Legal theorists have proposed several theories to justify statutes of limitations in the criminal law, but none of these normative theories is generally accepted. This chapter investigates the related descriptive question as to whether ordinary people have the intuition that legal punishment becomes less appropriate as time passes from the date of the offense and, if they do, what factors play a role in these intuitions. Five studies demonstrate that there is an intuitive statute of limitations on both legal punishment (...) and moral criticism, and that these intuitions arise, in part, from judgments about changes in psychological connectedness over time. (shrink)

Are companies, churches, and states genuine agents? Or are they just collections of individuals that give a misleading impression of unity? This question is important, since the answer dictates how we should explain the behaviour of these entities and whether we should treat them as responsible and accountable on the model of individual agents. Group Agency offers a new approach to that question and is relevant, therefore, to a range of fields from philosophy to law, politics, and the social sciences. (...) Christian List and Philip Pettit argue that there really are group or corporate agents, over and above the individual agents who compose them, and that a proper approach to the social sciences, law, morality, and politics must take account of this fact. Unlike some earlier defences of group agency, their account is entirely unmysterious in character and, despite not being technically difficult, is grounded in cutting-edge work in social choice theory, economics, and philosophy. (shrink)

‘Researcher identity’ affects global health research in profound and complex ways. Anthropologists in particular have led the way in portraying the multiple, and sometimes tension-generating, identities that researchers ascribe to themselves, or have ascribed to them, in their places of research. However, the central importance of researcher identity in the ethical conduct of global health research has yet to be fully appreciated. The capacity of researchers to respond effectively to the ethical tensions surrounding their identities is hampered by (...) lack of conceptual clarity, as to the nature and scope of the issues involved. This paper strives to provide some clarification of these ethical tensions by considering researcher identity from the perspective of (1) Guillemin and Heggen's (2009) key distinction between procedural ethics and ethics in practice, and (2) our own distinction between perceptions of identity that are either symmetrical or asymmetrical, with the potential to shift research relationships toward greater or lesser ethical harmony. Discussion of these concepts is supported with ethnographic examples from relevant literature and from our own (United States (US) Government-funded) research in South Africa. A preliminary set of recommendations is provided in an effort to equip researchers with a greater sense of organization and control over the ethics of researcher identity. The paper concludes that the complex construction of researcher identity needs to be central among the ethical concerns of global health researchers, and that the conceptual tools discussed in the paper are a useful starting point for better organizing and acting on these ethical concerns. (shrink)

This paper addresses the seemingly insurmountable challenges the problem of personal identity raises for the prospect of radical human enhancement and synthetic consciousness. It argues that conceptions of personal identity rooted in psychological continuity akin to those proposed by Parfit and the Buddha may not provide the sort of grounding that many transhumanists chasing the dream of life extension think that they do if they rest upon ontologies that assume an incompatibility between identity and change. It also (...) suggests that process ontologies that take change to be primary, such as those that align with contemporary systems biology, offer a better way out of the personal identity dilemma. But the solution in this case, which regards biological organisms as processes rather than things, may constrain the possibility of biologically inspired superintelligent aliens (BISAs), which Schneider (following Bostrom 2014) posits as possibly the most common form of (extraterrestrial) superintelligence in the universe. (shrink)

Aging is an integral part of human existence. The problem of aging addresses the most fundamental coordinates of our lives but also the ones of the phenomenological method: time, embodiment, subjectivity and intersubjectivity, and even the social norms that grow into the very notion of aging as such. In my article, I delineate a phenomenological analysis of aging and show how such an analysis connects with the debate concerning personal identity: I claim that aging is not merely a physical (...) process, but is far more significantly also a spiritual one as the process of aging consists in our awareness of and conscious relation to our aging. This spiritual process takes place on an individual and on a social level, whereas the latter is the more primordial layer of this experience. This complicates the question of personal identity since it will raise the question in two ways, namely who I am for myself and who I am for the others, and in a further step how the latter experience shapes the former. However, we can state that aging is neither only physical nor only spiritual. It concerns my bodily processes as it concerns the complex reflexive structure that relates my former self with my present and even future self. (shrink)

What justifies holding the person that we are today morally responsible for something we did a year ago? And why are we justified in showing prudential concern for the future welfare of the person we will be a year from now? These questions cannot be systematically pursued without addressing the problem of personal identity. This essay considers whether Buddhist Reductionism, a philosophical project grounded on the idea that persons reduce to a set of bodily, sensory, perceptual, dispositional, and conscious (...) elements, provides support for Parfit’s psychological criterion for personal identity. It examines the role that self-consciousness plays in mediating both self-concern and concern for others, and offers an argument for how reductionism about substantive or enduring selves may be reconciled with the seemingly irreducible character of self-consciousness. (shrink)

