Rolls's presentation of emotion as integral to cognition is a welcome counter to a long tradition of treating them as antagonists. His eduction of experimental evidence in support of this view is impressive. However, we find his excursion into the philosophy of consciousness less successful. Rolls gives syntactical manipulation the central role in consciousness (in stark contrast to Searle, for whom “mere” syntax inevitably falls short of consciousness), and leaves us wondering about the roles left for emotion after all.

This book describes the application of Artificial Life simulation to evolutionary scenarios of wide ethical interest, including the evolution of altruism, rape and abortion, providing a new meaning to “experimental philosophy”. The authors also apply evolutionary ALife techniques to explore contentious issues within evolutionary theory itself, such as the evolution of aging. They justify these uses of simulation in science and philosophy, both in general and in their specific applications here.Evolving Ethics will be of interest to researchers, enthusiasts, students and (...) interested lay readers in the fields of Artificial Life, philosophy of science, ethics, agent- and individual-based modeling in ecology and the social sciences, computer simulation, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology and the social sciences.Dr Steven Mascaro is a researcher in computer simulation and Artificial Life.Dr Kevin Korb is a Reader in the Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University.Dr Ann Nicholson is an Associate Professor in the Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University.Owen Woodberry is a researcher in the Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University. (shrink)

Population-based research is enhanced by biological measures, but biological sampling raises complex ethical issues. The third British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3) will estimate the population prevalence of five sexually transmitted infections (STIs) (Chlamydia trachomatis, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, human papillomavirus (HPV), HIV and Mycoplasma genitalium) in a probability sample aged 16–44 years. The present work describes the development of an ethical approach to urine testing for STIs, including the process of reaching consensus on whether to return results. The (...) following issues were considered: (1) testing for some STIs that are treatable and for which appropriate settings to obtain free testing and advice are widely available (Natsal-3 provides all respondents with STI and healthcare access information), (2) limits on test accuracy and timeliness imposed by survey conditions and sample type, (3) testing for some STIs with unknown clinical and public health implications, (4) how a uniform approach is easier to explain and understand, (5) practical difficulties in returning results and cost efficiency, such as enabling wider STI testing by not returning results. The agreed approach, to perform voluntary anonymous testing with specific consent for five STIs without returning results, was approved by stakeholders and a research ethics committee. Overall, this was acceptable to respondents in developmental piloting; 61% (68 of 111) of respondents agreed to provide a sample. The experiences reported here may inform the ethical decision making of researchers, research ethics committees and funders considering population-based biological sampling. (shrink)

Dispositional compatibilists argue that a proper understanding of our abilities vindicates both compatibilism and the principle of Alternate Possibilities (the claim that the ability to do otherwise is required for freedom and moral responsibility). In this paper, I argue that this is mistaken. Both analyses of dispositions and abilities should distinguish between local and global dispositions or abilities. Once this distinction is in place, we see that neither thesis is established by an analysis of abilities.

Analyzing Oppression asks: why is oppression often sustained over many generations? The book explains how oppression coercively co-opts the oppressed to join their own oppression and argues that all persons have a moral responsibility to resist it. It finally explores the possibility of freedom in a world actively opposing oppression.

That there is no substance causation is often treated as the default position. My aim in this paper is primarily one of burden shifting: opponents of substance causation must do more to defend their position. After outlining the thesis I wish to defend, I present a simple argument for substance causation, arguing that opponents of substance causation owe us an explanation of why this argument is unsound. I end by answering objections to the view that substances can be causes.

AI has numerous applications and in various fields, including the military domain. The increase in the degree of autonomy in some decision-making systems leads to discussions on the possible future use of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS). A central issue in these discussions is the assignment of moral responsibility for some AI-based outcomes. Several authors claim that the high autonomous capability of such systems leads to a so-called “responsibility gap.” In recent years, there has been a surge in philosophical literature (...) around the concept of responsibility gaps and different solutions have been devised to close or bridge these gaps. In order to move forward in the research around LAWS and the problem of responsibility, it is important to increase our understanding of the different perspectives and discussions in this debate. This paper attempts to do so by disentangling the various arguments and providing a critical overview. After giving a brief outline of the state of the technology of LAWS, I will review the debates over responsibility gaps using three differentiators: those who believe in the existence of responsibility gaps versus those who do not, those who hold that responsibility gaps constitute a new moral problem versus those who argue they do not, and those who claim that solutions can be successful as opposed to those who believe that it is an unsolvable problem. (shrink)

Table of Contents: Illustrations Acknowledgments Conventions Introduction 3 Ch. 1 Kinds of Natural Philosophy 14 Ch. 2 Methods of Bookishness 49 Ch. 3 Modes of Argument 82 Ch. 4 Bodin’s Philosophy of Nature 116 Ch. 5 Theatrical Metaphors 153 Ch. 6 The Reception of the Theatrum 180 Epilogue: The Legacies of the Theatrum 225 Notes 233 Bibliography 331 Index 369.

