It is argued that a chief obstacle to a naturalistic explanation of the origins of mind is human exceptionalism, as exemplified in the 17th century by Descartes, and in the 20th century by Noam Chomsky. As an antidote to human exceptionalism we turn to the account of aesthetic judgment in Darwin’s Descent of Man, according to which the mental capacities of humans differ from those of lower animals only in degree, not in kind. Thoroughgoing naturalistic explanation of these capacities is (...) made easier by shifting away from the substance-metaphysical implications of the search for an account of mind, toward a dispositional account of the origins of mindfulness. (shrink)

It is argued that a chief obstacle to a naturalistic explanation of the origins of mind is human exceptionalism, as exempli fi ed in the seventeenth century by René Descartes and in the twentieth century by Noam Chomsky. As an antidote to human exceptionalism, we turn to the account of aesthetic judgment in Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man , according to which the mental capacities of humans differ from those of lower animals only in degree, and not in kind. Thoroughgoing (...) naturalistic explanation of these capacities is made easier by shifting away from the substance-metaphysical implications of the search for an account of mind , toward a dispositional account of the origins of mindfulness . (shrink)

Atheism: young Hegelian style -- A social thing -- The tenacity of an illusion -- Beyond God and evil -- The liberal turn -- A precarious left.

It is universally agreed that involuntary unemployment is an evil for unemployed individuals, who lose both income and the non-pecuniary benefits of paid employment, and for society, which loses the productive labor that the unemployed are unable to expend. It is nearly as widely agreed that there is at least a prima-facie case for alleviating this evil – for reasons of justice and/or benevolence and/or social order. Finally, there is little doubt that the evils of involuntary unemployment cannot be adequately (...) addressed in contemporary societies without state intervention – whether through monetary or fiscal policies, cash payments or other subsidies to the unemployed, direct provision of employment by the state, or some combination of these measures. (shrink)

:High-fidelity simulation is a relatively new teaching modality, which is gaining widespread acceptance in medical education. To date, dozens of studies have proven the usefulness of HFS in improving student, resident, and attending physician performance, with similar results in the allied health fields. Although many studies have analyzed the utility of simulation, few have investigated why it works. A recent study illustrated that permissive failure, leading to simulated mortality, is one HFS method that can improve long-term performance. Critics maintain, however, (...) that the use of simulated death is troubling and excessive. Given the controversy regarding simulated death, we consider the data about the educational value and the emotional harms associated with them, expecting that evidence could be useful in resolving the question. The goal of this narrative review is to explore the argument against simulated mortality and provide educators with an imperative as to why it can be safely utilized. (shrink)

A systematic, critical examination of Karl Marx's social theories and their philosophical presuppositions. Through extensive discussions of the texts Jon Elster offers a balanced and detailed account of Marx's views that is at once sympathetic, undogmatic and rigorous. Equally importantly he tries to assess 'what is living and what is dead in the philosophy of Marx', using the analytical resources of contemporary social science and philosophy. Professor Elster insists on the need for microfoundations in social science and provides a systematic (...) criticism of functionalism and teleological thinking in Marx. He argues that Marx's economic theories are largely wrong or irrelevant; historical materialism is seen to have only limited plausibility ; Marx's most lasting achievements are the criticism of capitalism in terms of alienation and exploitation and the theory of class struggle, politics and ideology under capitalism, though in these areas too Elster enters substantial qualifications. The book should take its place as the most comprehensive and sophisticated modern study available. (shrink)

