Julian Wuerth offers a radically new interpretation of major themes in Kant's philosophy. He explores Kant's ontology of the mind, his transcendental idealism, his account of the mind's powers, and his theory of action, and goes on to develop an original, moral realist account of Kant's ethics.

In a revolutionary new book, a theoretical physicist attacks the foundations of modern scientific theory, including the notion of time, as he shares evidence of ...

Arthur Schopenhauer was one of the greatest writers and German philosophers of the nineteenth century. His work influenced figures as diverse as Wagner, Freud and Nietzsche. Best known as a pessimist, he was one of the few philosophers read and admired by Wittgenstein. In this comprehensive introduction, Julian Young covers all the main aspects of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Beginning with an overview of Schopenhauer's life and work, he introduces the central aspects of his metaphysics fundamental to understanding his work as (...) a whole: his philosophical idealism and debt to the philosophy of Kant; his attempt to answer the question of what the world is; his account of science; and in particular his idea that 'will' is the essence of all things. Julian Young then introduces and assesses Schopenhauer's aesthetics, which occupy a central place in his philosophy. He carefully examines Schopenhauer's theories of the sublime, artistic genius and music, before assessing his ethics of compassion, his arguments for pessimism and his account of 'salvation'. In the final chapter, he considers Schopenhauer's legacy and his influence on the thought of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, making this an ideal starting point for those coming to Schopenhauer for the first time. (shrink)

The phenomenon of ‘structural irrationality’ covers a diverse range of combinations of attitudes, including (inter alia) contradictory beliefs, contradictory intentions, means–end incoherence, akratic incoherence, and cyclical preferences. This paper offers a novel, unified account of when a pattern of attitudes qualifies as structurally irrational. It begins by setting up the core of the view I will be defending: a set of attitudes is irrational if and only if it is impossible for those attitudes to be jointly successful. I show that (...) this view can account for a wide range of paradigmatically irrational combinations of attitudes. I then refine the account to make it sufficiently subjective. I argue that a set of attitudes is irrational only if the impossibility of their joint success is (i) logically transparent, (ii) subjectively inferable, and (iii) not justifiably denied. (shrink)

Brain organoid research raises ethical challenges not seen in other forms of stem cell research. Given that brain organoids partially recapitulate the development of the human brain, it is plausible that brain organoids could one day attain consciousness and perhaps even higher cognitive abilities. Brain organoid research therefore raises difficult questions about these organoids' moral status – questions that currently fall outside the scope of existing regulations and guidelines. This paper shows how these gaps can be addressed. We outline a (...) moral framework for brain organoid research that can address the relevant ethical concerns without unduly impeding this important area of research. (shrink)

The requirements of rationality are fundamental in practical and theoretical philosophy. Nonetheless, there exists no correct account of what constitutes rational requirements. This paper attempts to provide a correct constitutive account of ‘rationality requires’. I argue that rational requirements are grounded in ‘necessary explanations of subjective incoherence’, as I shall put it. Rationality requires of you to X if and only if your rational capacities, in conjunction with the fact that you not-X, explain necessarily why you have a non-maximal degree (...) of subjective coherence. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTaking some controversial claims philosopher Jason Brennan makes in his book Against Democracy as a starting point, this paper argues in favour of two theses: There is No Such Thing as Superior Political Judgement; There Is No Such Thing as Uncontroversial Social Scientific Knowledge. I conclude that social science experts need to be kept in check, not given more power.

