Analytic moral philosophers have generally failed to engage in any substantial way with the cultural history of morality. This is a shame, because a genealogy of morals can help us accomplish two important tasks. First, a genealogy can form the basis of an epistemological project, one that seeks to establish the epistemic status of our beliefs or values. Second, a genealogy can provide us with functional understanding, since a history of our beliefs, values or institutions can reveal some inherent dynamic (...) or pattern which may be problematically obscured from our view. In this paper, I try to make good on these claims by offering a sketchy genealogy of emancipatory values, or values which call for the liberation of persons from systems of dominance and oppression. The real history of these values, I argue, is both epistemologically vindicatory and functionally enlightening. (shrink)

"Ethical thought has no chance of being everything it seems." Bernard Williams offered this cryptic remark in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, and in this chapter I argue that understanding it is the key to understanding Williams' skepticism about moral theory and about systematization in ethics. The difficulty for moral philosophy, Williams believed, is that ethics looks one way to embodied, active agents, but looks entirely different when considered from the standpoint of theory. This, in turn, means that following (...) a moral theory is a sure route to practical alienation. I argue that once we see it for what it is, we can see that Williams own skepticism undermines his later attempts to vindicate Truthfulness. Moreover, given the pervasiveness of reflective practical alienation in ordinary life, it leaves us with a difficult question: what would a non-alienated ethical existence even look like for us? (shrink)

_Anthropic Bias_ explores how to reason when you suspect that your evidence is biased by "observation selection effects"--that is, evidence that has been filtered by the precondition that there be some suitably positioned observer to "have" the evidence. This conundrum--sometimes alluded to as "the anthropic principle," "self-locating belief," or "indexical information"--turns out to be a surprisingly perplexing and intellectually stimulating challenge, one abounding with important implications for many areas in science and philosophy. There are the philosophical thought experiments and paradoxes: (...) the Doomsday Argument; Sleeping Beauty; the Presumptuous Philosopher; Adam & Eve; the Absent-Minded Driver; the Shooting Room. And there are the applications in contemporary science: cosmology ; evolutionary theory ; the problem of time's arrow ; quantum physics ; game-theory problems with imperfect recall ; even traffic analysis. _Anthropic Bias_ argues that the same principles are at work across all these domains. And it offers a synthesis: a mathematically explicit theory of observation selection effects that attempts to meet scientific needs while steering clear of philosophical paradox. (shrink)

We begin by showing that every theory of the value of uncertain prospects must have one of three unpalatable properties. _Reckless_ theories recommend giving up a sure thing, no matter how good, for an arbitrarily tiny chance of enormous gain; _timid_ theories permit passing up an arbitrarily large potential gain to prevent a tiny increase in risk; _non-transitive_ theories deny the principle that, if A is better than B and B is better than C, then A must be better than (...) C. Having set up this trilemma, we study its horns. Non-transitivity has been much discussed; we focus on drawing out the costs and benefits of recklessness and timidity when it comes to axiology, decision theory, and normative uncertainty. (shrink)

