This article explores the claim that law is characteristically in search of the past. We argue that the structure of memory defines our relationship with the past and this relationship, in turn, has important implications for the nature of law. The article begins by examining the structure of memory, drawing particularly on the work of Henri Bergson. It then draws out the implications of Bergson’s theory for the interplay of past and present, highlighting the challenges this poses for law’s project (...) of retrieval. Law, as an artifact, seeks its origins in human action, but this often yields a static view of legal discourse as the retrieval of pivotal moments. Bergson, by contrast, shows us that past and present influence each other dynamically, giving rise to an integrated whole. The article concludes by exploring the potential for law to transcend the structure of memory. We argue that even beyond the limits of memory legal reasoning encounters a kind of residue left by the ethical foundations of law. Law searches vainly for the past, but what it finds is itself. (shrink)

This thought-provoking Research Handbook provides a snapshot of current research on natural law theory in ethics, politics and law, showcasing the breadth and diversity of contemporary natural law thought. The Research Handbook on Natural Law Theory examines topics such as foundational figures in Western natural law theory, natural law ideas in a variety of religious and cultural traditions, normative foundations of natural law, as well as issues of law and governance. Featuring contributions by leading international scholars, this Research Handbook offers (...) a valuable resource for scholars in law, philosophy, religious studies and related fields. (shrink)

We point out that the acceptance of the relativity principle together with the homogeneity and isotropy of space and the homogeneity of time inevitably leads to the Lorentz spacetime transformation with a universal limiting speed σ. Speculations on possible new four-dimensional symmetries involving a variable “speed of light” such as that proposed by Hsu must therefore be dismissed on such a basis alone. In this paper we draw attention to some logical inconsistencies in Hsu's attempt at establishing a new space-light (...) transformation law, and follow with a discussion on why such an attempt must necessarily fail. (shrink)

There are two main paradigms for brain-related science, with different implications for brain-focused intervention or advancement. The paradigm of homeostasis (“stability through constancy,” Walter Cannon), originating from laboratory-based experimental physiology pioneered by Claude Bernard, shows that living systems tend to maintain system functionality in the direction of constancy (or similitude). The aim of physiology is elucidate the factors that maintain homeostasis, and therapeutics aim to correct abnormal factor functions. The homeostasis paradigm does not formally recognize influences outside its controlled experimental (...) frames and it is variable in its modelling of neural contributions. The paradigm of allostatic orchestration (PAO) extends the principle of allostasis (“stability through change”) as originally put forth by Peter Sterling. The PAO originates from an evolutionary perspective and recognizes that biological set points change in anticipation of changing environments. The brain is the organ of central command, orchestrating cross-system operations to support optimal behavior at the level of the whole organism. Alternative views of blood pressure regulation and posttraumatic stress disorder illustrate differences between the paradigms. For the PAO, complexities of top-down neural effects and environmental context are foundational (not to be “factored out”), and anticipatory regulation is the principle of their interface. The allostatic state represents the integrated totality of brain-body interactions. Health itself is an allostatic state of optimal anticipatory oscillation, hypothesized to relate to the state of criticality, a mathematical point of poise between phases, on the border between order and disorder (or the “edge of chaos”). Diseases are allostatic states of impaired anticipatory oscillations, demonstrated as rigidifications of set points across the brain and body (disease comorbidity). Conciliation of the paradigms is possible, with “reactive homeostasis” resolved as an illusion stemming from anticipation of environmental monotony. Considerations are presented with respect to implications of the two paradigms for brain-focused intervention or advancement; the hypothesis that the state of criticality is a vehicle for evolutionary processes; concordance with a philosophy of freedom based on ethical individualism as well as self-creativity, non-obsolescence, empowerment, and citizenship; and concluding reflections on the science and ethics of the placebo, and the potential for virtuous cycles of brain-Anthropocene interactions. (shrink)

Profoundly important ethical and political controversies turn on the question of whether biological life is an essential aspect of a human person, or only an extrinsic instrument. Lee and George argue that human beings are physical, animal organisms - albeit essentially rational and free - and examine the implications of this understanding of human beings for some of the most controversial issues in contemporary ethics and politics. The authors argue that human beings are animal organisms and that their personal identity (...) across time consists in the persistence of the animal organisms they are; they also argue that human beings are essentially rational and free and that there is a radical difference between human beings and other animals; criticize hedonism and hedonistic drug-taking; present detailed defenses of the prolife positions on abortion and euthanasia; and defend the traditional moral position on marriage and sexual acts. (shrink)