There are ethical obligations to conduct research that contributes to generalisable knowledge and improves reproductive health, and this should include embryo research in jurisdictions where it is permitted. Often, the controversial nature of embryo research can alarm ethics committee members, which can unnecessarily delay important research that can potentially improve fertility for patients and society. Such delay is ethically unjustified. Moreover, countries such as the UK, Australia and Singapore have legislation which unnecessarily captures low-risk research, such as observational research, in (...) an often cumbersome and protracted review process. Such countries should revise such legislation to better facilitate low-risk embryo research.We introduce a philosophical distinction to help decision-makers more efficiently identify higher risk embryo research from that which presents no more risks to persons than other types of tissue research. That distinction is between future person embryo research and non-future person embryo research. We apply this distinction to four examples of embryo research that might be presented to ethics committees.Embryo research is most controversial and deserving of detailed scrutiny when it potentially affects a future person. Where it does not, it should generally require less ethical scrutiny. We explore a variety of ways in which research can affect a future person, including by deriving information about that person, and manipulating eggs or sperm before an embryo is created. (shrink)

This book, the first comprehensive study in English of Heidegger's philosophy of art, starts in the mid-1930s with Heidegger's discussion of the Greek temple and his Hegelian declaration that a great artwork gathers together an entire culture in affirmative celebration of its foundational 'truth', and that, by this criterion, art in modernity is 'dead'. His subsequent work on Hölderlin, whom he later identified as the decisive influence on his mature philosophy, led him into a passionate engagement with the art of (...) Rilke, Ce;zanne, Klee and Zen Buddhism, liberating him not only from the overly restrictive conception of art of the mid-1930s but also from the disastrous politics of the period. Drawing on material hitherto unknown in the anglophone world, Young establishes a new account of Heidegger's philosophy of art and shows that his famous essay 'The Origin of the Work of Art' is its beginning, not its end. (shrink)

The smooth integration of the natural sciences with everyday lived experience is an important ambition of radical embodied cognitive science. In this paper we start from Koffka’s recommendation in his Principles of Gestalt Psychology that to realize this ambition psychology should be a “science of molar behaviour”. Molar behavior refers to the purposeful behaviour of the whole organism directed at an environment that is meaningfully structured for the animal. Koffka made a sharp distinction between the “behavioural environment” and the “geographical (...) environment”. We show how this distinction picks out the difference between the environment as perceived by an individual organism, and the shared publicly available environment. The ecological psychologist James Gibson was later critical of Koffka for inserting a private phenomenal reality in between animals and the shared environment. Gibson tried to make do with just the concept of affordances in his explanation of molar behaviour. We argue however that psychology as a science of molar behaviour will need to make appeal both to the concepts of shared publicly available affordances, and of the multiplicity of relevant affordances that invite an individual to act. A version of Koffka’s distinction between the two environments remains alive today in a distinction we have made between the field and landscape of affordances. Having distinguished the two environments, we go on to provide an account of how the two environments are related. Koffka suggested that the behavioural environment forms out of the causal interaction of the individual with a pre-existing, ready-made geographical environment. We argue that such an account of the relation between the two environments fails to do justice to the complex entanglement of the social with the material aspects of the geographical environment. To better account for this sociomaterial reality of the geographical environment, we propose a process-perspective on our distinction between the landscape and field of affordances. While the two environments can be conceptually distinguished, we argue they should also be viewed as standing in a relation of reciprocal and mutual dependence. (shrink)

Can we employ the property of rationality in establishing what rationality requires? According to a central and formal thesis of John Broome’s work on rational requirements, the answer is ‘no’ – at least if we expect a precise answer. In particular, Broome argues that (i) the property of full rationality (i.e. whether or not you are fully rational) is independent of whether we formulate conditional requirements of rationality as having a wide or a narrow logical scope. That is, (ii) by (...) replacing a wide-scope requirement with a corresponding narrow-scope requirement (or vice versa), we do not alter the situations in which a person is fully rational. As a consequence, (iii) the property of full rationality is unable to guide us in determining whether a rational requirement has a wide or a narrow logical scope. We cannot resolve the wide/narrow scope debate by appealing to a theory of fully rational attitudes. This paper argues that (i), (ii) and (iii) are incorrect. Replacing a wide- with a corresponding narrow-scope requirement (or vice versa) can alter the set of circumstances in which a person is fully rational. The property of full rationality is therefore not independent of whether we formulate conditional requirements of rationality as having a wide or a narrow logical scope. As a consequence, the property of full rationality can guide us in determining what rationality requires – even in cases where we expect a precise answer. (shrink)

