Dennis Thompson and Lawrence Lessig are leading thinkers in the realm of institutional corruption, the notion that inappropriate dependencies and conflicts of interest undercut the ethical foundations of institutions on which society relies. Both are particularly known for their work on institutional corruption as it affects government and politics. This essay examines the applicability of their writing to the private sector, particularly as it relates to vital and influential industries like pharmaceuticals.

In 1995, Dennis Thompson, the founding director of Harvard’s program in Ethics and the Professions, authored a book entitled Ethics in Congress. That subject, in and of itself, seemingly was not new. And it undoubtedly inspired a few irreverent snickers. Consider that a Goggle search of “Ethics in Congress oxymoron” recently produced 5.79 million results in just over a tenth of a second.But it was the subtitle of the book — From Individual to Institutional Corruption — that revealed how Thompson’s (...) tome signaled an abrupt departure from the standard paradigms for measuring political corruption. (shrink)

The ontology of Local Quantum Physics, Rudolf Haag’s framework for relativistic quantum theory, is reviewed and discussed. It is one of spatiotemporally localized events and unlocalized causal intermediaries, including the elementary particles, which come progressively into existence in accordance with a fundamental arrow of time. Haag’s conception of quantum theory is distinguished from others in which events are also central, especially those of Niels Bohr and John Wheeler, with which it has been compared.

The elementary particles of relativistic quantum field theory are not simple field quanta, as has long been assumed. Rather, they supplement quantum fields, on which they depend but to which they are not reducible, as shown here with particles defined instead as a unified collection of properties that appear in both physical symmetry group representations and field propagators. This notion of particle provides consistency between the practice of particle physics and its basis in quantum field theory.

Human genetic enhancement, examined from the standpoint of the new field of political bioethics, displaces the age-old question of truth: What is human nature? This book displaces that question with another: What kind of human nature should humans want to create for themselves? To answer that question, this book answers two others: What constraints should limit the applications of rapidly developing biotechnologies? What could possibly form the basis for corresponding public policy in a democratic society? Benjamin Gregg focuses on (...) the distinctly political dimensions of human nature, where politics refers to competition among competing values on which to base public policy, legislation, and political culture. This book offers citizens of democratic communities a broad perspective on how they together might best approach urgent questions of how to deal with the socially and morally challenging potential for human genetic engineering. (shrink)

The operation of fundamental forces in quantum field theory is explicated here as the exchange of particles, consistently with the standard methodology of particle physics. The particles involved are seen to bear little relation to any classical particle but, rather, comprise unified collections of compresent, conserved quantities indicated by propagators. The exchange particles, which supervene upon quantum fields, are neither more fundamental than fields nor replace them as has often previously been assumed in models of exchange forces. It (...) is argued that this explication of quantum field-theoretic exchange forces definitively improves upon its predecessors. (shrink)

The well-definedness of particles of any kind depends on the limits, approximations, or other conditions that may or may not be involved, for example, whether there are interactions and whether ostensibly related energy is localizable. In particular, their theoretical status differs between its non-relativistic and relativistic versions: One can properly define interacting elementary particles in single-system non-relativistic quantum mechanics, at least in the case of non-zero mass systems; by contrast, one is severely challenged to define even these properly in the (...) relativistic quantum field theories that now underlie the study of particle physics. Here, the impact of localizability on this status is reviewed in relation to the work of Paul Busch on positive operator valued measures that significantly probes the relevance of quantum unsharpness to it. (shrink)

In the standard mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, measurement is an additional, exceptional fundamental process rather than an often complex, but ordinary process which happens also to serve a particular epistemic function: during a measurement of one of its properties which is not already determined by a preceding measurement, a measured system, even if closed, is taken to change its state discontinuously rather than continuously as is usual. Many, including Bell, have been concerned about the fundamental role thus given to (...) measurement in the foundation of the theory. Others, including the early Bohr and Schwinger, have suggested that quantum mechanics naturally incorporates the unavoidable uncontrollable disturbance of physical state that accompanies any local measurement without the need for an exceptional fundamental process or a special measurement theory. Disturbance is unanalyzable for Bohr, but for Schwinger it is due to physical interactions’ being borne by fundamental particles having discrete properties and behavior which is beyond physical control. Here, Schwinger’s approach is distinguished from more well known treatments of measurement, with the conclusion that, unlike most, it does not suffer under Bell’s critique of quantum measurement. Finally, Schwinger’s critique of measurement theory is explicated as a call for a deeper investigation of measurement processes that requires the use of a theory of quantum fields. (shrink)