The causal theory of properties is standardly combined with a realist's ontology of universals or tropes. In this paper, I consider an uncharted alternative – a nominalist causal theory of properties. I discuss advantages and disadvantages of the resulting theory of properties, and explore the Rylean understanding of causal powers that emerges.

I consider a grand, yet neglected proposal put forward by Shoemaker—a functionalist theory of all properties. I argue that two possible ways of developing this proposal meet with substantial objections. However, if we are prepared to endorse an ontology of tropes, one of these functionalist analyses can be developed into an original and informative theory of properties.

This is a book on feminist theory from a socialist-feminist (materialist feminist) perspective. I categorize existing paradigms of Western feminist theory in the 1980s and contrast them with my own view, which adds to a critique of capitalism inspired by Marxism another system in which male domination persists, which I call the system of "sex-affective production" (inspired but going beyond Freud, Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari). I also discuss motherhood and sexuality using my paradigm personally, politically and philosophically.

Detecting contract cheating in written submissions can be difficult beyond direct plagiarism detectable via technology. Successfully identifying potential cases of contract cheating in written work such as essays and reports is largely dependent on the experience of assessors and knowledge of student. It is further dependent on their familiarity with the patterns and clues evident in sections of body text and reference materials to identify irregularities. Consequently, some knowledge of what the patterns and clues look like is required. This paper (...) documents how to identify some of the patterns and clues observed in essay and report submissions. Effective assessment design with specific contextual requirements make irregularities easier to detect and interpret. The irregularities identified were confirmed as instances of contract cheating through conversations held with postgraduate students. An essential element of the conversations was the evidence presented for discussion. Irregularities were noted on a pro-forma specifically developed for this purpose. Patterns identified include misrepresented bibliographic data, inappropriate references, irrelevant material and generalised text that did not address the assessment question or grading criteria. The validated patterns formed the basis of identifying potential instances of contract cheating in later submissions. Timely conversations with students before the end of semester are essential to determining whether the patterns and clues link to poor knowledge of academic writing conventions or classified as contract cheating necessitating the application of appropriate penalties under institutional policies and procedures. (shrink)

The Routledge Companion to Feminist Philosophy is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key topics, subjects, thinkers, and debates in feminist philosophy. Fifty-six entries, written by an international team of contributors specifically for the _Companion_, are organized into five sections: Engaging the Past Mind, Body, and World Knowledge, Language, and Science Intersections Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics. The volume provides a mutually enriching representation of the several philosophical traditions that contribute to feminist philosophy, including the analytic and continental traditions. (...) It also foregrounds issues of global concern and scope; shows how feminist theory meshes with rich theoretical approaches that start from transgender identities, race and ethnicity, sexuality, disabilities, and other axes of identity and oppression; and highlights the interdisciplinarity of feminist philosophy and the ways that it both critiques and contributes to the whole range of subfields within philosophy. (shrink)

The feminist philosopher and social scientist shows how "gendering" has affected the social and natural sciences as she reconciles the long-standing dichotomy between the quantitative and qualitative methods and demonstrates the tandem use of both experimental and intuitive approaches.

While there is an extensive subfield in sociology studying the sources, content, and consequences of collective memory, the study of future projections has been much more fragmentary. In part, this has to do with the challenge of measurement; how do you measure something that has not happened yet? In this article, I argue that future projections can be studied via their externalizations in attitudes, narratives, performance, and material forms. They are particularly evident in what I call “sites of hyperprojectivity,” that (...) is, sites of heightened, future-oriented public debate about possible futures. As a pilot project, I examine contending narratives about possible futures in the online documents of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development and the accompanying “People’s Summit,” held in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012. I propose a framework for studying how public interventions into debates about “sustainable futures” and the “green economy” differ on various dimensions of projectivity, including their temporal reach, attention to contingency and causality, and network mapping of future actors. I present a preliminary analysis at the level of narrative and grammar, by analyzing the use of predictive, imperative, and subjunctive verb forms in both programmatic and oppositional texts. I close with a discussion of how different genres of future projection might be put to analytical use in studying processes of interest to social scientists, such as coalition formation, institution building, political mobilization, and policy change. (shrink)