Julian Wolfreys starts with loss. All memory is the memory of loss... All that we are, all we experience, all we remember, all that we forget but which leaves nevertheless a trace on us, in us, a trace that countersigns and writes us as who we are (in effect the constellated matrix of Being's becoming): this is a process of loss. This just is loss. Loss is who we are. Loss is authentically the necessary and inescapable inessential essence of (...) Being. Loss names the ghosts, the revenants of Being, Being's others. Neither there nor not there, loss persists as the always already becoming of the thinking of Being. There is more than one loss. There is no one loss. Loss never arrives for a first time. All loss is the return of what is lost to Being's being in the world. From that starting point, the author explores the nature of being and dwelling... of memory and the nature of the traces of the past... of apparition and appearance and perception... of touch and being touched... of the material and the (a)material. In a book that draws in multiple threads from 19th- and 20th-century European literature, he references extensively Heidegger, Derrida, Lacan, Cixous, Celan, Husserl, Woolf, Joyce, Hegel, Badiou, Rilke, Merleau-Ponty, Winterson, Stockhausen and True Detective in an impressive and eclectic tour of the being-becoming-loss.". (shrink)

This paper discusses whether rationality, morality or prudence impose process-requirements upon us. It has been argued that process-requirements fulfil two essential functions within a system of rational, moral or prudential requirements. These functions are considered to prove the existence of process-requirements. First, process-requirements are deemed necessary to ensure that rationality, morality or prudence can guide our deliberations and actions. Second, their existence is regarded as essential for the correctness of our ordinary explanations of why a person possesses a certain degree (...) of morality, rationality or prudence. However, I argue that these two functions are unable to show the existence of process-requirements. Instead, I propose a different essential function for process-requirements: they are necessary for attributing the correct degree of rationality, morality or prudence to a subject who is not entirely rational, moral or prudent. This function, I argue, necessitates the existence of process-requirements. (shrink)

Neuroimaging studies of brain-damaged patients diagnosed as in the vegetative state suggest that the patients might be conscious. This might seem to raise no new ethical questions given that in related disputes both sides agree that evidence for consciousness gives strong reason to preserve life. We question this assumption. We clarify the widely held but obscure principle that consciousness is morally significant. It is hard to apply this principle to difficult cases given that philosophers of mind distinguish between a range (...) of notions of consciousness and that is unclear which of these is assumed by the principle. We suggest that the morally relevant notion is that of phenomenal consciousness and then use our analysis to interpret cases of brain damage. We argue that enjoyment of consciousness might actually give stronger moral reasons not to preserve a patient's life and, indeed, that these might be stronger when patients retain significant cognitive function. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It is accepted that treatment of previously competent, now incompetent patients can be limited if that is what the patient would desire, if she were now competent. Expressed past preferences or an advance directive are often taken to constitute sufficient evidence of what a patient would now desire. I distinguish between desires and rational desires. I argue that for a desire to be an expression of a person's autonomy, it must be or satisfy that person's rational desires. A person (...) rationally desires a course of action if that person desires it while being in possession of all available relevant facts, without committing relevant error of logic, and “vividly imagining” what its consequences would be like for her. I argue that some competent, expressed desires obstruct autonomy. I show that several psychological mechanisms operate to prevent a person rationally evaluating what future life in a disabled state would be like. Rational evaluation is difficult. However, treatment limitation, if it is to respect autonomy, must be in accord with a patient's rational desires, and not merely her expressed desires. I illustrate the implications of these arguments for the use of advance directives and for the treatment of competent patients. (shrink)

Reasoning that compares two objects or situations to draw conclusions about previously unknown properties of one of them has traditionally been taken to be ampliative and probabilistic. I propose that it is apodeictic reasoning from a premise about isomorphic structures that is often uncertain, but which we may have good reasons to believe. I characterize the structures and their isomorphism, describe patterns of reasoning appropriate to them, and discuss some complications not immediately obvious.