Derk Pereboom’s Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life provides the most lively and comprehensive defense of free will skepticism in the literature. It contains a reworked and expanded version of the view he first developed in Living without Free Will. Important objections to the early book are answered, some slight modifications are introduced, and the overall account is significantly embellished—for example, Pereboom proposes a new account of rational deliberation consistent with the belief that one’s actions are causally determined and (...) develops a forward-looking theory of moral responsibility con- sistent with free will skepticism. A significant contribution to the field, Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life is destined to become a classic and is essential reading for anyone interested in free will and moral responsibility. (shrink)

An extremum principle was postulated by Horne, Finkelstein, Shull, Zeilinger, and Bernstein in order to derive the physically allowable parameters for sinusoidal standing waves governing a neutron in a crystal which is immersed in a strong external magnetic field: “the expectation value of the total potential 〈V〉 is an extremum.” We show that this extremum principle can be obtained from the variational principle used by Schrodinger to derive his nonrelativistic wave equation. We rederive the solutions found by the above-mentioned authors (...) as well as some additional solutions. (shrink)

This paper challenges the presumed triumph of laboratory life in the history of twentieth-century biomedical research through an exploration of the relationships between laboratory, clinic, and field in the regional understanding and treatment of allergy in America. In the early establishment of allergy clinics, many physicians opted to work closely with botanists knowledgeable about the local flora in the region to develop pollen extracts in desensitization treatments, rather than rely upon pharmaceutical companies that had adopted a principle of standardized vaccines (...) beholden to bacteriology that gave no thought to the particularities of place where their products were to be sold. Natural historical sciences like plant ecology and systematics furnished important knowledge, resources, and practices in establishing a medical marketplace for allergy in America. And botanists similarly profited from biomedicine and allergic bodies in extending their network of knowledge about the plant world. (shrink)

Hope is necessary for kinesiology. Hope is profoundly human, because it is a fact of our nature. Human life is organic. We hope because we are by nature oriented to the future. Motion, growth, development and temporality are at the core of our lives. The great Thomistic philosopher Josef Pieper puts it this way: ‘man finds himself, even until the moment of death, in the status viatoris, in the state of being on the way’. Hope, therefore, is a longing for (...) and expectation of fulfillment. An anticipation that the good will triumph in the end. What implications does this have for kinesiology? As I have often said before, kinesiology is a human discipline. The nature of man cannot help but impact our field. More pertinent for our present purposes however is this; the future of kinesiology is not about organization or rational planning. Nor, at the end of the day, is it merely about promoting health, or physical activity, or even play. Decontextualized from a larger vision of nature, purpose and end of human life, even play becomes mere therapy. Such an isolated vision of the future of kinesiology is emaciated. It is born of hopelessness. That is, either the presumption that ‘health’ is all we need, or the despair that ‘health’ is all there is. (shrink)

Derk Perebooms Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life (2014) provides the most lively and comprehensive defense of free will skepticism in the literature. It contains a reworked and expanded version of the view he first developed in Living without Free Will (2001). Important objections to the early book are answered, some slight modifications are introduced, and the overall account is significantly embellished—for example, Pereboom proposes a new account of rational deliberation consistent with the belief that one’s actions are causally (...) determined (ch.5) and develops a forward-looking theory of moral responsibility consistent with free will skepticism (ch.6). A significant contribution to the field, Free Will, Agency, and Meaning in Life is destined to become a classic and is essential reading for anyone interested in free will and moral responsibility. (shrink)

