The Tebtunis Papyri, Part II. Edited by B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, with the assistance of E. J. Godspeed. London: Henry Frowde, 1907. Pp. xv + 485. Two Facsimiles and Map. £2 5s. net.

The chapter highlights four themes within the psychology of climate change that illustrate how psychological findings bear on the philosophy of climate change. The chapter first considers how psychological research has explored the ways in which individuals think about the ethics of the relationship between humans and the environment, developing new constructs capturing various ways of thinking about that relationship and developing tools with which to measure the extent to which participants think about the relationship in the relevant ways. The (...) remaining sections look at why people might find it difficult to act ethically in relation to the environment, the psychological impacts of the climate crisis, and at what psychology can teach us about developing effective interventions to practically respond to the climate crisis. (shrink)

This schedule, provided as a companion to my “Teaching Firefly” article, was used for a sophomore level philosophy course that was populated mostly by non-majors. The original idea for the course was to develop a popular culture philosophy course that would attract students from all over campus, which was meant to both introduce them to multiple philosophical ideas and theories and hopefully convince some of them to major or minor in philosophy. The course was quite successful at drawing Whedon fans (...) from across the university (after a certain amount of advertising through posters and social media). Students were very engaged with both discussions of episodes and the readings. (shrink)

I examine the conditions which hypotheses must satisfy if they are to be used to raise significant sceptical challenges. I argue that sceptical hypotheses do not have to be logically, metaphysically or epistemically possible: they need only to depict scenarios subjectively indistinguishable from the actual world and to show how subjects can believe what they do while not having knowledge. I also argue that sceptical challenges can be raised against a priori beliefs, even if those beliefs are necessarily true. I (...) hope to broaden our conception of the legitimate kinds of sceptical challenges which can be raised. (shrink)

★ Publishers Weekly starred review One of the Top 100 Books and One of the 5 Best Books in Religion for 2019, Publishers Weekly Christianity Today 2020 Book Award Winner (Spiritual Formation) Outreach 2020 Resource of the Year (Spiritual Growth) Foreword INDIES 2019 Honorable Mention for Religion This is not a book about Saint Augustine. In a way, it's a book Augustine has written about each of us. Popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith has spent time (...) on the road with Augustine, and he invites us to take this journey too, for this ancient African thinker knows far more about us than we might expect. Following Smith's successful You Are What You Love, this book shows how Augustine can be a pilgrim guide to a spirituality that meets the complicated world we live in. Augustine, says Smith, is the patron saint of restless hearts--a guide who has been there, asked our questions, and knows our frustrations and failed pursuits. Augustine spent a lifetime searching for his heart's true home and he can help us find our way. "What makes Augustine a guide worth considering," says Smith, "is that he knows where home is, where rest can be found, what peace feels like, even if it is sometimes ephemeral and elusive along the way." Addressing believers and skeptics alike, this book shows how Augustine's timeless wisdom speaks to the worries and struggles of contemporary life, covering topics such as ambition, sex, friendship, freedom, parenthood, and death. As Smith vividly and colorfully brings Augustine to life for 21st-century readers, he also offers a fresh articulation of Christianity that speaks to our deepest hungers, fears, and hopes. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend an epistemic requirement on fitting hopes and worries: it is fitting to hope or to worry that p only if one’s epistemic position makes it rational to suspend judgment as to whether p. This view, unlike prominent alternatives, is ecumenical; it retains its plausibility against a variety of different background views of epistemology. It also has other important theoretical virtues: it is illuminating, elegant, and extensionally adequate. Fallibilists about knowledge have special reason to be (...) friendly to my view; it can help them explain why it can be unfitting to hold on to hope and worry in the face of overwhelming evidence, and it can also help them explain the sense in which knowledge that p and hope that –p are in tension with one another. (shrink)

I take it as my assignment to criticize the Gauthier enterprise. At the outset, however, I should express my general agreement with David Gauthier's normative vision of a liberal social order, including the place that individual principles of morality hold in such an order. Whether the enterprise is, ultimately, judged to have succeeded or to have failed depends on the standards applied. Considered as a coherent grounding of such a social order in the rational choice behavior of persons, the enterprise (...) fails. Considered as an extended argument implying that persons should adopt the moral stance embodied in the Gauthier structure, the enterprise is, I dunk, largely successful. Considered as a set of empirically falsifiable propositions suggesting that persons do, indeed, choose as the Gauthier precepts dictate, the enterprise offers Humean hope rather than Hobbesian despair. (shrink)

