation of action. I will state the basic laws of agentive commitment and action generation. (shrink)