Published in 1918, _The View of Life_ is Georg Simmel’s final work. Famously deemed “the brightest man in Europe” by George Santayana, Simmel addressed a variety of topics across his essayistic writings, which have influenced scholars in aesthetics, ethics, epistemology, and sociology. Nevertheless, a set of core issues emerged over the course of his career, most centrally the genesis, structure, and transcendence of social and cultural forms and the nature and genesis of authentic individuality. Composed in the years before his (...) death, _The View of Life_ was, according to Simmel, his “testament,” a capstone work of profound metaphysical inquiry intended to formulate his conception of life in its entirety. Now Anglophone readers can at last read in full the work that shaped the argument of Heidegger’s _Being and Time_ and whose extraordinary impact on European intellectual life between the wars was extolled by Jürgen Habermas. Presented alongside these seminal essays are aphoristic fragments from Simmel’s last journal, providing a beguiling look into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers. (shrink)

While we agree with Fiester and Yuan (2023) that ethicists should not execute behavioral agreements in their role as clinical consultants along with many of the authors’ criticisms of such contract...

In the decade after the death of Hegel in 1833, a group of young philosophers sought to extend some of Hegel’s ideas to criticize contemporary thought and society. These were the so-called “Young Hegelians,” which included the young Karl Marx. With interest in Marx and Marxism on the wane, interest in the Young Hegelians has also subsided. That is unfortunate, since the Young Hegelians have much to teach us. This paper recounts the Young Hegelians’ critique of religion, beginning with that (...) of Ludwig Feuerbach in his seminal work, The Essence of Christianity. (shrink)

In what follows, “persons” are ideal-typical concepts of human beings, deployed expressly or supposed implicitly in particular theoretical contexts. Thus, the person of Kantian moral philosophy is a pure bearer of moral predicates, bereft of all properties that empirically distinguish human beings from one another: properties that, in Kant's view, are irrelevant to moral deliberation. No man or woman, actual or possible, could be so starkly featureless. But Kant's aim was not to describe human beings in actual or possible deliberations, (...) but moral agency as such. Similarly, homo oeconomicus, economic man, is not a composite man or woman, but also a person, a theoretical construct introduced for explanatory purposes in models of economic behavior. My aim is to investigate capitalist persons: ideal-typical concepts of human beings deployed in justifying theories of capitalist property relations. I shall identify two capitalist persons, and impugn one of them. To situate my position historically, I call the impugned person Lockean, and the other Kantian. It is tempting to designate the Lockean person “ the capitalist person.” However, this characterization would be misleading. Justifying theories of capitalism can employ either concept, and both can serve in accounts of socialist economies. Nevertheless, the Lockean person is tendentially procapitalist while the Kantian person is not. What follows is therefore relevant to the broader capitalism/socialism debate. To fault the Lockean person is not quite to fault capitalism itself. But a case against the Lockean person, if successful, would undermine an important strain of procapitalist argument. More importantly, the considerations I will adduce suggest a way of thinking about distributive justice and, ultimately, an ideal of equality that socialism, but not capitalism, can in principle accommodate. (shrink)

Philosophical writing on the welfare state has taken a defensive turn in recent years, largely in response to two related phenomena: the re-emergence of pro-market ideologies in the larger political culture and the imperiled condition of real world welfare states in a global economy in which national governments have diminishing capacities for shaping the social and economic lives of their citizens. But thanks in part to the tireless advocacy of Philippe Van Parijs, an even more radically redistributive form of public (...) provision than the welfare state has come onto the intellectual agenda—and the political agenda too, at least in Belgium and the Netherlands. Van Parijs proposes that all citizens be accorded an unconditional “basic income grant” as large as is compatible with the need to generate as much wealth as possible for redistribution. By now, this idea has many defenders. It also boasts a genealogy extending back to such writers as Tom Paine, François Huet, Edward Bellamy and G. D. H. Cole. But Van Parijs has become its best-known and most adept philosophical proponent, and this book represents his most sustained effort to date to investigate its normative foundations. (shrink)

