The essays in this collection step back to ask: Do the complex components of Dennett's work on intentionality, consciousness, evolution, and ethics themselves ...

An assessment of Dennett's philosophy by various philosophers. Includes Dennett's responses.

brook muller begins his contribution to the Coss Dialogues by contesting and at least partially deconstructing Le Corbusier’s aphorism “a house is a machine for living.” He then trades upon an ambiguity that masks the difference between watersheds that mark an important transition from one phase to another and those that are defined by the drainage area associated with a body of water. The 2015 Coss Dialogues took place in the watershed of the Grand River, which extends from its southeast (...) limit near Jackson, Michigan, through my home in Lansing before emptying into Lake Michigan near Grand Haven, some 40 miles to the west of Grand Rapids. The main point that I take.. (shrink)

Although I took one class with John McDermott at SUNY Stony Brook, I write as a colleague who came through the ranks under his mentorship at Texas A&M from 1980 to 1997, when I left College Station to assume the Joyce and Edward E. Brewer Chair in Applied Ethics at Purdue University. I came to Texas A&M during the transition from McDermott's term as the Head of the Department of Philosophy and Humanities to the leadership of Professor Hugh McCann. It (...) was a heady time in Central Texas, and especially in philosophy. Texas A&M was itself undergoing rapid growth in both the size of its student population and in the research output of its faculty. The 1980s, in particular, were a time when a faculty member in any... (shrink)

Part I: The representation of life -- Can life be given a real definition? -- The representation of the living individual -- The representation of the life-form itself -- Part II: Naive action theory -- Types of practical explanation -- Naive explanation of action -- Action and time -- Part III: Practical generality -- Two tendencies in practical philosophy -- Practices and dispositions as sources of the goodness of individual actions -- Practice and disposition as sources of individual action.

Conspiracy theories are rather a popular topic these days, and a lot has been written on things like the meaning of _conspiracy theory_, whether it’s ever rational to believe conspiracy theories, and on the psychology and demographics of people who believe conspiracy theories. But very little has been said about why people might be led to posit conspiracy theories in the first place. This paper aims to fill this lacuna. In particular, I shall argue that, in open democratic societies, citizens (...) justifiably presuppose that the epistemic authorities—journalists, academics, scientists, and so on—are engaged in a good faith pursuit of the truth. This presupposition generates certain normative expectations on the behaviors of the epistemic authorities—they ought to be open to new evidence, possess a healthy degree of skepticism, be willing to engage with opponents, and so on. So, when an epistemic authority is presented with some putatively anomalous data or an alternative hypothesis for some event or phenomena, people expect the epistemic authority to respond in a way that is consonant with these norms. In some instances, however, the epistemic authorities do not respond in this way and instead are dogmatic, dismissive, and engage in _ad hominem_. From the point of view of the citizen, there’s a tension here between how the epistemic authorities ought to behave and how they have, in fact, behaved which is best resolved either by taking the epistemic authorities less seriously or by positing a conspiracy theory. Put another way, the failure of the epistemic authorities to adhere to the norms by which we take them to be governed when presented with apparent anomalies or alternative hypotheses is one reason for which one might initially posit a conspiracy theory. (shrink)

In this new work, political theorist Michael J. Thompson argues that modern societies are witnessing a decline in one of the core building blocks of modernity: the autonomous self. Far from being an illusion of the Enlightenment, Thompson contends that the individual is a defining feature of the project to build a modern democratic culture and polity. One of the central reasons for its demise in recent decades has been the emergence of what he calls the cybernetic society, (...) a cohesive totalization of the social logics of the institutional spheres of economy, culture and polity. These logics have been progressively defined by the imperatives of economic growth and technical-administrative management of labor and consumption, routinizing patterns of life, practices, and consciousness throughout the culture. Evolving out of the neoliberal transformation of economy and society since the 1980s, the cybernetic society has transformed how that the individual is articulated in contemporary society. Thompson examines the various pathologies of the self and consciousness that result from this form of socialization--such as hyper-reification, alienated moral cognition, false consciousness, and the withered ego--in new ways to demonstrate the extent of deformation of modern selfhood. Only with a more robust, more socially embedded concept of autonomy as critical agency can we begin to reconstruct the principles of democratic individuality and community. (shrink)