This paper examines the idea of objective phenomenology, or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of conscious experiences that doesn’t require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration. My central thesis is that structural facts about experience—facts that characterize purely how conscious experiences are structured—are objective phenomenal facts. I begin by precisifying the idea of objective phenomenology and diagnosing what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective. Then I defend the view that structural facts about experience are (...) objective. I also argue that structural facts about experience, despite being objective, nevertheless still give rise to an explanatory gap. (shrink)

Credal reductivism is the view that outright belief is reducible to degrees of confidence or ‘credence’. The most popular versions of credal reductivism all have the consequence that if you are near-maximally confident that p in a low-stakes situation, then you outright believe p. This paper addresses a recent objection to this consequence—the Correctness Objection— introduced by Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath and further developed by Jacob Ross and Mark Schroeder. The objection is that near-maximal confidence cannot entail outright belief (...) because when you believe a false proposition, you are wrong or incorrect, whereas you can be highly confident of a false proposition in a low-stakes situation without being incorrect. Both Fantl and McGrath’s and Ross and Schoeder’s versions of the Correctness Objection admit of multiple interpretations. But it is argued that even on the most charitable interpretations the objection fails. (shrink)

_Philosophers consider race and racism from the perspective of lived, bodily experience._.

The normativity of so-called “coherence” or “structural” requirements of rationality has been hotly debated in recent years. However, relatively little has been said about the nature of structural rationality, or what makes a set of attitudes structurally irrational, if structural rationality is not ultimately a matter of responding correctly to reasons. This paper develops a novel account of incoherence (or structural irrationality), critically examining Alex Worsnip’s recent account. It first argues that Worsnip’s account both over-generates and under-generates incoherent patterns of (...) attitudes, and then proposes an alternative that both avoids these problems and captures a crucial insight behind Worsnip’s account. According to this account, a set of attitudes is incoherent just in case having all of the attitudes in that set is incompatible with reacting to a question in a way that one is, in virtue of having the attitudes, committed to. (shrink)

An argument that what makes science distinctive is its emphasis on evidence and scientists' willingness to change theories on the basis of new evidence. Attacks on science have become commonplace. Claims that climate change isn't settled science, that evolution is “only a theory,” and that scientists are conspiring to keep the truth about vaccines from the public are staples of some politicians' rhetorical repertoire. Defenders of science often point to its discoveries (penicillin! relativity!) without explaining exactly why scientific claims are (...) superior. In this book, Lee McIntyre argues that what distinguishes science from its rivals is what he calls “the scientific attitude”—caring about evidence and being willing to change theories on the basis of new evidence. The history of science is littered with theories that were scientific but turned out to be wrong; the scientific attitude reveals why even a failed theory can help us to understand what is special about science. McIntyre offers examples that illustrate both scientific success (a reduction in childbed fever in the nineteenth century) and failure (the flawed “discovery” of cold fusion in the twentieth century). He describes the transformation of medicine from a practice based largely on hunches into a science based on evidence; considers scientific fraud; examines the positions of ideology-driven denialists, pseudoscientists, and “skeptics” who reject scientific findings; and argues that social science, no less than natural science, should embrace the scientific attitude. McIntyre argues that the scientific attitude—the grounding of science in evidence—offers a uniquely powerful tool in the defense of science. (shrink)

Exploring the intimate tie between body movement and space and time, Lee begins with the position that body movement generates space and time and explores the ethical implications of this responsibility for the situations one’s body movements generate. Whiteness theory has come to recognize the ethical responsibility for situations not of one’s own making and hence accountability for the results of more than one’s immediate personal conscious decisions. Because of our specific history, whites have developed a particular embodiment and body (...) movement that generates places that can only be characterized as more comfortable and more enabling to whites. (shrink)

Will have appeal to a very diverse range of philosophers, across all traditional branches of philosophy (nearly all major areas are covered). Combines substantive philosophical work on the various philosophical areas, with detailed methodological work, and introductory chapters exploring the nature of public philosophy per se.

