Stanovich & West (S&W) appear to overlook the adaptivity of variation. Behavioral variability, both between and within individuals, is an absolute necessity for phylogenetic and ontological adaptation. As with all heritable characteristics, inter-individual behavioral variation is the foundation for natural selection. Similarly, intra-individual variation allows a broad exploration of potential solutions. Variation increases the likelihood that more optimal behaviors are available for selection. Four examples of the adaptivity of variation are discussed: (a) Genetic variation as it pertains to behavior and (...) natural selection; (b) behavioral and cognitive aspects of mate selection which may facilitate genetic diversity; (c) variation as a strategy for optimizing learning through greater exploration; and (d) behavioral variation coupled with communication as a means to propagate individually discovered behavioral success. (shrink)

This project has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council (project number CS170100008); the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science; and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. ACOLA collaborates with the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and the New Zealand Royal Society Te Apārangi to deliver the interdisciplinary Horizon Scanning reports to government. The aims of the project which produced this report are: 1. Examine the transformative role that artificial intelligence may play in (...) different sectors of the economy, including the opportunities, risks and challenges that advancement presents. 2. Examine the ethical, legal and social considerations and frameworks required to enable and support broad development and uptake of artificial intelligence. 3. Assess the future education, skills and infrastructure requirements to manage workforce transition and support thriving and internationally competitive artificial intelligence industries. (shrink)

This collection of more than two hundred of Nietzsche's letters offers a representative body of correspondence on subjects of main concern to him--philosophy, history, morals, music and literature. Also included are letters of biographical interest which, in Middleton's words, mark the stresses and turnings of his life. Among the addressees are Richard Wagner, Erwin Rohde, Jacob Burkhardt, Lou Salome, his mother, and his sister Elisabeth. The annihilating split in Nietzsche's personality that has been associated with his collapse on a street (...) in Turin in 1889 is described in a moving letter from Franz Overbeck which forms the Epilogue. Index. (shrink)

Weiss, Propen, and Reid gather a diverse group of scholars to analyze the growing obsolescence of the human-object dichotomy in today's world. In doing so, Design, Mediation, and the Posthuman brings together diverse disciplines to foster a dialog on significant technological issues pertinent to philosophy, rhetoric, aesthetics, and science.

NThere are many problems with Levi and Green’s (2010) suggestion that a computer-based decision aid will overcome the major objections to advance directives (ADs). We focus on just two here. First, we argue that the key assumption underlying Levi and Green’s paper, that autonomy always ought to take priority over other values, is false. Second, we argue that the paper misses the point of the most telling objections to the use of ADs: they lack the relevant moral authority (...) to determine treatments. It is not that they are merely subject to a set of contingent problems related to capturing the wishes of individuals or being open to misinterpretation by others.We conclude that the plug should be pulled on Levi and Green’s computer-based proposal. (shrink)

Several epistemologists (Levi, Harman, Pollock) have recently urged the adoption of what I call a “no-fault” approach to the justification of beliefs. I argue that these views fall prey to objections raised by Alvin Goldman against internalism, specifically: they assume an initial set of regulative principles. It is also suggested that the way to avoid Goldman’s objections is through a psychologistic account of initial warrant.

Several epistemologists (Levi, Harman, Pollock) have recently urged the adoption of what I call a “no-fault” approach to the justification of beliefs. I argue that these views fall prey to objections raised by Alvin Goldman against internalism, specifically: they assume an initial set of regulative principles. It is also suggested that the way to avoid Goldman’s objections is through a psychologistic account of initial warrant.

In this paper I hope to demonstrate two different ways of interpreting the tenets of evidentialism and show why it is important to distinguish between them. These two ways correspond to those proposed by Feldman and Adler. Feldman’s way of interpreting evidentialism makes evidentialism a principle about epistemic justification, about what we ought to believe. Adler’s, on the other hand, makes evidentialism a principle about how we come to believe, what it is, broadly speaking, rational for us to believe. Having (...) identified this difference, I consider two complaints levied against evidentialism, namely what I call the threshold problem and what I call the availability problem, and hope to show that: only an independent, bracketed justification principle of evidentialism can deal with those problems; the rationality principle of evidentialism is not in fact independent from the justification principle; the rationality principle is hard to motivate; and that in the final analysis the argument for the justification principle depends on the rationality principle. I thus conclude that although it may be convenient for evidentialists to treat these two principles as independent, such an independence cannot be maintained. (shrink)

