This paper examines the figure of the hate-fighting digital vigilante as embodied through Aryan Queen, an online persona developed and depicted by self-proclaimed antifa member Talia Lavin in her book Culture Warlords. One chapter in the 2020 memoir relays Lavin’s pursuits to elicit and make known identifying information of Der Stürmer, an anonymous white supremacist online hater. I first locate Lavin’s undertaking in the porous policy landscape regulating online hate transnationally to make a case for its value as an entry (...) into the navigation of hate on Telegram, a platform that has become a popular enclave for hate, and one that remains otherwise impenetrable to state efforts at formal governance. I then introduce the digital vigilante as a cultural figure that has become increasingly distinguished from, but developed in relation to, the classical or analogue vigilante in academic literature, albeit with only limited attention paid to the seemingly boundless temporality that constitutes the virtual sphere. Attending to processes of temporalization, I argue, can well serve an analysis of the moral universe within which the digital vigilante operates, thereby enabling a critical engagement with the motivations, methods, and intentions of her justice pursuits online. With the support of anthropological theories of temporalization – namely, past presencing, un/doing futures, and affective justice – I show that justice pursuits by way of digital vigilantism for Lavin are entangled with an affective longing for revenge, and manifest a complex intermingling of open wounds from injustices that emerge from and produce entanglements of the past, present, and future. (shrink)

Although the global community has achieved some success in endeavors such as eradicating smallpox, efforts to coordinate nations' actions in others--such as the reduction of drug trafficking--have not been sufficient. Identifying the factors that promote, or inhibit, successful collective action for an ever-growing set of challenges associated with globalization, Todd Sandler applies them to promoting global health, providing foreign assistance, controlling rogue nations, limiting transnational terrorism, and intervening in civil wars.

Recently, philosophers have turned their attention to the question, not when a given agent is blameworthy for what she does, but when a further agent has the moral standing to blame her for what she does. Philosophers have proposed at least four conditions on having “moral standing”: -/- 1. One’s blame would not be “hypocritical”. 2. One is not oneself “involved in” the target agent’s wrongdoing. 3. One must be warranted in believing that the target is indeed blameworthy for the (...) wrongdoing. 4. The target’s wrongdoing must some of “one’s business”. -/- These conditions are often proposed as both conditions on one and the same thing, and as marking fundamentally different ways of “losing standing.” Here I call these claims into question. First, I claim that conditions (3) and (4) are simply conditions on different things than are conditions (1) and (2). Second, I argue that condition (2) reduces to condition (1): when “involvement” removes someone’s standing to blame, it does so only by indicating something further about that agent, viz., that he or she lacks commitment to the values that condemn the wrongdoer’s action. The result: after we clarify the nature of the non-hypocrisy condition, we will have a unified account of moral standing to blame. Issues also discussed: whether standing can ever be regained, the relationship between standing and our "moral fragility", the difference between mere inconsistency and hypocrisy, and whether a condition of standing might be derived from deeper facts about the "equality of persons". (shrink)

A critical evaluation of Rawlsian and Habermasian paradigms of political philosophy that offers an interpretation and defense of Habermas's theory of law and ...

How democratic progressive politics can happen and how it is happening in very different political arenas.

Presents the game-changing power of citizenship in sports, including what it is, what can happen when players are or are not good citizens, and how it can affect individuals.

Demonstrates the game-changing power of perseverance. Through action-filled stories, captivating spreads, and a character-building quiz, readers will consider their own character and be encouraged to take it to the next level.