This article argues that we should not abandon the noun ‘organization’ in favour of the verb ‘organizing’ in order to capture processes of change, flow and movement, but instead explore how such processes reveal themselves when the concept of organization diverges from the objects it is supposed to encapsulate. Here I make use of Adorno’s critique of identity thinking in order to show how the experience of organizational phenomena remains trapped within a contradiction: concepts are needed to describe objects (...) even though concepts can never fully exhaust the objects they describe. However, I maintain that it is precisely this discrepancy between concepts and objects that provides us the opportunity to experience the elusive state of organizations and their processual nature. Consequently, this article shows how organizational phenomena are always more complex, temporal and dynamic than what the concept of organization permits us to grasp. (shrink)

More often than not, recently popular structuralist interpretations of physical theories leave the central concept of a structure insufficiently precisified. The incipient causal sets approach to quantum gravity offers a paradigmatic case of a physical theory predestined to be interpreted in structuralist terms. It is shown how employing structuralism lends itself to a natural interpretation of the physical meaning of causal set theory. Conversely, the conceptually exceptionally clear case of causal sets is used as a foil to illustrate how a (...) mathematically informed rigorous conceptualization of structure serves to identify structures in physical theories. Furthermore, a number of technical issues infesting structuralist interpretations of physical theories such as difficulties with grounding the identity of the places of highly symmetrical physical structures in their relational profile and what may resolve these difficulties can be vividly illustrated with causal sets. (shrink)

While a large social-choice-theoretic literature discusses the aggregation of individual judgments into collective ones, there is much less formal work on the transformation of judgments in group communication. I develop a model of judgment transformation and prove a baseline impossibility theorem: Any judgment transformation function satisfying some initially plausible conditions is the identity function, under which no opinion change occurs. I identify escape routes from this impossibility and argue that the kind of group communication envisaged by deliberative democats must (...) be "holistic": It must focus on webs of connected propositions, not on one proposition at a time, which echoes the Duhem-Quine "holism thesis" on scientific theory testing. My approach provides a map of the logical space in which different possible group communication processes are located. (shrink)

In Topoi/Graphein Christian Abrahamsson maps the paradoxical limit of the in-between to revealthat to be human is to know how tolive with the difference between the known and the unknown. Using filmic case studies, including CodeInconnu, Lord of the Flies, and Apocalypse Now,and focusing on key concerns developed in the works of the philosophers Deleuze, Olsson, and Wittgenstein, Abrahamsson starts within the notion of fixed spatiality, in whichhuman thought and action are anchored in the given of identity. He (...) then movesthrough a social world in which spatiotemporal transformations are neitherfixed nor taken for granted. Finally he edges into the pure temporality that liesbeyond the maps of fixed points and social relations. Each chapter is organized into two subjects: topoi, orexcerpts from the films, and graphein, the author's interpretation ofpresented theoriesto mirror the displacements,transpositions, juxtapositions, fluctuations, and transformations between delimited categories. A landmark work in the study of human geography, Abrahamsson's book proposes that academic and intellectual attention should focus on the spatialization between meaning and its materialization in everyday life. (shrink)

Nanomedicine plays a prominent role among emerging technologies. The spectrum of potential applications is as broad as it is promising. It includes the use of nanoparticles and nanodevices for diagnostics, targeted drug delivery in the human body, the production of new therapeutic materials as well as nanorobots or nanoprotheses. Funding agencies are investing large sums in the development of this area, among them the European Commission, which has launched a large network for life-sciences related nanotechnology. At the same time government (...) agencies as well as the private sector are putting forward reports of working groups that have looked into the promises and risks of these developments. This paper will begin with an introduction to the central ethical themes as identified by selected reports from Europe and beyond. In a next step, it will analyse the most frequently invoked ethical concerns–risk assessment and management, the issues of human identity and enhancement, possible implications for civil liberties (e.g. nanodevices that might be used for covert surveillance), and concerns about equity and fair access. Although it seems that the main ethical issues are not unique to nanotechnologies, the conclusion will argue against shrugging them off as non-specific items that have been considered before in the context of other biomedical technologies, such as gene therapy or xenotransplantation. Rather, the paper will call on ethicists to help foster a rational, fair and participatory discourse on the different potential applications of nanotechnologies in medicine, which can form the basis for informed and responsible societal and political decisions. (shrink)

Jonardon Ganeri’s The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-Person Stance is a trailblazing study in cross-cultural philosophy of mind. Its liberal conception of naturalism makes room for a rich analytic taxonomy of conceptions of personal identity that go well beyond the standard models of Cartesianism, Physicalism, and Reductionism. But this naturalistically respectable model of the self must contend with the fact that the findings of the cognitive sciences are also compatible with ontological antirealism about the self. And while the (...) book opens new avenues for systematic reflection that thoroughly engages the historical material, its solutions to the problem of personal identity and the problem of self-knowledge often shortcut descriptive accounts that take agency and self-awareness to be constituted by their proprietary phenomenology. (shrink)

