In this article, I focus on intersections between colonial violence, aesthetics, and ecological crises as reflections of a crisis of the political imagination. I engage Namita Goswami’s Subjects That Matter and argue that the ways in which her text pursues forms of questioning racialized and gendered colonial violences provides a context for approaching variations of colonial violence collectively. By engaging Goswami’s text, I propose a postcolonial aesthetics as a way of rethinking our planetary bonds, aesthetically. I further argue that postcolonial (...) aesthetics runs contrary to our contemporary political imagination, and that it makes the crisis of this imaginary apparent. (shrink)

This book explores the problematic relationship between reconciliation and the continuance of violence and oppression. Frankowski engages with contemporary issues in philosophy of race, African American philosophy, and critical race theory in connection with German idealism, psychoanalysis, critical theory, phenomenology, and post-structuralism.

We were stolen, sold, and brought together from the African continent. We got on the slave ships together. We lay back to belly in the holds of the slave ships in each other’s excrement and urine together, sometimes died together, and our lifeless bodies thrown overboard together. Today, we are standing up together, with faith and even some joy. Within the last seven years or so, the development of postracial politics has been based on and grounded in a central contradiction (...) found in public memory. On the one hand, therefore, we can address our racist past as a collective. On the other hand, political policy and discourse seem to indelibly invoke tropes of color blindness and reverse racism to further the .. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The history of spectacle terror lynching remains one of the darkest and least explored political events in American history. In this article, I explore the aesthetic relation of this history to the formation of notions of public action and political assembly. I argue that the history of spectacle terror lynching establishes both a past and present form of public sovereignty. As such, I attempt to examine questions of what public action means with regard to a political context of antiblack (...) violence. I conclude that lynching festivals constitute not only a form of politics but a form of public sovereignty that is still in play in our notion of the public. At heart this notion informs not only antiblack forms of racism but antiblack forms of genocide. (shrink)

This text explores critical perspectives on the intersections between colonialism, political violence, and environmentalism to deepen our understanding of genocide and genocidal violence.

Politics is about much more than the laws we enact, the politicians we elect, the institutional structures and procedures that we support, and the distribution of rights and goods that undergird those decisions. It is, certainly, all of those things, but it is also something deeper and more fundamental to our way of being in society and among those with whom we live: at the level of our sensibility lies that which conditions our experiences and interactions. By sensibility I am (...) referring to the status quo of our existence, how we perceive the world and those around us, how we move around in that world—including how we are seen as we do so—and what we use as the bases for our judgments about it. This pre-reflective, though certainly not pre-experiential, scaffolding of experience is what is at stake in Alfred Frankowski’s book The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Toward a Political Sense of Mourning. In what follows I want to think through some of the consequences of how the text understands resistance as it relates to our ability to critique the contemporary world, and what critique looks like, given the centrality of sensibility to politics. (shrink)

Mele's ultimate purpose in this book is to help readers think more clearly about free will. He identifies and makes vivid the most important conceptual obstacles to justified belief in the existence of free will and meets them head on. Mele clarifies the central issues in the philosophical debate about free will and moral responsibility, criticizes various influential contemporary theories about free will, and develops two overlapping conceptions of free will--one for readers who are convinced that free will is incompatible (...) with determinism (incompatibilists), and the other for readers who are convinced of the opposite (compatibilists). Luck poses problems for all believers in free will, and Mele offers novel solutions to those problems--one for incompatibilist believers in free will and the other for compatibilists. An early chapter of this empirically well-informed book clearly explains influential neuroscientific studies of free will and debunks some extravagant interpretations of the data. Other featured topics include abilities and alternative possibilities, control and decision-making, the bearing of manipulation on free will, and the development of human infants into free agents. Mele's theory offers an original perspective on an important problem and will garner the attention of anyone interested in the debate on free will. (shrink)