Within the debate concerning reason and rationality, instrumental incoherence was for a long time conceived of as the paradigm of irrationality. However, with the emergence of the so-called ‘bootstrapping objection’ and the debate concerning the ‘scope’ of rational requirements, the innocuous status of the normative significance of (instrumental) coherence became subject to. This led to a paradigmatic shift in how to understand the relationship between rational requirements and normativity. While there now exists considerable doubt that rational requirements are normative, it (...) is commonly agreed that one’s normative point of view is a key feature of one’s rationality. Here the question is not only if one can hold a particular normative judgement and still be rational; what is significant too is whether your normative outlook coheres appropriately with your motivation. In fact, it is now commonly agreed that rationality requires us to intend to make the world fit with our first-personal ought beliefs. Enkrasia (i.e. coherence between your normative views and your motivation) is thus seen as a rational ideal and as a source of rational requirements. Nevertheless, many elementary questions regarding the application, content, and significance of an enkrasia-requirement remain unanswered, or subject to debate. This special issue on ‘The Nature of the Enkratic Requirement of Rationality’ aims to answer some of these fundamental questions. (shrink)

Some of my colleagues will sadly not be attending the IAB World Congress in Qatar. Amongst other things, they wish to take a stand against Qatar’s human rights record and the treatment of women and...

_The Ethics Toolkit_ provides an accessible and engaging compendium of concepts, theories, and strategies that encourage students and advanced readers to think critically about ethics so that they can engage intelligently in ethical study, thought, and debate. Written by the authors of the popular _The Philosophers’ Toolkit_ ; Baggini is also a renowned print and broadcast journalist, and a prolific author of popular philosophy books Uses clear and accessible language appropriate for use both inside and beyond the classroom Enlivened through (...) the use of real-world and hypothetical examples Cross-referencing of entries helps to connect and contrast ideas Features lists of prominent ethics organizations and useful websites Encourages readers to think critically about ethics and teaches them how to engage intelligently in ethical study, thought, and debate. (shrink)

This paper aims (a) to provide characterizations of realism and instrumentalism that are philosophically interesting and applicable to economics; and (b) to defend instrumentalism against realism as a methodological stance in economics. Starting point is the observation that ‘all models are false’, which, or so I argue, is difficult to square with the realist's aim of truth, even if the latter is understood as ‘partial’ or ‘approximate’. The three cheers in favour of instrumentalism are: (1) Once we have usefulness, truth (...) is redundant. (2) There is something disturbing about causal structure. (3) It's better to do what one can than to chase rainbows. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is widely recognised as one of the most important Western philosophers since Aristotle. His thought has had, and continues to have, a profound effect on every branch of philosophy, including aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. This Lexicon contains detailed and original entries by 130 leading Kant scholars, covering Kant's most important concepts as well as each of his writings. Part I covers Kant's notoriously difficult philosophical concepts, providing entries on these individual 'trees' of (...) Kant's philosophical system. Part II, by contrast, provides an overview of the 'forest' of Kant's philosophy, with entries on each of his published works and on each of his sets of lectures and personal reflections. This part is arranged chronologically, revealing not only the broad sweep of Kant's thought but also its development over time. Professors, graduate students, and undergraduates will value this landmark volume. (shrink)

In this review article we describe the current scope, methods, and contents of medical ethics education in medical schools in Western English speaking countries (mainly the United Kingdom, the United States, and Australia). We assess the strengths and weaknesses of current medical ethics curricula, and students’ levels of satisfaction with different teaching approaches and their reported difficulties in learning medical ethics concepts and applying them in clinical practice. We identify three main challenges for medical ethics education: counteracting the bad effects (...) of the “hidden curriculum,” teaching students how to apply ethical knowledge and critical thinking to real cases in clinical practice, and shaping future doctors’ right character through ethics education. We suggest ways in which these challenges could be addressed. On the basis of this analysis, we propose practical guidelines for designing, implementing, teaching, and assessing a medical ethics program within a four-year medical course. (shrink)