Is the sense of smell a source of aesthetic perception? Traditional philosophical aesthetics has centered on vision and audition but eliminated smell for its subjective and inherently affective character. This article dismantles the myth that olfaction is an unsophisticated sense. It makes a case for olfactory aesthetics by integrating recent insights in neuroscience with traditional expertise about flavor and fragrance assessment in perfumery and wine tasting. My analysis concerns the importance of observational refinement in aesthetic experience. I argue that the (...) active engagement with stimulus features in perceptual processing shapes the phenomenological content, so much so that the perceptual structure of trained smelling varies significantly from naive smelling. In a second step, I interpret the processes that determine such perceptual refinement in the context of neural decision-making processes, and I end with a positive outlook on how research in neuroscience can be used to benefit philosophical aesthetics. (shrink)

Dancing with Iris engages with Iris Marion Young's prolific writings in political theory and in phenomenology. Contributors discuss her work from a variety of disciplines, including philosophy, political science, human rights law, cultural geography and dance studies.

Philosophical discussion about the reality of sensory perceptions has been hijacked by two tendencies. First, talk about perception has been largely centered on vision. Second, the realism question is traditionally approached by attaching objects or material structures to matching contents of sensory perceptions. These tendencies have resulted in an argumentative impasse between realists and anti-realists, discussing the reliability of means by which the supposed causal information transfer from object to perceiver takes place. Concerning the nature of sensory experiences and their (...) capacity to provide access to reality, this article challenges the standard categories through which most arguments in this debate have been framed to date. Drawing on the underexplored case of olfaction, I first show how the details of the perception process determine the modalities of sensory experiences. I specifically examine the role of measurement and analyze its influence on the characterization of perceptions in olfaction. My aim is to argue for an understanding of perception through a process view, rather than one pertaining to objects and properties of objects. (shrink)

'The church in danger' : latitudinarians, Socinians, and Hobbists -- Animal spirits and living fibres -- Mortalists and materialists -- Journalism, exile, and clandestinity -- Mid-eighteenth-century materialism -- Epilogue : some consequences.

Does the sense of smell involve the perception of odor objects? General discussion of perceptual objecthood centers on three criteria: stimulus representation; perceptual constancy; and figure-ground segregation. These criteria, derived from theories of vision, have been applied to olfaction in recent philosophical debates about psychology. An inherent problem with such framing of olfactory objecthood is that philosophers explicitly ignore the constitutive factors of the sensory systems that underpin the implementation of these criteria. The biological basis of odor coding is fundamentally (...) different from the coding principles of the visual system. This article analyzes the three measures of perceptual objecthood against the biological background of the olfactory system. It contrasts the coding principles in olfaction with the visual system to show why these criteria of objecthood fail to be instantiated in odor perception. The argument demonstrates that olfaction affords perceptual categorization without the need to form odor objects. (shrink)

This book gives a socialist-feminist theory of the origins, persistence and reproduction of male dominance in systems of parenting/motherhood and sexuality. I create the concept of "modes of sex/affective production" which I see as analogous to and intertwined with modes of economic production to reproduce historically different systems of male dominance. I compare my Multi-system socialist-feminist theory to those of Liberal Feminism, Radical feminism, Marxist-feminism, Freudian feminism, and various types of lesbian-feminism. The concluding chapter presents a socialist-feminist vision of a (...) liberated society where class, gender and racial dominance have been eliminated. Historical, political and personal examples are discussed. (shrink)

This collection challenges the traditional divide between the investigation of ethics is a private concern and politics as a public, group concern.

When we speak about the aim of doing philosophy on the elementary school level with children as transforming classrooms into 'communities of inquiry', we make certain assumptions about nature and personhood and the relationship between the two. We also make certain assumptions about dialogue, truth and knowledge. Further, we make assumptions regarding the ability of children to form such communities that will engender care for one another as persons with rights, a tolerance for each other's views, feelings, imaginings, creations as (...) well as a care for one another's happiness equal to the concern one has for one's own happiness. Lastly, we make assumptions about children's ability to commit themselves to objectivity, impartiality, consistency and reasonableness. The latter has social, moral and political implications. This paper is an attempt to identify and clarify some of these assumptions. (shrink)

Life comes from physical or biological survival. But the good life comes from what we care about, what we value, what we think truly important, as distinguished from what we think merely trivial. What we care about is the source of the criteria we use to evaluate ideas, ideals, persons, events, things, and their importance in our lives. And it is these criteria that determine the judgments we make in our everyday lives. In the second edition of Thinking in Education, (...) Matthew Lipman has indicated the importance of fostering critical, creative and caring thinking in children, if one is to prepare them to make better judgments and live qualitatively better lives. He tells us that caring thinking is appreciative thinking, active thinking, normative thinking, affective thinking and empathetic thinking and then goes on to list a number of mental acts under each of these categories. Maybe it is because ‘caring thinking’ is not as common a term as ‘critical thinking’ and ‘creative thinking’ in everyday educational language that we stop for pause when we hear it. However when we read what Lipman says about caring thinking, we find ourselves nodding and saying to ourselves, ‘Yes, that makes sense. To think caringly means to think ethically, affectively, normatively, appreciatively and to actively participate in society with a concern for the common good’. In a real sense what we care about is manifest in how we perform, participate, build, contribute and how we relate to others. It is thinking that reveals our ideals as well as what we think is valuable, what we are willing to fight and suffer for. (shrink)

