How do people judge the degree of causal responsibility that an agent has for the outcomes of her actions? We show that a relatively unexplored factor -- the robustness of the causal chain linking the agent’s action and the outcome -- influences judgments of causal responsibility of the agent. In three experiments, we vary robustness by manipulating the number of background circumstances under which the action causes the effect, and find that causal responsibility judgments increase with robustness. In the first (...) experiment, the robustness manipulation also raises the probability of the effect given the action. Experiments 2 and 3 control for probability-raising, and show that robustness still affects judgments of causal responsibility. In particular, Experiment 3 introduces an Ellsberg type of scenario to manipulate robustness, while keeping the conditional probability and the skill deployed in the action fixed. Experiment 4, replicates the results of Experiment 3, while contrasting between judgments of causal strength and of causal responsibility. The results show that in all cases, the perceived degree of responsibility increases with the robustness of the action-outcome causal chain. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art and the Educated AudienceJames O. Young (bio)1. IntroductionWhen writing about art, aestheticians tend to focus on the work of art and on the artist who produces it. When they refer to audiences, they typically speak only of the effect that the artwork has on its audience. Aestheticians pay little, if any, attention to the important active role that an audience plays in the workings of a healthy art (...) world. My goal in this essay is to do something to end the neglect of the audience. I will focus on the role of the informed or, as I will call it, educated audience. I begin by subjecting the concept of an audience to some old-fashioned conceptual analysis. Once we are clearer about what an audience is and, in particular, what an educated audience is, we can begin to determine what it can do. In my view, an educated audience can play an important role in encouraging the production of artworks with high aesthetic value. Indeed, highly valuable artworks are unlikely to be produced without a broad educated audience to whom artists are responsive. Consequently, the aesthetic education of audiences is crucial to the health of an art world.2. What Is an Audience?In its original sense, the noun "audience" refers to the people within earshot of some speaker: one held forth to an audience. In connection with the arts, "audience" was first used in something very like this original sense. It referred to those who heard actors perform plays or those who heard the recitation of poetry. Soon the concept of an audience also applied to those who heard the performance of musical works. By the mid-nineteenth century, the concept of an audience had been broadened. It came to apply to the readers of a novel or other works of literature. More recently, the concept of an audience has been applied to those who view paintings, sculptures, and films. [End Page 29] Now an audience consists of people who experience artworks of any sort. Having an experience of an artwork is a necessary condition of being part of an audience. This condition is, however, far from being sufficient.Some people experience works of art but are not part of an audience. Consider, for example, ushers in a concert hall or theater and guards in art museums. An usher hears the play or the concerto but may not regard it as an aesthetic object. Similarly, a guard sees the paintings (and so in this sense experiences them) but does not, perhaps, attend to them as aesthetic objects. Or consider a person who arranges to meet a friend in a gallery. He almost certainly sees the paintings, but he will not count as part of an audience if he is completely intent on looking for his friend. It seems, then, that members of an audience do not simply experience artworks. They must experience artworks in a certain way.Audience members experience an artwork in such a way that they are able to benefit from its aesthetic value. When I speak of "aesthetic value," I mean the value an artwork possesses in virtue of its sensuous properties. I will not here take a stand on the nature of experience of aesthetic value. Some writers have suggested that the contemplation of art involves a distinctive sort of experience. Perhaps it does. (It has been suggested, for example, that audience members must have a measure of "psychical distance" from some object if they are to have an aesthetic experience of it.) I simply hold that audience members experience an artwork in whatever way makes it possible for them to benefit from its aesthetic value. If aesthetic value causes pleasure (or "aesthetic emotion," understanding, or anything else) then audience members can have pleasure caused in them by an artwork's aesthetic value. The capacity to benefit from the aesthetic value of an artwork is a necessary condition of being part of the work's audience.Notice that not just anyone can be part of the audience for a given work of art. Audience members must possess certain capacities. In the most basic sense of the word, an audience is composed... (shrink)

This chapter both explains the origins of emotivism in C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, R. B. Braithwaite, Austin Duncan-Jones, A. J. Ayer and Charles Stevenson (along with the endorsement by Frank P. Ramsey, and the summary of C. D. Broad), and looks at MacIntyre's criticisms of emotivism as the inevitable result of Moore's attack on naturalistic ethics and his ushering in the fact/value, which was a historical product of the Enlightenment.

The Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Philosophy series serves undergraduate college students who have had little or no exposure to philosophy, as well as the curious lay reader. Following this first primer volume, which introduces both the discipline and the topics of the remaining nine volumes, each handbook will usher the reader into a subfield of philosophy, and explore fifteen to thirty topics in that subfield. Every chapter in each volume will use vehicles such as film to facilitate understanding of philosophical (...) issues; for example, the film Dead Man Walking may be used as an introduction to issues related to the death penalty. (shrink)

J.P. Moreland—Christian philosopher, theologian, and apologist—issues a call to recapture the drama and power of kingdom living—to cultivate a revolution of Evangelical life, spirituality, thought, and Spirit-led power. Drawing insights from the early church, he unpacks three essential ingredients of this revolution: Recovery of the Christian mind. Renovation of Christian spirituality. Restoration of the power of the Holy Spirit. Western society is in crisis: the result of our culture's embrace of naturalism and postmodernism, and a biblical worldview has been pushed (...) to the margins. Christians have been strongly influenced by these trends, with the result that their personal lives often reflect the surrounding culture more than the way of Christ, and the church's transforming influence on society has waned as a result. Kingdom Triangle is divided into two major sections: The first examines and provides a critique of secular worldviews and shows how they have ushered in the current societal crisis. The second lays out a strategy for the Christian community to regain the potency of kingdom life and influence in the world. Moreland believes that evangelical Christianity can mature and lead the surrounding society out of the meaningless morass it finds itself in with humility and vision. With clear insight, he puts the thoughtful Christian in a position to understand our current cultural struggle and to return to a responsible presentation of "the way of Christ" as not just a way of right living, but also a way of knowledge and meaningful life. (shrink)

