In this chapter, Macnish and Asgarinia introduce current thinking and debate around issues of privacy as these relate to the media. Starting with controversies over the definition of privacy, they consider what the content of privacy should be and why it is we consider privacy to be valuable. This latter includes the social implications of privacy and the only recently-recognised concept of group privacy, contrasting it with individual privacy, as well as legal implications arising through laws such as the (...) European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, concerning the collection of personal data and data subjects’ rights. Finally they turn to specific instances of privacy consideration in the media. These include: -/- The use of telephoto lenses to take pictures of celebrities at a distance without those celebrities’ permission (and the related question as to what is a reasonable expectation of privacy when in a public place); -/- Sharing information on social media (and the related question of whether those who share their data on social networking sites care about their privacy), as well as the availability of data online to research, even though that data has not always been posted for the purposes of research; -/- The challenges posed by anonymity online, including the trade-off between free expression and offensive expression; -/- Hacking and the meaning of fishing expeditions as a practice by the media and exploring what, if anything, is wrong with these; -/- The implications of invading the privacy of politicians, both as a defence of democracy and as a threat to democracy. (shrink)

It is often claimed that surveillance should be proportionate, but it is rarely made clear exactly what proportionate surveillance would look like beyond an intuitive sense of an act being excessive. I argue that surveillance should indeed be proportionate and draw on Thomas Hurka’s work on proportionality in war to inform the debate on surveillance. After distinguishing between the proportionality of surveillance per se, and surveillance as a particular act, I deal with objections to using proportionality as a legitimate ethical (...) measure. From there I argue that only certain benefits and harms should be counted in any determination of proportionality. Finally I look at how context can affect the proportionality of a particular method of surveillance. In conclusion, I hold that proportionality is not only a morally relevant criterion by which to assess surveillance, but that it is a necessary criterion. Furthermore, while granting that it is difficult to assess, that difficulty should not prevent our trying to do so. (shrink)

There is a long-running debate as to whether privacy is a matter of control or access. This has become more important following revelations made by Edward Snowden in 2013 regarding the collection of vast swathes of data from the Internet by signals intelligence agencies such as NSA and GCHQ. The nature of this collection is such that if the control account is correct then there has been a significant invasion of people's privacy. If, though, the access account is correct then (...) there has not been an invasion of privacy on the scale suggested by the control account. I argue that the control account of privacy is mistaken. However, the consequences of this are not that the seizing control of personal information is unproblematic. I argue that the control account, while mistaken, seems plausible for two reasons. The first is that a loss of control over my information entails harm to the rights and interests that privacy protects. The second is that a loss of control over my information increases the risk that my information will be accessed and that my privacy will be violated. Seizing control of another's information is therefore harmful, even though it may not entail a violation of privacy. Indeed, seizing control of another's information may be more harmful than actually violating their privacy. (shrink)

This book draws from the use of modern surveillance technologies during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore a set of issues and challenges facing decision-makers and designers in times of emergency: how do we respond to emergencies in ways that are both consistent with democratic and community principles, and that are ethically justifiable?

What's wrong with targeted advertising in political campaigns? Are echo chambers a matter of genuine concern? How does data collection impact on trust in society? As decision-making becomes increasingly automated, how can decision-makers be held to account? This collection consider potential solutions to these challenges.

_The Ethics of Surveillance: An Introduction_ systematically and comprehensively examines the ethical issues surrounding the concept of surveillance. Addressing important questions such as: Is it ever acceptable to spy on one's allies? To what degree should the state be able to intrude into its citizens' private lives in the name of security? Can corporate espionage ever be justified? What are the ethical issues surrounding big data? How far should a journalist go in pursuing information? Is it reasonable to expect a (...) degree of privacy in public? Is it ever justifiable for a parent to read a child’s diary? Featuring case studies throughout this textbook provides a philosophical introduction to an incredibly topical issue studied by students within the fields of applied ethics, ethics of technology, privacy, security studies, politics, journalism and human geography. (shrink)

