In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Playing the Dummy:Maugham, Smartphones, and the End of EleganceEric BronsonIOn the Russian Trans-Siberian train from Vladivostok to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), an American businessman won't stop talking for the entire ten-day journey. In his story, "A Chance Acquaintance," W. Somerset Maugham describes this 1917 meeting between Ashenden, a British character loosely based on himself, and the chatty American, named Harrington. The two passengers are blissfully unmoved by the revolution (...) unfolding all around them. Ashenden casually suggests the two of them try and find another pair to pass the time playing bridge. Harrington refuses. "It beats me how an intelligent man can waste his time card-playing," Harrington asserts, "and of all the unintellectual pursuits I have ever seen it seems to me that solitaire is the worst. It kills conversation. Man is a social animal and he exercises the highest part of his nature when he takes part in social intercourse."1 Ashenden doesn't understand the American's distaste for playing cards, especially bridge. "'There is a certain elegance in wasting time,' said Ashenden. … 'Besides,' he added with bitterness, 'you can still talk.'" [End Page 477]Like many of his fictional characters, Maugham enjoyed eloquent, "time-wasting" games like bridge. Unlike solitaire, bridge encourages social interaction. Once, when his confounded bridge partner confronted Maugham with evidence that his high-class opponents were cheating, Maugham was nonplussed. "They gave us double Martinis to start with," he noted, "a slap-up lunch with a particularly good bottle of white Burgundy and old brandy with our coffee."2 The dishonesty was irrelevant. For Maugham, a good bridge game, like the attendant conversation, should help temper one's moral outrage and skim over the unruly passions that so often plague our public and private lives. Elegance, for Maugham, meant presenting the appearance of calm and respectability, especially when such presentations conflicted with one's more turbulent emotions.In Maugham's short story "The Three Fat Women of Antibes," the women around the bridge table desperately try to keep up appearances, both physically and emotionally. When passionate arguments inevitably threaten to undo the air of genteel conversation, Lena, the newest addition to the table, states, "I think it's such a pity to quarrel over bridge. … After all, it's only a game."3 But while it might be true that bridge is "only a game," Maugham took games seriously. Parlor games like bridge were spaces to practice and perfect the social mores on which colonial hierarchies were solidified. In Maugham's England, the game of life required an elegant performance of the many roles the genteel class was expected to play. That performance was predicated on a relentless effort to keep up ordinary appearances by regulating emotional displays. As Maugham wrote in a 1944 article for Good Housekeeping, a good bridge game rewards people who are "truthful, clearheaded, and considerate," characteristics essential "for playing the more important game of life."4More than any other card game, bridge is built on conventions. Etiquette dictates how cards are shuffled, passed, and played. While there is always some room for surprise and risk, everyone around the table needs to know the bidding and playing conventions to ensure the best possible game. In every hand a silent partner, known as the dummy, lays their cards face up, thereby taking themself out of the action.The persistence of such conventions is a holdover from the game of whist, the predecessor of bridge. In an early-nineteenth-century story, "Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist," essayist Charles Lamb describes an elderly whist player who enjoys the elegant waste of time that such long card games encourage. While dances and parties help build social skills around untrustworthy passions, card games like whist, and later bridge, [End Page 478] were more like "a long meal; not like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might co-extend in duration with an evening. They gave time to form rooted friendships." This kind of congeniality mattered to serious people like Mrs. Battle, people who "despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the colours of things."5The game of bridge... (shrink)