Accession Number: ATLA0001712130; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 226-235.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 234-235.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

In the wake of ethical scandals and close ethical scrutiny throughout business and the accounting professional today, Brooks/Dunn's BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL ETHICS, 9E provides the ethical insights and strategies you need for corporate and professional success. Learn why ethical behavior is so important and how to recognize potential pitfalls that involve much more than memorizing rules. You master the skills to develop a corporate culture of integrity that maintains stakeholder support and enables directors and auditors to complete their jobs. You (...) also learn how to use ethical strategies to make decisions, as this edition examines the latest information on governance scandals, legal liability and professional accounting and auditing issues. More than 130 cases and readings highlight new and classic cases of fraud, bankruptcy and unprofessional practices to help you better understand appropriate codes of conduct and sound ethical reasoning while strengthening your persuasive and leadership skills for success. (shrink)

_Continues the author’s inquiry into the development of the Chinese philosophical concept Li, concluding in Song and Ming dynasty Neo-Confucianism._.

The article presents critical examination of theories about collective responsibility attempting to cover responsibility for historic injustices. The author will also try to establish the possibility of collective responsibility for the present members of the group to make recompense for the injustices committed by their ancestors depending on two factors expounded in the article.

#1 New York Times bestselling author David Brooks, a controversial and eye-opening look at how our culture has lost sight of the value of humility - defined as the opposite of self-preoccupation - and why only an engaged inner life can yield true meaning and fulfillment.

_Continues the author’s inquiry into the development of the Chinese philosophical concept Li, concluding in Song and Ming dynasty Neo-Confucianism._.

This compelling new book engages leading theorists to consider how cultivating emotions can impact on social justice. Although the presence of political emotions can appear counterproductive to stability and peace, there is an increasing recognition that emotions can be harnessed to empower community cohesion and social justice. Covering such key issues as adaptive preferences, capabilities, civil religion, compassion, conscience, dignity, feminism, imagination, multicultural citizenship, perfectionism, political liberalism, public sentiments, sympathy, Political Emotions challenges readers to explore the role emotions can and (...) should play in our modern society – and at a time when new ideas about how to foster a decent public sphere and overcome intolerance are urgently needed. Drawing particularly on the work of Martha C. Nussbaum, and including a chapter giving her personal response to the issues raised in the individual essays, this is a fascinating read for all of those interested in social and political philosophy today. (shrink)

Truth happens to an idea." So wrote William James in 1907; and twenty-four years later John Dewey argued that artistic experience entailed a process of "doing and undergoing." But what do these ideas have to do with music, or with research conducted in and through music - that is, with "artistic research?" In this collection of essays, fourteen very different authors respond with distinct and challenging perspectives. Some report on their own experiments and experiences; some offer probing analyses of noteworthy (...) practices; some view historical continuities through the lens of pragmatism and artistic experiment. The resulting collection yields new insights into what musicians do, how they experiment, and what they experience - insights that arise not from doctrine, but from diverse voices seeking common ground in and through experimental discourse: artistic research in and of itself. (shrink)

Uses modernist and postmodernist theoretical perspectives to examine the formation and reformation of states throughout history and around the globe.

Drawn from the authors' experiences in the UK, Australia and mainland Europe and with contributions from across the globe, this clear and accessible book includes a wide range of examples. The authors show the reader how to: identify ethical issues which may arise with any research project, gain informed consent, provide information in the right way to participants, and present and disseminate findings in line with ethical guidelines.