This book explores both the embodied nature of social life and the social nature of human bodily life. It provides an accessible review of the contemporary social science debates on the body, and develops a coherent new perspective. Nick Crossley critically reviews the literature on mind and body, and also on the body and society. He draws on theoretical insights from the work of Gilbert Ryle, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, George Herbert Mead and Pierre Bourdieu, and shows how the work of (...) these writers overlaps in interesting and important ways which, when combined, provide the basis for a persuasive and robust account of human embodiment. The Social Body provides a timely review of the theoretical approaches to the sociology of the body. It offers new insights, and a coherent new perspective on the body. It will be valuable reading for students and academics in sociology, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception - a canonical text of twentieth-century philosophy - concludes with an appeal to 'heroism' by citing a series of enigmatic sentences drawn from Saint-Exupe;ry's Pilote de guerre. Surprisingly, however, these lines are antithetical to the philosophical thrust of Merleau-Ponty's project. This book aims to explain this situation. Foregrounding liminal themes in Merleau-Ponty's thought that have been largely overlooked - e.g., sacrifice, death, myth, faith - and showing how these themes support Merleau-Ponty's reinterpretation of Husserlian phenomenology, (...) class='Hi'>Smyth shows that Merleau-Ponty's appeal to 'heroism' represents an extra-philosophical appeal to a historical purposiveness as a universal feature of human nature, and that Merleau-Ponty makes this appeal in virtue of his recognition of the intrinsic methodological limitations of philosophy as a theoretical endeavor. The book thus recovers the 'militant' dimension of Merleau-Ponty's thought. This sheds considerable new light on his work. It does so in a way that challenges some of the basic parameters of existing Merleau-Ponty scholarship by illuminating the intrinsic normativity of his existential phenomenology, and its epistemic reliance on forms of non-reason such as faith and myth. (shrink)

This paper sketches a new approach to the critical-theoretic problem of reification understood as a normatively problematic form of naturalizing or dehistoricizing entifcation. Entifcation in general is approached phenomenologically in terms of the mythic outer horizonality of the lifeworld, and reification is shown to stem from the dichotomy between nature and history which, along with a corresponding dichotomy between myth and reason, is characteristic of Enlightenment rationality. Dereification necessitates overcoming these dichotomies, and this implies a critical embrace of myth and (...) mythopoesis in the sense of instituting more normatively appropriate lifeworld horizons. While classical Marxism and radical social theory have typically adhered to the standard model of Enlightenment thought, with the result that the critique of naturalization backfires by reinforcing the dichotomy between nature and history, Luxemburgian spontaneism, rethought through a phenomenology of embodied enaction, is shown to ofer a more viable way of understanding reification and its solution. (shrink)

Prior research found correlations between reflection test performance and philosophical tendencies among laypeople. In two large studies (total N = 1299)—one pre-registered—many of these correlations were replicated in a sample that included both laypeople and philosophers. For example, reflection test performance predicted preferring atheism over theism and instrumental harm over harm avoidance on the trolley problem. However, most reflection-philosophy correlations were undetected when controlling for other factors such as numeracy, preferences for open-minded thinking, personality, philosophical training, age, and gender. Nonetheless, (...) some correlations between reflection and philosophical views survived this multivariate analysis and were only partially confounded with either education or self-reported reasoning preferences. Unreflective thinking still predicted believing in God whereas reflective thinking still predicted believing that (a) proper names like ‘Santa’ do not necessarily refer to entities that actually exist and (b) science does reveal the fundamental nature of the world. So some robust relationships between reflection and philosophical tendencies were detected even among philosophers, and yet there was clearly more to the link between reflection and philosophy. To this end, demographic and metaphilosophical hypotheses are considered. (shrink)

Tasler teaches readers how to thrive when faced with difficult choices, provides a clear understanding of why you make the choices you do, and suggests the tools to make those decision change your business and your life.

Philosophers often characterize discourse in general as aiming at some sort of convergence (in beliefs, plans, dispositions, feelings, etc.), and many views about aesthetic discourse in particular affirm this thought. I argue that a convergence norm does not govern aesthetic discourse. The conversational dynamics of aesthetic discourse suggest that typical aesthetic claims have directive force. I distinguish between dynamic and illocutionary force and develop related theories of each for aesthetic discourse. I argue that the illocutionary force of aesthetic utterances is (...) typically invitational because its dynamic force is influenced by a ‘communal’ norm. I draw on dynamic pragmatics to develop a formal account of this dynamic force that explains why invitation has pride of place in aesthetic conversation. It turns out that the end of aesthetic discourse is not convergence but a distinctive form of community, a kind of harmony of individuality, that is compatible with aesthetic disagreement. If this is right, then convergence theories of aesthetic and normative discourse, and of conversation in general, need to be revised. (shrink)