Das Buch "Der kleine Hobbit" gilt als Vorläufer der wichtigsten Fantasy-Bücher aller Zeiten - den drei Bänden von "Der Herr der Ringe". Mit diesem Buch über die Abenteuer des Hobbits Bilbo Beutlin, zusammen mit 13 Zwergen und dem Zauberer Gandalf, schuf J.R.R. Tolkien schon jene Fantasiewelt, die uns alle später beim "Herrn der Ringe" nachhaltig beeindruckte. Elben, Trolle, Orks und ein Drache halten kleine und große Leser schon seit Jahren in Atem. Man stelle sich folgende Geschichte vor: Ein Mensch wohnt (...) in einer Höhle und lebt dort ein ruhiges, geordnetes und unaufgeregtes Leben, das schon seit Geburt an in den gleichen Bahnen verläuft. Eines Tages verlässt der Mensch seine Höhle und geht hinaus in die Welt. Dort sieht und erfährt er Dinge, die ihn nachhaltig verändern und reifen lassen. Er wird nach dieser Reise nie wieder derselbe sein wie vorher. Es ist nicht ungewöhnlich, wenn das bekannt klingt: Es handelt sich dabei um Platons Höhlengleichnis - eines der wichtigsten Gleichnisse bzw. Beispiele der Philosophie, genauer der Erkenntnistheorie. Die Handlung passt aber auch genau auf die Geschichte eines anderen Autors: J.R.R. Tolkien und sein Buch "Der kleine Hobbit". Auch hier verlässt eine Person (der Hobbit Bilbo Beutlin) die sichere und geordnete Umgebung des Auenlandes und zieht in die Welt hinaus. Diese abenteuerliche Reise wird ihn verändern und - wie wir alle wissen - mit dem Fund des EINEN Ringes für Mittelerde weitere große Folgen nach sich ziehen. Es ergibt also Sinn, den "kleinen Hobbit" mit seinen Inhalten unter der philosophischen Linse zu betrachten. Es ist nicht nur eine Kindergeschichte, sondern eine Auseinandersetzung mit Werten wie Mut, Freundschaft, Demut, Gnade und Weisheit - um nur einige zu nennen. (shrink)

Before becoming an internationally renowned sadhu espousing words of wisdom in an Indian forest, Sampath Chawla pulls down his pants. The wedding guests are horrified. His supervisor at the small-town post office fires him on the spot—it is, after all, his daughter's wedding.In Kiran Desai's novel Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, the oafish Sampath probably shouldn't have been invited to the wedding in the first place. At the post office he has been sulking for some time. "The post office. The (...) post office. The post office. It made him want to throw up."1 More troubling, he routinely opens other people's mail and reads their private letters throughout the workday. The letters give Sampath insights into the lives of... (shrink)

The essential companion to Stieg Larsson's bestselling trilogyand director David Fincher's 2011 film adaptation Stieg Larsson's bestselling Millennium Trilogy—The Girlwith the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, andThe Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest—is aninternational phenomenon. These books express Larsson's lifelongwar against injustice, his ethical beliefs, and his deep concernfor women's rights. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo andPhilosophy probes the compelling philosophical issues behindthe entire trilogy. What philosophies do Lisbeth Salander and Kanthave in common? To catch a (...) criminal, can Lisbeth and Mikael becriminals themselves? Can revenge be ethical? Drawing on some ofhistory's greatest philosophical minds, this book gives freshinsights into Larsson's ingeniously plotted tale of crime andcorruption. Looks at compelling philosophical issues such as a feministreading of Lisbeth Salander, Aristotelian arguments for why we loverevenge, how Kant can explain why so many women sleep with MikaelBlomkvist, and many more Includes a chapter from a colleague of Larsson's—whoworked with him in anti-Nazi activities—that exploresLarsson's philosophical views on skepticism and quotes fromnever-before-seen correspondence with Larsson Offers new insights into the novels' key characters, includingLisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, and investigates the author,Stieg Larsson As engrossing as the quest to free Lisbeth Salander from herpast, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Philosophy isideal reading for anyone interested in unraveling the subtext andexploring the greater issues at work in the story. (shrink)

