In their discussion paper of November 2020, Cooket alpresent a draft protocol for navigating circumstances in which emergency services are overwhelmed. Their paper suggests that COVID-related triage decisions should be based on clinical assessment, patient and family consultation, and a range of ethical considerations. In this response, we note that the protocol exhibits an ambiguity that is likely to result in irresolvable dilemmas when put into practice. This ambiguity is exemplified in the paper’s prime ethical imperative (to ‘save more lives (...) and more years of life’), which takes the form of an undefined conjunction whose practical implications are left unspecified. We see this ambiguity in the prime imperative as one manifestation of a broader set of tensions in the protocol. We show that the discipline of human rights provides an essential supplement to the ethical framework on which Cook and colleagues rely, providing a framework for understanding and working through triage dilemmas involving age, discrimination and equality. (shrink)

Aaron Zimmerman presents a new pragmatist account of belief, in terms of information poised to guide our more attentive, controlled actions. And he explores the consequences of this account for our understanding of the relation between psychology and philosophy, the mind and brain, the nature of delusion, faith, pretence, racism, and more.

Some psychopathologic experiences have as one of their structural aspects the experience of restructured temporality. The general argument is that one of the universal microstructures of experience, namely, lived time offers a particular perspective relevant to certain psychopathologic experiences. Lived time is connected with the experience of the embodied human subject as being driven and directed towards the world in terms of bodily potentiality and capability. The dialectical relationship between the embodied human subject and the world results in a sense (...) of lived time (personal time), a lived time that is intimately synchronized with the time of others (intersubjective time). Some experiences of acute suffering, and in particular acute melancholic suffering, can dramatically alter the temporal microstructure of experience to the extent that personal lived time becomes disordered. Normally, past and future withdraw on their own according with their nature of "not being." The future is characterized as openness to change and movement. The absence of this openness is the closing of the future; without this openness, the future appears static and deterministic. When the future is experienced as static, then one longer has the possibility of "things getting better," nor does one have any possibility of relinquishing or escaping from the past because a static future does not allow openness to change and movement. In short, both past and future become static. With the presence of melancholic suffering and the absence of temporal movement, a sense of hopelessness may arise in the individual because suffering without temporal movement becomes, from the sufferer's perspective, eternal suffering. (shrink)

In their target article, McKay & Dennett (M&D) conclude that only “positive illusions” are adaptive misbeliefs. Relying on overly strict conceptual schisms (deficit vs. motivational, functional vs. organic, perception vs. belief), they prematurely discount delusions asbiologicallyadaptive. In contrast to their view that “motivation” plays a psychological but not a biological function in a two-factor model of the forming and maintenance of delusions, we propose asingleimpairment in prediction-error–driven (i.e., motivational) learning in three stages in which delusions play a biologically adaptive role.

The fact that philosophy is systematic—that philosophical issues are thoroughly interconnected—was a commonplace among nineteenth century idealists, then neglected by analytic philosophers throughout much of the twentieth century, and has now finally started to get some renewed attention. But other than calling attention to the fact, few philosophers have tried to say what it consists in, or what its implications are. -/- I argue that the systematicity of philosophy has disastrous epistemological implications. In particular, it implies philosophical skepticism: philosophers are (...) rationally prohibited from believing any philosophical thesis. The argument goes by way of a new principle that connects inquiry with what is rational to believe. I conclude with a discussion of the relationship between my argument and other, more well-trodden arguments for philosophical skepticism. (shrink)