Rather than focusing on political and legal debates surrounding attempts to determine if and when genocidal rape has taken place in a particular setting, this essay turns instead to a crucial, yet neglected area of inquiry: the moral significance of genocidal rape, and more specifically, the nature of the harms that constitute the culpable wrongdoing that genocidal rape represents. In contrast to standard philosophical accounts, which tend to employ an individualistic framework, this essay offers a situated understanding of harm that (...) features the importance of interdependence and relationality and that conceptualizes harms as embodied and contextual. The paper ultimately reveals what is distinctive about this particular crime of sexual violence by exploring the logic of genocidal rape: genocidal rape involves the harm of forced self-betrayal unleashed relationally, causing victims as representatives of their group to participate inadvertently in the destruction of that group. (shrink)

This paper argues that even the most virtuous people living in affluent Western countries share responsibility for injustices suffered by poor people living in developing countries. The argument of the paper draws on a moral principle that underlies the law of restitution: the principle of unjust enrichment. The paper argues that denizens of affluent Western countries have benefited unjustly from injustices suffered by poor people living in developing countries and that they have a moral responsibility to pay back their unjust (...) gains. (shrink)

This paper answers two interpretive questions surrounding belief in God in Thomas Reid’s philosophy, the status question and the detachability question. The former has to do with the type of justification Reid assigns to belief in God – immediate or mediate. The later question is whether anything philosophically significant depends on his belief in God. I argue that, for Reid, belief in God is immediately justified and integral to some parts of his system. Reid’s response to skepticism about God is (...) more complicated and more interesting than many of the contemporary philosophers who, citing Reid as inspiration, also hold that belief in God enjoys immediate justification. In Reid’s hands the approach to belief in God does not compete with inferential justification, does not rely on a special faculty, and foregrounds the developmental character of his epistemology. (shrink)

The moral status of some particularly horrendous actions cannot be adequately captured by the concept of wrongdoing.See Daniel Haybron, “Moral Monsters and Saints,” Monist, Vol. 85 : p. 260; Paul Formosa, “Evil, Wrongs and Dignity: How to Test a Theory of Evil,” Journal of Value Inquiry, Vol. 47 : pp. 235–253; Eve Garrard, “The Nature of Evil,” Philosophical Explorations: An International Journal for the Philosophy of Mind and Action, Vol. 1 : pp. 43–45; Hillel Steiner, “Calibrating Evil,” The Monist, Vol. (...) 85 : pp. 183–185. For instance, sadistic torture and genocidal mass murder are not just wrong, or very wrong, or very very wrong. We need the concept of evil to make sense of the moral status of these actions. But what is evil? And how is it distinct from mere wrongdoing?In recent years, several theorists writing about the concept of evil have argued that the best way to proceed is to think reflectively about evil’s opposite. Call this the mirror methodology. .. (shrink)

First book to identify the political project inherent in the fundamental tenets of psychoanalysis.

Перевод статьи: Davies T., Chandler R. Online deliberation design: Choices, criteria, and evidence // Democracy in motion: Evaluating the practice and impact of deliberative civic engagement / Nabatchi T., Weiksner M., Gastil J., Leighninger M. (eds.). -- Oxford: Oxford univ. press, 2013. -- P. 103-131. А. Кулик. -/- Вниманию читателей предлагается обзор эмпирических исследований в области дизайна онлайн-форумов, предназначенных для вовлечения граждан в делиберацию. Размерности дизайна определены для различных характеристик делиберации: назначения, целевой аудитории, разобщенности участников в пространстве и во времени, (...) среды коммуникации и организации делиберативного процесса. После краткого обзора критериев оценки вариантов дизайна рассматриваются эмпирические данные, соотносящиеся с каждым из вариантов. Эффективность онлайн-делиберации зависит от того, насколько условия коммуникации соотносятся с заданиями делиберации. Компромиссы, как, например, между анонимным или идентифицируемым участием, предполагают различные дизайны в зависимости от цели делиберации и состава участников. Выводы исследования получены на материале существующих технологий и могут измениться по мере коэволюции технологий и пользователей. (shrink)