Fiona Nicoll and Melissa Gregg met on the job at a new university having both moved from Sydney to Brisbane to take up their appointments. Here they share reflections on teaching a cultural theory course that they inherited from a prominent Australian Professor of Cultural Studies, offering the perspectives of two consecutive generations of cultural studies theorists now teaching in the field since the early 1990s. This situation gives rise to new interpretations regarding the value and uses of theory (...) in the classroom. Noting the subtle differences involved in teaching the same theoretical material in different cities, the ironies of teaching radical cultural theory in a conservative institutional environment, and the specific opportunities and challenges of teaching cultural studies theory as opposed to others, the article considers some of the silences teachers must also contend with in their classroom practice, drawing on and expanding the terrain established by Thorkelson's thesis. (shrink)

Despite theorisation and consistent Pracademic (academics who are also practitioners) contributions to the concepts of truth-telling and decolonising epistemologies in the fields of activist research, there remains ongoing need for articulating the everyday praxis and positionality of empirical work. This paper considers the practice of two intercultural Australian-based practitioners’ examination of the ethical practices towards decolonising praxis as a contributor to third-space youth development which considers the space between participants. First Nations terminology is drawn on to explore the empirical (...) nature of third space theory (Bhabha) acknowledging the social construct of hybrid identities within individuals and communities’ personhood. Through exploring Indigenous inquiry as a contributor to third-space youth development, this paper argues that co-creation of knowledge amongst young people and practitioners considers a third space which can allow for deeper understandings of intercultural work and power dynamics. This article provides the opportunity to further explore a critical analysis of the challenges and possibilities of practitioners/pracademics working towards a decolonising journey which has implications for the ethics of youth work practice globally. (shrink)

In December 1927, Alan Gregg,Associate Director of the RockefellerFoundation's Division of Medical Education, setoff from Paris on an exploratory mission toRussia. After a seventeen-day visit, Greggreturned firmly committed to improvingrelations. What did Gregg `see' in the field?Using the briefing book prepared for Gregg, histravel diaries, and his final report, thispaper analyses the social and cognitivedynamics of what became an exercise inFoundation bridge-building.

What place does consciousness have in the natural world? If we reject materialism, could there be a credible alternative? In one classic example, philosophers ask whether we can ever know what is it is like for bats to sense the world using sonar. It seems obvious to many that any amount of information about a bat's physical structure and information processing leaves us guessing about the central questions concerning the character of its experience. A Place for Consciousness begins with reflections (...) on the existence of this gap. Is it just a psychological shortcoming in our merely human understanding of the physical world? Is it a trivial consequence of the simple fact that we just cannot be bats? Or does it mean there really are facts about consciousness over and above the physical facts? If so, what does consciousness do? Why does it exist? Rosenberg sorts out these problems, especially those centering on the causal role of consciousness. He introduces a new paradigm called Liberal Naturalism for thinking about what causation is, about the natural world, and about how to create a detailed model to go along with the new paradigm. Arguing that experience is part of the categorical foundations of causality, he shows that within this new paradigm there is a place for something essentially like consciousness in all its traditional mysterious respects. A striking feature of Liberal Naturalism is that its central tenets are motivated independently of the mind-body problem, by analyzing causation itself. Because of this approach, when consciousness shows up in the picture it is not introduced in an ad hoc way, and its most puzzling features can be explained from first principles. Ultimately, Rosenberg's final solution gives consciousness a causally important role without supposing either that it is physical or that it interacts with the physical. (shrink)

Neurolaw is an area of interdisciplinary research on the meaning and implications of neuroscience for the law and legal practices. This Element addresses the potential contributions of neuroscience, and the brain sciences more generally, to criminal justice decision-making and policy. It distinguishes between three different areas and domains of investigation in neurolaw: assessment, intervention, and revision. The first concerns brain-based assessments, which may be used for predicting future violence, lie detection, judging legal insanity, and the like. The second concerns potential (...) treatments and other interventions that aim at rehabilitating criminals and/or preventing crime before it occurs. The third investigates the ways that neuroscience may impact the law by changing or revising commonsense views about human nature and the causes of human action. (shrink)