From the bestselling author of Assholes: A Theory, a book that--in the tradition of Shopclass as Soulcraft, Barbarian Days and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance--uses the experience and the ethos of surfing to explore key concepts in philosophy. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once declared "the ideal limit of aquatic sports...is waterskiing." The avid surfer and lavishly credentialed academic philosopher Aaron James vigorously disagrees, and in Surfing with Sartre he intends to expound the thinking surfer's view of (...) the matter, in the process elucidating such philosophical categories as freedom, being, phenomenology, morality, epistemology, and even the emerging values of what he terms "leisure capitalism." In developing his unique surfer-philosophical worldview, he draws from his own experience of surfing and from surf culture and lingo, and includes many relevant details from the lives of the philosophers, from Aristotle to Wittgenstein, with whose thought he engages. In the process, he'll speak to readers in search of personal and social meaning in our current anxious moment, by way of doing real, authentic philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 12.3 (2005) 209-214 [Access article in PDF] Body-Subjects Martin Wyllie Keywords embodied subjectivity, dialectical relationships, body-subject A complete description of melancholic ex-perience and the experience of suffering can only be given by considering the human being as an embodied subject (body-subject) that is already and always situated in the world (body-subject-in-the-world). A full understanding of the body-subject eliminates the mutual exclusivity of certain conceptual (...) categories. There is no need to preserve the dichotomies of subject/object, inner/outer, mind and body within the field of psychopathology because body and mind and world may be reconciled through the concept of the body-subject. The concept of the body-subject provides a means of evolving a common language that could unify many descriptive levels of explanation into a single integrative descriptive framework.Each of the four excellent commentaries moves the debate forward and I attempt to do the same by engaging in some of the issues raised. Without doubt there is more to lived time than outlined within my paper. For example, the useful "implicit/explicit" distinction of temporality (Fuchs 2005) and "cognitive temporal experience" (Kupke 2005) are important for any developing description of lived time. Kupke identifies that the processes and structures in relation to lived time, intersubjective time (subject–other) and cognitive temporal experience (subject–object) as articulated, in my paper, remain ambiguous. This short reply attempts to clarify some of this ambiguity by placing the concept of lived time within a wider "body-subject-in-the-world" framework (Wyllie 2003). This "body-subject-in-the-world" framework attempts to integrate the universal structures of embodiment, lived time, lived space, and intersubjectivity into a unified description of human experience. Concentrating on some of the problems with this framework, I attempt to clarify some of the ambiguity and show how this slowly developing framework can be of benefit in describing psychopathologic phenomena.One problem in articulating any developing conceptual framework, particularly within the domain of philosophical phenomenology, is attempting to find language that is neutral and does not carry with it a large theoretical payload. This "view from nowhere" approach is, however, doomed to failure as one has to inevitably build on and appropriate meanings, concepts and terms that are already given. Broome (2005) clearly demonstrates the importance of scientific models and outlines how scientific explanatory models are necessary and complementary companions to phenomenological models of melancholia. Matthews (2005) argues that "causal relationships" and causal terms are more appropriate to a scientific understand of melancholia and that the use of reductive subject/object, cause/effect language may be inappropriate because I attempt to holistically understand the phenomena of melancholia. Nonetheless, such a holistic approach ultimately includes the language of the molecular (scientific), the subjective [End Page 209] (intentional), and the communal (intersubjective). There flows from Matthews's point the rational for attempting to evolve a common language that could unify descriptive "phenomenological" and prescriptive "scientific" levels of "explanation" into a common integrated explanatory framework. This, however, is no easy task because one has in developing an inclusive description of melancholia to liberate both the "objective" and "subjective" without losing the force of either polarity. For this to occur something in addition to causal relationships needs to be considered when attempting to describe melancholia. A small part of this "something in addition" may be supplied by considering dialectical relationships.The concept of a causal relationship, as opposed to a dialectical relationship, attempts to understand processes in an atomistic fashion and this may be a wholly inadequate way of characterizing the phenomenology of melancholia or, for that matter, human experience. For example, the objects of my immediate experience only constitute a small minority of that which I can experience in that moment, and this is because I can have the experience of absent objects, impossible objects, future objects, past objects, and ideal objects. The directedness of my experience at those moments toward these objects is not brought about because I am causally influenced by the spatial world proximity of the objects in question. It maybe argued my relation to these... (shrink)