Given that all Buddhists give universal scope to the no-self view, accounts of personal identity in Buddhism cannot rest on egological conceptions of self-consciousness. Without a conception of consciousness as the property, function, or dimension of an enduring subject or self, how, then, do mental states acquire their first-personal character? What it is that in virtue of which mental states exhibit a basic or minimal sense of self? These questions are at the heart of a long debate about the (...) nature and character of consciousness and self-consciousness. This paper traces the genealogy of key concepts of consciousness and personal identity in Buddhism, their role in articulating specific accounts of self-knowledge, and their relevance to contemporary debates in phenomenology and philosophy of mind about the relation between consciousness and self-consciousness. (shrink)

Modern computer-based applications often require the user to interact with avatars. Depending on the task at hand, spatial dissociation between the orientations of the user and the avatars might arise. As a consequence, the user has to adopt the avatar's perspective and identify herself/himself with the avatar, possibly changing the user's self-representation in the process. The present study aims to identify the conditions that benefit this change of perspective with objective performance measures and subjective self-estimations by integrating the idea of (...) avatar-ownership into the cognitive phenomenon of spatial compatibility. Two different instructions were used to manipulate a user's perceived ownership of an avatar used in otherwise identical situations. Users with the high-ownership instruction reported higher levels of perceived ownership of the avatar and showed larger spatial compatibility effects from the avatar's point of view in comparison to the low ownership instruction. This supports the hypothesis that perceived ownership benefits perspective taking. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism: The Foundations of Authority in Gelukpa MonasticismChristian P. B. HaskettIdentity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism: The Foundations of Authority in Gelukpa Monasticism. By Martin A. Mills. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. 404 + xxi pp. with 12 black and white plates.In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a type of teaching called a dmar khrid, a "red instruction," wherein the lama brings students (...) through a teaching as a physician might dissect a corpse, pointing out and explaining the various parts and organs and their places and functions. In Identity, Ritual and State in Tibetan Buddhism, Martin Mills has done very much the same thing, with the exception that the body he examines is still very much alive, and emerges, to my eyes at least, as a new and wholly vital entity. Mills exposes the subcutaneous and sanguine body of Tibetan Buddhism, the bones and muscles that make up its structure, the blood that flows through it, and the organs that keep it alive, in "a plain and open manner," just as in a dmar khrid.1 The value of such a presentation truly cannot be overstated. An attempt to catalog the contents of each chapter would be both impossible and counterproductive, as the wealth of theoretical material and ethnographic detail is a large part of what makes this book so powerful. Instead, I will identify several topics, several of the vital organs alluded to, that are either not commonly noticed in the academic study of Buddhism, or that are given fresh perspective by Mills's anthropological and sociological methodology, and that are so crucial to understanding how it is that Buddhism lives in a typical Himalayan village. The latter portion of this review explains why I place such high value on this book and its potential place in Buddhist-Christian studies.Identity, Ritual and State is an ethnography of Kumbum Monastery in Lingshed, Ladakh (the eastern half of the Kashmir valley, located in Jammu and Kashmir, India), but its concerns are much more far-reaching than a single remote Himalayan village. The central question of the work is "how we are to understand the nature of religious authority in Tibetan Buddhist monasticism" (p. xiii), although it might more properly be the religious authority of Tibetan [End Page 187] Buddhist monastics. This answer is worked out in three overlapping areas of analysis: local ritual activity, ecclesiastical structure of the monastery, and the ritual foundations of Tibetan political thought (p. xvii).Mills convincingly asserts that there is a framework within which Buddhism happens in the Himalayas. The starting point of this framework is birth itself, which establishes the embodied person. The very physicality of personhood has several implications. First, the body is embedded in a very specific local space and place, and personhood is thus not only embodied, but also chthonic—intimately bound up with the earth or soil onto which it is born. At birth, persons are injected into a complex matrix of relations between people and various spirits, such as household gods and protectors, nāga, and itinerant demons. For example, Lingshed is divided into seven subterritories, each under the jurisdiction of a local deity whose physical abode and reign are well known to all in the village.2 These deities are associated with features of the local geography, and they regulate and influence local agricultural and social production, so birth in one area or another signifies a relation with the deity presiding over it. The land itself is imbued with a notion of personhood and agency. The human body is also the repository for pollution (sgrib), which comes about as a result of violating the established hierarchy of space and place and from bringing about changes to the local matrix of embodied persons. Both bodily pollution concerns and the need for proper relations with local spirit numina mandate definite, ongoing ritual attention. Rituals are occasioned in response to births, deaths, spirit possession, unintentional pollution of places or household objects, and movements within the monastic ecclesiastical structure, or happen regularly according to an astrologically and agriculturally influenced calendar.Rituals are performed by monks not only because they are trained specialists, but because... (shrink)