The so-called ‘cyclical argument’ for immortality in the Phaedo represents an endeavour to give philosophical respectability to the ancient religious doctrine of the cycle or wheel of rebirth. According to this, the soul is reincarnated after the death of its body and a short period in the ‘other world’ in a purely disembodied state. Socrates sets himself the task of proving that a soul animating a new body must previously have animated another body whose death antedates the life of the (...) new body. (shrink)

Our perceptual experiences stretch across time to present us with movement, persistence and change. How is this possible given that perceptual experiences take place in the present that has no duration? In this paper I argue that this problem is one and the same as the problem of accounting for how our experiences occurring at different times can be phenomenally unified over time so that events occurring at different times can be experienced together. Any adequate account of temporal experience must (...) also account for phenomenal unity. I look to Edmund Husserl's writings on time consciousness for such an account. (shrink)

Hussain claims that ethical consumers are subject to democratic requirements of morality, whereas ordinary price/quality consumers are exempt from these requirements. In this paper, we demonstrate that Hussain’s position is incoherent, does not follow from the arguments he offers for it, and entails a number of counterintuitive consequences.

Does a coherentist version of rationality issue requirements on states? Or does it issue requirements on processes? This paper evalu- ates the possibility of process-requirements. It argues that there are two possible definitions of state- and process-requirements: a satisfaction- based definition and a content-based definition. I demonstrate that the satisfaction-based definition is inappropriate. It does not allow us to uphold a clear-cut distinction between state- and process-requirements. We should therefore use a content-based definition of state- and pro- cess-requirements. However, a (...) content-based definition entails that ra- tionality does not issue process-requirements. Content-based process- requirements violate the principle that ‘rationality requires’ implies ‘can satisfy’. The conclusion of this paper therefore amounts to a radical re- jection of process-requirements of rationality. (shrink)

I argue that pregnant women have a duty to refrain from behaviours or to allow certain acts to be done to them for the sake of their foetus if the foetus has a reasonable chance of living and being in a harmed state if the woman does not refrain from those behaviours or allow those things to be done to her. There is a proviso: that her refraining from acting or allowing acts to be performed upon her does not significantly (...) harm her. This duty does not presuppose that the foetus is a person. It is grounded on principles of respect for the interests of sentient beings and prevention of harm to future individuals. I give an argument for a general duty of easy rescue. (shrink)

The course of German philosophy in the twentieth century is one of the most exciting and controversial in the history of human thought. In this outstanding and engaging introduction, a companion volume to his German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Weber to Heidegger, Julian Young examines and assesses the way in which some of the major German thinkers of the period reacted, often in starkly contrasting ways, to the challenges posed by the nature of modernity, the failure of liberalism (...) and the concept of decline. Divided into two parts exploring major intellectual figures of the left and right respectively, Young introduces and assesses the thought of the following figures: Georg Lukács: the critique of capitalism: alienation, reification, and false consciousness Ernst Bloch: the Marxist utopia Walter Benjamin: the confluence of phenomenology and left-wing thought: the Arcades Project, aura, and the technological reproduction of the artwork Oswald Spengler: the pessimistic right and the concept of Western decline Max Scheler: Catholic conservatism and the 'objective hierarchy of values' Carl Schmitt: the failure of liberalism, dictatorship, 'friends' versus 'enemies' Leo Strauss: the rejection of moral relativism and the return to classical philosophy. Highly relevant when the viability of liberal democracy is again called into question, German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Lukacs to Strauss is essential reading for students of German philosophy, phenomenology and critical theory, and will also be of interest to students in related fields such as literature, religious studies, and political theory. (shrink)