Haskell Curry’s philosophy of mathematics is really a form of “structuralism” rather than “formalism” despite Curry’s own description of it as formalist (Seldin 2011). This paper explains Curry’s actual view by a formal analysis of a simple example. This analysis is extended to solve Keränen’s (2001) identity problem for structuralism, confirming Leitgeb’s (2020a, b) solution, and further clarifies structural ontology. Curry’s methods answer philosophical questions by employing a standard mathematical method, which is a virtue of the “methodological autonomy” emphasized by (...) Curry (1951, 1963) and more recently with greater clarity by Maddy (1997, 2007). (shrink)

Biological science uses multiple species concepts. Order can be brought to this diversity if we recognize two key features. First, any given species concept is likely to have a patchwork structure, generated by repeated application of the concept to new domains. We illustrate this by showing how two species concepts (biological and ecological) have been modified from their initial eukaryotic applications to apply to prokaryotes. Second, both within and between patches, distinct species concepts may interact and hybridize. We thus defend (...) a semantic picture of the species concept as a collection of interacting patchwork structures. Thus, although not all uses of the term pick out the same kind of unit in nature, the diversity of uses reflects something more than mere polysemy. We suggest that the emphasis on the use of species to pick out natural units is itself problematic, because that is not the term’s sole function. In particular, species concepts are used to manage inquiry into processes of speciation, even when these processes do not produce clearly delimited species. (shrink)

How do we know right from wrong? Do we even have moral knowledge? Moral epistemology studies these and related questions about our understanding of virtue and vice. It is one of philosophy’s perennial problems, reaching back to Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Hume and Kant, and has recently been the subject of intense debate as a result of findings in developmental and social psychology. Throughout the book Zimmerman argues that our belief in moral knowledge can survive sceptical challenges. He also draws (...) on a rich range of examples from Plato’s Meno and Dickens’ David Copperfield to Bernard Madoff and Saddam Hussein. (shrink)

Political constructivism is associated with John Rawls more than any other contemporary philosopher. This chapter suggests that Rawls's political constructivism is better understood as a general method of justification which runs throughout his work as a whole, including his early work and A Theory of Justice. The chapter develops the general characterization of Rawls's political constructivism. Its main elements are taken in turn and developed with special attention to the two places where Rawls discusses the topic in depth – his (...) Dewey Lectures on Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory and its substantially revised version called “Political Constructivism” (PL, Lecture III). The main elements include social role, sources, interpretive basis, representation and conclusion. Rawls endorsed a Kantian metaethical constructivism in part because it offered a way of more deeply characterizing how his previous political constructivism could be a live and distinct possibility. (shrink)

The trouble with theory and practice -- Preparing a place for a Peircean ethics -- Intelligent habits -- The metaphysics of habits -- Thinking of habits -- Self-controlled habits.

History was a continuous cycle driven by the gods. Societies began by being small, impoverished, and insignificant, then became great, then proud and decadent, and finally were overthrown by a different small, impoverished people, with the cycle beginning anew. Herbert's historical universe in Dune is bound within a series of ever repeating cycle. Herbert's themes about human action, fatalism versus free will, and the repetition of religious motifs across vast distances of space and time. Greek mythology and tragedy appear on (...) the very first page of Dune with the use of a single word: Atreides. Much like in the Dune series, History emerged in the ancient Greek world by combining mythology, epic narrative, and tragedy. The Golden Path is the death of the constant cycles of imperialism and the freeing of humanity from constantly repeating old mistakes. (shrink)