Consequentialist theories of virtue and vice, such as the theories of Jeremy Bentham and Julia Driver, characterize virtue and vice in terms of the consequential, or instrumental, properties of these character traits. There are two problems with theories of this sort. First they imply that, under the right circumstances, paradigmatic virtues, such as benevolence, are vices and paradigmatic vices, such as maliciousness, are virtues. This is conceptually problematic. Second, they say nothing about the intrinsic nature of the virtues and vices, (...) which is less than we could hope for from a theory of virtue and vice. Thus, we have reason to reject consequentialist theories in favour of theories that characterize virtue and vice in terms of the intrinsic properties of these character traits. Aristotle and Thomas Hurka have theories this sort. (shrink)

David Lewis advised essentialists to judge his counterpart theory a false friend. He also argued that counterpart theory needs natural properties. This essay argues that natural properties are all essentialists need to find a true friend in counterpart theory. Section one explains why Lewis takes counterpart theory to be anti-essentialist and why he thinks it needs natural properties. Section two establishes the connection between the natural properties counterpart theory needs and the essentialist consequences Lewis disavows. Section three answers two objections: (...) the first attempts to block the consequences of adding natural properties to counterpart theory; the second grants the consequences, but denies that they amount to essentialism. –Correspondence to: [email protected]. (shrink)

Inspired by Peter van Inwagen’s “simulacra model” of the resurrection, I investigate whether it could be reasonable to adopt an analogous approach to the problem of evil. Empirically Skeptical Theism, as I call it, is the hypothesis that God shields our lives from irredeemable evils surreptitiously (just as van Inwagen proposes that God shields our bodies from destruction surreptitiously). I argue that EST compares favorably with traditional skeptical theism and with eschatological theodicies, and that EST does not have the negative (...) moral consequences we might suppose. (shrink)

In this paper, we summarize the various impacts of incarceration with the aim of providing an overview of the ways mass incarceration affects society. In doing so, we look inside the black box of the largest penal experiment in world history: the quintupling of the prison population in the United States between 1973 and 2006. The question is, "What have been the social consequences of our incarceration policy?"One objective is to provide insight into what might be called the prison policy (...) paradox, namely, that a 500% generation_long growth in imprisonment has had little impact on crime. Answers are provided by looking inside the black box of penal policy and by identifying the various ways incarceration leads to social outcomes that are associated with public safety. The paper considers the problem of "public safety," because safety is a broader concept than crime. Though a desire for public safety includes a desire for low rates of crime, public safety connotes a more profound interest we have to live in a society where we feel secure pursuing our personal goals and fulfilling our life desires Using public safety as our criteria enables us to consider the ways incarceration affects our quality_of_life, especially through the way incarceration affects the informal social relations that promote the kind of profound social control that is a foundation for a sense of feeling safe.Three types of effects are described. Positive effects are those that improve public safety, negative effects reduce public safety, and "ambivalent" effects have the capacity to be both positive and negative. Five levels of social impacts on public safety are assessed:o Effects on individuals that change the way people act;o Effects on intimate relationships such as those with families and other loved ones;o Effects on social relationships that are felt as community_level outcomes;o Effects on institutions such as labor markets and the political economy;o Effects on democracy or social justice.Thus, the purpose of this paper is to summarize what is known, empirically and experientially, about the positive and negative ways incarceration affects levels of social expression. (shrink)

This paper defines the form of prior knowledge that is required for sound inferences by analogy and single-instance generalizations, in both logical and probabilistic reasoning. In the logical case, the first order determination rule defined in Davies (1985) is shown to solve both the justification and non-redundancy problems for analogical inference. The statistical analogue of determination that is put forward is termed 'uniformity'. Based on the semantics of determination and uniformity, a third notion of "relevance" is defined, both logically and (...) probabilistically. The statistical relevance of one function in determining another is put forward as a way of defining the value of information: The statistical relevance of a function F to a function G is the absolute value of the change in one's information about the value of G afforded by specifying the value of F. This theory provides normative justifications for conclusions projected by analogy from one case to another, and for generalization from an instance to a rule. The soundness of such conclusions, in either the logical or the probabilistic case, can be identified with the extent to which the corresponding criteria (determination and uniformity) actually hold for the features being related. (shrink)

Some mental states are about themselves. Nothing is a cause of itself. So some mental states are not about their causes; they are about things distinct from their causes. If this argument is sound, it spells trouble for causal theories of mental content—the precise sort of trouble depending on the precise sort of causal theory. This paper shows that the argument is sound (§§1-3), and then spells out the trouble (§4).