Mele's ultimate purpose in this book is to help readers think more clearly about free will. He identifies and makes vivid the most important conceptual obstacles to justified belief in the existence of free will and meets them head on. Mele clarifies the central issues in the philosophical debate about free will and moral responsibility, criticizes various influential contemporary theories about free will, and develops two overlapping conceptions of free will--one for readers who are convinced that free will is incompatible (...) with determinism (incompatibilists), and the other for readers who are convinced of the opposite (compatibilists). Luck poses problems for all believers in free will, and Mele offers novel solutions to those problems--one for incompatibilist believers in free will and the other for compatibilists. An early chapter of this empirically well-informed book clearly explains influential neuroscientific studies of free will and debunks some extravagant interpretations of the data. Other featured topics include abilities and alternative possibilities, control and decision-making, the bearing of manipulation on free will, and the development of human infants into free agents. Mele's theory offers an original perspective on an important problem and will garner the attention of anyone interested in the debate on free will. (shrink)

One of the major philosophical texts of the 20th century, Process and Reality is based on Alfred North Whitehead’s influential lectures that he delivered at the University of Edinburgh in the 1920s on process philosophy. Whitehead’s master work in philsophy, Process and Reality propounds a system of speculative philosophy, known as process philosophy, in which the various elements of reality into a consistent relation to each other. It is also an exploration of some of the preeminent thinkers of the (...) seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Kant. The ultimate edition of Whitehead’s magnum opus, Process and Reality is a standard reference for scholars of all backgrounds. (shrink)

Self-deception poses tantalizing conceptual conundrums and provides fertile ground for empirical research. Recent interdisciplinary volumes on the topic feature essays by biologists, philosophers, psychiatrists, and psychologists (Lockard & Paulhus 1988, Martin 1985). Self-deception's location at the intersection of these disciplines is explained by its significance for questions of abiding interdisciplinary interest. To what extent is our mental life present--or even accessible--to consciousness? How rational are we? How is motivated irrationality to be explained? To what extent are our beliefs subject to (...) our control? What are the determinants of belief, and how does motivation bear upon belief? In what measure are widely shared psychological propensities products of evolution? (shrink)

This paper raises a pair of objections to the novel libertarian position advanced in Robert Kane's recent book, The Significance of Free Will.The first objection's target is a central element in Kane's intriguing response to what he calls the "Intelligibility" and "Existence" questions about free will. It is argued that this response is undermined by considerations of luck.The second objection is directed at a portion of Kane's answer to what he calls "The Significance Question" about free will: "Why do we, (...) or should we, want to possess a free will that is incompatible with determinism? Is it a kind of freedom 'worth wanting'... and, if so, why?" A desire for "objective worth" has a featured role in his answer. However, a compatibilist can have that desire. (shrink)

This paper attempts to construct a systematic and plausible account of the necessity of the past. The account proposed is meant to explicate the central ockhamistic thesis of the primacy of the pure present and to vindicate Ockham's own non-Aristotelian response to the challenge of logical determinism.

In instances of "twisted" self-deception, people deceive themselves into believing things that they do not want to be true. In this, twisted self-deception differs markedly from the "straight" variety that has dominated the philosophical and psychological literature on self-deception. Drawing partly upon empirical literature, I develop a trio of approaches to explaining twisted self-deception: a motivation-centered approach; an emotion-centered approach; and a hybrid approach featuring both motivation and emotion. My aim is to display our resources for exploring and explaining twisted (...) self-deception and to show that promising approaches are consistent with a plausible position on straight self-deception. (shrink)

One popular style of argument for the thesis that determinism is incompatible with moral responsibility features manipulation. Its thrust is that regarding moral responsibility, there is no important difference between various cases of manipulation in which agents who A are not morally responsible for A-ing and ordinary cases of A-ing in deterministic worlds. There is a detailed argument of this kind in Derk Pereboom’s recent book (2001: 112–26). His strategy in what he calls his ‘four-case argument’ (117) is to describe (...) three cases of progressively weaker manipulation in which, he contends, the agent, Plum, is not morally responsible for killing his victim and to compare them to a related deterministic case that involves no manipulation. Pereboom argues that what blocks Plum’s moral responsibility for the killing in the first three cases is the fact that ‘his action results from a deterministic causal process that traces back to factors beyond his control’ and that, because this fact also obtains in the fourth case, Plum is not morally responsible for that killing either (116). My thesis is that Pereboom’s argument fails. (shrink)

