Algorithms are powerful because we invest in them the power to do things. With such promise, they can transform the ordinary, say snapshots along a robotic vacuum cleaner’s route, into something much more, such as a clean home. Echoing David Graeber’s revision of fetishism, we argue that this easy slip from technical capabilities to broader claims betrays not the “magic” of algorithms but rather the dynamics of their exchange. Fetishes are not indicators of false thinking, but social contracts in material (...) form. They mediate emerging distributions of power often too nascent, too slippery or too disconcerting to directly acknowledge. Drawing primarily on 2016 ethnographic research with computer vision professionals, we show how faith in what algorithms can do shapes the social encounters and exchanges of their production. By analyzing algorithms through the lens of fetishism, we can see the social and economic investment in some people’s labor over others. We also see everyday opportunities for social creativity and change. We conclude that what is problematic about algorithms is not their fetishization but instead their stabilization into full-fledged gods and demons – the more deserving objects of critique. (shrink)

The contributors to this volume argue that we can, and they offer a new way: the "participatory turn," which proposes that individuals and communities have an ...

Jeremy Sherman distills Terrence Deacon's breakthrough natural science hypothesis for the emergence of agents and agency, selves and aims in an otherwise aimless universe. The theory cuts a new path through the dualistic spirit vs. mechanism debate, unifying the hard and soft sciences and suggesting new solutions to philosophical mysteries.

In this article, we describe four theoretical and methodological problems that have impeded implicit attitude research and the popular understanding of its findings. The problems all revolve around assumptions made about the relationships among measures, constructs, cognitive processes, and features of processing. These assumptions have confused our understandings of exactly what we are measuring, the processes that produce implicit evaluations, the meaning of differences in implicit evaluations across people and contexts, the meaning of changes in implicit evaluations in response to (...) intervention, and how implicit evaluations predict behavior. We describe formal modeling as one means to address these problems, and provide illustrative examples. Clarifying these issues has important implications for our understanding of who has particular implicit evaluations and why, when those evaluations are likely to be particularly problematic, how we might best try to change them, and what interventions are best suited to minimize the effects of implicit evaluations on behavior. (shrink)

Deacon’s approach to resolving mechanism/semiotic duality exemplifies an innovative methodology for imposing greater rigor on abductive assumptions in biosemiotics and beyond. His approach specifies interpretive agents and their responsive effort as the categories of phenomena to be explained. Implicit in his approach are five standards for imposing greater rigor on abduction or categorization, here named and described by the author.

ABSTRACTInitial evaluations generalise to new contexts, whereas counter-attitudinal evaluations are context-specific. Counter-attitudinal information may not change evaluations in new contexts beca...

This essay adds a theological voice to the current debate over the legacy of Gilles Deleuze. It discusses Peter Hallward's charge that Deleuze is best read as a mystical, theophanic philosopher who values creativity to the detriment of real creatures. It argues that while Hallward is right to discern a flight from bodies, relations, and politics in Deleuze, this is due not to Deleuze's contemplative mysticism, but rather to his strident rejection of any transcendence. The essay then draws upon Thomas (...) Merton in order to argue that only a fully contemplative engagement with transcendence allows us to save the sort of radical becoming that Deleuze sought but couldn't achieve. (shrink)

This article introduces and discusses a series of problems which any adequate account of legitimate practical authority must be able to solve. I then argue that Joseph Raz's influential Service Conception of Authority is unable to solve them. I develop a new account of legitimate authority by integrating many of the important insights of the Service Conception into my own framework for understanding the nature of moral rights and duties. I argue that this account has the resources to solve these (...) problems. (shrink)

My goal in this paper is to advance a long-standing debate about the nature of moral rights. The debate focuses on the questions: In virtue of what do persons possess moral rights? What could explain the fact that they possess moral rights? The predominant sides in this debate are the status theory and the instrumental theory. I aim to develop and defend a new instrumental theory. I take as my point of departure the influential view of Joseph Raz, which for (...) all its virtues is unable to meet the challenge to the instrumentalist that I will address: the problem of justifying the enforcement of rights. I then offer a new instrumental theory in which duties are grounded on individuals’ interests, and individuals rights exist in virtue of the duties owed to them. I argue that my theory enables the instrumentalist to give the right sort of justification for enforcing rights. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAs a postscript to this special issue, the author offers a set of concluding thoughts about the prospect of a new ritual turn within philosophy and theology and the relationship of this contemporary development to the previous ‘ritual turn’ of the early twentieth century. Where early twentieth-century scholars tended to treat ritual as repetitive symbolic behavior, and thus as something that needed to be decoded in order to be understood, the author suggests that a contemporary ritual turn involves not only (...) thinking about ritual as symbolic, but also thinking about it as a kind of creative, formative, and performative practice. To think ritual in this manner means not only to think about ritual but also, as it were, to think with ritual. (shrink)

Exploring the meeting of mystical and philosophical theology, Partakers of the Divine shows that Christian philosophical and contemplative practices arose together and that throughout much of Christian history, philosophy, theology and contemplation remained internal to one another. In this compelling volume, Jacob Holsinger Sherman demonstrates that the relation of philosophy, theology and contemplation to one another provides theologians and philosophers of religion today with a way forward beyond many of the stalemates that have beset discussions about faith and reason, the (...) role of religion in contemporary culture, and the challenges of modernity and postmodernity"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This book develops an original and comprehensive theory of political liberalism. It defends bold new accounts of the nature of autonomy and individual liberty, the content of distributive justice, and the justification for the authority of the State. The theory that emerges integrates contemporary progressive and pluralistic liberalism into a broadly Aristotelian intellectual tradition. The early chapters of the book challenge the traditional conservative idea of individual liberty-the liberty to dispose of one's property as one wishes-and replace it with a (...) new one, according to which liberty is of equal value to all persons, regardless of economic position. The middle chapters present an original theory of socio-economic justice, arguing that a society in which every citizen enjoys an equal share of liberty should be the distributive goal of the State. It is argued that this goal is incompatible with the existence of large disparities in wealth and economic power, and that (contra conservative and libertarian economic arguments) such disparities are harmful to the overall health of national and global economies. The final chapters provide an original argument that the State has both a moral duty and a moral right to pursue this program of socio-economic justice (contra conservative and libertarian moral arguments), and that only the measures necessary to implement this program lie within the morally justifiable limits on the State's authority. Though primarily a political work, it spans most areas of practical philosophy-including ethical, social, and legal theory; and meta-ethics, moral psychology, and action theory. And though fundamentally a philosophical work, it incorporates research from a number of fields-including decision theory, economics, political science, and jurisprudence; primatology, neuroscience, and psychology; and history, anthropology, sociology, and ecology-and is sure to be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students. (shrink)

Spatial visualization as a key variable in sex-related differences in mathematical problem solving and spatial aspects of geometry is traced to the 1960s. More recent relevant data are presented. The variability debate is traced to the latter part of the nineteenth century and an explanation for it is suggested. An idea is presented for further research to clarify sex-related brain laterality differences in solving spatial problems.

Volume 24, Issue 1, July 2021, Page 49-72.

We argue that the dual-system approach and, particularly, the default-interventionist framework favored by De Neys unnecessarily constrains process models, limiting their range of application. In turn, the accommodations De Neys makes for these constraints raise questions of parsimony and falsifiability. We conclude that the extent to which processes possess features of system 1 versus system 2 must be tested empirically.