The renaissance in Hegel scholarship over the past two decades has largely ignored or marginalized the metaphysical dimension of his thought, perhaps most vigorously when considering his social and political philosophy. Many scholars have consistently maintained that Hegel’s political philosophy must be reconstructed without the metaphysical structure that Hegel saw as his crowning philosophical achievement. This book brings together twelve original essays that explore the relation between Hegel’s metaphysics and his political, social, and practical philosophy. The essays seek to explore (...) what normative insights and positions can be obtained from examining Hegel’s distinctive view of the metaphysical dimensions of political philosophy. His ideas about the good, the universal, freedom, rationality, objectivity, self-determination, and self-development can be seen in a new context and with renewed understanding once their relation to his metaphysical project is considered. _Hegel’s Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Politics_ will be of great interest to scholars of Hegelian philosophy, German Idealism, nineteenth-century philosophy, political philosophy, and political theory. (shrink)

The figure of the mistress is undoubtedly controversial provoking intense reactions, ranging from fear, to disgust and revulsion, to excitement and titillation, to sadness and perhaps to some, love. The mistress is conventionally depicted as a threat to moral living and someone whose sexuality is 'defective' and 'toxic'. Of course, she is a woman that you would not have as your friend, and certainly not your wife, since her 'ethical sense', if she even has one, is dubious at best. This (...) book subverts these traditional judgements offering an unflinching look at the lived experience of the mistress and recasts her as a potentially loving, free, intimate 'other' woman. Drawing upon feminist philosophy, contemporary sexual ethics and the current cultural moment of #MeToo, Mistress Morality moves beyond a narrative of 'infidelity', conventional judgment, the safeguarding of monogamy and conventional heterosex that permeates our society. It asks what happens when we let go of our insecurities, judgments and moralistic relationship philosophies and opt, instead, for an ethics of kindness. A kindness underpinned by engaging with those deemed 'other' and learning from mistresses, both straight and queer, new ways of thinking about ethics and sex, meaning we have better sex, and can be better to each other. (shrink)

Adorno was deeply influenced by ideas about the rationalization of mass society and effects of commodification on consciousness. The work of Max Weber and Georg Lukács were dual influences that shaped much of Adorno's own work. He develops his critique of the “totally administered society” as a confluence of Weber's rationalization thesis as well as Lukács' theory of reification of consciousness due to the penetration of the commodity form into everyday life. But Adorno moves beyond these ideas by arguing that (...) the spread of exchange‐value and quantification, carried forth via the commodity form, collapses the modern individual and its consciousness into the prevailing forms of dominant rationality. I then show how his later projects of Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory seek to protect the subject from these trends and then reflect on how Adorno's ideas can be brought together with Lukács' later ideas about social ontology in order to glimpse a broader concept of Critical Theory. (shrink)

Explores the development of Chinese thought, highlighting its concern with questions of coherence. Providing a bracing expansion of horizons, this book displays the unsuspected range of human thinking on the most basic categories of experience. The way in which early Chinese thinkers approached concepts such as one and many, sameness and difference, self and other, and internal and external stand in stark contrast to the way parallel concepts entrenched in much of modern thinking developed in Greek and European thought. Brook (...) Ziporyn traces the distinctive and surprising philosophical journeys found in the works of the formative Confucian and Daoist thinkers back to a prevailing set of assumptions that tends to see questions of identity, value, and knowledge—the subject matter of ontology, ethics, and epistemology in other traditions—as all ultimately relating to questions about coherence in one form or another. Mere awareness of how many different ways human beings can think and have thought about these categories is itself a game changer for our own attitudes toward what is thinkable for us. The actual inhabitation and mastery of these alternative modes of thinking is an even greater adventure in intellectual and experiential expansion. Brook Ziporyn is Professor of Chinese Philosophy, Religion, and Comparative Thought at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the National University of Singapore. His books include The Penumbra Unbound: The Neo-Taoist Philosophy of Guo Xiang, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

The enduring popularity of Star Wars has much to do with its mythic dimensions. However, there are problems with Joseph Campbell's work on myth and George Lucas's use of Campbell's ideas in Star Wars. Both Campbell and Lucas promote a simplistic view that encourages fans to avoid some darker, more unsettling ideas in Star Wars, which may obscure myth's true power. Campbell remains one of the most famous mythologists, but he was by no means the first. Campbell's influence on Star (...) Wars seems obvious, but the details are difficult to determine, partly because Lucas himself gives different accounts of it. Campbell's monomyth leads us to see similarities between tales and, in so doing, overlooks many significant differences. Tensions between mythos and logos date back to ancient Greek philosophers, if not earlier. The mythic structure of Star Wars has immense hidden power, and this power has a dark side. (shrink)

