The manipulation argument poses a significant challenge for any adequate compatibilist theory of agency. The argument maintains that there is no relevant difference between actions or pro‐attitudes that are induced by nefarious neurosurgeons, God, or (and this is the important point) natural causes. Therefore, if manipulation is thought to undermine moral responsibility, then so also ought causal determinism. In this paper, I will attempt to bolster the plausibility of John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza's semicompatibilist theory of moral (...) responsibility by demonstrating how their account provides a distinctive line of response to three important types of manipulation. (shrink)

Dwayne Moore (2021) argues that libertarians about free will who are reductive physicalists cannot make proper sense of free will. In doing so, he presents what he calls “the physical indeterminism luck objection” to libertarian free will. He goes on to consider three different contemporary naturalistic approaches to libertarian free will (LFW) – those of Christopher Franklin, Mark Balaguer, and Robert Kane – and argues that if understood as reductive physicalist views they all fall prey to this objection. While (...) it’s not entirely clear that Kane is a reductive physicalist, it is clear that he would reject any kind of eliminative materialism or eliminative physicalism (Kane 1996, 147). Regardless, in this essay I argue that even if Kane’s view is a kind of reductive physicalist view, it is immune to the arguments made in Moore’s essay. (shrink)

The book explores what characterises a a good lifea and how this idea has been affected by globalisation and neoliberalism.".

The Islamisation of the East Indies, now Indonesia, was a gradual process over many centuries, beginning in the late thirteenth century, continuing during Dutch colonial rule (1605–1942), and ongoi...

Codes of ethics are being increasingly adopted in organizations worldwide, yet their effects on employee perceptions and behavior have not been thoroughly addressed. This study used a sample of 613 management accountants drawn from the United States to study the relationship between corporate and professional codes of ethics and employee attitudes and behaviors. The presence of corporate codes of ethics was associated with less perceived wrongdoing in organizations, but not with an increased propensity to report observed unethical behavior. Further, organizations (...) that adopted formal codes of ethics exhibited value orientations that went beyond financial performance to include responsibility to the commonweal. In contrast to corporate codes of ethics, professional codes of ethical conduct had no influence on perceived wrongdoing in organization nor these codes affect the propensity to report observed unethical activities. (shrink)

This article looks at Deleuze and Guattari's understanding of molecular biology, focusing particularly on their reading of two highly influential works by the eminent French molecular biologists François Jacob and Jacques Monod, La logique du vivant and Le hasard et la nécessité. In these two works, Jacob and Monod present the significance of molecular biology in broadly reductionist terms. What is more, the lac operon model of gene regulation that they propose serves to reinforce the so-called Central Dogma of molecular (...) biology, according to which information passes from DNA to RNA to proteins, with no reverse route. However, Deleuze and Guattari discover intensive potentials within the descriptions of molecular biology offered by both writers. It is argued that Jacob's work in particular, as it has developed in the years since the publication of La logique du vivant in 1970, has itself developed these intensive potentials. (shrink)

This article explores literary interrogations of the bioethical implications of cloning. It does so by outlining the basic science of cloning before going on to question the dominance of the Freudian notion of the ‘uncanny’ in the critical theoretical responses to cloning by figures such as Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek. The second half of the article turns to two recent novels exploring the theme of cloning: Eva Hoffman's The Secret, and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. It is argued (...) that the former rehearses familiar themes of revulsion connected to the figure of the clone, yet resolves the struggle for identity in a ‘human’ conclusion; whereas the latter maintains the uncanny in-human difference of the clone even as it highlights the dangers of the biopolitical instrumentalization of life itself. The article therefore argues that fictional treatments of cloning can provide an important alternative to simplified debates on the subject in the mass media. (shrink)

The modernist and scientific juxtaposition of object and subject are inappropriate when investigating the nature of “knowledge.” This commentary argues that the usual methodological dichotomy fails when it is applied to the domain of “knowledge.” The two instead coalesce within the topic itself, demanding the most careful self-awareness.