The possible future use of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) and the challenges associated with assigning moral responsibility leads to several debates. Some authors argue that the highly autonomous capability of such systems may lead to a so-called responsibility gap in situations where LAWS cause serious violations of international humanitarian law. One proposed solution is the doctrine of command responsibility. Despite the doctrine’s original development to govern human interactions on the battlefield, it is worth considering whether the doctrine of command (...) responsibility could provide a solution by applying the notion analogously to LAWS. A fundamental condition underpinning the doctrine’s application is the control requirement, stipulating that a superior must exert some degree of control over subordinates. The aim of this article is to provide an in-depth analysis of this control condition and assess whether it leads to the impossibility of applying the doctrine of command responsibility to LAWS. To this end, the first section briefly introduces the topic of LAWS and responsibility gaps. The subsequent section provides a concise overview of the doctrine itself and the conditions typically necessitated for its application. In the third section, a comprehensive scrutiny of the control requirement is undertaken through examination of key case law, examining how the concept has been interpreted. Finally, the fourth section delves into the evaluation of commanders’ potential to exert effective control over their (non-human) subordinates. Based on this, the feasibility of considering command responsibility as a viable solution is assessed, aiming to determine whether its application should be prima facie excluded or warrants further exploration. (shrink)

This collection presents stimulating and diverse essays by scholars from several different fields; the contributors have made important contributions to the ...

Some have argued that our intuitive reactions to a number of cases of moral responsibility can only be preserved at the expense of a unified account of moral responsibility for acts and omissions. I argue against this conclusion, proposing that a plausible condition on responsibility, the Causal Condition can, when properly elaborated, justify the relevant intuitive data.

The controversy between hunting apologists and their anti-hunting antagonists continues to escalate. Numerous attempts to settle the issue have failed in part because the participants have often not distinguished and treated separately the various activities labeled “hunting.” Those who participate in hunting fall into one of two categories: shooters or sport hunters. Shooters are those whose ultimate goals do not depend on hunting but can be met in other ways; sport hunters are those who take immense pleasure in the hunt (...) itself and who kill in order to have had an authentic hunting experience. Discussion of the morality of hunting (as opposed to its prudence) is properly restricted to the moral evaluation of the desire of sport hunters to kill for pleasure. This desire can be explained by biological/evolutionary concepts and defended as morally neutral. Neither the animal protectionists nor the utilitarian apologists recognize that violent death is part of nature and that man’s desire to participate in it can be both natural and culturally valuable. Though well-intentioned, utilitarianism is an impotent ethical defense of hunting because it can judge only the prudence, not the morality, of hunting. (shrink)

AI has numerous applications and in various fields, including the military domain. The increase in the degree of autonomy in some decision-making systems leads to discussions on the possible future use of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS). A central issue in these discussions is the assignment of moral responsibility for some AI-based outcomes. Several authors claim that the high autonomous capability of such systems leads to a so-called “responsibility gap.” In recent years, there has been a surge in philosophical literature (...) around the concept of responsibility gaps and different solutions have been devised to close or bridge these gaps. In order to move forward in the research around LAWS and the problem of responsibility, it is important to increase our understanding of the different perspectives and discussions in this debate. This paper attempts to do so by disentangling the various arguments and providing a critical overview. After giving a brief outline of the state of the technology of LAWS, I will review the debates over responsibility gaps using three differentiators: those who believe in the existence of responsibility gaps versus those who do not, those who hold that responsibility gaps constitute a new moral problem versus those who argue they do not, and those who claim that solutions can be successful as opposed to those who believe that it is an unsolvable problem. (shrink)

I distinguish between two opposing intuitions about the nature of the singular causal relation. The first stresses the nomological character of causation, while the second emphasises is seemingly local character. My question is this: is it possible to formulate an account of causation which incorporates both intuitions? Anscombe gives us reason to think that these intuitions could not be jointly met in an account of causation. Foster and Tooley's acount seems to provide a counter‐instance to her claim, but this proves (...) to be a false start. I put forward an alternative suggestion which, by utilising tropes, manages to reconcile both the local and nomological character of causation. (shrink)