This book seeks to explain why different systems of sovereign states have built different types of fundamental institutions to govern interstate relations. Why, for example, did the ancient Greeks operate a successful system of third-party arbitration, while international society today rests on a combination of international law and multilateral diplomacy? Why did the city-states of Renaissance Italy develop a system of oratorical diplomacy, while the states of absolutist Europe relied on naturalist international law and "old diplomacy"? Conventional explanations of basic (...) institutional practices have difficulty accounting for such variation. Christian Reus-Smit addresses this problem by presenting an alternative, "constructivist" theory of international institutional development, one that emphasizes the relationship between the social identity of the state and the nature and origin of basic institutional practices. Reus-Smit argues that international societies are shaped by deep constitutional structures that are based on prevailing beliefs about the moral purpose of the state, the organizing principle of sovereignty, and the norm of procedural justice. These structures inform the imaginations of institutional architects as they develop and adjust institutional arrangements between states. As he shows with detailed reference to ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy, absolutist Europe, and the modern world, different cultural and historical contexts lead to profoundly different constitutional structures and institutional practices. The first major study of its kind, this book is a significant addition to our theoretical and empirical understanding of international relations, past and present. (shrink)

What justifies holding the person that we are today morally responsible for something we did a year ago? And why are we justified in showing prudential concern for the future welfare of the person we will be a year from now? These questions cannot be systematically pursued without addressing the problem of personal identity. In pursuing this problem, this essay considers whether Buddhist Reductionism, a philosophical project grounded on the idea that persons reduce to a set of bodily, sensory, (...) perceptual, dispositional, and conscious elements, provides support for Parfit’s psychological criteria of personal identity. It examines the role that self-consciousness plays in mediating both self-concern and concern for others, and offers an argument for how reductionism about substantive or enduring selves may be reconciled with the irreducibility of self-consciousness as an experiential dimension of subjectivity. (shrink)

Mark Siderits’ confluence approach to philosophy, first sketched in his landmark monograph, Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy (2003), is emblematic of what has arguably become the most influential way of engaging historically and culturally distant Buddhist thinkers and texts systematically and constructively. For nearly half a century, and rather fittingly for someone enthralled by Madhyamaka, Siderits has successfully charted a middle ground between the text-based, exegetical approach to Buddhist philosophy still dominant in many parts of Europe and East Asia (...) and the methods of contemporary Anglophone analytic philosophy. Indebted to both, yet unconstrained by either, the confluence approach represents Siderits’ unique brand of historically-informed systematic reflection, delivered in the characteristically forceful and tightly argued prose that defines his inimitable style. (shrink)

Leibniz’s universal characteristic is a fundamental aspect of his theory of cognition. Without symbols or characters it would be difficult for the human mind to define several concepts and to achieve many demonstrations. In most disciplines, and particularly in mathematics, the mind must then focus on symbols and their combinatorial rules rather than on mental contents. For Leibniz, mental perception is most of the time too confused for attaining distinct notions and valid deductions. In this paper, I argue that the (...) functions of symbolization differ depending upon the kind of concepts that are replaced with characters. In my view, most commentators did not sufficiently underline the distinction between two main functions of formal substitution in Leibniz’s characteristic: either increasing our knowledge or simply structuring it. In the first case, we complete our knowledge because formal substitution makes sensible and imaginary concepts more distinct. In the second case, symbolization helps to organize contents that are already conceived of by reason. Thus the process of substitution is not always identically applicable, for symbols replace different types of concepts. (shrink)

It is argued that early Buddhism to a very considerable extent can and should be seen as reformed Brahmanism. Speculations about cosmogony in Buddhist s tras can be traced back to Vedic sources, above all R gveda 10.129 & 10.90—two hymns that play a similar fundamental role in the early Upanisads. Like the immortal and unmanifest Brahman and the mortal and manifest Brahm, the Buddha, as a mythological Bhagavat, also had two forms. In his highest form he is “the profound” (...) beyond being and non-being, like Brahman. As a teacher, he is like Brahm. By suppressing mind and by getting rid of desire a Buddhist should “swim” back to the profound beyond the duality of life and death, which is also suffering. One becomes real and true by seeing the causal identity of tat and tvam, i.e. of macrocosm and microcosm. The spiritual ideals of early Buddhism are thus founded on natural philosophy. (shrink)

Neutrality, liberalism, and islam integration in Europe and America -- Limits of excluding: the French burqa law of 2010 -- Limits of including: Germany's reticence to "cooperate" with organized Islam -- "Reasonable accommodation" and the limits of multiculturalism in Canada -- The dog that didn't bark: Islam and religious pluralism in the United States -- Islam and identity in the liberal state.