Das Buch "Der kleine Hobbit" gilt als Vorläufer der wichtigsten Fantasy-Bücher aller Zeiten - den drei Bänden von "Der Herr der Ringe". Mit diesem Buch über die Abenteuer des Hobbits Bilbo Beutlin, zusammen mit 13 Zwergen und dem Zauberer Gandalf, schuf J.R.R. Tolkien schon jene Fantasiewelt, die uns alle später beim "Herrn der Ringe" nachhaltig beeindruckte. Elben, Trolle, Orks und ein Drache halten kleine und große Leser schon seit Jahren in Atem. Man stelle sich folgende Geschichte vor: Ein Mensch wohnt (...) in einer Höhle und lebt dort ein ruhiges, geordnetes und unaufgeregtes Leben, das schon seit Geburt an in den gleichen Bahnen verläuft. Eines Tages verlässt der Mensch seine Höhle und geht hinaus in die Welt. Dort sieht und erfährt er Dinge, die ihn nachhaltig verändern und reifen lassen. Er wird nach dieser Reise nie wieder derselbe sein wie vorher. Es ist nicht ungewöhnlich, wenn das bekannt klingt: Es handelt sich dabei um Platons Höhlengleichnis - eines der wichtigsten Gleichnisse bzw. Beispiele der Philosophie, genauer der Erkenntnistheorie. Die Handlung passt aber auch genau auf die Geschichte eines anderen Autors: J.R.R. Tolkien und sein Buch "Der kleine Hobbit". Auch hier verlässt eine Person die sichere und geordnete Umgebung des Auenlandes und zieht in die Welt hinaus. Diese abenteuerliche Reise wird ihn verändern und - wie wir alle wissen - mit dem Fund des EINEN Ringes für Mittelerde weitere große Folgen nach sich ziehen. Es ergibt also Sinn, den "kleinen Hobbit" mit seinen Inhalten unter der philosophischen Linse zu betrachten. Es ist nicht nur eine Kindergeschichte, sondern eine Auseinandersetzung mit Werten wie Mut, Freundschaft, Demut, Gnade und Weisheit - um nur einige zu nennen. (shrink)

Contains over fifteen essays that discuss philosophical topics in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" providing new insights into the characters and plot.

Culls dozens of life lessons from the pages of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic tale, examining the author's treatment of such issues as happiness, morality, and the search for ultimate truth.

[The war for a ring through the eyes of philosophers].

From the time of Locke, discussions of personal identity have often ignored the question of our basic metaphysical nature: whether we human people are biological organisms, spatial or temporal parts of organisms, bundles of perceptions, or what have you. The result of this neglect has been centuries of wild proposals and clashing intuitions. What Are We? is the first general study of this important question. It beings by explaining what the question means and how it differs from others, such as (...) questions of personal identity and the mind-body problem. It then examines in some depth the main possible accounts of our metaphysical nature, detailing both their theoretical virtues and the often grave difficulties they face. The book does not endorse any particular account of what we are, but argues that the matter turns on more general issues in the ontology of material things. If composition is universal--if any material things whatever make up something bigger--then we are temporal parts of organisms. If things never compose anything bigger, so that there are only mereological simples, then we too are simples--perhaps the immaterial substances of Descartes--or else we do not exist at all (a view Olson takes very seriously). The intermediate view that some things compose bigger things and others do not leads almost inevitably to the conclusion that we are organisms. So we can discover what we are by working out when composition occurs. (shrink)

Introduction -- Sanctioning models : theories and their scope -- Methodology for a virtual world -- A tale of two methods -- When theories shake hands -- Models of climate : values and uncertainties -- Reliability without truth -- Conclusion.