This volume, edited by three leading proponents and practitioners of human science psychology, serves as an invitation to readers new to this approach while also renewing that invitation to those who have long embraced and advanced research in the field from this perspective. It is a timely and important invitation. In 2009, the American Psychological Association declared psychology to be a core STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) discipline and advocated the teaching and practice of psychology with this natural science understanding (...) in mind, but in 2014 further reaffirmed alternative methods by adding a new journal, Qualitative Psychology. The varied essays in this volume, certainly, bolster the view that a purely STEM-centered vision would ignore much about the very experience of being human.In fact, it would be dangerous to rely solely on the methods of the natural sciences to study human beings, who operate in the realm of meanings, lived experience, and complex and complicated relationships with self and others. We create societies and belief systems, orient ourselves in time, experience beauty and pain. The Qualitative Vision for Psychology: An Invitation to a Human Science Approach argues that because we have aspects that are distinctly and uniquely human -- we are not rats, hydrogen, or rocks, for example -- this necessitates a distinctly human science, one that regards persons as humans rather than objects of study. The laws and formulas of the natural sciences simply do not take into account that particularly human way of being in the world.There are few comprehensive books on psychology conceived as a human science, even though it has a long history with roots in phenomenology, existentialism, psychoanalysis, humanistic psychology, and hermeneutics. In recent years, as these essays discuss, the field has been transformed through its contact with feminism, critical historical analysis, and deconstruction, and it has continued to examine new challenges. Further, we see here its specific applicability to issues as diverse as empathy, cultural history, apartheid, sexual assault, fetishes, and our natural environment. (shrink)

To be conscious—according to a common metaphor—is for the “lights to be on inside.” Is this a good metaphor? I argue that the metaphor elicits useful intuitions while staying neutral on controversial philosophical questions. But I also argue that there are two ways of interpreting the metaphor. Is consciousness the inner light itself? Or is consciousness the illuminated room? Call the first sense subjectivity (where ‘consciousness’ =def what makes an entity feel some way at all), and the second sense phenomenal (...) character (where ‘consciousness’ =def what it feels like to be an entity). I use this distinction—as well as the metaphor of the inner light—to clarify some philosophical questions about whether consciousness comes in degrees, whether consciousness is multidimensional, and whether there are borderline cases of consciousness. (shrink)

In How to Talk to a Science Denier, Lee McIntyre tells the story of his own adventures in talking face to face with science deniers and their victims-including a Flat Earth convention in Denver, coal miners in rural Pennsylvania, and fishermen in the Maldives-and what he learned from the experience.

Let a smooth experience be an experience with perfectly gradual changes in phenomenal character. Consider, as examples, your visual experience of a blue sky or your auditory experience of a rising pitch. Do the phenomenal characters of smooth experiences have continuous or discrete structures? If we appeal merely to introspection, then it may seem that we should think that smooth experiences are continuous. This paper (1) uses formal tools to clarify what it means to say that an experience is continuous (...) or discrete, and (2) develops a discrete model of the phenomenal characters of smooth experiences. As a result, I'll argue that introspection leaves open whether smooth experiences are continuous or discrete. Yet I’ll also argue—perhaps surprisingly—that the discrete theory may better fit our introspective evidence. (shrink)

In recent years, the science and the philosophy of consciousness has seen growing interest in structural questions about consciousness. This is the Editorial Introduction for a special volume for Philosophy and the Mind Sciences on “Structuralism in Consciousness Studies.”.

Many of the benefits and burdens we might experience in our lives — from bank loans to bail terms — are increasingly decided by institutions relying on algorithms. In a sense, this is nothing new: algorithms — instructions whose steps can, in principle, be mechanically executed to solve a decision problem — are at least as old as allocative social institutions themselves. Algorithms, after all, help decision-makers to navigate the complexity and variation of whatever domains they are designed for. In (...) another sense, however, this development is startlingly new: not only are algorithms being deployed in ever more social contexts, they are being mechanically executed not merely in principle, but pervasively in practice. Due to recent advances in computing technology, the benefits and burdens we experience in our lives are now increasingly decided by automata, rather than each other. How are we to morally assess these technologies? In this chapter, I propose a preliminary conceptual schema for identifying and locating the various injustices of automated, algorithmic social decision systems, from a broadly liberal perspective. (shrink)