This bold and unabashedly utopian book advances the thesis that Marx's notion of communism is a defensible, normative ideal. However, unlike many others who have written in this area, Levine applies the tools and techniques of analytic philosophy to formulate and defend his radical, political programme. The argument proceeds by filtering the ideals and institutions of Marxism through Rousseau's notion of the 'general will'. Once Rousseau's ideas are properly understood it is possible to construct a community of equals who (...) share some vision of a common good that can be achieved and maintained through cooperation or coordination that is at once both voluntary and authoritative. The book engages with liberal theory in order to establish its differences from Rousseauean-Marxian political theory. This provocative book will be of particular interest to political philosophers and political scientists concerned with Marxism, socialist theory and democratic theory. (shrink)

This interview with media anthropologist, Rebecca L. Stein, conducted by Noa Levin and Andrew Fisher in Spring 2023, takes her recent book Screenshots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine (2021) as its starting point in order to explore issues of state violence and the militarization of social media in Israel/Palestine. This book marks the culmination of a decade-long research project into the camera dreams introduced by digital imaging technologies and the fraught histories of their disillusionment. Stein discusses (...) the way her research has critically conceptualized the recent history of hopes invested in the digital image in this geopolitical context, by the occupier as much as the occupied, and charts the failures and mistakes, obstructions and appropriations that characterize the conflicted visual cultures of Israel/Palestine. (shrink)

In our essay ‘What’s Historical About Historical Materialism?’, we drew two contrasts between the Darwinian theory of evolution (ET) and the Marxist theory of historical materialism (HM).1 We described the former as a ‘micro-theory’ and the latter as a ‘macro-theory’. We also argued that, in Darwinian theory, evolution is driven by exogenous forces, specifically, by natural selection induced by environmental factors; whereas historical materialism sees the transformation of a society from feudalism to capitalism and then to socialism as a consequence (...) of an endogenous process, involving ‘contradictions’ between forces and relations of production and class struggle. Nolan has taken issue with both of these contrasts; his view is that the two theories are more similar than our account allows. (shrink)

It is widely held that in the eighteenth and nineteenth and centuries history came into its own as a proper object of scientific scrutiny, and that the work of Darwin and Marx was decisive in this regard. We readily concede the revolutionary character of Darwinism and Marxism in relation to earlier accounts of natural and human history. And we agree too, as is widely supposed, that there are important conceptual affinities joining Darwin's theory of evolution and Marx's theory of history. (...) However, it has not been sufficiently appreciated how these theories differ-precisely in the sense they count as historical. Evolutionary theory and historical materialism exemplify different strategies for making history an object of theoretical investigation. By reflecting on these differences, we can gain some purchase on the kind of theory historical materialism is and appreciate the very special sense in which Marx did indeed construct an historical theory. (shrink)

Written by renowned political philosopher Andrew Levine, _Political Keywords_ guides readers through today’s most commonly used- and misused- political terminology. A much-needed dictionary of contemporary political vernacular from “alienation” to “Zionism” Defines the most important political keywords, i.e. the often-confusing terms that are used to describe our politics Refamiliarizes the reader with today’s most commonly used and misused terms, thus clarifying the current political landscape Assumes no prior academic background in politics Includes extensive cross-referencing, suggested further readings, and (...) a comprehensive glossary Provides the ideal guide to navigating a landscape of dangerously vague terms. (shrink)

For more than two decades, C. B. Macpherson has waged a relentless campaign to expose and critize the ‘possessive individualist’ assumptions of classical and liberal democratictheory. This new book —a collection of essays, including several not previously published —gives a clear focus to this campaign and provides the fullest expression to date of its positive side: the elaboration of a social philosophy incorporating liberal values but free from possessive individualist assumptions. What is defective in the assumptions is less the internal (...) theoretical problems they generate than that they have become historically outmoded. For Macpherson, liberal democracy is historically — even politically — inadequate, before it is theoretically inadequate. It is inadequate for us — now — because it rests on assumptions we no longer need, assumptions that have ceased to be historically progressive. However, liberal democracy is not, as surgeons would say, beyond operation. On Macpherson's view, nearly everything that is attractive in liberal theory can be salvaged. Democratic Theory is appropriately subtitled: Essays in Retrieval. (shrink)