"The greatest crisis of our times in a failure of the human imagination." -Editors The world is currently undergoing a period of unprecedented crises on virtually every front: economic, ecological, and humanitarian. It is starkly apparent that a shift is needed in our dominant structural systems - and that by addressing the collective thinking that has created and maintained these systems, scholars can do their part to catalyze such a shift. The interdisciplinary field known as the Anthropology of Consciousness offers (...) important insights for enacting this necessary shift. This book draws on the work of a group of diverse scholars to explore what the intersection of anthropology and consciousness studies can contribute to the "public turn" within anthropology and the academy in general. Its twelve chapters span disparate geographies and disciplinary frameworks, yet cohere in their focus on common themes such as imagination, empathy, agency, dialogue, and ethics. The answers to the question "So What? Now What?" differ for a linguistic anthropologist in the South Pacific, an environmental educator in Hawai'i, a grant-writing anthropologist serving a refugee agency in Portland, Oregon and the founder of a girls' school in Brazil. Nevertheless, they are united in the desire to reframe the anthropology of consciousness as an "anthropology of conscience," and this pioneering volume is the result. (shrink)

Consider the following three claims. (i) There are no truths of the form ‘p and ~p’. (ii) No one holds a belief of the form ‘p and ~p’. (iii) No one holds any pairs of beliefs of the form {p, ~p}. Irad Kimhi has recently argued, in effect, that each of these claims holds and holds with metaphysical necessity. Furthermore, he maintains that they are ultimately not distinct claims at all, but the same claim formulated in different ways. I find (...) his argument suggestive, if not entirely transparent. I do think there is at least an important kernel of truth even in (iii), and that (i) ultimately explains what’s right about the other two. Consciousness of an impossibility makes belief in the obtaining of the corresponding state of affairs an impossibility. Interestingly, an appreciation of this fact brings into view a novel conception of inference, according to which it consists in the consciousness of necessity. This essay outlines and defends this position. A central element of the defense is that it reveals how reasoners satisfy what Paul Boghossian calls the Taking Condition and do so without engendering regress. (shrink)

Concepts: Core Readings traces the develoment of one of the most active areas of investigation in cognitive science. This comprehensive volume brings together the essential background readings on concepts from philosophy, psychology, and linguistics, while providing a broad sampling of contemporary research. The first part of the book centers around the fall of the Classical Theory of Concepts in the face of attacks by W.V.O. Quine, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Eleanor Rosch, and others, emphasizing the emergence and development of the Prototype Theory (...) and the controversies it spurred. The second part surveys a broad range of contemporary theories—Neoclassical Theories, the Prototype Theory, the Theory-Theory, and Conceptual Atomism. (shrink)

I argue that to have an attitude is, primarily, (1.) to have a dispositional profile that matches, to an appropriate degree and in appropriate respects, a stereotype for that attitude, typically grounded in folk psychology, and secondarily, (2.) in some cases also to meet further stereotypical attitude-specific conditions. To have an attitude, on the account I will recommend here, is mainly a matter of being apt to interact with the world in patterns that ordinary people would regard as characteristic of (...) having that attitude. I contrast this view with alternative views that treat having an attitude as a matter of possessing some particular internally stored representational content or some other "deep" structural feature. (shrink)

Rationalization, in our intended sense of the term, occurs when a person favors a particular conclusion as a result of some factor (such as self-interest) that is of little justificatory epistemic relevance, if that factor then biases the person’s subsequent search for, and assessment of, potential justifications for the conclusion. Empirical evidence suggests that rationalization is common in people’s moral and philosophical thought. We argue that it is likely that the moral and philosophical thought of philosophers and moral psychologists is (...) also pervaded by rationalization. Moreover, although rationalization has some benefits, overall it would be epistemically better if the moral and philosophical reasoning of people, including professional academics, were not as heavily influenced by rationalization as it likely is. We discuss the significance of our arguments for cognitive management and epistemic responsibility. (shrink)

Farming is undergoing a digital revolution. Our existing review of current Big Data applications in the agri-food sector has revealed several collection and analytics tools that may have implications for relationships of power between players in the food system. For example, Who retains ownership of the data generated by applications like Monsanto Corproation's Weed I.D. “app”? Are there privacy implications with the data gathered by John Deere's precision agricultural equipment? Systematically tracing the digital revolution in agriculture, and charting the affordances (...) as well as the limitations of Big Data applied to food and agriculture, should be a broad research goal for Big Data scholarship. Such a goal brings data scholarship into conversation with food studies and it allows for a focus on the material consequences of big data in society. (shrink)