I start, in Section I, with the case for skepticism about the possibility of self-deception. In Sections II and III, I review attempts to explain how self-deception, conceived on a strict interpersonal model, is possible. Section IV addresses a variety of analyses of self-deception that involve modest departures from these strict models and canvasses associated attacks on the standard paradoxes. The emphasis there is on the static paradoxes, discussion of their dynamic coun terparts being reserved largely for Section V. Section (...) VI takes up Herbert Fingarette's apparently radical departure from the interpersonal models of deception, while Section VII distinguishes among three approaches to the philosophical investigation of self-deception. I conclude, in Section VIII, with a comment on a promising direction for future work on the topic. (shrink)

Originally published in 1928 this book was an attempt to acquaint the general public with the fundamentals of Individual Psychology. At the same time it is a demonstration of the practical application of these principles to the conduct of everyday relationships, and the organization of our personal life. Based upon a years’ lectures to audiences at the People’s Institute in Vienna, the purpose of the book was to point out how the mistaken behaviour of the individual affects harmony of our (...) social and communal life; to teach the individual to recognize their own mistakes; and finally, to show them how they may effect a harmonious adjustment to the communal life. Adler felt that mistakes in business or in science were costly and deplorable, but mistakes in the conduct of life are usually dangerous to life itself. This book is dedicated by the author in his preface ‘to the task of illuminating man’s progress toward a better understanding of human nature.’. (shrink)

Self-Deception, Properly understood, Is not paradoxical. Although self-Deception involves motivated false belief, It is not properly modeled after "intentional" interpersonal deception. Thus, The major source of paradox is dissolved. Moreover, Even intentional self-Deception need not be paradoxical and there is good reason to believe that a kind of self-Deception which "would" be paradoxical never occurs. Finally, In cases of self-Deception, As in instances of akratic action, There is scope for blame.

According to a traditional view of self-deception, the phenomenon is an intrapersonal analogue of stereotypical interpersonal deception. In the latter case, deceivers intentionally deceive others into believing something, p , and there is a time at which the deceivers believe that p is false while their victims falsely believe that p is true. If self-deception is properly understood on this model, self-deceivers intentionally deceive themselves into believing something, p , and there is a time at which they believe that p (...) is false while also believing that p is true. (shrink)

I will argue that close attention to deciding casts doubt on the simple view and the single phenomena view of intentional action. That is my thesis. My aim is much broader—to improve our understanding of deciding and of the bearing of the phenomenon of deciding on free will and moral responsibility.

This article defends a nonstandard position on free will that is based on three topics linked to contemporary debates about free will: autonomy, self-control, and weakness of will. It argues that autonomy, and hence also free will, requires more than self-control, including ideal self-control. It considers the additional conditions required, showing how contemporary discussions of autonomy are intertwined with debates about free will. These additional conditions for genuine autonomy do not require us to choose between compatibilist and incompatibilist accounts of (...) autonomy, because one can give a “robust, satisfiable” set of adequate conditions for both compatibilist autonomy and incompatibilist autonomy. One can thus remain agnostic on the Compatibility Question regarding autonomy and free will without giving up the belief that there are autonomous human beings. This view is called “agnostic autonomism”. (shrink)

Drawing on recent empirical work, this philosophical paper explores some possible contributions of emotion to self-deception. Three hypotheses are considered: (1) the anxiety reduction hypothesis: the function of self-deception is to reduce present anxiety; (2) the solo emotion hypothesis: emotions sometimes contribute to instances of self-deception that have no desires among their significant causes; (3) the direct emotion hypothesis: emotions sometimes contribute directly to self-deception, in the sense that they make contributions that, at the time, are neither made by desires (...) nor causally mediated by desires. It is argued that (1) is false and that (3) is defensible and more defensible than (2). (shrink)