Mass surveillance is a more real threat now than at any time in history. Digital communications and automated systems allow for the collection and processing of private information at a scale never seen before. Many argue that mass surveillance entails a significant loss of privacy. Others dispute that there is a loss of privacy if the information is only encountered by automated systems.This paper argues that automated mass surveillance does not involve a significant loss of privacy. Through providing a definition (...) of informational privacy as a matter of actual access of private information by one who can understand the meaning of that information, it follows that automated systems which lack understanding cannot of themselves diminish privacy. This is not to say that mass surveillance is unproblematic, though - it is deeply problematic. It is just that privacy is not the most significant of these problems. (shrink)

Despite recent growth in surveillance capabilities there has been little discussion regarding the ethics of surveillance. Much of the research that has been carried out has tended to lack a coherent structure or fails to address key concerns. I argue that the just war tradition should be used as an ethical framework which is applicable to surveillance, providing the questions which should be asked of any surveillance operation. In this manner, when considering whether to employ surveillance, one should take into (...) account the reason for the surveillance, the authority of the surveillant, whether or not there has been a declaration of intent, whether surveillance is an act of last resort, what is the likelihood of success of the operation and whether surveillance is a proportionate response. Once underway, the methods of surveillance should be proportionate to the occasion and seek to target appropriate people while limiting surveillance of those deemed inappropriate. By drawing on the just war tradition, ethical questions regarding surveillance can draw on a long and considered discourse while gaining a framework which, I argue, raises all the key concerns and misses none. (shrink)

In this paper I critique the ethical implications of automating CCTV surveillance. I consider three modes of CCTV with respect to automation: manual, fully automated, and partially automated. In each of these I examine concerns posed by processing capacity, prejudice towards and profiling of surveilled subjects, and false positives and false negatives. While it might seem as if fully automated surveillance is an improvement over the manual alternative in these areas, I demonstrate that this is not necessarily the case. In (...) preference to the extremes I argue in favour of partial automation in which the system integrates a human CCTV operator with some level of automation. To assess the degree to which such a system should be automated I draw on the further issues of privacy and distance. Here I argue that the privacy of the surveilled subject can benefit from automation, while the distance between the surveilled subject and the CCTV operator introduced by automation can have both positive and negative effects. I conclude that in at least the majority of cases more automation is preferable to less within a partially automated system where this does not impinge on efficacy. (shrink)

The Ethics of Surveillance: An Introduction systematically and comprehensively examines the ethical issues surrounding the concept of surveillance. Addressing important questions such as: Is it ever acceptable to spy on one's allies? To what degree should the state be able to intrude into its citizens' private lives in the name of security? Can corporate espionage ever be justified? What are the ethical issues surrounding big data? How far should a journalist go in pursuing information? Is it reasonable to expect a (...) degree of privacy in public? Is it ever justifiable for a parent to read a child’s diary? Featuring case studies throughout, this textbook provides a philosophical introduction to an incredibly topical issue studied by students within the fields of applied ethics, ethics of technology, privacy, security studies, politics, journalism and human geography. (shrink)

This paper argues that a principle of discrimination is central to an ethical approach to surveillance.

. There is a moral question at the heart of this issue as to what actions are justified for a democratic government in the arena of surveillance. In particular, I want to look here at whether untargeted surveillance, such as the collecting of the Verizon call records, is justified.

An introduction to the ethical issues of surveillance in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

This study investigates the ethical use of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies (BD + AI)—using an empirical approach. The paper categorises the current literature and presents a multi-case study of 'on-the-ground' ethical issues that uses qualitative tools to analyse findings from ten targeted case-studies from a range of domains. The analysis coalesces identified singular ethical issues, (from the literature), into clusters to offer a comparison with the proposed classification in the literature. The results show that despite the variety (...) of different social domains, fields, and applications of AI, there is overlap and correlation between the organisations’ ethical concerns. This more detailed understanding of ethics in AI + BD is required to ensure that the multitude of suggested ways of addressing them can be targeted and succeed in mitigating the pertinent ethical issues that are often discussed in the literature. (shrink)

Even if there is to be a general theory of ethical surveillance, though, it does not follow that the just war tradition is the best place to start. This gets to the heart of argument I make in the paper in that I believe this tradition captures all the relevant principles and misses none out. As a point of clarification, it is important to note that I am drawing on the just war tradition rather than the just war theory. While (...) the theory is, as I see it, a largely 20th century phenomenon, the tradition itself goes back much further, certainly to Augustine and arguably Cicero (Reichberg, Syse and Begby 2006). This is important as, while the theory may be tied to the state as authority (although, as I argue below, I would dispute that it is), the tradition is not (Coates 1997: 156). Tradition or theory, the key point is whether or not it is the best approach. Again, Stoddart is sceptical. He writes that the just war theory is contested and is concerned that in appealing to it we may obscure the ethical values on which it relies. Palm also refers to the contested nature of the theory but picks up on the lack of foundational values on which an ethics of surveillance, using the model I suggest, would draw as it currently stands. (shrink)

Article argues for the need and shape of an ethics of security.