We present evidence that mainstream Anglophone philosophy is insular in the sense that participants in this academic tradition tend mostly to cite or interact with other participants in this academic tradition, while having little academic interaction with philosophers writing in other languages. Among our evidence: In a sample of articles from elite Anglophone philosophy journals, 97% of citations are citations of work originally written in English; 96% of members of editorial boards of elite Anglophone philosophy journals are housed in majority-Anglophone (...) countries; and only one of the 100 most-cited recent authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy spent most of his career in non-Anglophone countries writing primarily in a language other than English. In contrast, philosophy articles published in elite Chinese-language and Spanish-language journals cite from a range of linguistic traditions, as do non-English-language articles in a convenience sample of established European-language journals. We also find evidence that work in English has more influence on work in other languages than vice versa and that when non-Anglophone philosophers cite recent work outside of their own linguistic tradition it tends to be work in English. (shrink)

Unconscious logical inference seems to rely on the syntactic structures of mental representations (Quilty-Dunn & Mandelbaum 2018). Other transitions, such as transitions using iconic representations and associative transitions, are harder to assimilate to syntax-based theories. Here we tackle these difficulties head on in the interest of a fuller taxonomy of mental transitions. Along the way we discuss how icons can be compositional without having constituent structure, and expand and defend the “symmetry condition” on Associationism (the idea that associative links and (...) transitions are perfectly symmetric). In the end, we show how a BIT (“bare inferential transition”) theory can cohabitate with these other non-inferential mental transitions. (shrink)

Philosophers tend to be pretty impressed by human self-knowledge. Descartes (1641/1984) thought our knowledge of our own stream of experience was the secure and indubitable foundation upon which to build our knowledge of the rest of the world. Hume – who was capable of being skeptical about almost anything – said that the only existences we can be certain of are our own sensory and imagistic experiences (1739/1978, p. 212). Perhaps the most prominent writer on self-knowledge in contemporary philosophy is (...) Sydney Shoemaker. The central aim of much of his work has been to show that certain sorts of error are impossible (1963, 1988, 1994). David Chalmers has likewise attempted to show that, for a suitably constrained class of beliefs about one’s own consciousness, error is impossible (2003, sec. 4.1). Even philosophers most of the community thinks of as pessimistic about self-knowledge of consciousness seem to me, really, to be fairly optimistic. Paul Churchland, famous for his disdain of ordinary people’s knowledge about the mind, compares the accuracy of introspection to the accuracy of sense perception – pretty good, presumably, about medium-sized, nearby matters (1985, 1988). Dan Dennett, often cited as a pessimist about introspective report, actually says that we can come close to infallibility when charitably interpreted (2002). The above references concern knowledge of the stream of conscious experience, but philosophers have also tended to be impressed with our self-knowledge of our attitudes, such as our beliefs and desires. Consider this: Although I can be wrong about its being sunny outside, I can’t in the same way be wrong, it seems, about the fact that I think it’s sunny outside. Some.. (shrink)

In On Empirically Equivalent Systems of the World from 1975, Quine formulated a thesis of underdetermination roughly to the effect that every scientific theory has an empirically equivalent but logically incompatible rival, one that cannot be discarded merely as a terminological variant of the former. For Quine, the truth of this thesis was an open question. If true, some would argue that it undermines any belief in scientific theories that is based purely on their empirical success. But despite its potential (...) significance, surprisingly little has been done by way of establishing or refuting it. My aim is to establish the thesis for as large a class of theories as possible. Under various precisifications of the concepts involved, I show that it holds for all consistent and recursively axiomatizable theories that postulate infinitely many theoretical entities. (shrink)