The study of active matter systems demonstrates how interactions might co-constitute agential dynamics. Active matter systems are comprised of self-propelled independent entities which, en masse, take part in complex and interesting collective group behaviors at a far-from-equilibrium state (Menon, 2010 ; Takatori & Brady, 2015 ). These systems are modelled using very simple rules (Vicsek at al. 1995), which reveal the interactive nature of the collective behaviors seen from humble to highly complex entities. Here I show how the study of (...) active matter systems supports two related proposals regarding interaction and agency. First, I argue that the study of interactive dynamics in these systems evidences the utility of treating interaction as an ontological category (Longino, 2021 ) and challenges methodological individualism as the received explanatory primitive in the study of agency. Second, the methods used to research active matter systems demonstrate how a minimal approach to agency can scale up in studying interactive agential dynamics in more complex systems. The examples of coordination dynamics (Kelso, 2001 ) and participatory sense-making (De Jaegher & Di Paolo, 2007 ) are provided to show how understanding agency requires us to look beyond the individuals to the interactive agential dynamics that can guide, scaffold, or constrain their activity. (shrink)

In this book Daniel Smyth offers a comprehensive overview of Immanuel Kant's conception of intuition in all its species – divine, receptive, sensible, and human. Kant considers sense perception a paradigm of intuition, yet claims that we can represent infinities in intuition, despite the finitude of sense perception. Smyth examines this heterodox combination of commitments and argues that the various features Kant ascribes to intuition are meant to remedy specific cognitive shortcomings that arise from the discursivity of our (...) intellect Intuition acting as the intellect's cognitive partner to make knowledge possible. He reconstructs Kant's conception of intuition and its role in his philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of mathematics, and shows that Kant's conception of sensibility is as innovative and revolutionary as his much-debated theory of the understanding. (shrink)

I consider a number of reasons one might think we should only accept epistemic dilemmas in our normative epistemology as a last resort and argue that none of them is compelling.

Why does time pass and space does not? Are there just three dimensions? What is a quantum particle? Nick Huggett shows that philosophy -- armed with a power to analyze fundamental concepts and their relationship to the human experience -- has much to say about these profound questions about the universe. In Everywhere and Everywhen, Huggett charts a journey that peers into some of the oldest questions about the world, through some of the newest, such as: What shape is (...) space? Does it have an edge? What is the difference between past and future? What is time in relativity? Is time travel possible? Are there other universes? Huggett shows that answers to these profound questions are not just reserved for physics, and that philosophy can not only address but help advance our view of our deepest questions about the universe, space, and time, and their implications for humanity. His lively, accessible introduction to these topics is suitable for a general reader with no previous exposure to these profound and exciting questions. (shrink)

Articulate and perceptive, Intersubjectivity is a text that explains the notions of intersubjectivity as a central concern of philosophy, sociology, psychology, and politics. Going beyond this broad-ranging introduction and explication, author Nick Crossley provides a critical discussion of intersubjectivity as an interdisciplinary concept to shed light on our understanding of selfhood, communication, citizenship, power, and community. The volume traces the contributions of key thinkers engaged within the intersubjectivist tradition, including Husserl, Buber, Kojeve, Merlau-Ponty, Mead, Wittgenstein, Schutz, and Habermas. A (...) clear, concise introduction to a range of difficult concepts and thinkers, Intersubjectivity demystifies this very interdisciplinary subject for advanced and graduate-level students of philosophy, sociology, social psychology, and social and political theory. (shrink)

This article argues that traditional, regulative principles of research ethics offer insufficient guidance for research in the narrative study of lives. These principles presuppose an implicit epistemology that conceives of research participants as data sources, a conception that is argued not tenable for narrative research. The case is made by drawing on recent discussions of research ethics in the qualitative and narrative research literature. This article shows that narrative ethics is inextricably entwined with epistemological issues--namely, issues of narrative ownership and (...) the multiplicity of narrative meaning. Finally, practical recommendations are made for the ethical treatment of research participants in narrative research. The article concludes by situating our approach with respect to the broad range of contemporary perspectives on research ethics. (shrink)

What is the purpose of art? What drives us to make it? Why do we value it? Nick Zangwill argues that the function of art is to have certain aesthetic properties in virtue of its non-aesthetic properties, and this function arises because of the artist's insight into the nature of these dependence relations and her intention to bring them about.