This paper provides a defence of the thesis that responsible belief is permissible rather than obliged belief. On the Uniqueness Thesis (UT), our evidence is always such that there is a unique doxastic attitude that we are obliged to have given that evidence, whereas the Permissibility Thesis (PT) denies this. After distinguishing several varieties of UT and PT, we argue that the main arguments that have been levied against PT fail. Next, two arguments in favour of PT are provided. Finally, (...) two motivations for PT are put forward by showing that PT is entailed by two views that are quite popular among theorists working on doxastic responsibility. If the arguments in this paper are successful, we not only have good reasons to prefer PT over UT, but also good reasons to think that the gap between the ways in which we are meant to normatively assess belief and action may not be as wide as has been thought. (shrink)

Several philosophers think that we do not have duties to believe but that we can nevertheless sometimes be held to blame for our beliefs, since duties relevant to belief are exclusively duties to critical reflection. One important line of argument for this claim goes as follows: we at most have influence over our beliefs such that we are not responsible for belief, but responsible for the acts of critical reflection that influence them. We can be blameworthy not just for violating (...) a duty but also for the obtaining of a state of affairs that would not have obtained had we not violated a duty. We can thus also be blameworthy for our beliefs even though we have no duties to believe. The chapter levies several objections to this argument, and then defends an alternative argument for the same conclusion. Roughly stated, the argument goes: if S has a duty to believe that p, then S has a duty to reflect on whether p. But duties to reflect on whether p always undercut duties to believe that p. Thus, the duties relevant to belief are always duties to critical reflection. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese AnimationJoseph MurphyAnime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. By Susan Napier. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001. Pp. vii + 320.Certain progressions can be marked from Antonia Levi's Samurai from Outer Space in 1996 to Susan Napier's Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation in 2001. While both survey the phenomenon of (...) Japanese animation as consumed in North America, the palpable underdog subcultural context and sense of mission in Levi's earlier work has given way to a confident mainstream appreciation in Napier's, with the term "Japanese animation" replaced in English by the naturalized anime (a-ni-mé, pl. anime). In a fast-moving media phenomenon both were dated as soon as they were published; however, bolstered by the worldwide critical and financial success of Miyazaki Hayao's work, and contemporary with the exposure to youth by the rise of 24/7 cartoon networks and the runaway success of the card game-anime nexus, Napier's Anime finds itself still in the right historical moment. Though the book has limitations in terms of both its own systematicity and its treatment of potentially interesting philosophical themes in anime, it is a reliable and sometimes inspired guide to a new phenomenon that forms an increasingly important default in the background your students bring.Napier is concerned not so much with accounting for the visual and perceptual properties of anime as with its narrative qualities: "Japanese animation merits serious consideration as a narrative art form and not simply for its arresting visual style.... Much of this book will be an investigation into the themes, imagery, and ideas of some of the most memorable anime created over the last two decades" (p. 10). The strengths and weaknesses of this book are nicely summed up here. Concentrating on narrative—a formal property of storytelling transposable across media—allows a broad and well-chosen survey of themes, images, and ideas. However, there is some question as to whether this will allow the reader to satisfy the ambition to "understand what makes anime the distinctive art form it is" (p. 10).The book is comprised of twelve chapters in four parts. Part 1 is an introduction that argues for the importance of anime and sketches a quasi-Aristotelian method as the basis for Napier's taxonomy. Parts 2-4 cover major thematic divisions that characterize the particular obsessions, power, and drama of anime, and these are particularly well-chosen to reflect not just the relatively palatable work deemed suitable for TV or subtitled for video distribution in the United States but also the anarchic diversity of the phenomenon as it circulates in Japan. Part 2 is on the essential theme of the changeable body and includes discussion of the monstrous adolescent body, pornographic anime, and the cybernetic body, and will allow you to catch up with classic anime like Akira (1988), Ranma 1/2 (TV version, 1990s), and Ghost in the Shell (theater version, 1996). Part 3 is on fantasy and romance as genres and the unusual [End Page 493] space in anime for female leads, and includes discussion of Miyazaki's pastoral work and the comedy TV series Urusei Yatsura (1980s), Oh My Goddess (1980s), and Video Girl Ai (1990s). Part 4 discusses anime that have sought to make a self-conscious contribution to historical debate, including Barefoot Gen (1983) and Grave of the Fireflies (1988), on the bombing of Japanese cities in World War II, and Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke (1997), which presents a multicultural picture of Japan's past produced in consultation with Japan's leading ethnologists. Discussions are balanced and entertaining, introducing the major auteurs of the last twenty years (Oshii Mamoru, Otomo Katsuhiro, Takahashi Rumiko, etc.) and creating the sharp impression that the genre of anime is not the same as the American concept of "cartoons."Though the anime phenomenon raises interesting sociocultural and critical questions about narrative and image culture, it is not immediately certain that there is a philosophical issue to anime. One might seek this philosophical content within the medium itself or in a systematic quality... (shrink)