This is a paper about the problem of realism in meta-ethics (and, I hope, also in other areas, but that hope is so far pretty speculative). But it is not about the problem of whether realism is true. It is about the problem of what realism is. More specifically, it is about the question of what divides meta-ethical realists from irrealists. I start with a potted history of the Good Old Days.

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Nature and Conduct of Research Collecting Research Data Controls Intellectual Property.

The Great Speech of Protagoras in Plato’s dialogue is now widely seen as an expression of democratic theory, one of the earliest substantial expressions of democratic theory on record. At the same time, there have long been arguments to the contrary, the most formidable presentation of which is an article by Peter Nicholson that appeared in these pages in 1981. In this short piece, I address Nicholson’s skeptical arguments head-on and in full, in a way that has not yet been (...) done. By doing so, I hope to put skeptical arguments of this sort to rest, and to confirm Protagoras’ Great Speech once and for all as an early, and very interesting, fragment of democratic theory. (shrink)

What does Artificial Intelligence (AI) have to contribute to health care? And what should we be looking out for if we are worried about its risks? In this paper we offer a survey, and initial evaluation, of hopes and fears about the applications of artificial intelligence in medicine. AI clearly has enormous potential as a research tool, in genomics and public health especially, as well as a diagnostic aid. It’s also highly likely to impact on the organisational and business practices (...) of healthcare systems in ways that are perhaps under-appreciated. Enthusiasts for AI have held out the prospect that it will free physicians up to spend more time attending to what really matters to them and their patients. We will argue that this claim depends upon implausible assumptions about the institutional and economic imperatives operating in contemporary healthcare settings. We will also highlight important concerns about privacy, surveillance, and bias in big data, as well as the risks of over trust in machines, the challenges of transparency, the deskilling of healthcare practitioners, the way AI reframes healthcare, and the implications of AI for the distribution of power in healthcare institutions. We will suggest that two questions, in particular, are deserving of further attention from philosophers and bioethicists. What does care look like when one is dealing with data as much as people? And, what weight should we give to the advice of machines in our own deliberations about medical decisions? (shrink)

A recent essay by Jürgen Habermas revisits political liberalism and takes up the question of the extent to which democratic citizens and officials should rely on their religious convictions in publicly deliberating about and deciding political issues. With his institutional translation proviso, a proposed alternative to Rawls' idea of public reason, Habermas hopes to dodge familiar (and often overstated) criticisms that liberal requirements of citizenship are unfair or disproportionately burdensome to religious believers. I argue that, due in part to its (...) sharp contrast between the obligations attributed to political officials and those attributed to ordinary citizens, Habermas' position is beset by additional, quite considerable difficulties. I conclude that Habermas' account of religion in the public sphere does not present a genuine alternative to the leading liberal theory of citizenship and public reasoning. (shrink)

We propose that the onset and progressive destructive action of cancer within an individual bears a profound and striking similarity to the onset and progressive human-engendered destruction of global ecosystems and the extinction of entire species. Cancer in the human body and our human role in planetary, especially biotic, degradation are uncannily similar systems. For starters, they are the only two known complex systems where a discrete component changes its normal ecological role and function—turning on and potentially killing its host, (...) and in so doing, itself. Both are “hostile takeovers.” Clearly, humans are integral to both systems. With cancer we are the host and victims of the rogue behavior of what starts out as a normal, healthy, and functionally important part of our bodies. With the biodiversity crisis, we are the part of the system that has changed, expanded, and proven so destructive to the system in which we live. We argue that given that these threats to our bodies and Earth are both essentially ecological diseases, understanding the critical role of ecological interdependencies for avoiding both cancer’s and humankind’s destruction of their respective homes should hopefully promote better stewardship of both by the only animal capable of recognizing the problems—us. (shrink)