For Reid, the external senses have a “double province.” They give rise to both sensation and perception. This essay is about the relation of sensation and perception, a relation Reid’s sign theory of sensations describes. Drawing on Reid’s distinctions between general and particular principles of our constitution, relative and absolute conceptions, and original and acquired perception, the paper systematizes Reid’s sporadic comments on the sign theory. The aim is to offer an interpretation which reveals the overall structure, rationale and coherence (...) of Reid’s sign theory. (shrink)

Rules and similarity refer to qualitatively different processes. The classification of a stimulus by rules involves abstract and usually domain-specific knowledge operating primarily on the target representation. In contrast, similarity is a relation between the target representation and another representation of the same type. It is also useful to distinguish associationist processes as a third type of cognitive process.

Is evil a distinct moral concept? Or are evil actions just very wrong actions? Some philosophers have argued that evil is a distinct moral concept. These philosophers argue that evil is qualitatively distinct from ordinary wrongdoing. Other philosophers have suggested that evil is only quantitatively distinct from ordinary wrongdoing. On this view, evil is just very wrong. In this paper I argue that evil is qualitatively distinct from ordinary wrongdoing. The first part of the paper is critical. I argue that (...) Luke Russell’s attempt to show that evil is only quantitatively distinct from ordinary wrongdoing fails. Russell’s argument fails because it is based on an implausible criterion for determining whether two concepts are qualitatively distinct. I offer a more plausible criterion and argue that based on this criterion evil and wrongdoing are qualitatively distinct. To help make my case, I sketch a theory of evil which makes a genuinely qualitative distinction between evil and wrongdoing. I argue that we cannot characterize evil as just very wrong on plausible conceptions of evil and wrongdoing. I focus on act-consequentialist, Kantian, and contractarian conceptions of wrongdoing. (shrink)

1. Introduction. Like other direct realists, Thomas Reid offered an alternative to indirect realist and idealist accounts of perception. Reids alternative aimed to preserve the indirect realists commitment to realism about the objects of perception, and the idealists commitment to the immediacy of the minds relation to the objects of perception. Reid holds that what you perceive is mind independent or external; and your relation to such objects in perception is direct or immediate. In his own words, something which is (...) extended and solid, which may be measured and weighed, is the immediate object of my touch and sight. And this object I take to be matter, and not an idea (IP II xi, 154). (shrink)

How consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed, and why all vertebrates and perhaps even some invertebrates are conscious. How is consciousness created? When did it first appear on Earth, and how did it evolve? What constitutes consciousness, and which animals can be said to be sentient? In this book, Todd Feinberg and Jon Mallatt draw on recent scientific findings to answer these questions—and to tackle the most fundamental question about the nature of consciousness: how (...) does the material brain create subjective experience? After assembling a list of the biological and neurobiological features that seem responsible for consciousness, and considering the fossil record of evolution, Feinberg and Mallatt argue that consciousness appeared much earlier in evolutionary history than is commonly assumed. About 520 to 560 million years ago, they explain, the great “Cambrian explosion” of animal diversity produced the first complex brains, which were accompanied by the first appearance of consciousness; simple reflexive behaviors evolved into a unified inner world of subjective experiences. From this they deduce that all vertebrates are and have always been conscious—not just humans and other mammals, but also every fish, reptile, amphibian, and bird. Considering invertebrates, they find that arthropods (including insects and probably crustaceans) and cephalopods (including the octopus) meet many of the criteria for consciousness. The obvious and conventional wisdom–shattering implication is that consciousness evolved simultaneously but independently in the first vertebrates and possibly arthropods more than half a billion years ago. Combining evolutionary, neurobiological, and philosophical approaches allows Feinberg and Mallatt to offer an original solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness. (shrink)