One of the most frequently voiced criticisms of free will skepticism is that it is unable to adequately deal with criminal behavior and that the responses it would permit as justified are insufficient for acceptable social policy. This concern is fueled by two factors. The first is that one of the most prominent justifications for punishing criminals, retributivism, is incompatible with free will skepticism. The second concern is that alternative justifications that are not ruled out by the skeptical view per (...) se face significant independent moral objections. Yet despite these concerns, I maintain that free will skepticism leaves intact other ways to respond to criminal behavior—in particular preventive detention, rehabilitation, and alteration of relevant social conditions—and that these methods are both morally justifiable and sufficient for good social policy. The position I defend is similar to Derk Pereboom’s, taking as its starting point his quarantine analogy, but it sets out to develop the quarantine model within a broader justificatory framework drawn from public health ethics. The resulting model—which I call the public health -quarantine model—provides a framework for justifying quarantine and criminal sanctions that is more humane than retributivism and preferable to other non-retributive alternatives. It also provides a broader approach to criminal behavior than Pereboom’s quarantine analogy does on its own. (shrink)

In The Stubborn System of Moral Responsibility (2015), Bruce Waller sets out to explain why the belief in individual moral responsibility is so strong. He begins by pointing out that there is a strange disconnect between the strength of philosophical arguments in support of moral responsibility and the strength of philosophical belief in moral responsibility. While the many arguments in favor of moral responsibility are inventive, subtle, and fascinating, Waller points out that even the most ardent supporters of moral responsibility (...) acknowledge that the arguments in its favor are far from conclusive; and some of the least confident concerning the arguments for moral responsibility—such as Van Inwagen—are most confident of the truth of moral responsibility. Thus, argues Waller, whatever the verdict on the strength of philosophical arguments for moral responsibility, it is clear that belief in moral responsibility—whether among philosophers or the folk—is based on something other than philosophical reasons. -/- He goes on to argue that there are several sources for the strong belief in moral responsibility, but the following four are particularly influential: First, moral responsibility is based in a powerful “strike back” emotion that we share with other animals. Second, there is a deep-rooted “belief in a just world”—a belief that, according to Waller, most philosophers reject when they consciously consider it, but which has a deep nonconscious influence on what we regard as just treatment and which provides subtle (but mistaken) support for belief in moral responsibility. Third, there is a pervasive moral responsibility system—extending over criminal justice as well as “common sense”—that makes the truth of moral responsibility seem obvious, and makes challenges to moral responsibility seem incoherent. Finally, there is the enormous confidence we have in the power of reason, which mistakenly leads us to believe that our conscious, rational, and critically reflective selves are constantly guiding our behavior in accordance with our deep values. -/- In these comments, I would like to discuss the many points of agreement I have with Waller, providing along the way additional fuel for his skeptical fire (i.e., his moral responsibility skepticism and his skeptical analysis of the source of our strong belief in moral responsibility). I will also discuss, however, my one main point of disagreement—i.e., his desire to preserve the conception of free will. Waller believes free will can “flourish” in the absence of moral responsibility (see Ch.8), while I maintain they that the variety of free will that is of central philosophical and practical importance is the sort required for moral responsibility in a particular but pervasive sense. This sense of moral responsibility is set apart by the notion of basic desert and is purely backward-looking and non-consequentialist (see Pereboom 2001, 2014; Caruso and Morris, forthcoming). Understood this way, the sort of free will at issue in the historical debate is a kind of power or ability an agent must possess in order to justify certain kinds of desert-based judgments, attitudes, or treatments in response to decisions or actions that the agent performed or failed to perform. (shrink)