"Michel Foucault's Force of Light" offers a comprehensive, chronological reading of Foucault's published, and many unpublished, writings. James Bernauer claims that Foucault's achievement was to have fashioned a series of inquiries that makes it possible to question the activity of thought itself as an ethical practice. Foucault's ethic historicizes Kant's great questions on knowledge, obligation, and hope. He asks not "What can I know?" but rather "How have my questions been produced? How has the path of my knowing (...) been determined?" Not "What ought I to know?" or "What may I hope for?" by "How have the parameters of my aspirations been defined?". (shrink)

One thing that would profit both the frustrated readers of Sellars and Sellars himself would be a careful attempt to explicate and evaluate critically the many interrelated theses stated and defended by Sellars. But, so far as I know, there has been little work of this kind done. I know only of two fine reviews by Keith Lehrer and Gilbert Harman, and a very helpful expository article by Richard Bernstein that deal directly and in some detail with Sellars' work. This (...) is not to mention, however, the many philosophers, including myself, who have been influenced by his work. What I believe would be most helpful at this point would be a critique of some central thesis in Sellars' work, that is, an attempt to raise objections to this thesis and to refute the replies that can be anticipated, based upon other of Sellars' claims. This is what I shall try to do in this paper. My hope is that it will further the understanding of his complex philosophy, and help carry forward discussion of the philosophical issues involved. (shrink)

This article revisits the hope of the First and Fourth Missiological Institute (MI) consultations in 1965 and 1967 regarding the survival of African Spirituality as relevant to the daily life of South African churches. African Spirituality has played a significant role in the cultural context of Africans. In the African context, African Spirituality is intertwined with life, death, and health, which co-exist with material aspects and the economy as gracious gifts from God. The churches in South Africa and elsewhere (...) in Africa have been challenged by the African worldview of healing and culture. Thus, Africans mostly prefer the African-centred church with more African Christianity, instead of Western Christianity. This has been a serious challenge in African church circles for centuries, even in the current 21st century. The question therefore arises whether this is a matter for the Africanisation, indigenisation, and decolonisation of the church in Africa. CONTRIBUTION: The article analyses the two MI consultations and whether the church in the 21st century has Africanised and decolonised itself in service of its African members. The study is a historical approach given the history of the MI's contribution in South Africa. The concept of African Spirituality is unpacked and contextualised within the African Independent Churches' (AIC) Zionist type churches such as the Zion Christian Church (ZCC), the St John's Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM), and other Ethiopian type churches such as Lutheran Bapedi Church and others in South Africa and African Traditional Religions (ATR). The article engages the importance of how African Spirituality differs from other spiritualities within the context of Christian spirituality. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that an important component of the language-ready brain is the ability to recognize and conceptualize events. By ‘event’, I mean any situation or activity in the world or our mental life, that we find salient enough to individuate as a thought or word. While this may sound either trivial or non-unique to humans, I hope to show that abstracting away events and their participants from the embodied flow of experience is a characteristic unique to (...) humans. This ability is enabled, I will argue, by two critical competencies that act as scaffolds for language-ready thought in the prehuman brain. The first, as argued by Arbib (2006,2012,2016) and others, is a sophisticated system of gesture production and understanding in prehumans, which provided a template for schema-like sequencing and slot-filling of information units. The second involves the integration of multiple modalities of expression in the communicative act, in particular, the alignment of co-gestural speech and co-speech gesture. With such computational facilities, action-based gestures can be abstracted away from their associated objects and become full event representations. This view supports the MSH argument for the emergence of more complex linguistic expressions from initially holophrastic units. In particular, actions can be thought of as protoverbs, which through this process are abstracted to full event descriptions, i.e., verbs. (shrink)

Mallon, Machery, Nichols and Stich (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79: 332–356, 2009) argue that the use of intuitions in the philosophy of reference is problematic as recent studies show intuitions about reference vary both within and between cultures. I use some ideas from the recent literature on disagreement and truth relativism to shed light on the debate concerning the appropriate reaction to these studies. Mallon et al. argue that variation is problematic because if one tries to use intuitions which vary (...) to find the correct theory of reference one will end up endorsing an absurd position: referential pluralism. I argue that there is hope for intuition-based philosophy of reference. One can avoid endorsing referential pluralism (as Mallon et al. understand it). Furthermore, referential pluralism may not be so absurd after all. (shrink)