On an intellectualist approach to belief, the intellectual endorsement of a proposition (such as “The working poor deserve as much respect as the handsomely paid”) is sufficient or nearly sufficient for believing it. On a pragmatic approach to belief, intellectual endorsement is not enough. Belief is behaviorally demanding. To really, fully believe, you must also “walk the walk.” This chapter argues that the pragmatic approach is preferable on pragmatic grounds: It rightly directs our attention to what matters most in thinking (...) about belief. (shrink)

The present study used masked repetition priming to examine whether face representations can be accessed without attention. Two experiments using a face recognition task presented masked repetition and control primes in spatially unattended locations prior to target onset. Experiment 1 used the same images as primes and as targets and Experiment 2 used different images of the same individual as primes and targets. Repetition priming was observed across both experiments regardless of whether spatial attention was cued to the location of (...) the prime. Priming occurred for both famous and non-famous targets in Experiment 1 but was only reliable for famous targets in Experiment 2, suggesting that priming in Experiment 1 indexed access to view-specific representations whereas priming in Experiment 2 indexed access to view-invariant, abstract representations. Overall, the results indicate that subliminal access to abstract face representations does not rely on attention. (shrink)

Eric Martin and Daniel N. Osherson present a theory of inductive logic built on model theory. Their aim is to extend the mathematics of Formal Learning Theory to a more general setting and to provide a more accurate image of empirical inquiry. The formal results of their study illuminate aspects of scientific inquiry that are not covered by the commonly applied Bayesian approach.

Can large language models produce expert‐quality philosophical texts? To investigate this, we fine‐tuned GPT‐3 with the works of philosopher Daniel Dennett. To evaluate the model, we asked the real Dennett 10 philosophical questions and then posed the same questions to the language model, collecting four responses for each question without cherry‐picking. Experts on Dennett's work succeeded at distinguishing the Dennett‐generated and machine‐generated answers above chance but substantially short of our expectations. Philosophy blog readers performed similarly to the experts, while ordinary (...) research participants were near chance distinguishing GPT‐3's responses from those of an “actual human philosopher”. (shrink)

Once again available in paperback, Plato is the first half of Eric Voegelin's Plato and Aristotle, the third volume of his five-volume Order and History, which ...

In this book, Eric Havelock presents a challenging account of the development of the idea of justice in early Greece, and particularly of the way justice changed as Greek oral tradition gradually gave way to the written word in a literate society. He begins by examining the educational functions of poets in preliterate Greece, showing how they conserved and transmitted the traditions of society, a thesis adumbrated in his earlier book Preface to Plato. Homer, he demonstrates, has much to (...) say about justice, but since that idea is nowhere in the epics directly stated or expressed, it must be deduced from the speech and actions of the characters. Havelock's careful reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey is original and revealing; it sheds light both on Homeric notions of justice and on the Archaic Greek society depicted in the poems. As Havelock continues his inquiry from Hesiod to Aeschylus, his findings become more complex. The oral Greek world shades into a literate one. Words lose some kinds of meanings, gain others, and steadily become more suited to the conceptualization that Plato strove for and achieved. This evolution of language itself, Havelock shows, was one of the principal accomplishments of the Greek world. Lucidly written and forcefully argued, this book is a major contribution to our knowledge of ancient Greece--its politics, philosophy, and literature, from Homer to Plato. (shrink)

One big question in biology is what life is, but another is how life divides into living things. This is the problem of biological individuality. Proposed statements of the problem have been vague and incomplete. And proposed theories of biological individuality are not detailed enough to solve the problem even if they are correct. The root of these troubles is that their authors have not recognized the metaphysical claims presupposed in their statement of the problem. Making these claims explicit will (...) enable us to see better what the problem is and what form a solution to it would need to have. (shrink)

Trust me: my chair isn't big enough for two. You may doubt that every rational, conscious being is a person; perhaps there are beings that mistakenly believe themselves to be people. If so, read ‘rational, conscious being’ or the like for 'person'.

Preface -- Introduction -- How to value democracy -- Paper stones, the ethics of participation -- Philosophers-citizens -- Superdeliberators -- What is it like to be a citizen? -- Democracy's ethics of belief -- The division of democratic labor -- Representing principles -- Democratic complicity -- Not in my name, macrodemocratic design.