Analytic Philosophy: An Interpretive History explores the ways interpretation shaped the analytic tradition, from Frege to Dummet. It offers readers 17 chapters, written especially for this volume by an international cast of leading scholars. Some chapters are devoted to large, thematic issues like the relationship between analytic philosophy and other philosophical traditions such as British Idealism and phenomenology, while other chapters are tied to more fine-grained topics or to individual philosophers, like Moore and Russell on philosophical method or the history (...) of interpretations of Wittgenstein’s _Tractatus_. Throughout, the focus is on interpretations that are crucial to the origin, development, and persistence of the analytic tradition. The result is a more fully formed and philosophically satisfying portrait of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

We identify a species of experiment—Kon-Tiki experiments—used to demonstrate the competence of a cause to produce a certain effect, and we examine their role in the historical sciences. We argue that Kon-Tiki experiments are used to test middle-range theory, to test assumptions within historical narratives, and to open new avenues of inquiry. We show how the results of Kon-Tiki experiments are involved in projective inferences, and we argue that reliance on projective inferences does not provide historical scientists with any special (...) protection against the problem of unconceived alternatives. (shrink)

This dissertation compares the thought and practice of Xunzi, a 4th--3rd century BCE Confucian, with that of Augustine of Hippo, a 4th--5th century CE Christian. Specifically, it compares their versions of the view that human nature is significantly bad or evil, and their prescriptions for the cultivation of ethically and religiously preferable modes of life, through the practice of what Pierre Hadot has called "spiritual exercises." ;Xunzi and Augustine deploy conceptual apparatuses structured by distinctive terms of art, responding to debates (...) within their own contexts. Their articulations of human personhood deeply shape their proposals and hopes for personal cultivation. This thesis examines their different anthropologies, with special attention to Augustine's concept of natura and Xunzi's idea of xing, both traditionally rendered in English as "human nature." It then discusses their positive proposals for ethico-religious education and personal cultivation, focusing on the specific practices they recommend and their accounts of how and why these practices are effective in the production of flourishing human beings. It explores Xunzi's opposition of "nature" and "artifice," his analysis of emotion, desire, and action, and his accounts of study, ritual practice, and music as spiritual exercises. It investigates Augustine's views of original sin and the mind imaging God, his account of disciplina "teaching" and "discipline," and his understandings of the liberal arts, learning from scripture, fasting, the Eucharist, and different types of prayer. ;Comparison of Xunzi and Augustine makes three contributions. First, it refines our analytical categories as students of religious thought and practice, especially in this case "human nature" and "spiritual exercises." Second, it illuminates both thinkers' views more fully, in particular deepening our understanding of Xunzi's moral psychology and Augustine's theories of Christian formation after "conversion" and baptism. Third, it contributes to contemporary debates in religious ethics: first, about moral personhood, proposing a new model of "chastened intellectualism" but underscoring the limitations of universalistic accounts; and second, about spiritual exercises, retrieving elements of Xunzi's account of ritual and Augustine's techniques for affecting one's inner discourse of interpretation and judgment. (shrink)

The American conservative movement is a force of anti-reflexivity insofar as it attacks two key elements of reflexive modernization: the environmental movement and environmental impact science. Learning from its mistakes in overtly attacking environmental regulations in the early 1980s, this counter-movement has subsequently exercised a more subtle form of power characterized by non-decision-making. We examine the conservative movement’s efforts to undermine climate science and policy in the USA over the last two decades by using this second dimension of power. The (...) conservative movement has employed four non-decision-making techniques to challenge the legitimacy of climate science and prevent progress in policy-making. We argue that reflexive modernization scholars should focus more attention on similar forces of anti-reflexivity that continue to shape the overall direction of our social, political and economic order, and the life chances of many citizens. Indeed, better understanding of the forces and effectiveness of anti-reflexivity may very well be crucial for societal resilience and adaptation, especially in the face of global environmental problems like climate change. (shrink)