To what extent should we use technological advances to try to make better human beings? Leading philosophers debate the possibility of enhancing human cognition, mood, personality, and physical performance, and controlling aging. Would this take us beyond the bounds of human nature? These are questions that need to be answered now.

A dizzying trip through the mind(s) of the provocative and influential thinker Nick Land. During the 1990s British philosopher Nick Land's unique work, variously described as “rabid nihilism,” “mad black deleuzianism,” and “cybergothic,” developed perhaps the only rigorous and culturally-engaged escape route out of the malaise of “continental philosophy” —a route that was implacably blocked by the academy. However, Land's work has continued to exert an influence, both through the British “speculative realist” philosophers who studied with him, and (...) through the many cultural producers—writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers—who have been invigorated by his uncompromising and abrasive philosophical vision. Beginning with Land's early radical rereadings of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kant and Bataille, the volume collects together the papers, talks and articles of the mid-90s—long the subject of rumour and vague legend (including some work which has never previously appeared in print)—in which Land developed his futuristic theory-fiction of cybercapitalism gone amok; and ends with his enigmatic later writings in which Ballardian fictions, poetics, cryptography, anthropology, grammatology and the occult are smeared into unrecognisable hybrids. Fanged Noumena gives a dizzying perspective on the entire trajectory of this provocative and influential thinker's work, and has introduced his unique voice to a new generation of readers. (shrink)

We review the various factors that limit adaptation by natural selection. Recent discussion of constraints on selection and, conversely, of the factors that enhance “evolvability”, have concentrated on the kinds of variation that can be produced. Here, we emphasise that adaptation depends on how the various evolutionary processes shape variation in populations. We survey the limits that population genetics places on adaptive evolution, and discuss the relationship between disparate literatures. BioEssays 22:1075–1084, 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

In this paper, I critically analyze the notion that self-interest distorts moral belief-formation. This belief is widely shared among modern moral epistemologists, and in this paper, I seek to undermine this near consensus. I then offer a principle which can help us to sort cases in which self-interest distorts moral belief from cases in which it does not. As it turns out, we cannot determine whether such distortion has occurred from the armchair; rather, we must inquire into mechanisms of social (...) power and advantage before declaring that some moral position is distorted by self-interest. (shrink)

David Benatar has argued both for anti-natalism and for a certain pessimism about life's meaning. In this paper, I propose that these positions are expressions of a deeply impersonal philosophical temperament. This is not a problem on its own; we all have our philosophical instincts. The problem is that this particular temperament, I argue, leads Benatar astray, since it prevents him from answering a question that any moral philosopher must answer. This is the question of rational authority, which requires the (...) moral philosopher to say why existing human agents have strong practical reasons to comply with the philosopher's dictates. A purely impersonal ethical system can never do this, and this is why Benatar has no answer to this question. (shrink)

I argue that evidentialism should be rejected because it cannot be reconciled with empirical work on bias in cognitive and social psychology.

The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. Other animals have stronger muscles or sharper claws, but we have cleverer brains. If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of (...) our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence. But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed AI or otherwise to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation? To get closer to an answer to this question, we must make our way through a fascinating landscape of topics and considerations. Read the book and learn about oracles, genies, singletons; about boxing methods, tripwires, and mind crime; about humanity's cosmic endowment and differential technological development; indirect normativity, instrumental convergence, whole brain emulation and technology couplings; Malthusian economics and dystopian evolution; artificial intelligence, and biological cognitive enhancement, and collective intelligence. (shrink)