The ethics of artificial intelligence is a widely discussed topic. There are numerous initiatives that aim to develop the principles and guidance to ensure that the development, deployment and use of AI are ethically acceptable. What is generally unclear is how organisations that make use of AI understand and address these ethical issues in practice. While there is an abundance of conceptual work on AI ethics, empirical insights are rare and often anecdotal. This paper fills the gap in our current (...) understanding of how organisations deal with AI ethics by presenting empirical findings collected using a set of ten case studies and providing an account of the cross-case analysis. The paper reviews the discussion of ethical issues of AI as well as mitigation strategies that have been proposed in the literature. Using this background, the cross-case analysis categorises the organisational responses that were observed in practice. The discussion shows that organisations are highly aware of the AI ethics debate and keen to engage with ethical issues proactively. However, they make use of only a relatively small subsection of the mitigation strategies proposed in the literature. These insights are of importance to organisations deploying or using AI, to the academic AI ethics debate, but maybe most valuable to policymakers involved in the current debate about suitable policy developments to address the ethical issues raised by AI. (shrink)

This paper develops a problem for conciliationism that is structurally similar to the self-undermining problem but which is immune to most of the solutions offered against it. A popular objection to conciliationism is that it undermines itself. Given the current disagreement among philosophers about conciliationism, conciliationism seems to require rejecting conciliationism. Adam Elga (2010) has influentially argued that this shows that conciliationism is an incoherent method. By recommending its own rejection, conciliationism recommends multiple, incompatible responses to the same body of (...) experience. Many have offered solutions to this problem, including Elga himself. However, there is another undermining problem. When a peer disagrees about their own peerhood, conciliationism can require the rejection of the peer’s peerhood. The result is that conciliationism recommends two incompatible responses to the same body of experience in a way that parallels the original self-undermining problem. But since many, if not all, of the proposed solutions to the original undermining problem depend on distinctive characteristics of conciliationism undermining itself, they cannot apply to a peer undermining themself. I illustrate this by dividing the solutions that have been offered against the self-undermining problem into two categories: self-exempting solutions and non-exempting solutions. I then show how the proposed solutions under each type do not extend to the peer-undermining problem. If that is right, then conciliationism is faced with a more difficult undermining problem than has been so far acknowledged. (shrink)

An important and engaging book on a key argument in contemporary debates about free will and moral responsibility.

Although several important methodologies implicitly assume the truth of epistemic conservatism, the view that holding a belief confers some measure of justification on the belief, recent criticisms have led some to conclude that epistemic conservatism is an implausible view. That conclusion is mistaken. In this article, I propose a new formulation of epistemic conservatism that is not susceptible to the criticisms leveled at earlier formulations of epistemic conservatism. In addition to withstanding these criticisms, this formulation of epistemic conservatism has several (...) benefits. First, this formulation has the benefits of earlier formulations of epistemic conservatism, that is to say it makes sense of our intuitions about justification in regard to both memory beliefs and beliefs for which we have forgotten our evidence. Second, it provides a good way of responding to the skeptic’s challenge concerning the possibility of possessing knowledge of the external world posed by the Alternative Hypotheses argument. Third, it provides responses to both forms of a new skeptical problem plaguing basic knowledge structure theories, the Problem of Easy Knowledge formulated by Stewart Cohen. I argue that given the many benefits of this formulation of epistemic conservatism and the fact that it is not vulnerable to the criticisms that undermine earlier formulations of epistemic conservatism, this formulation of epistemic conservatism is a plausible view to maintain. (shrink)