In his work on Wu wei, Edward Slingerland argues that the classical Chinese ideal is an inherently paradoxical concept that is first and foremost spiritual and political only secondarily. Through a close reading of the Dao de Jing, the first major classical text to substantially deploy and develop the concept, I argue that Wu wei isn’t inherently paradoxical and that this is seen precisely when it is viewed in terms of its political primacy. On my reading, the emergence of Wu (...) wei in the Daoist canon is an equilibrating moment of political mediation between the highly intentionalized sphere of human pursuits and the purposeless fluidity and boundless flux of the natural world. Wu wei here takes on a different aspect—mystery rather than paradox—when considered within a form of political collectivity in which the intentional and the innate, purposive and natural are constantly juxtaposed and contending with one another. (shrink)

The advanced division of cognitive labor generates a set of challenges and opportunities for professional philosophers. In this paper, I re-characterize the nature of synthetic philosophy in light of these challenges and opportunities. In part 1, I’ll remind you of the centrality of the division of labor to Plato’s Republic, and why this is especially salient in his banishment of the poets from his Kallipolis. I’ll then focus on the significance of an easily overlooked albeit rather significant character, Damon, mentioned (...) in that dialogue. I’ll argue that if we take the relationship between Socrates and Damon seriously, we’ll notice that in modeling imperfect polities, Plato inscribes Socrates within the advanced division of cognitive labor who defers to Damon as an expert on a key feature of the art of government. In fact, I’ll argue that in Republic, Plato offers us at least two ways to conceptualize philosophy’s relationship to the sciences, and that he alerts us to the social significance of this. In part 2, I’ll re-introduce my conceptualization of synthetic philosophy and restate it. Back in 2019 I published a short paper on it that went viral and was immediately used by others. Reflection on their use instructed me about an ambiguity in my position. Building on the material in parts 1-2, in part 3, I’ll contrast my account with a number of ways that Philip Kitcher has conceptualized synthetic philosophy in order to make more precise the version promoted here. (shrink)

How diverse is philosophy? In this paper we explore recent data on the racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of philosophy students and faculty in the United States. We have found that women are underrepresented in philosophy at all levels from first-year intention to major through senior faculty. The past four years have seen an increase in the percentage of women philosophy majors at the undergraduate level, but it remains to be seen if this recent increase in the percentage of women (...) will eventually also show at more advanced stages. Temporal trends since 2000 also show substantial increases in the racial and ethnic diversity of philosophy majors at all levels of education from first-year undergraduate through PhD, with substantial declines in the percentage of non-Hispanic White philosophy majors and substantial increases in all other commonly measured racial/ethnic groups except for Native American / Alaska Native. Despite generally increasing diversity, people who identify as Hispanic (any race), or non-Hispanic Native American, Alaska Native, or Black remain substantially underrepresented in philosophy at all levels compared to their presence in the U.S. population, and in some cases also as compared to other majors. (shrink)

This chapter surveys the origins and development in Greek philosophy of the thought that living well requires living as a citizen of the world.

Aristotle's treatment of the choice between the political and contemplative lives (in EN I 5 and X 7-8) can seem awkward. To offer one explanation of this, I argue that when he invokes self-sufficience (autarkeia) as a criterion for this choice, he appeals to two different and incompatible specifications of "lacking nothing." On one specification, suitable to a human being living as a political animal and thus seeking to realize his end as an engaged citizen of a polis, a person (...) lacks nothing by possessing a wide range of goods that directly require other people. On the other, more suitable to a god or a beast, a person lacks nothing by having no need of goods that directly require other people. The ambiguity of this criterion renders the choice between the political and contemplative lives difficult. (shrink)

We examine a set of debates in Practical Ethics commonly labeled “the ethics of human enhancement.” Our essay focuses on (1) conceptual concerns about the limits of legitimate health care—the treatment vs. enhancement distinction, (2) moral considerations about fairness, authenticity, and human nature that are common in discussing the use of medical technologies in competitive institutions like sports and academia, and (3) broader issues that pertain to science policy and the distribution and regulation of medical technologies.