For most of the history of prejudice research, negativity has been treated as its emotional and cognitive signature, a conception that continues to dominate work on the topic. By this definition, prejudice occurs when we dislike or derogate members of other groups. Recent research, however, has highlighted the need for a more nuanced and “inclusive” (Eagly 2004) perspective on the role of intergroup emotions and beliefs in sustaining discrimination. On the one hand, several independent lines of research have shown that (...) unequal intergroup relations are often marked by attitudinal complexity, with positive responses such as affection and admiration mingling with negative responses such as contempt and resentment. Simple antipathy is the exception rather than the rule. On the other hand, there is mounting evidence that nurturing bonds of affection between the advantaged and the disadvantaged sometimes entrenches rather than disrupts wider patterns of discrimination. Notably, prejudice reduction interventions may have ironic effects on the political attitudes of the historically disadvantaged, decreasing their perceptions of injustice and willingness to engage in collective action to transform social inequalities.These developments raise a number of important questions. Has the time come to challenge the assumption that negative evaluations are inevitably the cognitive and affective hallmarks of discrimination? Is the orthodox concept of prejudice in danger of side-tracking, if not obstructing, progress towards social justice in a fuller sense? What are the prospects for reconciling a prejudice reduction model of change, designed to get people to like one another more, with a collective action model of change, designed to ignite struggles to achieve intergroup equality? (shrink)

_Buddhist Philosophy of Consciousness_ explores a variety of different approaches to the study of consciousness developed by Buddhist philosophers in classical India and China. It addresses questions that are still being investigated in cognitive science and philosophy of mind.

This book brings together a comprehensive collection of the writings of one of the greatest philosophers in the Western tradition. Along with five of John Locke's major essays, seventy shorter essays are included that stand outside the canonical works that Locke published during his lifetime. For the first time students will be able to fully explore the evolution of Locke's ideas concerning the philosophical foundations of morality and sociability, the boundary of church and state, the shaping of constitutions, and (...) the conduct of government and public policy. (shrink)

This is the first book to use complexity theory to open up the 'geophilosophy' developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, Anti-Oedipus and What is Philosophy?.

This book provides a comprehensive, systematic theory of moral responsibility. The authors explore the conditions under which individuals are morally responsible for actions, omissions, consequences, and emotions. The leading idea in the book is that moral responsibility is based on 'guidance control'. This control has two components: the mechanism that issues in the relevant behavior must be the agent's own mechanism, and it must be appropriately responsive to reasons. The book develops an account of both components. The authors go on (...) to offer a sustained defense of the thesis that moral responsibility is compatible with causal determinism. (shrink)

In mid-1987 Taiwanese president Chiang Ching-kuo announced the end of martial law and the legalization of a political opposition. These two changes, in addition to the orderly elections held at the end of 1986, underscored the political development that has occurred in the Republic of China on Taiwan.

Things that don't exist -- Fictional object nominalism -- Fictional object realism -- Meinongianism -- God's existence and nonexistence -- Contingency and nonexistence -- Perfection and divine existence -- Nonexistence and creatures -- Ex nihilo and nonexistence -- Infinite existence and countless nonexistents -- Providence and freedom -- Nonexistents and middle knowledge -- Evil as nonexistence.

The journal of Cognitive Computation is defined in part by the notion that biologically inspired computational accounts are at the heart of cognitive processes in both natural and artificial systems. Many studies of various important aspects of cognition (memory, observational learning, decision making, reward prediction learning, attention control, etc.) have been made by modelling the various experimental results using ever-more sophisticated computer programs. In this manner progressive inroads have been made into gaining a better understanding of the many components of (...) cognition. Concomitantly in both science and science fiction the hope is periodically re-ignited that a manmade system can be engineered to be fully cognitive and conscious purely in virtue of its execution of an appropriate computer program. However, whilst the usefulness of the computational metaphor in many areas of psychology and neuroscience is clear, it has not gone unchallenged and in this article I will review a group of philosophical arguments that suggest either such unequivocal optimism in computationalism is misplaced—computation is neither necessary nor sufficient for cognition—or panpsychism (the belief that the physical universe is fundamentally composed of elements each of which is conscious) is true. I conclude by highlighting an alternative metaphor for cognitive processes based on communication and interaction. (shrink)

Contemporary virtue epistemology (hereafter ‘VE’) is a diverse collection of approaches to epistemology. At least two central tendencies are discernible among the approaches. First, they view epistemology as a normative discipline. Second, they view intellectual agents and communities as the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, with a focus on the intellectual virtues and vices embodied in and expressed by these agents and communities. -/- This entry introduces many of the most important results of the contemporary VE research program. These include (...) novel attempts to resolve longstanding disputes, solve perennial problems, grapple with novel challenges, and expand epistemology’s horizons. In the process, it reveals the diversity within VE. Beyond sharing the two unifying commitments mentioned above, its practitioners diverge over the nature of intellectual virtues, which questions to ask, and which methods to use. -/- It will be helpful to note some terminology before proceeding. First, we use ‘cognitive’, ‘epistemic’ and ‘intellectual’ synonymously. Second, we often use ‘normative’ broadly to include not only norms and rules, but also duties and values. Finally, ‘practitioners’ names contemporary virtue epistemologists. (shrink)