This paper investigates the complexity hypothesis in microbial evolutionary genetics from a philosophical vantage. This hypothesis, in its current version, states that genes with high connectivity are likely to be resistant to being horizontally transferred. We defend four claims. There is an important distinction between two different ways in which a gene family can persist: vertically and horizontally. There is a trade-off between these two modes of persistence, such that a gene better at achieving one will be worse at achieving (...) the other. At least some genes are likely to experience selection favoring increased transferability. One consequence of this can be encapsulated as the “simplicity hypothesis”: horizontally persisting genes will experience selection favoring reduced connectivity. In order to make sense of the simplicity hypothesis, we need to consider evolutionary populations that transcend species boundaries. Vertical and horizontal persistence are therefore not two competing ways of succeeding at the same game, but involve playing two different games altogether. The complexity hypothesis can be understood in terms of two related notions: entrenchment and Cuvierian functionalism. This framing reveals previously unrecognized and philosophically interesting connections between reasoning about deep conservation and horizontal transfer. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Multiplicity How Are Instances of Comics Created? Autographic and Allographic Conclusion Notes References.

The aim of this volume is to consider connections among issues in metaphilosophy, historiographical method, and the formation of philosophical canons. Here I consider an ancient metaphilosophical position very different from anything accepted in mainstream academic philosophy today, but which, I believe, merits revival in a form appropriate to our era. I call this position “metaphilosophical eudaimonism” because it takes human flourishing to be the ultimate goal of philosophy. I first explain the position before considering its implications for philosophy’s relationship (...) to its history, for the historiography of philosophy, and for the role of canons in philosophy. Along the way, I develop a perspective on the possibility of trans-historical knowledge grounded in a Husserlian analysis of the act of consciousness. (shrink)

Introduction: occupation -- Impossibilities -- Irreconcilability -- Kaddish -- Authoritarianism: a case study -- Rosenzweig's patient -- Beyond.

Prior research on the influence of various ways of framing anthropogenic climate change do not account for the organized ACC denial in the U.S. media and popular culture, and thus may overestimate these frames' influence in the general public. We conducted an experiment to examine how Americans' ACC views are influenced by four promising frames for urging action on ACC —when these frames appear with an ACC denial counter-frame. This is the first direct test of how exposure to an ACC (...) denial message influences Americans' ACC views. Overall, these four positive frames have little to no effect on ACC beliefs. But exposure to an ACC denial counter-frame does significantly reduce respondents' belief in the reality of ACC, belief about the veracity of climate science, awareness of the consequences of ACC, and support for aggressively attempting to reduce our nation's GHG emissions in the near future. Furthermore, as expected by the Anti-Reflexivity Thesis, exposure to the ACC denial counter-frame has a disproportionate influence on the ACC views of conservatives, effectively activating conservatives' underlying propensity for anti-reflexivity. (shrink)

A study of the relationship between African political theory and the politics of liberation. It elucidates the dialectical inter-relationship between the political philosophical views of these thinkers and the political, social and economic contexts of their respective countries.

Explores Martin Heidegger's rich and profound engagement with ancient philosophy and literature and demonstrates both his essential place within the discourse of classical studies and the fundamental significance of classical thought for his own work.

Introduction -- Logics of extraction -- Materialism & critical materialism -- Methodological parrhesia: truth-telling -- Methodological materiality: towards productive social change.

In The Case for Animal Rights, Tom Regan defends the view that all animals who are “subjects of a life” have an equal moral right to life. In this chapter, I consider whether it makes sense to think that animals have an equal right to life in light of the challenge that life has less value for animals than humans. This challenge raises two central questions: (1) does life have less value for animals than humans and (2) if it does, (...) does this fact justify the view that animals do not have an equal right to life. I argue, first, that life has greater value for most humans than animals because most humans are capable of experiencing higher qualities of enjoyment in life, in the form of creative, intellectual pleasures. However, this does not justify denying that animals have an equal right to life. Whether beings’ lives deserve strong respect depends on whether the value of life for those beings meets a certain threshold. I argue that the value of life for many animals meets this threshold because it is compatible with the virtue of compassion. (shrink)