A structural harm results from countless apparently innocuous interactions between a great many individuals in a social system, and not from any agent’s intentionally producing the harm. Iris Young has influentially articulated a model of individual moral responsibility for such harms, and several other philosophers have taken it as their starting point for dealing with the phenomenon of structural injustice. In this paper, I argue that this social connection model is far less realistic and socially effective than it aims to (...) be. This is because the model systematically neglects the key role played by the emotions in human moral life. (shrink)

This article responds to recent debates in critical algorithm studies about the significance of the term “algorithm.” Where some have suggested that critical scholars should align their use of the term with its common definition in professional computer science, I argue that we should instead approach algorithms as “multiples”—unstable objects that are enacted through the varied practices that people use to engage with them, including the practices of “outsider” researchers. This approach builds on the work of Laura Devendorf, Elizabeth Goodman, (...) and Annemarie Mol. Different ways of enacting algorithms foreground certain issues while occluding others: computer scientists enact algorithms as conceptual objects indifferent to implementation details, while calls for accountability enact algorithms as closed boxes to be opened. I propose that critical researchers might seek to enact algorithms ethnographically, seeing them as heterogeneous and diffuse sociotechnical systems, rather than rigidly constrained and procedural formulas. To do so, I suggest thinking of algorithms not “in” culture, as the event occasioning this essay was titled, but “as” culture: part of broad patterns of meaning and practice that can be engaged with empirically. I offer a set of practical tactics for the ethnographic enactment of algorithmic systems, which do not depend on pinning down a singular “algorithm” or achieving “access,” but which rather work from the partial and mobile position of an outsider. (shrink)

Our paradigms of aesthetic value condition the philosophical questions we pose and hope to answer about it. Theories of aesthetic value are typically individualistic, in the sense that the paradigms they are designed to capture, and the questions to which they are offered as answers, center the individual’s engagement with aesthetic value. Here I offer some considerations that suggest that such individualism is a mistake and sketch a communitarian way of posing and answering questions about the nature of aesthetic value.

'The Probabilistic Mind' is a follow-up to the influential and highly cited 'Rational Models of Cognition'. It brings together developments in understanding how, and how far, high-level cognitive processes can be understood in rational terms, and particularly using probabilistic Bayesian methods.

Non-representational approaches to cognition have struggled to provide accounts of long-term planning that forgo the use of representations. An explanation comes easier for cognitivist accounts, which hold that we concoct and use contentful mental representations as guides to coordinate a series of actions towards an end state. One non-representational approach, ecological-enactivism, has recently seen several proposals that account for “high-level” or “representation-hungry” capacities, including long-term planning and action coordination. In this paper, we demonstrate the explanatory gap in these accounts that (...) stems from avoiding the incorporation of long-term intentions, as they play an important role both in action coordination and perception on the ecological account. Using recent enactive accounts of language, we argue for a non-representational conception of intentions, their formation, and their role in coordinating pre-reflective action. We provide an account for the coordination of our present actions towards a distant goal, a skill we call distal engagement. Rather than positing intentions as an actual cognitive entity in need of explanation, we argue that we take them up in this way as a practice due to linguistically scaffolded attitudes towards language use. (shrink)

Previously proposed strategies for tackling hermeneutical injustices take for granted the interests people have in certain things about them being intelligible to them and/or to others, and seek to enable them to satisfy these interests. Strategies of this sort I call interests-as-given strategies. I propose that some hermeneutical injustices can instead be tackled by doing away with certain of these interests, and so with the possibility of their unfair non-satisfaction. Strategies of this sort I call interests-in-question strategies. As a case (...) study in when such an interests-in-question strategy ought to be pursued, I look at how to tackle hermeneutical injustices arising in the context of gender-affirming healthcare as provided to adults by the National Health Service in the UK. I argue that considerations of trust, privacy, and respect all support pursuing such a strategy. One way to do so, I suggest, would be by replacing the existing gatekeeping model with an informed consent model for the provision of gender-affirming healthcare. Considerations of hermeneutical justice can hence be added to the already-impressive case for undertaking this shift. (shrink)