Plausible assumptions from Cosmology and Statistical Mechanics entail that it is overwhelmingly likely that there will be exact duplicates of us in the distant future long after our deaths. Call such persons “Boltzmann duplicates,” after the great pioneer of Statistical Mechanics. In this paper, I argue that if survival of death is possible at all, then we almost surely will survive our deaths because there almost surely will be Boltzmann duplicates of us in the distant future that stand in appropriate (...) relations to us to guarantee our survival. (shrink)

This article deals with the category of alternative media from a theoretical perspective. It aims to develop a definition and to distinguish different dimensions of alternative media. The article is a contribution to theoretical foundations of alternative media studies. The notion of alternative media as critical media is introduced. Critical media product content shows the suppressed possibilities of existence, antagonisms of reality, and potentials for change. It questions domination, expresses the standpoints of the oppressed and dominated groups and individuals and (...) argues for the advancement of a co-operative society. Critical media product form aims at advancing imagination; it is dialectical because it involves dynamics, non-identity, rupture, and the unexpected. The category of critical media is connected to Negt and Kluge’s notion of the counter-public sphere. Critical media can be seen as the communicative dimension of the counter-public sphere. (shrink)

This chapter explores the relationship between Goldman's thesis and the classical jury theorem. It identifies the minimal modification needed in order to recover Goldman's thesis in a Condorcetian framework. Goldman's thesis can be recast as a generalization of the classical Condorcet jury theorem. The central move needed to recover Goldman's thesis from a generalized jury theorem is to replace Condorcet's assumption that there is a single truth to be tracked with the assumption of multiple such truths: one for each voter. (...) In Goldman's picture, there is still an indirect, derivative sense in which there exists an 'overall' truth about the correct outcome for the electorate in aggregate. This 'overall' truth is determined, of course, by the profile of voter‐specific truths and therefore depends on the identity of the electorate. The chapter also provides some numerical examples to illustrate the implications of the generalized jury theorem. (shrink)

There is a difference between acting with a probability of making a difference to who is harmed, and worsening someone’s prospect. This difference is relevant to debates about the ethics of offsetting, since it means that showing that emitting-and-offsetting has the first feature is not a way of showing that it has the second feature. In an earlier paper, we illustrate this difference with an example of a lottery in which you shake the bag from which a ball will be (...) drawn to determine the identity of the person who will suffer a harm. Here, we reply to Stefansson and Willners’ criticism of that example, explaining how their reply makes a mistake about the point of the example. (shrink)

Integrity is one of the leading normative concepts employed in our society. We frequently talk about the degree of integrity of community leaders and famous historical figures, and we highly value integrity in our elected public officials. But philosophers have had a difficult time arriving at consensus about what integrity consists in. Some claim that it is a purely formal relation of consistency, others that it has to do primarily with one‟s identity, and still others that it involves subjective (...) or objective moral requirements. The primarily goal here is to outline the leading facets of integrity in the contemporary philosophical literature. (shrink)

Samuel Huntington's influential clash of civilizations hypothesis (Huntington, 1993; Huntington, 1996) has been widely debated, but empirical tests of his ideas about core states remain limited at the micro-level. In this paper, we bring new evidence to bear, focusing on the : Greater Asia and the Pacific. Using the AsiaBarometer, we examine the extent to which publics in the region identify with the core states of the supposedly most contentious civilizations in the region and the factors that influence those perceptions. (...) We give attention to the role of globalization and nationalism and whether both may be subsumed by religiosity as Huntington suggests. Our descriptive evidence affirms some of the tensions between the US, China, and Islamic-predominant Asia identified by Huntington as areas of potential conflict. At the same time, we find no evidence to suggest that attitudes toward core states are zero-sum; Asian publics often see rival powers as mutually good influences. Using multivariate analysis, we find that religiosity, as the clash paradigm surmises, boosts Iranian influence and undermines American influence in several predominantly Islamic states. We also find, contrary to Huntington, that overall exposure to foreign cultures leads to a more positive assessment of American influence among Chinese and Pakistanis, as well as American perceptions of China. When foreign exposure influences perceptions of Iran, the effect is modestly, but consistently, negative. Taken together, the findings raise questions about two key assumptions of the Huntington framework and suggest that alternative approaches in recent civilizations literature show greater empirical promise. (shrink)