Thomas Reid’s philosophy is a philosophy of mind—a Pneumatology in the idiom of 18th century Scotland. His overarching philosophical project is to construct an account of the nature and operations of the human mind, focusing on the two-way correspondence, in perception and action, between the thinking principle within and the material world without. Like his contemporaries, Reid’s treatment of these topics aimed to incorporate the lessons of the scientific revolution. What sets Reid’s philosophy of mind apart is his commitment to (...) a set of intuitive contingent truths he called the principles of common sense. This difference, as this chapter will show, enables Reid to construct an account of mind that resists the temptation to which so many philosophers in his day and ours succumb, i.e., the temptation, in his words, to materialize minds or spiritualize bodies. (shrink)

One Berkeleyan case for idealism, recently developed by Robert M. Adams, relies on a seeming disparity between our concepts of matter and mind. Thomas Reid’s critique of idealism directly challenges the alleged disparity. After highlighting the role of the disparity thesis in Adams’s updated Berkeleyan argument for idealism, this chapter offers an updated version of Reid’s challenge, and assesses its strength. What emerges from this historico-philosophical investigation is that a contemporary Reidian has much work to do to transpose her objections (...) to Berkeley into good objections to Adams’s argument. (shrink)

The question Adorno and Horkheimer leave the reader of the Dialectic of Enlightenment with is: How, finally, are we to supplement the project of the Enlightenment, so that it may attain its libratory potential? As I find Adorno's answers to the question of the proletariat's political failure troubling, in leaving little possibility of reform or hope in concrete terms for continuing successfully in the project of liberation, I intend to provide an alternative narrative of human liberation based on a critical (...) rereading of Adorno and Horkheimer in light of Ren Girard. Specifically, I argue that Girard can provide a model of human liberation that enables the transcendence of the Odyssean disposition to self-sacrifice that Adorno and Horkheimer see as a key to the failures of the proletariat. In Girard's terms, I argue that the strategy of Penelope rather than Odysseus can provide a model for a psychology and praxis of liberation. (shrink)

A persistent theme in the Vitae of Aesop, Archilochus, and Homer, and in Plato's Apology, is the righteous poet brought to trial by a corrupt society that has found him and his poetry intolerable. As society condemns the poet, it condemns itself, and is punished following the poet's punishment ; often the society then grants a hero cult to the poet.

The problem of `conscious inessentialism' is examined in the literature, and an argument is presented that the presence of consciousness is indeed marked by a behavioural difference, but that this should be looked for at the cultural level of speech communities.

This paper presents a novel learning model Clarion , which is a hybrid model based on the two-level approach proposed in Sun (1995). The model integrates neural, reinforcement, and symbolic learning methods to perform on-line, bottom-up learning (i.e., learning that goes from neural to symbolic representations). The model utilizes both procedural and declarative knowledge (in neural and symbolic representations respectively), tapping into the synergy of the two types of processes. It was applied to deal with sequential decision tasks. Experiments and (...) analyses in various ways are reported that shed light on the advantages of the model. (shrink)

We analyze the logical form of the domain knowledge that grounds analogical inferences and generalizations from a single instance. The form of the assumptions which justify analogies is given schematically as the "determination rule", so called because it expresses the relation of one set of variables determining the values of another set. The determination relation is a logical generalization of the different types of dependency relations defined in database theory. Specifically, we define determination as a relation between schemata of first (...) order logic that have two kinds of free variables: (1) object variables and (2) what we call "polar" variables, which hold the place of truth values. Determination rules facilitate sound rule inference and valid conclusions projected by analogy from single instances, without implying what the conclusion should be prior to an inspection of the instance. They also provide a way to specify what information is sufficiently relevant to decide a question, prior to knowledge of the answer to the question. (shrink)