Both critique and an appropriation of a large and diverse body of work, Home and Beyond is a major contribution to contemporary Husserl scholarship.

Shaftesbury's Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times was published in 1711. It ranges widely over ethics, aesthetics, religion, the arts (painting, literature, architecture, gardening), and ancient and modern history, and aims at nothing less than a new ideal of the gentleman. Together with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Addison and Steele's Spectator, it is a text of fundamental importance for understanding the thought and culture of Enlightenment Europe. This volume presents a new edition of the text together with an (...) introduction, explanatory notes and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

Taking a refreshingly hands-on approach to introductory ethics, A 21st Century Ethical Toolbox provides students with a set of tools to help them understand and make a constructive difference in real-life moral controversies. Thoroughly optimistic, it invites students to approach ethical issues with a reconstructive intent, making room for more and better options than the traditional "pro" and "con" positions that have grown up around tough problems like abortion and animal rights. Ideal for introductory and applied ethics courses, this unique (...) text does not treat ethics as a purely academic, historical, or theoretical subject, but as a wide-ranging and ongoing set of challenges that calls for multiple and interwoven kinds of intelligence. It covers the skills that are most vital to making real progress in ethics, including paying careful attention to the values at stake on all sides of an issue; looking for creative opportunities within difficult problems; critical-thinking skills such as defining key terms and making sure to judge similar cases alike; and learning how to engage in constructive dialogue. Instructors can readily use the experiential and applied activities inspired by this "toolbox" of practical skills to design an interactive and collaborative ethics course. Students can carry these essential skills directly from this book into such projects as campaigning for environmental awareness and staffing local homeless shelters. In addition to his own discussion, Weston includes gripping and provocative short selections from essayists, activists, and philosophers, and also cites his own students. Extensive "Exercises and Notes" sections end each chapter, and a detailed appendix offers instructors advice on how to use the Toolbox in the classroom. (shrink)

Children are routinely treated paternalistically. There are good reasons for this. Children are quite vulnerable. They are ill-equipped to meet their most basic needs, due, in part, to deficiencies in practical and theoretical reasoning and in executing their wishes. Children’s motivations and perceptions are often not congruent with their best interests. Consequently, raising children involves facilitating their best interests synchronically and diachronically. In practice, this requires caregivers to (in some sense) manage a child’s daily life. If apposite, this management will (...) focus partly on a child’s well-being. To be ably executed, an account of children’s well-being will need to be articulated. This chapter focuses on the nature of children’s well-being. It has five sections. The first section clarifies the focus. The second section examines some hurdles to articulating a view of children’s well-being. The third section evaluates some accounts of children’s well-being. The fourth section addresses the view that children possess features essential to them that make their lives on balance prudentially bad for them. The fifth section sums things up. (shrink)

In this little volume, Anthony Thiselton makes an impassioned appeal for closer attention to the philosophy of hermeneutics. Emilio Betti provocatively observes that hermeneutics ought to constitute an obligatory course for most degrees in the humanities. Hermeneutics, he insists, teaches patience, tolerance, respect for other views, understanding, and humility, while holding one's own views with firmness and generosity. Yet many teaching institutions do not yet recognize this. With this in mind, Thiselton first considers and responds to those who argue (...) that hermeneutics is not necessary. Then he considers anew more sophisticated thinkers on the subject. Types of texts and hermeneutical models, he argues, are almost infinite, a fact many biblical scholars do not recognize. In the field of biblical hermeneutics, too many view the Bible as one thing, or as a monochrome landscape--it is not. The culmination of Thiselton's case consists in a sustained reflection on the impressive work of Paul Ricoeur, selecting thirteen points of genuine advance his work makes. With a glossary of fifty technical terms this is a volume that will prove helpful to student and scholar alike. (shrink)

Short Arguments: Some General Rules Arguments begin by marshaling reasons and organizing them in a clear and fair way. Chapter I offers general rules for ...