This paper responds to critical commentaries on my book, Perceiving Reality (OUP, 2012), by Laura Guerrero, Matthew MacKenzie, and Anand Vaidya. Guerrero focuses on the metaphysics of causation, and its role in the broader question of whether the ‘two truths’ framework of Buddhist philosophy can be reconciled with the claim that science provides the best account of our experienced world. MacKenzie pursues two related questions: (i) Is reflexive awareness (svasaṃvedana) identical with the subjective pole of a dual-aspect cognition or are (...) there alternative, perhaps better, ways of understanding this self-intimating character of mental states? (ii) Is perception constitutively intentional or is it representational? Vaidya argues that, in so far as Husserlian phenomenology and Buddhism differ in terms of their fundamental ontological commit- ments, they must be incompatible, thus rendering any cross-cultural philosophical project that seeks their rapprochement tenuous. One of my aims in Perceiving Reality is to show how accounts of perception informed by metaphysical realism can be problematic on both metaphysical and epistemological grounds, especially when relying on conceptions of consciousness that ignore its properly phenomenological features. (shrink)

Christiane Bailey and Chloë Taylor (Editorial Introduction) Sue Donaldson (Stirring the Pot - A short play in six scenes) Ralph Acampora (La diversification de la recherche en éthique animale et en études animales) Eva Giraud (Veganism as Affirmative Biopolitics: Moving Towards a Posthumanist Ethics?) Leonard Lawlor (The Flipside of Violence, or Beyond the Thought of Good Enough) Kelly Struthers Montford (The “Present Referent”: Nonhuman Animal Sacrifice and the Constitution of Dominant Albertan Identity) James Stanescu (Beyond Biopolitics: Animal Studies, Factory (...) Farms, and the Advent of Deading Life) Ian Werkheiser (Domination and Consumption: An Examination of Veganism, Anarchism, and Ecofeminism) Cynthia Willett (Water and Wing Give Wonder: Trans-Species Cosmopolitanism) Corey Lee Wrenn (Nonhuman Animal Rights, Alternative Food Systems, and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex) Emily R. Douglas (Eat or Be Eaten: A Feminist Phenomenology of Women as Food) Gary Steiner’s Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013) Chloë Taylor (“Postmodern” Critical Animal Theory: A Defense) Patrick Llored (La déconstruction derridienne peut-elle fonder une communauté politique et morale entre vivants humains et non humains?) Jan Dutkiewicz (“Postmodernism,” Politics, and Pigs) Gary Steiner (Response to Commentators). (shrink)

Algorithms are used across a wide range of societal sectors such as banking, administration, and healthcare to make predictions that impact on our lives. While the predictions can be incredibly accurate about our present and future behavior, there is an important question about how these algorithms in fact represent human identity. In this paper, we explore this question and argue that machine learning algorithms represent human identity in terms of what we shall call the statistical individual. This statisticalized (...) representation of individuals, we shall argue, differs significantly from our ordinary conception of human identity, which is tightly intertwined with considerations about biological, psychological, and narrative continuity—as witnessed by our most well-established philosophical views on personal identity. Indeed, algorithmic representations of individuals give no special attention to biological, psychological, and narrative continuity and instead rely on predictive properties that significantly exceed and diverge from those that we would ordinarily take to be relevant for questions about how we are. (shrink)

The paper investigates exchangeability in the context of probability logic. We study generalizations of basic inference rules and inferences involving cardinalities. We compare the results with those obtained in the case in which only identical probabilities are assumed.

In this paper, I re-examine Barry Smith’s list of features of Austrian Philosophy in his Austrian philosophy. The legacy of Franz Brentano. Open Court, Chicago, 1994). I claim that the list properly applies only in a somewhat abbreviated form to all significant representatives of Austrian Philosophy. Moreover, Smith’s crucial thesis that the features of Austrian Philosophy are not shared by any German philosopher only holds if we compare Austrian Philosophy to a canonical list of German Philosophy II. This list, however, (...) was established in twentieth century as a result of historical misrepresentations. If we correct these misrepresentations, we obtain another list of hidden representatives called German Philosophy I. German Philosophy I is fundamentally identical to Austrian Philosophy, whereas German Philosophy II is entirely different from both Austrian Philosophy and German Philosophy I. Therefore, a slightly modified version of Smith’s Austrian Philosophy account still makes sense as a tool to position the proscientific and rational currents of Austrian Philosophy and German Philosophy I against the tendentially anti-scientific and irrational current of German Philosophy II. (shrink)

This paper is about non-fictional objects in fictions and their role as narrators. Two central claims are advanced. In part 1 it is argued that non-fictional objects such as you and me can be part of fictions. This commonsensical idea is elaborated and defended against objections. Building on it, it is argued in part 2 that non-fictional objects can be characters and narrators in fictional narratives. As a consequence, three fundamental and popular claims concerning narrators are rejected. In particular, it (...) is shown that some fictional narratives have non-fictional internal narrators, some have no internal fictional narrator, and, most controversially, that the author of a fictional narrative can be identical to its internal narrator. (shrink)