Beliefs are concrete particulars containing ideas of properties and notions of things, which also are concrete. The claim made in a belief report is that the agent has a belief (i) whose content is a specific singular proposition, and (ii) which involves certain of the agent's notions and ideas in a certain way. No words in the report stand for the notions and ideas, so they are unarticulated constituents of the report's content (like the relevant place in "it's raining"). The (...) belief puzzles (Hesperus, Cicero, Pierre) involve reports about two different notions. So the analysis gets the puzzling truth values right. (shrink)

In 15 insightful essays, Jacques Derrida and an international group of scholars of religion explore postmodern thinking about God and consider the nature of forgiveness in relation to the paradoxes of the gift. Among the themes addressed by contributors are the possibilities of imagining God as unthinkable, imagining God as non-patriarchal, imagining a return to Augustine, and imagining an age in which praise is far more important than narrative. Questioning God moves readers beyond the parameters of metaphysical reason and modernist (...) rationality as it attempts to think the questions of God and forgiveness in a postmodernist context. Contributors include John D. Caputo, Jacques Derrida, Mark Dooley, Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Robert Gibbs, Jean Greisch, Kevin Hart, Richard Kearney, Cleo McNelly Kearns, John Milbank, Regina M. Schwartz, Michael J. Scanlon, and Graham Ward. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion—Merold Westphal, general editor. (shrink)

The most cursory examination of the history of artificial intelligence highlights numerous egregious claims of its researchers, especially in relation to a populist form of ‘strong’ computationalism which holds that any suitably programmed computer instantiates genuine conscious mental states purely in virtue of carrying out a specific series of computations. The argument presented herein is a simple development of that originally presented in Putnam’s (Representation & Reality, Bradford Books, Cambridge in 1988 ) monograph, “Representation & Reality”, which if correct, has (...) important implications for turing machine functionalism and the prospect of ‘conscious’ machines. In the paper, instead of seeking to develop Putnam’s claim that, “everything implements every finite state automata”, I will try to establish the weaker result that, “everything implements the specific machine Q on a particular input set ( x )”. Then, equating Q ( x ) to any putative AI program, I will show that conceding the ‘strong AI’ thesis for Q (crediting it with mental states and consciousness) opens the door to a vicious form of panpsychism whereby all open systems, (e.g. grass, rocks etc.), must instantiate conscious experience and hence that disembodied minds lurk everywhere. (shrink)

This book analyzes the philosophical foundations of sensorimotor theory and discusses the most recent applications of sensorimotor theory to human computer interaction, child's play, virtual reality, robotics, and linguistics. -/- Why does a circle look curved and not angular? Why doesn't red sound like a bell? Why, as I interact with the world, is there something it is like to be me? These are simple questions to pose but more difficult to answer. An analytic philosopher might respond to the first (...) by merely observing, ``if we ponder the concept `circle' we find that it is the essence of a circle to be round''; but where does this definition come from? Was it set in stone by the gods, the divine arbiters of circle-ness (red-ness and conscious-ness)? It is a measure of the importance of Kevin O'Regan and Alva Noe's 2001 paper `A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness' that it reveals deep scientific and philosophical insight on these foundational issues of perception. -/- Opening with a chapter from Kevin O'Regan, this collection of new essays continues by presenting fifteen additional essays on as many developments achieved in recent years in this field. It provides readers with a critical review of the sensorimotor theory and in so doing introduces them to a radically new approach in cognitive science. (shrink)

The most cursory examination of the history of artificial intelligence highlights numerous egregious claims of its researchers, especially in relation to a populist form of ‘strong’ computationalism which holds that any suitably programmed computer instantiates genuine conscious mental states purely in virtue of carrying out a specific series of computations. The argument presented herein is a simple development of that originally presented in Putnam’s (Representation & Reality, Bradford Books, Cambridge in 1988) monograph, “Representation & Reality”, which if correct, has important (...) implications for turing machine functionalism and the prospect of ‘conscious’ machines. In the paper, instead of seeking to develop Putnam’s claim that, “everything implements every finite state automata”, I will try to establish the weaker result that, “everything implements the specific machine Q on a particular input set (x)”. Then, equating Q (x) to any putative AI program, I will show that conceding the ‘strong AI’ thesis for Q (crediting it with mental states and consciousness) opens the door to a vicious form of panpsychism whereby all open systems, (e.g. grass, rocks etc.), must instantiate conscious experience and hence that disembodied minds lurk everywhere. (shrink)