A philosophical discussion of children's well-being in which various existing views of well-being are discussed to determine their implications for children's well-being and a variety of views of children's well-being are considered and evaluated.

A Practical Companion to Ethics, Fourth Edition, is a concise and accessible introduction to the basic attitudes and skills that make ethics work, like thinking for oneself, creative and integrative problem-solving, and keeping an open mind. This unique volume illuminates the broad kinds of practical intelligence required in moral judgment, complementing the narrower theoretical considerations that often dominate ethics courses. The optimistic tone and brisk pace of the narrative provide an entertaining and intelligent guide to "everyday" morality. The fourth edition (...) features a new chapter on ethical theories; significantly revised and expanded chapters on conflicts of value and creative problem- solving in ethics; and a new concluding chapter on "Making a Difference, " which explains how students can incorporate ethical thinking and practice into their daily lives. (shrink)

How does valuing something for its own sake differ from valuing an entity for the sake of other things? Although numerous answers come to mind, many of them rule out substantive views about what is valuable for its own sake. I therefore seek to provide a more neutral way to distinguish the two valuing attitudes. Drawing from existing accounts of valuing, I argue that the two can be distinguished in terms of a conative-volitional feature. Focusing first on “non-final valuing”—i.e. valuing_ (...) x_ for the sake of something else—I argue that it involves adopting certain reasons on account of a desire for _x_ to contribute to other things. I then show how this contrasts final valuing. The result, I argue, is a plausible account of how the two modes of valuing differ that leaves open substantive views about what all can be valued for its own sake. This is helpful because it develops a popular methodology used to explore the value of a wide range of things, including natural entities, family heirlooms, and artworks, as well as, more broadly, entities that might have “extrinsic final value.”. (shrink)

This chapter addresses Immanuel Kant and the potential impasse of any philosophical account of religious experience. Various attempts within phenomenology are explored to broaden the notion of givenness and evidence beyond the parameters of object-givenness. Then, the chapter deals with a phenomenology of religious experience as an irreducible sphere of human experience, and its unique style of evidence and modalisations. For Kant, experience is limited to one mode of givenness in which objects of knowledge are actively constituted with the direct (...) implication that one cannot meaningfully speak of a religious experience. The recognition of the different quality of givenness in religious experience implicated the significant matter of religious evidence. (shrink)

This concise, authoritative encyclopedia from one of the world's most renowned theologians explores all the major themes in the philosophy of religion.

This book uncovers and examines the confusion in antiquity between Aristotle's hypothetical syllogistic and Stoic logic, and offers a fresh perspective on the ...

Graham N. Stanton, University of Cambridge ?Anthony Thiselton is one of our leading theologians, equally at home in both New Testament studies and in philosophical and theological hermeneutics, and a collection of this major articles will ...

Volume 20, Issue 8, August 2020, Page 27-29.

A distinctive position in contemporary political philosophy is occupied by those who defend the principle of public justification. This principle states that the moral or political rules that govern our common life must be in some sense justifiable to all reasonable citizens. In this article, I evaluate Gerald Gaus’s defence of this principle, which holds that it is presupposed by our moral reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. He argues, echoing P.F. Strawson in ‘Freedom and Resentment’, that these attitudes are (...) so deep a part of us that we are unable to rationally reject them. I examine and reject this defence of the principle. Considering the nature of our commitment to the moral reactive attitudes, I argue that those attitudes need not be grounded in a commitment to public justification. The availability of alternative grounds for these attitudes shows, contra Gaus, that we can rationally reject the principle of public justification while maintaining a wholehearted commitment to the reactive attitudes. (shrink)

E. F. Carritt (1876-1964) was educated at and taught in Oxford University. He made substantial contributions both to aesthetics and to moral philosophy. The focus of this entry is his work in moral philosophy. His most notable works in this field are The Theory of Morals (1928) and Ethical and Political Thinking (1947). Carritt developed views in metaethics and in normative ethics. In meta-ethics he defends a cognitivist, non-naturalist moral realism and was among the first to respond to A. J. (...) Ayer’s emotivist challenge to this view. In normative ethics he advocates a deontological view in which there is a plurality of obligations and of non-instrumental goods. In the context of defending this view he raised some penetrating and novel criticisms of ideal utilitarianism. He held that it is not acceptable to revise our reflective common-sense moral attitudes in the face of philosophical moral theories, and that moral philosophy is only indirectly practical. (shrink)

This popular selection of Wittgenstein’s key writings has now been updated to include new material relevant to recent debates about the philosopher. Follows the evolution of Wittgenstein’s philosophical thought from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus through to the Philosophical Investigations. Excerpts are arranged by topic and introduce readers to all the central concerns of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Now includes a new chapter on ‘Sense, Nonsense and Philosophy’ incorporating material relevant to recent debates about Wittgenstein.