With very advanced technology, a very large population of people living happy lives could be sustained in the accessible region of the universe. For every year that development of such technologies and colonization of the universe is delayed, there is therefore a corresponding opportunity cost: a potential good, lives worth living, is not being realized. Given some plausible assumptions, this cost is extremely large. However, the lesson for standard utilitarians is not that we ought to maximize the pace of technological (...) development, but rather that we ought to maximize its safety, i.e. the probability that colonization will eventually occur. This goal has such high utility that standard utilitarians ought to focus all their efforts on it. Utilitarians of a ‘person-affecting’ stripe should accept a modified version of this conclusion. Some mixed ethical views, which combine utilitarian considerations with other criteria, will also be committed to a similar bottom line. (shrink)

How sexuality should be regulated in a liberal political community is an important, controversial theoretical and empirical question—as shown by the recent criminalization of possession of some adult pornography in the United Kingdom. Supporters of criminalization argue that Mill, often considered a staunch opponent of censorship, would support prohibition due to his feminist commitments. I argue that this account underestimates the strengths of the Millian account of private conduct and free expression, and the consistency of Millian anticensorship with feminist values. (...) A Millian contextual defense of liberty, however, suggests several other policy approaches to addressing the harms of pornography. (shrink)

In this brief note, we respond to Gottlieb and Lasser's (2001/this issue) critical commentary on our work on narrative research ethics. We argue that their concern for privileging voices needs to be balanced against the risk of exploiting some research participants, that conflicts of interest are best resolved through appropriately prioritizing ethical principles and in consultation with others, and that the researcher's ability to protect participants from harm can be enhanced through appropriate clinical training and access to clinical expertise. We (...) welcome Gottlieb and Lasser's specific recommendations for ethical practice in narrative research and encourage further ethical reflection by other researchers in this area. (shrink)

""The Habit of Lying" is a highly original, exceptionally sophisticated, continuously illuminating work of literary and cultural theory, and an intellectual ...

Subjects of ectogenesis—human beings that are developing in artificial wombs (AWs)—share the same moral status as newborns. To demonstrate this, I defend two claims. First, subjects of partial ectogenesis—those that develop in utero for a time before being transferred to AWs—are newborns (in the full sense of the word). Second, subjects of complete ectogenesis—those who develop in AWs entirely—share the same moral status as newborns. To defend the first claim, I rely on Elizabeth Chloe Romanis’s distinctions between fetuses, newborns and (...) subjects of ectogenesis. For Romanis, the subject of partial ectogenesis ‘is neither a fetus nor a baby’ but is, instead, a ‘new product of human reproduction’. In this essay, I begin by, expanding upon Romanis’s argument that subjects of partial ectogenesis are not fetuses while arguing that those subjects are newborns. Next, I show that the distinction that Romanis draws between subjects of partial ectogenesis and newborns needs to be revised. The former is a kind of the latter. This leads us to an argument that shows why different moral statuses cannot be justifiably assigned to subjects of partial ectogenesis and subjects of complete ectogenesis, respectively. As subjects of partial ectogenesis share the same moral status as newborns, it follows that subjects of complete ectogenesis share the same moral status as newborns as well. I conclude by considering implications that this essay may have for the research and development of AW technology and conceptual links between a subject’s moral status and birth. (shrink)

Evolutionary development is sometimes thought of as exhibiting an inexorable trend towards higher, more complex, and normatively worthwhile forms of life. This paper explores some dystopian scenarios where freewheeling evolutionary developments, while continuing to produce complex and intelligent forms of organization, lead to the gradual elimination of all forms of being that we care about. We then consider how such catastrophic outcomes could be avoided and argue that under certain conditions the only possible remedy would be a globally coordinated policy (...) to control human evolution by modifying the fitness function of future intelligent life forms. (shrink)