The path taken by German philosophy in the twentieth century is one of the most exciting and controversial in the history of human thought, by turns radical and conservative and secular and religious. In this outstanding introduction, German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Dilthey to Honneth--the third and final volume in his trilogy, Julian Young examines the work of eight German philosophers and theologians of the period. He shows how they engaged with profound existential questions about individual and collective (...) lives, criticised the increasing rationalisation and mechanisation characteristic of modernity, and committed themselves to varying forms of liberalism, socialism and democracy. Young introduces and assesses the thought of the following figures: Wilhelm Dilthey, the encroachment of the natural sciences upon the study of humanity and his distinction between 'explanation' and 'understanding'; Karl Jaspers, existentialism, the challenge of nihilism and the turn to theology; Edith Stein, our understanding of other people and the philosophy of empathy from a phenomenological standpoint; Paul Tillich, philosophical theology and the 'theonomous' life; Martin Buber, Recovering the 'I-Thou' relationship in the face of modernity and religious socialism; Hans Jonas, responsibility, selfhood and threats to humanity in the twentieth century; Erich Fromm, the 'art of loving' as a bulwark against totalitarianism and the replacement of capitalism by communitarian socialism; Axel Honneth, contemporary Hegelianism and the ethics and politics of recognition. Lucidly and engagingly written, German Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Dilthey to Honneth is essential reading for students of German philosophy, phenomenology and theology and will also be of interest to students in related fields such as literature, political theory and sociology. (shrink)

Suppose rationality requires you to A if you believe you ought to A. Suppose you believe that you ought to A. How can you satisfy this requirement? One way seems obvious. You can satisfy this requirement by A-ing. But can you also satisfy it by stopping to believe that you ought to A? Recently, it has been argued that this second option is not a genuine way of satisfying the above requirement. Conditional requirements of rationality do not have two ‘symmetric’, (...) but only one ‘asymmetric’ satisfaction condition. This paper explores the consequences of this argument for a theory of the requirements of rationality. I seek to show that thisview conflicts with another powerful intuition about the requirements of rationality, i.e. ‘rational consistency’: if rationality requires you to X, then it is not the case that rationality requires you to not-X. I shall conclude that ‘asymmetric’ satisfying is based on a misleading intuition, for which we should not sacrifice ‘rational consistency’. (shrink)

Examples of uniformly moving charge distributions that possess conserved electromagnetic stress tensors are exhibited. These constitute stable systems with covariantly characterized electromagnetic mass. This note, on a topic to which Paul Dirac made a significant contribution in 1938, is dedicated to him for his 80th birthday.

This paper argues that practical reasoning is a mental process which leads a person from a set of existent mental states to an intention. In Section 1, I defend this view against two other proposals according to which practical reasoning either concludes in an action itself or in a normative belief. Section 2 discusses the correctness of practical reasoning and explains how the correctness of instrumental reasoning can be explained by the logical relations that hold between the contents of the (...) mental states. In Section 3, I explore the correctness of normative practical reasoning. I conclude with the sceptical view that correct practical reasoning cannot require us to intend to do what we believe we ought to do. (shrink)

The simulation hypothesis can reinforce a cynical dismissal of human potential. This attitude can allow online platform designers to rationalize employing manipulative neuromarketing techniques to control user decisions. We point to cognitive boosting techniques at both user and designer levels to build critical reflection and mindfulness.

Más allá de sus diferencias y tensiones conceptuales, Hegel y Deleuze comparten el esfuerzo por concebir una filosofía de la naturaleza que no se confunda con el conocimiento científico de sus épocas respectivas – con el cual sin embargo se relacionan. En este artículo, se toma como base el orden de exposición de la “física orgánica” en la Enciclopedia de las ciencias filosóficas de Hegel para ponerla en relación con tres capítulos de Mil Mesetas, de Deleuze y Guattari. Así la (...) naturaleza geológica, la vegetal y la animal se confrontan respectivamente con “La geología de la moral”, el rizoma y los devenires-animales. El resultado, desde el estudio de Deleuze, es la posibilidad de encontrar, dentro de la caótica exposición de Mil mesetas, una determinación ontológica progresiva y una valorización de las formas existentes. Desde la interpretación de Hegel se podrá encontrar, dentro de la rígida estructura de la escala de la naturaleza, la estimación de lo anómalo y singular. (shrink)

(2001). The Fiction of 'Undue Inducement': Why Researchers Should Be Allowed to Pay Participants Any Amount of Money for Any Reasonable Research Project. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 1g-3g.