On the surface, developing a social psychology of science seems compelling as a way to understand how individual social cognition – in aggregate – contributes towards individual and group behavior within scientific communities (Kitcher, 2002). However, in cases where the functional input-output profile of psychological processes cannot be mapped directly onto the observed behavior of working scientists, it becomes clear that the relationship between psychological claims and normative philosophy of science should be refined. For example, a robust body of social (...) psychological research demonstrates implicit gender bias in the evaluation of others (e.g., Steinpreis, Anders, & Ritzke, 1999). Many expected implicit bias to be a major cause of women’s underrepresentation in math intensive fields of science; however, quantitative sociological research of hiring and manuscript and grant evaluation has discovered no gender disparity in outcomes (Ceci & Williams, 2011). Why might this be so? This paper will discuss methodological challenges that go beyond classic problems of external validity in extrapolating psychological effects and explanations to scientific communities. These problems include more complex external validity issues raised by the introduction of multi-process models of cognition (e.g., implicit versus explicit social cognition) as well as the reflexive role that folk and experimental theories of social psychology play in guiding the behavior of scientists at the individual and community level. (shrink)

What is post-truth? -- Science denial as a road map for understanding post-truth -- The roots of cognitive bias -- The decline of traditional media -- The rise of social media and the problem of fake news -- Did post-modernism lead to post-truth? -- Fighting post-truth.

Reasons evidentialism is the view that normative reasons can be analyzed in terms of evidence about oughts (i.e., propositions concerning whether or not S ought to phi). In this paper, I defend a new reason-evidentialist account according to which normative reasons are evidence against propositions of the form S ought not to phi. The arguments for my view have two strands. First of all, I argue that my view can account for three difficulty cases, cases where (i) a fact is (...) both a reason for S to phi and a reason for S not to phi, (ii) a fact is both evidence for the proposition that S ought to phi and evidence for the proposition that S ought not to phi, and (iii) the subject is genuinely torn, as far as reasons are concerned, between phi-ing and not phi-ing. Second, I argue that my view can account for what a reason against S phi-ing is. (shrink)

This book defends the conjugal view of marriage. Patrick Lee and Robert P. George argue that marriage is a distinctive type of community: the union of a man and a woman who have committed to sharing their lives on every level of their beings (bodily, emotionally, and spiritually) in the kind of union that would be fulfilled by conceiving and rearing children together. The comprehensive nature of this union, and its intrinsic orientation to procreation as its natural fulfillment, distinguishes marriage (...) from other types of community and provides the basis for the norms of marital exclusivity and permanence. Lee and George detail how the basic moral norms regarding sexual acts follow from the ethical requirement to respect the good of marriage and explain how the law should treat marriage, given its conjugal nature, examining both the same-sex-marriage issue and civil divorce. (shrink)

This paper examines to what extent Davidsonian truth-theoretic semantics can give an adequate account for empty names in natural languages. It argues that the prospect is dim because of a tension between metaphysical austerity, non-vacuousness of theorems and empirical adequacy. Sainsbury (2005) proposed a Davidsonian account of empty names called ‘Reference Without Referents’ (RWR), which explicates reference in terms of reference-condition rather than referent, thus avoiding the issue of existence. This is an inspiring account. However, it meets several difficulties. First, (...) there is no non-vacuous, interpretive truth-condition available for any T-sentence containing an empty name, because by stipulation there is no way to compose a true atomic sentence using an empty name in RWR. The absence of an interpretive truth-condition implies the absence of an interpretive reference-condition. It also entails empirical inadequacy to support an interpretation because the related propositional attitude can never be truly satisfied. These considerations cast doubt on whether truth is the proper vehicle to articulate meaning. This paper suggests that we can alleviating the problem by employing truth-conditions varying across contexts of utterance, rather than just contexts of evaluation. The result is a two-dimensional model-theoretic approach to empty names. It involves a new function coined counterfactual reference and the account is compatible with both descriptivism and Millianism. (shrink)