Originally published in 1928 this book was an attempt to acquaint the general public with the fundamentals of Individual Psychology. At the same time it is a demonstration of the practical application of these principles to the conduct of everyday relationships, and the organization of our personal life. Based upon a years’ lectures to audiences at the People’s Institute in Vienna, the purpose of the book was to point out how the mistaken behaviour of the individual affects harmony of our (...) social and communal life; to teach the individual to recognize their own mistakes; and finally, to show them how they may effect a harmonious adjustment to the communal life. Adler felt that mistakes in business or in science were costly and deplorable, but mistakes in the conduct of life are usually dangerous to life itself. This book is dedicated by the author in his preface ‘to the task of illuminating man’s progress toward a better understanding of human nature.’. (shrink)

In this commentary, I discuss the three main articles in this volume that present survey data relevant to a search for something that might merit the label “the folk concept of intentional action” – the articles by Joshua Knobe and Arudra Burra, Bertram Malle, and Thomas Nadelhoffer. My guiding question is this: What shape might we find in an analysis of intentional action that takes at face value the results of all of the relevant surveys about vignettes discussed in these (...) three articles?1 To simplify exposition, I assume that there is something that merits the label I mentioned. (shrink)

Globalization is a part of modern life. Sharing a common set of professional nursing values is critical in this global environment. The purpose of this research was to examine the professional values of nursing students from two distinct cultural perspectives. Nurse educators in Taiwan partnered with nurse educators in the United States to compare professional values of their respective graduating nursing students. The American Nurses Association Code of Ethics served as the philosophical framework for this examination. The convenience sample comprised (...) 94 Taiwanese students and 168 US students. Both groups reported high scores on an overall measure of values. They did differ substantially on the relative importance of individual items related to advocacy, competence, education, self-evaluation, professional advancement, and professional associations. Global implications for the collaborative practice of nurses from different cultures working together can be improved by first recognizing and then attending to these differences in value priorities. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

It is sometimes suggested that if, whenever we act intentionally, we do, or try to do, what we are most strongly motivated to do at the time, then we are at the mercy of whatever desire happens to be strongest at the time. I have argued elsewhere that this is false (Mele 1987, ch. 5; 1992, ch. 4; 1995, ch. 3; 1996). This essay provides another route to that conclusion, but that is not my primary aim. The goal of this (...) paper is to display the bearing of some well-known experiments by physiologist Benjamin Libet on this issue. Philosophical discussion of these experiments has focused on Libet's claims about consciousness. The significance of these experiments for the topics of motivation and agential control also merits serious attention. (shrink)

In the Logica Ingredientibus Abailard attacks the theory according to which universals are collections of individuals. This paper argues that Abailard's principal objection to this 'collective realism', viz, that it conflates universals with integral wholes, is actually quite strong, though it is generally overlooked by recent commentators. For implicit in this objection is the claim that the collective realist cannot provide a satisfactory account of predication. The reason for this is that integral wholes are not uniquely decomposable. In support of (...) thesis the author first explicates the medieval distinction between integral and subjective parts and then discusses its application to collective realism. (shrink)

The literature on motivated irrationality has two primary foci: action and belief. This article explores two of the central topics falling under this rubric: akratic action (action exhibiting so-called weakness of will or deficient self-control) and motivationally biased belief (including self-deception). Among other matters, this article offers a resolution of Donald Davidson's worry about the explanation of irrationality. When agents act akratically, they act for reasons, and in central cases, they make rational judgments about what it is best to do. (...) The rationality required for that is in place. However, to the extent to which their actions are at odds with these judgments, they act irrationally. Motivationally biased believers test hypotheses and believe on the basis of evidence. Again there is a background of rationality. But owing to the influence of motivation, they violate general standards of epistemic rationality. (shrink)

This edition first published in 1960. The revival of interest in the thought of Burke was one of the justifications for the publication of a second edition of Professor Cobban's study of the political and social ideas of Burke and his closest disciples, the Lake Poets. Burke's thought has both historical and permanent significance: fundamentally his works are as relevant today as when they were first written. In this book Burke's ideas are discussed without the uncritical adulation they receive in (...) some quarters, and those of the Lake Poets without the undue depreciation from which they used to suffer. This title will be of great interest to students of politics, philosophy and history. (shrink)