Much of the recent philosophical discussion about free will has been focused on whether compatibilists can adequately defend how a determined agent could exercise the type of free will that would enable the agent to be morally responsible in what has been called the basic desert sense :5–24, 1994; Fischer in Four views on free will, Wiley, Hoboken, 2007; Vargas in Four views on free will, Wiley, Hoboken, 2007; Vargas in Philos Stud, 144:45–62, 2009). While we agree with Derk Pereboom (...) and others that the compatibilist’s burden should be properly understood as providing a compelling account of how a determined agent could be morally responsible in the basic desert sense, the exact nature of this burden has been rendered somewhat unclear by the fact that there has been no definitive account given as to what the basic desert sense of moral responsibility amounts to. In Sect. 1 we set out to clarify the compatibilist’s burden by presenting our account of basic desert moral responsibility—which we call retributivist desert moral responsibility for purposes of clarity—and explain why it is of central philosophical and practical importance to the free will debate. In Sect. 2 we employ a thought experiment to illustrate the kind of difficulty that compatibilists of any stripe are likely to encounter in attempting to explain how determined agents can exercise the kind of free will needed for retributivist desert moral responsibility. (shrink)

The Meaning Circuit Hypothesis (MCH) is a synthesis of ideas providing John Wheeler’s outline of ultimate physics, which he fine-tuned over several decades from the 1970s onward. It is a ‘working hypothesis’ in which ‘existence is a ‘meaning circuit”’ that portrays the world as a “system self-synthesized by quantum networking.” It was strongly advocated by him for roughly two decades and since then has had an increasingly strong impact on the approach of many investigators of quantum theory; in particular, elements (...) such as the quantum participator and ‘it from bit’ are now considered by others as candidate components of a foundation for quantum theory in which information is involved essentially. Therefore, it is worthy of review and critique. (shrink)

Within the United States, the most prominent justification for criminal punishment is retributivism. This retributivist justification for punishment maintains that punishment of a wrongdoer is justified for the reason that she deserves something bad to happen to her just because she has knowingly done wrong—this could include pain, deprivation, or death. For the retributivist, it is the basic desert attached to the criminal’s immoral action alone that provides the justification for punishment. This means that the retributivist position is not reducible (...) to consequentialist considerations nor in justifying punishment does it appeal to wider goods such as the safety of society or the moral improvement of those being punished. A number of sentencing guidelines in the U.S. have adopted desert as their distributive principle, and it is increasingly given deference in the “purposes” section of state criminal codes, where it can be the guiding principle in the interpretation and application of the code’s provisions. Indeed, the American Law Institute recently revised the Model Penal Code so as to set desert as the official dominate principle for sentencing. And courts have identified desert as the guiding principle in a variety of contexts, as with the Supreme Court’s enthroning retributivism as the “primary justification for the death penalty.” While retributivism provides one of the main sources of justification for punishment within the criminal justice system, there are good philosophical and practical reasons for rejecting it. One such reason is that it is unclear that agents truly deserve to suffer for the wrongs they have done in the sense required by retributivism. In the first section, I explore the retributivist justification of punishment and explain why it is inconsistent with free will skepticism. In the second section, I then argue that even if one is not convinced by the arguments for free will skepticism, there remains a strong epistemic argument against causing harm on retributivist grounds that undermines both libertarian and compatibilist attempts to justify it. I maintain that this argument provides sufficient reason for rejecting the retributive justification of criminal punishment. I conclude in the third section by briefly sketching my public health-quarantine model, a non-retributive alternative for addressing criminal behavior that draws on the public health framework and prioritizes prevention and social justice. I argue that the model is not only consistent with free will skepticism and the epistemic argument against retributivism, it also provides the most justified, humane, and effective way of dealing with criminal behavior. (shrink)

Alternative dispute resolution occurs outside the litigation process. The alternative dispute resolution (ADR) movement in North America has emphasized viable alternatives to the litigation framework, such as arbitration, mediation, med-arb, multi-party facilitation, non-legal negotiation, mini-trials, administrative hearings, private judging (“renta-judge”), fact finding, and moderated settlement conferences. This essay addresses argument in the dominant alternatives: arbitration, mediation, and multi-party facilitation. Prior to comparing argument in these ADR systems, each will be briefly described.