Too often the study of philosophical texts is carried out in ways that do not pay significant attention to how the ideas contained within them are presented, articulated, and developed. This was not always the case. The contributors to this collected work consider Jewish philosophy in the medieval period, when new genres and forms of written expression were flourishing in the wake of renewed interest in ancient philosophy. Many medieval Jewish philosophers were highly accomplished poets, for example, and made conscious (...) efforts to write in a poetic style. This volume turns attention to the connections that medieval Jewish thinkers made between the literary, the exegetical, the philosophical, and the mystical to shed light on the creativity and diversity of medieval thought. As they broaden the scope of what counts as medieval Jewish philosophy, the essays collected here consider questions about how an argument is formed, how text is put into the service of philosophy, and the social and intellectual environment in which philosophical texts were produced. (shrink)

pt. I. Theoretical ethics.--pt. II. Practical ethics.--pt. III. History of ethics.

In The Democratic Soul, Aaron L. Herold argues that liberal democracy's current crisis—of extreme polarization, rising populism, and disillusionment with political institutions—must be understood as the culmination of a deeper dissatisfaction with the liberal Enlightenment. Major elements of both the Left and the Right now reject the Enlightenment's emphasis on rights as theoretically unfounded and morally undesirable and have sought to recover a contrasting politics of obligation. But this has re-opened questions about the relationship between politics and religion long (...) thought settled. To address our situation, Herold examines the political thought of Spinoza and Tocqueville, two authors united in support of liberal democracy but with differing assessments of the Enlightenment. Through an original reading of Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise, Herold uncovers the theological foundation of liberal democracy: a comprehensive moral teaching rehabilitating human self-interest, denigrating "devotion" as a relic of "superstition," and cultivating a pride in living, acting, and thinking for oneself. In his political vision, Spinoza articulates our highest hopes for liberalism, for he is confident such an outlook will produce both intellectual flourishing and a paradoxical recovery of community. But Spinoza's project contains tensions which continue to trouble democracy today. As Herold shows via a new interpretation of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, the dissatisfactions now destabilizing democracy can be traced to the Enlightenment's failure to find a place for religious longings whose existence it largely denied. In particular, Tocqueville described a natural human desire for a kind of happiness found, at least partly, in self-sacrifice. Because modernity weakens religion precisely as it makes democracy stronger than liberalism, it permits this desire to find new and dangerous outlets. Tocqueville thus sought to design a "new political science" which could rectify this problem and which therefore remains indispensable today in recovering the moderation lacking in contemporary politics. (shrink)

Review of W. J. Mander, The Volitional Theory of Causation: From Berkeley to the Twentieth Century. Oxford University Press, 2023.

Discusses the moral and metaphysical philosophy of Vladimir Jankélévitch, his reflections on the conditions for forgiveness, especially in light of the Shoah, and the temporality of forgiveness in its relation to creation, history, and memory.

Obligations to reduce one’s green house gas emissions appear to be difficult to justify prior to large-scale collective action because an individual’s emissions have virtually no impact on the environmental problem. However, I show that individuals’ emissions choices raise the question of whether or not they can be justified as fair use of what remains of a safe global emissions budget. This is true both before and after major mitigation efforts are in place. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to establish an (...) obligation to reduce personal emissions because it appears unlikely that governments will in fact maintain safe emissions budgets. The result, I claim, is that under current conditions we lack outcome, fairness, promotional, virtue or duty based grounds for seeing personal emissions reductions as morally obligatory. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to bring recent work on metaphysical grounding to bear on the phenomenon of social construction. It is argued that grounding can be used to analyze social construction and that the grounding framework is helpful for articulating various claims and commitments of social constructionists, especially about social identities, e.g., gender and race. The paper also responds to a number of objections that have been leveled against the application of grounding to social construction from Elizabeth Barnes, (...) Mari Mikkola, and Jessica Wilson. (shrink)