Alfred Mele's deflationary account of self-deception has frequently been criticised for being unable to explain the “tension” inherent in self-deception. These critics maintain that rival theories can better account for this tension, such as theories which suppose self-deceivers to have contradictory beliefs. However, there are two ways in which the tension idea has been understood. In this article, it is argued that on one such understanding, Mele's deflationism can account for this tension better than its rivals, but only if we (...) reconceptualize the self-deceiver's attitude in terms of unwarranted degrees of conviction rather than unwarranted belief. This new way of viewing the self-deceiver's attitude will be informed by observations on experimental work done on the biasing influence of desire on belief, which suggests that self-deceivers don’t manage to fully convince themselves of what they want to be true. On another way in which this tension has been understood, this account would not manage so well, since on this understanding the self-deceiver is best interpreted as knowing, but wishing to avoid, the truth. However, it is argued that we are under no obligation to account for this since it is a characteristic of a different phenomenon than self-deception, namely, escapism. (shrink)

Matthew McGrath has recently challenged all theories that allow for immediate perceptual justification. This challenge comes by way of arguing for what he calls the “Looks View” of visual justification, which entails that our visual beliefs that are allegedly immediately justified are in fact mediately justified based on our independent beliefs about the looks of things. This paper shows that McGrath’s arguments are unsound or, at the very least, that they do not cause genuine concern for the species of dogmatism (...) called “Phenomenal Explanationism”, recently introduced and defended by Kevin McCain and Luca Moretti. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that liberalism and religious belief conflict. Liberalism, its proponents and critics maintain, requires the privatization of religious belief, since liberals often argue that citizens of faith must repress their fundamental commitments when participating in public life. Critics of liberalism complain that privatization is objectionable because it requires citizens of faith to violate their integrity. The liberal political tradition has always sought to carve out social space for individuals to live by their own lights. If liberalism requires (...) citizens to violate their integrity, liberals have cause for concern. I seek to rebut this integrity objection to liberalism. I focus on the dominant form of philosophical liberalism: public reason liberalism. I argue that the integrity objection undermines the mainstream conception of public reason liberalism, but not public reason liberalism itself. The paper opens by outlining the structure of public reason liberalism and the integrity objection (§§2 and 3). It then analyses two versions of the objection and argues that the second version is successful against the mainstream conception of public reason (§4). I argue in response that public reason liberalism need not endorse principles of restraint—the civic restrictions on religious expression typically associated with it. I then sketch a conception of public reason liberalism that eschews principles of restraint (§5). This alternative promises to reconcile public reason liberals and their faith-friendly critics by putting the integrity objection to rest. (shrink)

This volume explores evidentialism, a major theory of epistemic justification. It contains more than 20 papers that examine its nuances, its challenges, as well as its future directions. Written by leading and up-and-coming epistemologists, the papers cover a wide array of topics related to evidentialism. The contributors present both sides of the theory: some are advocates of evidentialism, while others are critics. This provides readers with a comprehensive, and cutting-edge, understanding of this epistemic theory. Overall, the book is organized into (...) six parts: The Nature of Evidence, Understanding Evidentialism, Problems for Evidentialism, Evidentialism and Social Epistemology, New Directions for Evidentialism, and Explanationist Evidentialism. Readers will find insightful discussion on such issues as the ontology of evidence, phenomenal dogmatism, how experiences yield evidence, the new evil demon problem, probability, norms of credibility, intellectual virtues, wisdom, epistemic justification, and more. This title provides authoritative coverage of evidentialism, from the latest developments to the most recent philosophical criticisms. It will appeal to researchers and graduate students searching for more information on this prominent epistemological theory. (shrink)

Through a series of empirical studies involving native speakers of English, German, and Chinese, this paper reveals that the predicate “true” is inherently ambiguous in the empirical domain. Truth statements such as “It is true that Tom is at the party” seem to be ambivalent between two readings. On the first reading, the statement means “Reality is such that Tom is at the party.” On the second reading, the statement means “According to what X believes, Tom is at the party.” (...) While there appear to exist some cross-cultural differences in the interpretation of the statements, the overall findings robustly indicate that “true” has multiple meanings in the realm of empirical matters. (shrink)

Introduction: religion and politics as human universals -- Catholic integralism and the integralists -- History --Symmetry -- Transition -- Stability -- Justice -- Confucian and Islamic anti-liberalisms -- Epilogue: reconciliation.