This is Thomas Reid's greatest work. It covers far more philosophical ground than the earlier, more popular Inquiry. The Intellectual Powers and its companion volume, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, constitute the fullest, most original presentation of the philosophy of Common Sense. In the process, Reid provides acutely critical discussions of an impressive array of thinkers but especially of David Hume. In Reid's eyes, Hume had driven a deep tendency in modern philosophy to its ultimate conclusions by creating (...) a phantom-world of so-called 'ideas' that sprang from objects of observation; the self was a conglomeration of perceived ideas; and the will as the source of action was nothing but the balance of passionate impulses. -/- Reid's Common Sense philosophy answers these problems by suggesting that sceptics, such as Hume, unavoidably affirm what they purport to deny, namely the existence of a stable external world, of other minds, of the continuity of their own minds, and of their own and other people's ability to ascribe and accept responsibility for actions. We can understand all of this by proper empirical observation and philosophical analysis of the activity of the mind. Reid's major positive contribution to philosophy is a detailed account of the various innate powers of the mind. While particularly influential in the first half of the nineteenth century, Reid's work has retained a significant role in philosophy, not least in recent years. At the same time, his role in the Scottish Enlightenment is becoming much better understood. -/- This is the only properly established text. It is accompanied by manuscript lectures on the nature and immortality of the soul, as well as helpful editorial annotation and introduction, making it useful to a wide variety of readers. -/- Key Features: -/- Accurate, reliable and critically established text; The Introduction explains the work's genesis and its place in Reid's system; Annotations provide an understanding of Reid's context; An Appendix contains manuscript material covering an important topic not represented in the hitherto published work. (shrink)

Four essays, three on the philosopher Jacques Derrida, whose writings have so influenced our time (one on his breakfast, one on his cat, one on his relationship with a snake, and one (on the killing of doves) on the great early twentieth century poet Rilke - each of them examining key failures and challenges in the relationship of poetry, philosophy and 'the animal', and each entertaining, absorbing, and thought-provoking well beyond its given subject. A book that crosses with apparent ease (...) the boundaries of philosophy, literary criticism (there are passages on Coleridge, on D.H. Lawrence, on Henry Lawson) and human-animal relations, by a writer recently described as 'one of the most skilful, unusual and versatile of Australian writers' (Sydney Morning Herald, January 2016). (shrink)

An urgent call for everyone to find inventive ways to question the ethics of sexuality.

Drawing from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and from the worlds of theater, philosophy, history and education, one of the nation's leading writers and commentators helps us become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen.

This chapter contains sections titled: Yoga's Approach to the Core Self Clinical Psychology and Treatment How Yoga can Help Neuroscience and You Getting Stronger, Getting Smarter Instructor Responsibility Possibilities for Therapy.

For many years emotion theory has been characterized by a dichotomy between the head and the body. In the golden years of cognitivism, during the nineteen-sixties and seventies, emotion theory focused on the cognitive antecedents of emotion, the so-called “appraisal processes.” Bodily events were seen largely as byproducts of cognition, and as too unspecific to contribute to the variety of emotion experience. Cognition was conceptualized as an abstract, intellectual, “heady” process separate from bodily events. Although current emotion theory has moved (...) beyond this disembodied stance by conceiving of emotions as involving both cognitive processes (perception, attention, and evaluation) and bodily events (arousal, behavior, and facial expressions), the legacy of cognitivism persists in the tendency to treat cognitive and bodily events as separate constituents of emotion. Thus the cognitive aspects of emotion are supposedly distinct and separate from the bodily ones. This separation indicates that cognitivism’s disembodied conception of cognition continues to shape the way emotion theorists conceptualize emotion. (shrink)