In general, the technical apparatus of decision theory is well developed. It has loads of theorems, and they can be proved from axioms. Many of the theorems are interesting, and useful both from a philosophical and a practical perspective. But decision theory does not have a well agreed upon interpretation. Its technical terms, in particular, ‘utility’ and ‘preference’ do not have a single clear and uncontroversial meaning. How to interpret these terms depends, of course, on what purposes in pursuit of (...) which one wants to put decision theory to use. One might want to use it as a model of economic decision-making, in order to predict the behavior of corporations or of the stock market. In that case, it might be useful to interpret the technical term ‘utility’ as meaning money profit. Decision theory would then be an empirical theory. I want to look into the question of what ‘utility’ could mean, if we want decision theory to function as a theory of practical rationality. I want to know whether it makes good sense to think of practical rationality as fully or even partly accounted for by decision theory. I shall lay my cards on the table: I hope it does make good sense to think of it that way. For, I think, if Humeans are right about practical rationality, then decision theory must play a very large part in their account. And I think Humeanism has very strong attractions. (shrink)

Most disciplines make use of thought experiments, but physics and philosophy lead the pack with heavy dependence upon them. Often this is for conceptual clarification, but occasionally they provide real theoretical advances. In spite of their importance, however, thought experirnents have received rather little attention as a topic in their own right until recently. The situation has improved in the past few years, but a mere generation ago the entire published literature on thought experiments could have been mastered in a (...) long weekend. Now the subject is beginning to flourish. Given the relative newness of the field, it might be useful to have several examples at one’s finger tips, so a number of great ones will be described. Attention will also be drawn outside physics and philosophy. In mathematics there is something analogous to thought experiments -- visual reasoning and picture proofs. I will look briefly at this class of thought experiments and try using them to make a case for possibly settling the continuum hypothesis. After this, I will return to thought experiments in the sciences and propose an account of how they work. Finally, I will end with a sketch of a topic I am currently working on, a kind of progress report which, I hope, will be an inducement to others. (shrink)

From the $700 billion bailout of the banking industry to president Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package to the highly controversial passage of federal health-care reform, conservatives and concerned citizens alike have grown increasingly fearful of big government. Enter Nobel Prize–winning economist and political theorist F. A. Hayek, whose passionate warning against empowering states with greater economic control, The Road to Serfdom, became an overnight sensation last summer when it was endorsed by Glenn Beck. The book has since sold over (...) 150,000 copies. The latest entry in the University of Chicago Press’s series of newly edited editions of Hayek’s works, The Constitution of Liberty is, like Serfdom, just as relevant to our present moment. The book is considered Hayek’s classic statement on the ideals of freedom and liberty, ideals that he believes have guided—and must continue to guide—the growth of Western civilization. Here Hayek defends the principles of a free society, casting a skeptical eye on the growth of the welfare state and examining the challenges to freedom posed by an ever expanding government—as well as its corrosive effect on the creation, preservation, and utilization of knowledge. In opposition to those who call for the state to play a greater role in society, Hayek puts forward a nuanced argument for prudence. Guided by this quality, he elegantly demonstrates that a free market system in a democratic polity—under the rule of law and with strong constitutional protections of individual rights—represents the best chance for the continuing existence of liberty. Striking a balance between skepticism and hope, Hayek’s profound insights are timelier and more welcome than ever before. This definitive edition of The Constitution of Liberty will give a new generation the opportunity to learn from his enduring wisdom. (shrink)

This paper discusses aspects of the thought of the American patriot and thinker, Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). At the present time, Franklin is too often regarded primarily as a scientific amateur whose tinkerings produced nothing of lasting importance, or as a self-centered prig of interest only to others like himself. In reality, Franklin was a thoughtful and concerned individual attempting to advance the common weal, both through his personal struggle toward moral perfection and through the institutionalization of the scientific spirit of (...) fallibilism, publicity, and the unquestioned appeal to experience as the sole means of deciding policies. I hope to suggest the ongoing value of Franklin's work in the course of my paper. (shrink)