Most donated organs in the United States come from brain dead donors, while a small percentage come from patients who die in “controlled,” or expected, circumstances, typically after the family or surrogate makes a decision to withdraw life support. The number of organs available for transplant could be substantially if donations were permitted in “uncontrolled” circumstances–that is, from people who die unexpectedly, often outside the hospital. According to projections from the Institute of Medicine, establishing programs permitting “uncontrolled donation after circulatory (...) determination of death,” or uDCDD, throughout the United States has the potential to provide 22,000 more donation opportunities annually. In contrast, U.S. controlled donation after circulatory determination of death, or cDCDD, cases have increased progressively over the past decade from 87 to 848 donors, but currently account for only 10.6 percent of all deceased donors. Following the IOM recommendations, several projects exploring the feasibility of uDCDD were funded by the federal government, including a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration that supported a pilot project in New York City in which the authors of this article participated.A key feature of our protocol, and indeed of many uDCDD protocols, is the initiation of preservation methods such as chest compressions and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation shortly after death in order to perfuse and preserve the donor's organs. Critics of uDCDD argue that the means of determining death deviates from generally ascribed principles. They assert that reinstituting circulation in order to preserve organs has the effect of “undoing” the prior determination of death. The result is that cDCDD is widely accepted and practiced routinely even though it only marginally increases the number of organs available for transplantation, and uDCDD is widely considered unacceptable despite being ethically embraced and proven to significantly increase organ donation opportunities in other countries. This article explores the evolution of this counterintuitive state of affairs and calls for a policy that, in line with the IOM report, allows for both cDCDD and uDCDD protocols. (shrink)

You can perceive things, in many respects, as they really are. For example, you can correctly see a coin as circular from most angles. Nonetheless, your perception of the world is perspectival. The coin looks different when slanted than when head-on, and there is some respect in which the slanted coin looks similar to a head-on ellipse. Many hold that perception is perspectival because you perceive certain properties that correspond to the “looks” of things. I argue that this view is (...) misguided. I consider the two standard versions of this view. What I call the PLURALIST APPROACH fails to give a unified account of the perspectival character of perception, while what I call the PERSPECTIVAL PROPERTIES APPROACH violates central commitments of contemporary psychology. I propose instead that perception is perspectival because of the way perceptual states are structured from their parts. (shrink)

According to Phenomenal Conservatism (PC), if a subject S has an appearance that P, in the absence of defeaters, S has justification for believing P by virtue of her appearance's inherent justifying power. McCain and Moretti (2021) have argued that PC is affected by the problem of reflective awareness: if S becomes reflectively aware of an appearance, the appearance loses its inherent justifying power. This limits the explanatory power of PC and reduces its antisceptical bite. This paper provides a novel (...) argument to the same conclusion and contends that it does not apply to Phenomenal Explanationism, the appearance-based account of justification alternative to PC defended by McCain and Moretti (2021). (shrink)

Therapy for metaphysics -- Concepts, rules, and the spirit of recognition -- Meaning and meanings -- Reference and presence -- Truth and correspondence -- Emancipating theology.

Introduction -- Organization, society and politics -- An Aristotelian perspective -- The politics -- The public good -- The rhetoric -- Talk and texts -- The Nichomachean ethics -- Decision making and ethics -- The Poetics -- Bolshevism to ballet in three steps -- What is "public interest"?: a case study -- Where do we go from here?

Experimental philosophy of consciousness aims to investigate and explain our thinking about phenomenally conscious states. Based on empirical studies, researchers have argued (a) that we lack a folk concept of consciousness, (b) that we do not think entities like Microsoft feel regret, (c) that unfelt pains are widely accepted, and (d) that people do not attribute phenomenally conscious states to duplicated hamsters. In this article, I review these and other intriguing claims about people’s understanding of phenomenal consciousness. In doing so, (...) I also show why experimental philosophy of consciousness is challenging, although perhaps not quite as daunting as studying phenomenal consciousness itself. (shrink)

A keen athlete in his late forties, philosophy professor Kevin Aho hadn't given much thought to his own mortality, until he suffered a sudden heart attack that left him fighting for his life. Confronted with death for the first time, he realized that the things he thought gave his life meaning, such as his independence or his ability to plan his own future, were in tatters. Aho turned to those thinkers who have reflected deeply on the meaning of life (...) and the anxiety of living when every heartbeat might be your last: the existentialists. Armed with insights from the likes of Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and de Beauvoir, he found new meaning and comfort in a view of life that strives for authenticity and accepts aging and death as part of what makes life worthwhile. Existentialism asks us to face the frailty of our existence and to live with a sense of urgency and gratitude toward its manifold beauties. It is only then that we can be released from patterns of self-deception and begin to appreciate what truly matters in our fleeting, precious lives. (shrink)