The principle of epistemic closure is the claim that what is known to follow from knowledge is known to be true. This intuitively plausible idea is endorsed by a vast majority of knowledge theorists. There are significant problems, however, that have to be addressed if epistemic closure – closed knowledge – is endorsed. The present essay locates the problem for closed knowledge in the separation it imposes between knowledge and evidence. Although it might appear that all that stands between knowing (...) the truth of the premises of a valid inference and knowledge of its conclusion is inferring it from the premises, the evidence for each of the premises may jointly count against the conclusion. The intuitive view regarding inferred knowledge says one thing, the evidence says another. One epistemological framework that seems to have the resources to resolve this tension endorses the view that knowledge always requires conclusive evidence. A second framework resolves the tension by limiting the scope of the closure principle. Only inferences drawn directly from propositions contained in the scope of a single knowledge operator are considered closed. The aim of the present essay is to revive the unpopular third option, the idea that knowledge is open. The essay proceeds by arguing that in different ways the two former frameworks only succeed in relocating the problem, not in resolving it. The first framework, the infallibilist view, relocates the problem to a sharp separation between knowledge of the occurrences of events from knowledge of their chance of occurring, a separation leading to several significant additional problems. The fallibilist view, the second framework, in endorsing closure neglects to take into full account the ways in which evidence fails to be transitive. For instance, evidence can count in favor of a conjunction while counting against each of its conjuncts. This fact, which is argued for in the essay on probabilistic as well as non-probabilistic grounds, is used as the foundation of an argument against closed knowledge that can be used as a way to understand several of the most fundamental challenges of epistemology. Not only can an open knowledge view that is based on open evidence resolve all these problems in a simple and natural way, it can also respond to formidable challenges that significantly hinder other open knowledge views. There are good reasons, then, to view both knowledge and evidence as open. (shrink)

way on the information available in the contexts in which they are used, it’s not surprising that there is a minor but growing industry of work in semantics and the philosophy of language concerned with the precise nature of the context-dependency of epistemically modalized sentences. Take, for instance, an epistemic might-claim like..

Innovation is a key driver of care provision in assisted reproductive technologies (ART). ART providers offer a range of add‐on interventions, aiming to augment standard in vitro fertilization protocols and improve the chances of a live birth. Particularly in the context of commercial provision, an ever‐increasing array of add‐ons are marketed to ART patients, even when evidence to support them is equivocal. A defining feature of ART is hope—hope that a cycle will lead to a baby or that another test (...) or intervention will make a difference. Yet such hope also leaves ART patients vulnerable in a variety of ways. This article argues that previous attempts to safeguard ART patients have neglected how the use of add‐ons in commercial ART can exploit patients’ hopes. Commercial providers of ART should provide add‐ons only free of charge, under a suitable research protocol. (shrink)

Provides a much-needed humanities-based analysis and description of humanism in relation to theses cultural markers. Whereas most existing analysis attempts to explain humanism through the natural and social sciences (the "what" of life), Anthony B. Pinn explores humanism in relation to "how" life is arranged, socialized, ritualized, and framed. This ground-breaking publication brings together old and new essays on a wide range of topics and themes, from the African-American experience, to the development of humanist churches, and the lyrics of (...) Jay-Z. (shrink)

Encountering philosophy of religion for the first time, we are like explorers arriving on an uncharted coastline. This introduction from Anthony Thiselton is divided into three parts, first mapping the main approaches, then introducing us to the major ideas and thinkers, and finally giving concise explanations of all the words and phrases readers need to know.

Much of the current thought concerning mathematical ontology in volves in some way the Quine/Putnam indispensability argument. The indispensability approach needs to be more thoroughly specified, however, before substantive progress can be made in assessing it. To this end I examine in some detail the ways in which pure mathematics is applied to physical theory; such considerations give rise to three specific issues with which the indispensability approach must come to grips.

This is a collection of writings by the late Lord Quinton, one of the wittiest and most versatile philosophers of his generation.