This article examines the role of the mediaeval theory of the propositio in re, as proposed by Walter Burley and others, which bears a striking resemblance to the theory of the “proposition” advocated by G. E. Moore and B. Russell. Burley’s proposition composed of real things has the function of an ultimate significate for every sentence of natural language. The main problems of such a theory are on the one hand absurdities like a bird flying between the subject and predicate (...) of a sentence, on the other hand Burley’s assumption that a relation of identity holds between subject and predicate, which might render propositiones in re tautological. Moreover, the particular nature of this relation is left unexplained. But these difficulties can be solved: The former by applying objective being, being as being cognized, to the terms of a propositio, as did Scotus and Franciscus de Prato, the latter by specifying multiple forms of real predication as being or being-in-something apart from a mere identity-relation. (shrink)

The general aim of this paper is to propose a reductionist strategy to higher-level property types. Starting from a common ground in the philosophy of science, I shall elaborate on possible realizer differences of higher-level property types. Because of the realizer types' causal heterogeneity, an introduction of functional sub-types of higher-level properties will be suggested. Each higher-level functional sub-type corresponds to one realizer type. This means that there is the theoretical possibility to reach some kind of type-identity and this (...) opens up the way for theory reduction in a more complete manner. This kind of type-identity will go beyond the common ground of the identity of tokens and their reductive explanation. In the second part of the paper, this reductionist strategy will be applied to a specific debate in the philosophy of biology — the reductionist approach to classical genetics from a molecular point of view. (shrink)

There are two accounts of the normative foundation of intergenerationel business ethics, agent-variant theories and agent-invariant theories. Each of them faces a specific challenge: agent-variant theories have to deal with the inverse non-identity problem, while agent-invariant theories are vulnerable to the moral crowding-out effect. Both are particularly difficult to deal with within a reductivist approach that conceives of corporations as distinct moral agents whose responsibility cannot be reduced to the responsibility of either individual agents or higher-level institutions. This might (...) be a reason to favour reductivist approaches in intergenerational contexts. (shrink)

This paper explores Whitehead’s concept of law as an immanent order, arguing that it can be successfully used to cover the whole semantic field denoted as ‘law’, and especially law in its juridical sense. After showing the features that make it more plausible and more desirable than the opposing view of law as a transcendent imposition, law will be defined as the expression of the modes of existence of individuals within their environment. It will then be tested as a key (...) for understanding the link between life and law and showing the inadequacy of Foucault and Agamben’s biopolitical reflections: if law is an immanent order, then life is identical with its own inherent normativity. Finally, drawing on Deleuze’s philosophy of right, the fundamental features of an immanent practice of law, a “speculative jurisprudence” which confirms the binding between law, life, and immanence, will be sketched as a proposal for a practical philosophy consistent with Whitehead’s process cosmology. (shrink)

This paper aims at exploring a particular dimension of the affinity between Gilles Deleuze and pragmatism: his ontology of the virtual, which results in a metaphysics of power. In Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza, the essence of an entity is identical to its power: what can it do? substitutes the Socratic ti esti? as the leading philosophical question. This shift, operated by Spinoza and given a new and adequate ontology by Deleuze, is very close to Peirce’s pragmatic revolution: if Deleuze’s virtual (...) ideas are identical to the range of variations in power and affects that a body may go through, Peirce defines meaning in terms of the whole range of possible effects that an idea would produce if taken to be true. Contradictory as it may sound, the concept of the virtual entails something like a pragmaticism of the singular, which informs every aspect of Deleuze’s philosophy: his doctrine of faculties and his theory of praxis will be used as instances of this pervasiveness. This pragmatist reading of Deleuze could possibly shape an alternative path for contemporary pragmatism: instead of valorising its “edifying” (linguistic, historicistic, humanistic) tendency, Deleuze allows to highlight the vitality of the second vein of pragmatism, the “constructive,” empiricist, speculative, even metaphysical one. (shrink)

One of the main issues in philosophy is the refl ection on sciences. In order to conciliate the unity and plurality of sciences, this paper sets out a new strategy for theory reduction by means of functional sub-concepts. This strategy is intended to get around the multiple realization objection that leads to a dilemma for the scientifi c quality of the special sciences. Taking Kim’s argument for token identity as starting point, I shall show a strategy to establish a (...) systematic link between concepts of the special sciences with physical concepts. By this means, a conservative theory reduction is in principle possible despite multiple realization. (shrink)

In his work, Horgan argues for the compatibilism of agency, mental state-causation, and physical causal-closure. We generally assume a causally closed physical world that seems to exclude agency in the sense of mental state-causation in addition to physical causation. However, Horgan argues for an account of agency that satisfies the experience of our own as acting persons and that is compatible with physical causal-closure. Mental properties are causal properties but not identical with physical properties because there are different ontological levels. (...) In this commentary, I shall reconsider the essential issues of this compatibilism (1), focus on a problem for Horgan’s conception of agent causation that arises from the causal argument for ontological reductionism (2), and propose to embed Horgan’s conception of agency within a reductionist approach in order to vindicate the indispensable character of agency (3). (shrink)