Within the criminal justice system, one of the most prominent justifications for legal punishment is retributivism. The retributive justification of legal punishment maintains that wrongdoers are morally responsible for their actions and deserve to be punished in proportion to their wrongdoing. This book argues against retributivism and develops a viable alternative that is both ethically defensible and practical. Introducing six distinct reasons for rejecting retributivism, Gregg D. Caruso contends that it is unclear that agents possess the kind of free (...) will and moral responsibility needed to justify this view of punishment. While a number of alternatives to retributivism exist - including consequentialist deterrence, educational, and communicative theories - they have ethical problems of their own. Moving beyond existing theories, Caruso presents a new non-retributive approach called the public health-quarantine model. In stark contrast to retributivism, the public health-quarantine model provides a more human, holistic, and effective approach to dealing with criminal behavior. (shrink)

This article begins the task of assessing polygamy as a moral ideal. The structure of traditional polygamy, in which only one central spouse may marry multiple partners, necessarily yields two inequalities. The central spouse has greater rights and expectations within each marriage and greater control over the wider family. However, two alternative structures for polygamy can remove these inequalities. In polyfidelity, each spouse marries every other spouse in the family. In “molecular” polygamy, any spouses may marry a new spouse outside (...) the family. These new models of polygamy face additional difficulties, but they can be egalitarian in principle. (shrink)

The current essay introduces the guidance theory of representation, according to which the content and intentionality of representations can be accounted for in terms of the way they provide guidance for action. The guidance theory offers a way of fixing representational content that gives the causal and evolutionary history of the subject only an indirect role, and an account of representational error, based on failure of action, that does not rely on any such notions as proper functions, ideal conditions, or (...) normal circumstances. Moreover, because the notion of error is defined in terms of failure of action, the guidance theory meets the “meta-epistemological requirement” that representational error should be potentially detectable by the representing system itself. In this essay, we offer a brief account of the biological origins of representation, a formal characterization of the guidance theory, some examples of its use, and show how the guidance theory handles some traditional problem cases for representation: the representation of fictional and abstract entities. Being both representational and actiongrounded, the guidance theory may provide some common ground between embodied and cognitivist approaches to the study of the mind. (shrink)

In Helen Bannerman’s Little Black Sambo, the text describes its main character as witty, brave, and resourceful. The drawings of the story’s main character which accompany this text, however, present a unique kind of harm that only becomes clear when the work is read as a collection of single-panel comics rather than an illustrated book. In this chapter, I show what happens when we read drawings in books as textless comics, and, based on how things turn out from this reading, (...) motivate why we have some substantive reason to read both Little Black Sambo and other books with drawings-as-comics. (shrink)

This book argues two main things: The first is that there is no such thing as free will—at least not in the sense most ordinary folk take to be central or fundamental; the second is that the strong and pervasive belief in free will can be accounted for through a careful analysis of our phenomenology and a proper theoretical understanding of consciousness.

Skepticism about moral responsibility, or what is more commonly referred to as moral responsibility skepticism, refers to a family of views that all take seriously the possibility that human beings are never morally responsible for their actions in a particular but pervasive sense. This sense is typically set apart by the notion of basic desert and is defined in terms of the control in action needed for an agent to be truly deserving of blame and praise. Some moral responsibility skeptics (...) wholly reject this notion of moral responsibility because they believe it to be incoherent or impossible. Others maintain that, though possible, our best philosophical and scientific theories about the world provide strong and compelling reasons for adopting skepticism about moral responsibility. What all varieties of moral responsibility skepticism share, however, is the belief that the justification needed to ground basic desert moral responsibility and the practices associated with it—such as backward-looking praise and blame, punishment and reward (including retributive punishment), and the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation—is not met. Versions of moral responsibility skepticism have historically been defended by Spinoza, Voltaire, Diderot, d’Holbach, Priestley, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Clarence Darrow, B.F. Skinner, and Paul Edwards, and more recently by Galen Strawson, Derk Pereboom, Bruce Waller, Neil Levy, Tamler Sommers, and Gregg D. Caruso. -/- Critics of these views tend to focus both on the arguments for skepticism about moral responsibility and on the implications of such views. They worry that adopting such a view would have dire consequences for our interpersonal relationships, society, morality, meaning, and the law. They fear, for instance, that relinquishing belief in moral responsibility would undermine morality, leave us unable to adequately deal with criminal behavior, increase anti-social conduct, and destroy meaning in life. Optimistic skeptics, however, respond by arguing that life without free will and basic desert moral responsibility would not be as destructive as many people believe. These optimistic skeptics argue that prospects of finding meaning in life or of sustaining good interpersonal relationships, for instance, would not be threatened. They further maintain that morality and moral judgments would remain intact. And although retributivism and severe punishment, such as the death penalty, would be ruled out, they argue that the imposition of sanctions could serve purposes other than the punishment of the guilty—e.g., it can also be justified by its role in incapacitating, rehabilitating, and deterring offenders. (shrink)