In this chapter I defend Explanationist Evidentialism, the theory developed and argued for in Evidentialism and Epistemic Justification, from the objections raised by Richard Fumerton, Jonathan Kvanvig, and Matthias Steup. Ultimately, I conclude that although each of these philosophers presents interesting challenges, none of the challenges succeed in undermining Explanationist Evidentialism. It remains a viable theory of epistemic justification.

This chapter explores the metaphysical views about higher-order logic held by two individuals responsible for introducing it to philosophy: Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) and Bertrand Russell (1872–1970). Frege understood a function at first as the remainder of the content of a proposition when one component was taken out or seen as replaceable by others, and later as a mapping between objects. His logic employed second-order quantifiers ranging over such functions, and he saw a deep division in nature between objects and functions. (...) Russell understood propositional functions as what is obtained when constituents of propositions are replaced by variables, but eventually denied that they were entities in their own right. Both encountered contradictions when supposing there to exist as many objects as functions, and both adopted views about the meaningfulness of higher-order discourse that were difficult to state from within their own strictures. (shrink)

_Challenges conventional understandings of Heidegger’s account of the body._.

There is growing interest in understanding and eliciting division of labor within groups of scientists. This paper illustrates the need for this division of labor through a historical example, and a formal model is presented to better analyze situations of this type. Analysis of this model reveals that a division of labor can be maintained in two different ways: by limiting information or by endowing the scientists with extreme beliefs. If both features are present however, cognitive diversity is maintained indefinitely, (...) and as a result agents fail to converge to the truth. Beyond the mechanisms for creating diversity suggested here, this shows that the real epistemic goal is not diversity but transient diversity. (shrink)

Was David Hume radically sceptical about our attempts to understand the world or was he merely approaching philosophical problems from a scientific perspective? Most philosophers today believe that Hume's outlook was more scientific than radically sceptical and that his scepticism was more limited than previously supposed. If these philosophers are correct, then Hume's approach to philosophy mirrors the approach of many contemporary philosophers. This similarity between Hume and many aspects of contemporary philosophy suggests that we should try to understand Hume (...) not as an historical relic but as a partner in a continuing philosophical dialogue. When we look closely at Hume's thoughts about human understanding, we find that Hume's scepticism emerges very insistently in the context of Hume's scientific approach. This book tries to come to terms with Hume's scepticism in a way that sheds light on contemporary philosophy and its relationship to science. (shrink)

Are philosophers regularly led into error by misleading pictures, grammatical appearances, illusions and fictions? An affirmative answer to this question lies at the heart of the writings of the later Wittgenstein on mind and language. Another affirmative answer was given much earlier by Anton Marty. The two Austrian philosophers think that philosophers regularly succumb to certain temptations which lie in natural language. Many of the examples given by the two philosophers are indeed the same. I set out the similarities between (...) the two accounts of misleading pictures and argue that many aspects of the two accounts can be defended independently of the very different conceptions of the philosophy of Marty and Wittgenstein. The paper shows how important it is to consider Wittgenstein’s Austrian predecessors if he is to be understood. (shrink)

Han Solo‐orphan, laconically cool Corellian smuggler, Rebel general, and martyr for the Resistance, is one of the most‐loved characters in the Star Wars universe. His emotional and moral development throughout the original trilogy into a trusted friend, Leia's lover, and a warrior for Rebel values is inspiring. In the sequel trilogy, he's returned to smuggling and reluctantly re‐assumes the mantle of father to Ben Solo, an alienated and ultimately patricidal son, but even death fails to stop him from offering fatherly (...) advice to bring Kylo Ren back to the light side. In a universe of tyrants, freedom‐fighters, Force‐sensitives, Jedi, and Sith, everybody seems to be peddling a philosophy. But Han Solo is a scoundrel, a skeptic, and a Corellian who seems to want to evade a philosophical life. Skepticism, anti‐authoritarianism, and a desire to demystify–to strip away pretensions to reveal the true, but often ugly face of reality. (shrink)