In his work, Horgan argues for the compatibilism of agency, mental state-causation, and physical causal-closure. We generally assume a causally closed physical world that seems to exclude agency in the sense of mental state-causation in addition to physical causation. However, Horgan argues for an account of agency that satisfies the experience of our own as acting persons and that is compatible with physical causal-closure. Mental properties are causal properties but not identical with physical properties because there are different ontological levels. (...) In this commentary, I shall reconsider the essential issues of this compatibilism (1), focus on a problem for Horgan’s conception of agent causation that arises from the causal argument for ontological reductionism (2), and propose to embed Horgan’s conception of agency within a reductionist approach in order to vindicate the indispensable character of agency (3). (shrink)

One problem of intergenerational justice concerns the question whether the present generation bears moral responsibility for future generations and how to justify such a responsibility. A way of justification is to take a person-affecting view of ethics, according to which no action is morally bad per se, but only with respect to someone (e.g. with respect to future generations). Against a person-affecting view sometimes the so-called non-identity-problem is posed. This problem states that there are actions which - from a (...) person-affecting point of view - have to be considered as bad for a person, although without execution of the action the person would not exist. In this paper I will try to show how this conflict can be solved by an exact analysis of its structure. (shrink)

In this paper we develop an abstract theory of adequacy. In the same way as the theory of consequence operations is a general theory of logic, this theory of adequacy is a general theory of the interactions and connections between consequence operations and its sound and complete semantics. Addition of axioms for the connectives of propositional logic to the basic axioms of consequence operations yields a unifying framework for different systems of classical propositional logic. We present an abstract model-theoretical semantics (...) based on model mappings and theory mappings. Between the classes of models and theories, i.e., the set of sentences verified by a model, it obtains a connection that is well-known within algebra as Galois correspondence. Many basic semantical properties can be derived from this observation. A sentence A is a semantical consequence of T if every model of T is also a model of A. A model mapping is adequate for a consequence operation if its semantical inference operation is identical with the consequence operation. We study how properties of an adequate model mapping reflect the properties of the consequence operation and vice versa. In particular, we show how every concept of the theory of consequence operations can be formulated semantically. (shrink)

Attempts to provide a thoroughly naturalized reading of the doctrine of karma have raised important issues regarding its role in the overall economy of the Buddhist soteriological project. This paper identifies some of the most problematic aspects of a naturalized interpretation of karma: (1) the strained relationship between retributive action and personal identity, and (2) the debate concerning mental causation in modern reductionist accounts of persons. The paper explores the benefits of a phenomenological approach in which reductionist accounts of (...) karma are replaced with accounts that interpret virtuous and compassionate actions as emergent properties of consciousness that can be further enhanced through socialization. (shrink)

It is typically held that Sartre is a thinker of transcendence, inasmuch as he retains a subject–predicate structure via intentional consciousness and ruptures an otherwise insular domain through his dialectic of the self. Against such interpretations, this article argues that in following the progression of Sartre’s thought, we will come to see a deepening engagement with, and development of, immanence in the spirit of Deleuze. Specifically, Sartre steadily develops a dialectic in which consciousness, while relating to an ‘outside’, is construed (...) as also thoroughly embedded in that outside through the subject-body of the flesh and relations of desire. From this comes a conceptualisation of the in-itself and for-itself as simulacra or topological variations of a more primordial intertwining or fabric of univocal Being. In this sense, we are immediately taken away from the subject of social contract theory, insofar as this presumes an asocial self, and the notion of identity as the sine qua non of politics, insofar as this presumes the terrain of an inexplicable transcendent Other. This brings with it a take on politics that prefigures and is concomitant with Deleuzian micropolitics, while also serving to complement it through the retention of the ego as a practical function. (shrink)

The premise of this article is that the political import of Deleuze and Guattari’s “micropolitics of desire” has been obscured and as such remains underdeveloped. The micropolitics of desire is here reproduced to provide a Nietzscheo-Marxian critique of capitalism and resistive politics of the future. This entails an entirely different understanding of the nature of power and resistance, as compared to prevalent views. Power is not negative or anti-energy, but a socially productive force operating on, with and through the productivity (...) of desire, delineating an immanent, quantitative and “fusional multiplicity” of a producing-production. Resistance is a matter of recomposing this producer-produced relationship in a manner problematic to and in excess of the very productive core of capitalism. In terms of praxis, this amounts to experimental practices that resonate into a viral though non-teleological “revolutionary-becoming”, delineating a form of a-systematic and post-identity resistance. The underlying thesis is that we must change our “desire”, before we can hope to change our politics. (shrink)