This monograph identifies the essential characteristics of the objects described by current quantum theory and considers their relationship to space-time. In the process, it explicates the senses in which quantum objects may be consistently considered to have parts of which they may be composed or into which they may be decomposed. The book also demonstrates the degree to which reduction is possible in quantum mechanics, showing it to be related to the objective indefiniteness of quantum properties and the strong non-local (...) correlations that can occur between the physical quantities of quantum subsystems. Careful attention is paid to the relationships among such property correlations, physical causation, probability, and symmetry in quantum theory. In this way, the text identifies and clarifies the conceptual grounds underlying the unique nature of many quantum phenomena. (shrink)

Some thinkers argue that our best scientific theories about the world prove that free will is an illusion. Others disagree. The concept of free will is profoundly important to our self-understanding, our interpersonal relationships, and our moral and legal practices. If it turns out that no one is ever free and morally responsible, what would that mean for society, morality, meaning, and the law? Just Deserts brings together two philosophers – Daniel C. Dennett and Gregg D. Caruso – to (...) debate their respective views on free will, moral responsibility, and legal punishment. In three extended conversations, Dennett and Caruso present their arguments for and against the existence of free will and debate their implications. Dennett argues that the kind of free will required for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism – for him, self-control is key; we are not responsible for becoming responsible, but are responsible for staying responsible, for keeping would-be puppeteers at bay. Caruso takes the opposite view, arguing that who we are and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control, and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the sense that would make us truly deserving of blame and praise, punishment and reward. These two leading thinkers introduce the concepts central to the debate about free will and moral responsibility by way of an entertaining, rigorous and sometimes heated philosophical dialogue. What emerges is a clear account of the latest thinking on free will, and what is at stake for our moral and legal practices. (shrink)

Jewish learning and thought in Languedoc -- 1250-1300: implications of original philosophic work and the diffusion of philosophic learning in Languedoc -- 1250-1300: Jewish contacts with Christian intellectuals and Jewish thought regarding Christianity -- Meiri's transformation of Talmud study: philosophic spirituality in a halakhic key -- 1300: on the eve of the controversy -- 1300-1304: knowledge and authority in dispute -- 1304-1306: the controversy peaks -- The effects of the expulsion: Jewish philosophic culture in Roussillon and Provence.

Entanglement was initially thought by some to be an oddity restricted to the realm of thought experiments. However, Bell’s inequality delimiting local - behavior and the experimental demonstration of its violation more than 25 years ago made it entirely clear that non-local properties of pure quantum states are more than an intellectual curiosity. Entanglement and non-locality are now understood to figure prominently in the microphysical world, a realm into which technology is rapidly hurtling. Information theory is also increasingly recognized by (...) physicists and philosophers as intimately related to the foundations of mechanics. The clearest indicator of this relationship is that between quantum information and entanglement. To some degree, a deep relationship between information and mechanics in the quantum context was already there to be seen upon the introduction by Max Born and Wolfgang Pauli of the idea that the essence of pure quantum states lies in their provision of probabilities regarding the behavior of quantum systems, via what has come to be known as the Born rule. The significance of the relationship between mechanics and information became even clearer with Leo Szilard’s analysis of James Clerk Maxwell’s infamous demon thought experiment. Here, in addition to examining both entanglement and quantum information and their relationship, I endeavor to critically assess the influence of the study of these subjects on the interpretation of quantum theory. (shrink)

Debate on free will with Christian List, Gregg Caruso, and Cory Clark. The exchange is focused on Christian List's book Why Free Will Is Real.