In this outstanding introduction, Constance Meinwald covers all of Plato's philosophy and shows how he shaped the landscape of Western philosophy. Beginning with a helpful overview of what is known about Plato's life and times, she clearly explains and assesses Plato's fundamental arguments and ideas. These include the importance of Plato's view of what philosophy is and the distinctive way in which his most important arguments are presented in dialogues; his theories of ethics addressed through the fundamental and enduring (...) questions happiness and virtue; his influential treatments of the soul and immortality; the lasting contributions he made to the study of metaphysics and the nature of knowledge through his theory of the Forms; and his enduring and controversial insights into political and social thought in the context of his theories of human nature. Throughout, Constance Meinwwald draws expertly on Plato's most important dialogues to present a thorough and lively picture of his philosophy. Essential reading for students of ancient philosophy and Classics, Plato is an ideal introduction to arguably the greatest of all Western philosophers. (shrink)

The Parmenides is notorious for the criticisms it directs against Plato's own Theory of Forms, as presented in the middle period. But the second and major portion of the dialogue has generally been avoided, despite its being offered as Plato's response to the problems; the text seems intractably obscure, appearing to consist of a series of bad arguments leading to contradictory conclusions. Carefully analyzing these arguments and the methodological remarks which precede them, Meinwald shows that to understand Plato's response we (...) need to recognize his important distinction between two kinds of predication. Read in the light of this distinction, the arguments can be seen to be sound, and the contradictions merely apparent. Meinwald then proceeds to demonstrate the direct application of Plato's crucial innovation in solving the problems of the first part of the dialogue, including the infamous Third Man. On Meinwald's interpretation, the new distinction is associated with developments in metaphysics which take Plato well beyond the problems commonly thought to tell against Platonism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Dangerous Sport of Social Climbing Not a Doe but a Roe The Belly of the Beast Notes.

This chapter contains sections titled: Story One: Sewn into My Skin is Written into My Story Story Two: Tattooing at Auschwitz – Ink, Terror, Death Story Three: Tattooing as a Practice of Writing, Unwriting, Inscription, and Counterinscription Story Four: ‘Real’ Tattoos and the Excesses of Meaning A Final Story: My Geckos.

This clear and engaging introduction is the first book to assess the ideas of Kwame Anthony Appiah, the Ghanaian-British philosopher who is a leading public intellectual today. The book focuses on the theme of 'identity' and is structured around five main topics, corresponding to the subjects of his major works: race, culture, liberalism, cosmopolitanism, and moral revolutions. This handy guide: teaches students about the sources, opportunities, and dilemmas of personal and social identity - whether on the basis of race, gender, (...) sexuality, or class, among others - in the purview of Appiah. locates Appiah within a broader tradition of intellectual engagement with these issues - involving such thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, John Stuart Mill, and Martha Nussbaum - and thus how Appiah is both an inheritor and innovator of preceding ideas. seeks to inspire students on how to approach and negotiate identity politics in the present. This book ultimately imparts a more diverse and wider-reaching geographic sense of philosophy through the lens of Appiah and his intellectual contributions, as well as emphasize the continuing social relevance of philosophy and critical theory more generally to everyday life today. (shrink)

This research note analyzes the relationship between indicators of corporate social and financial performance within a comprehensive theoretical framework. The results, based on data for 67 large U.S. corporations for 1982-1992, reveal no significant negative social-financial performance relationships and strong positive correlations in both contemporaneous and lead-lag formulations.

A Reading of Petronius’ Satyricon offers a detailed literary commentary on one of the surviving masterpieces of classical literature, with a complete guide to Petronian scholarship.

In this engaging and provocative new book, Lee Eisenberg, bestselling author of The Number, dares to tackle nothing less than what it takes to find enduring meaning and purpose in life. He explains how from a young age, each of us is compelled to take memories of events and relationships and shape them into a one-of-a-kind personal narrative. In addition to sharing his own pivotal memories (some of them moving, some just a shade embarrassing), Eisenberg presents striking research culled from (...) psychology and neuroscience, and draws on insights from a pantheon of thinkers and great writers-Tolstoy, Freud, Joseph Campbell, Virginia Woolf, among others. We also hear from men and women of all ages who are wrestling with the demands of work and family, ever in search of fulfillment and satisfaction. It all adds up to a fascinating story, delightfully told, one that goes straight to the heart of how we explain ourselves to ourselves-in other words, who we are and why. (shrink)