Perhaps the most widely touted of GPT-4’s at-launch, zero-shot capabilities has been its reported 90th-percentile performance on the Uniform Bar Exam. This paper begins by investigating the methodological challenges in documenting and verifying the 90th-percentile claim, presenting four sets of findings that indicate that OpenAI’s estimates of GPT-4’s UBE percentile are overinflated. First, although GPT-4’s UBE score nears the 90th percentile when examining approximate conversions from February administrations of the Illinois Bar Exam, these estimates are heavily skewed towards repeat test-takers (...) who failed the July administration and score significantly lower than the general test-taking population. Second, data from a recent July administration of the same exam suggests GPT-4’s overall UBE percentile was below the 69th percentile, and $$\sim$$ ∼ 48th percentile on essays. Third, examining official NCBE data and using several conservative statistical assumptions, GPT-4’s performance against first-time test takers is estimated to be $$\sim$$ ∼ 62nd percentile, including $$\sim$$ ∼ 42nd percentile on essays. Fourth, when examining only those who passed the exam (i.e. licensed or license-pending attorneys), GPT-4’s performance is estimated to drop to $$\sim$$ ∼ 48th percentile overall, and $$\sim$$ ∼ 15th percentile on essays. In addition to investigating the validity of the percentile claim, the paper also investigates the validity of GPT-4’s reported scaled UBE score of 298. The paper successfully replicates the MBE score, but highlights several methodological issues in the grading of the MPT + MEE components of the exam, which call into question the validity of the reported essay score. Finally, the paper investigates the effect of different hyperparameter combinations on GPT-4’s MBE performance, finding no significant effect of adjusting temperature settings, and a significant effect of few-shot chain-of-thought prompting over basic zero-shot prompting. Taken together, these findings carry timely insights for the desirability and feasibility of outsourcing legally relevant tasks to AI models, as well as for the importance for AI developers to implement rigorous and transparent capabilities evaluations to help secure safe and trustworthy AI. (shrink)

Polus admires orators for the tyrannical power they have. However, Socrates argues that orators and tyrants lack power worth having: the ability to satisfy one's wishes or wants (boulēseis). He distinguishes wanting from thinking best, and grants that orators and tyrants do what they think best while denying that they do what they want. His account is often thought to involve two conflicting requirements: wants must be attributable to the wanter from their own perspective (to count as their desires), but (...) wants must also be directed at objects that are genuinely good (in order for failure to satisfy them to matter). We offer an account of wanting as reflective, coherent desire, which allows Socrates to satisfy both desiderata. We then explain why he thinks that orators and tyrants want to act justly, though they do greater injustices than anyone else and so frustrate their own wants more than anyone else. (shrink)

This volume presents a comprehensive analysis of the Confucian thinker Xunzi and his work, which shares the same name. It features a variety of disciplinary perspectives and offers divergent interpretations. The disagreements reveal that, as with any other classic, the Xunzi provides fertile ground for readers. It is a source from which they have drawn—and will continue to draw—different lessons. In more than 15 essays, the contributors examine Xunzi’s views on topics such as human nature, ritual, music, ethics, and politics. (...) They also look at his relations with other thinkers in early China and consider his influence in East Asian intellectual history. A number of important Chinese scholars in the Song dynasty sought to censor the Xunzi. They thought that it offered a heretical and impure version of Confuciansim. As a result, they directed study away from the Xunzi. This has diminished the popularity of the work. However, the essays presented here help to change this situation. They open the text’s riches to Western students and scholars. The book also highlights the substantial impact the Xunzi has had on thinkers throughout history, even on those who were critical of it. Overall, readers will gain new insights and a deeper understanding of this important, but often neglected, thinker. (shrink)