This book gives an overview for practitioners and students of quantum physics and information science. It provides ready access to essential information on quantum information processing and communication, such as definitions, protocols and algorithms. Quantum information science is rarely found in clear and concise form. This book brings together this information from its various sources. It allows researchers and students in a range of areas including physics, photonics, solid-state electronics, nuclear magnetic resonance and information technology, in their applied and theoretical (...) branches, to have this vital material directly at hand. (shrink)

Can we be held morally responsible for our actions? Yes, says Daniel Dennett. No, says Gregg Caruso. Reader, you decide.

_Sustaining Loss_ explores the uncanny, traumatic weaving together of the living and the dead in art, and the morbid fascination it holds for modern philosophical aesthetics. Beginning with Kant, the author traces how aesthetic theory has been drawn back repeatedly to the moving power of the undead body of the work of art. He locates the most potent expressions of this philosophical compulsion in Hegel's thesis that art is a thing of the past, and in Freud's view that the work (...) of art is the haunting of the present by the endless suffering of what is dead but still has claims over the living. The book asserts that modern aesthetics holds the key to unlocking the tortured relation of modernity to the past it is perpetually leaving behind. As the capacity to withstand the inescapable force of a past that is dead for us becomes the supreme test for a fully modern, fully secular philosophy, aesthetics moves to the center of philosophical reflection. But, the author argues, this secular philosophical orientation can be sustained only if aesthetic theory remains oriented by intimate contact with modernist works of art. _Sustaining Loss_ examines not only Kant, Hegel, and Freud, but also the contemporary artists Gerhard Richter and Ilya Kabakov, whose art turns fruitfully against art's own past. To live as a modern, the author asserts, is to live with the dead past that modernist art ceaselessly disgorges. Overall, the book aims to articulate an aesthetic theory suitable to the task of living in a time when, in Flannery O'Connor's words, "The blind don't see and the lame don't walk, and what's dead stays that way.". (shrink)

One of the most frequently voiced criticisms of free will skepticism is that it is unable to adequately deal with criminal behavior and that the responses it would permit as justified are insufficient for acceptable social policy. This concern is fueled by two factors. The first is that one of the most prominent justifications for punishing criminals, retributivism, is incompatible with free will skepticism. The second concern is that alternative justifications that are not ruled out by the skeptical view per (...) se face significant independent moral objections (Pereboom 2014: 153). Despite these concerns, I maintain that free will skepticism leaves intact other ways to respond to criminal behavior—in particular incapacitation, rehabilitation, and alteration of relevant social conditions—and that these methods are both morally justifiable and sufficient for good social policy. The position I defend is similar to Derk Pereboom’s (2001, 2013, 2014), taking as its starting point his quarantine analogy, but it sets out to develop the quarantine model within a broader justificatory framework drawn from public health ethics. The resulting model—which I call the public health-quarantine model (Caruso 2016, 2017a)—provides a framework for justifying quarantine and criminal sanctions that is more humane than retributivism and preferable to other non-retributive alternatives. It also provides a broader approach to criminal behavior than Pereboom’s quarantine analogy does on its own since it prioritizes prevention and social justice. -/- In Section 1, I begin by (very) briefly summarizing my arguments against free will and basic desert moral responsibility. In Section 2, I then introduce and defend my public health-quarantine model, which is a non-retributive alternative to criminal punishment that prioritizes prevention and social justice. In Sections 3 and 4, I take up and respond to two general objections to the public health-quarantine model. Since objections by Michael Corrado (2016), John Lemos (2016), Saul Smilanksy (2011, 2017), and Victor Tadros (2017) have been addressed in detail elsewhere (see Pereboom 2017a; Pereboom and Caruso 2018), I will here focus on objections that have not yet been addressed. In particular, I will respond to concerns about proportionality, human dignity, and victims’ rights. I will argue that each of these concerns can be met and that in the end the public health-quarantine model offers a superior alternative to retributive punishment and other non-retributive accounts. (shrink)