For more than 35 years, James Welling has explored the material and conceptual possibilities of photography. Diary/Landscape - the first mature body of work by this important contemporary artist - set the framework for his subsequent investigations of abstraction and his fascination with nineteenth- and twentieth-century New England. In July 1977, Welling began photographing a two-volume travel diary kept by his great-grandmother Elizabeth C. Dixon, as well as landscapes in southern Connecticut. A beautiful and moving meditation on family, history, (...) memory, and place, the work reintroduced history and private emotion as subjects in high art, while also helping to usher in the centrality of photography and theoretical questions about originality that mark the epochal Pictures Generation. (shrink)

In his early Some Lectures concerning the Scholar’s Vocation, J. G. Fichte developed an account of the social role of the scholar. This role concerns the task of furthering human culture and progress, which Fichte considers to be a moral duty for the scholar. In these lectures, Fichte also outlined the capabilities and knowledge that the scholar needs in order to be able to fulfill the task in question, including the possession of historical knowledge. The article argues that the later (...) Addresses to the German Nation represent an attempt on Fichte’s part to realize his earlier conception of the scholar’s vocation, because these addresses aim to help usher in a new, superior epoch in human history. Particular attention is paid to the use that Fichte makes of history in them. In effect, he instrumentalizes history, and justifies his doing this in terms of a higher purpose and the ‘merely’ empirical status of historical fact and evidence. This use of history is compared to some things that Nietzsche has to say about history in his essay On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life; and it invites questions concerning the possible dangers of such a use of history and its compatibility with Fichte’s idea that the vocation of the scholar is a moral one. (shrink)

Changes in the social, political, and intellectual climate worldwide portend radical changes in how humans view themselves and their world. This essay argues that the twenty-first century will usher in apost-postmodern age. The new epoch will be one in which argument practices more closely resemble their modernist forbears. The ‘given of achievement’ will overcome the postmodern ‘reluctance to assent.’ Argument will be practiced against the backdrop of realist philosophical frameworks and will be viewed as contributing to the accretion of (...) knowledge. (shrink)

Human evolution sits at several important thresholds. In organic evolution, interplay between exogenous environmental and genetic factors rendered new phenotypes at rates limited by genetic variation. The interplay took place on adaptive fitness landscapes determined by correspondence of genetic and environmental relationships. Human evolution involved important emergences that altered the adaptive landscape: language, writing, organized societies, science, and the internet. These endogenous factors ushered in transformative periods leading to more rapidly evolving emergences. I explore the impact of development of emerging (...) biotransformative technologies capable of being applied to effect self-genetic modification and artificial intelligence-augmented cognition on the evolutionary landscape of phenotypes important to cognitive plasticity. Interaction effects will yield unanticipated emergences resulting in hyperrealm adaptive landscapes with more rapid evolutionary processes that feed back upon more fundamental levels while vastly outpacing organic evolution. Emerging technologies exist that are likely to impact the evolution of cognitive plasticity in humans in ways and at rates that will lead to societal upheaval. I show that the theoretical contribution of organic evolution in future human evolution is expected to become comparatively insignificant relative to that made by endogenous environmental factors such as external cognition aids and manipulation of the human genome. The results support the conclusion of a strong recommendation of a moratorium on the adoption of any technology capable of completely altering the course of human evolution. (shrink)

Many assumed that the Obama administration would usher in a sea change from the previous administration by expanding NIH support for human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research and reducing the patchwork of state and federal regulations that currently governs it. This article examines the extent to which NIH’s new Guidelines are likely to accomplish these goals.

The story of James and John Stuart Mill is one of the great dramas of the 19thcentury. In the tense yet loving struggle of this extraordinarily influential father and son, we can see the genesis of evolution of Liberal ideas-about love, sex, and women, wealth and work, authority and rebellion-which ushered in the modern age. The result of more than a decade of research and reflection, this is a study of the relationship between James Mill, the self-made utilitarian (...) philosopher who tried (with only partial success) to shape his son in his own image. Mazlish integrates psychology and intellectual history as part of his larger and continuing effort to spur deeper understanding of the character, limitations, and possibilities of the social sciences. John Stuart Mill's rebellion against a joyless, loveless upbringing, one in strict accordance with the principles of Utilitarianism, was rooted ina powerful Oedipal struggle against his father's authority. Mazlish describes this rebellion as playing an important role in the genesis of classical nineteenth century liberalism. Behind this intellectual development were the women in Mills' life: Harriet the mother, never mentioned by her son in his autobiography, and Harriet Taylor, with whom Mill lived in a scandalous, if chaste, ménage a trois. It was this long relationship which informed his famous essay “The Subjection of Women,” one of the most eloquent feminist statements ever written. A work of brilliant historical research and psychological insights, James and John Stuart Mill shows how the nineteenth-century struggle of fathers and sons shaped the social transformation of society. (shrink)

How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a (...) compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on. (shrink)

Hubert Dreyfus has argued that cases of absorbed bodily coping show that there is no room for self-awareness in flow experiences of experts. In this paper, I argue against Dreyfus’ maxim of vanishing self-awareness by suggesting that awareness of agency is present in expert bodily action. First, I discuss the phenomenon of absorbed bodily coping by discussing flow experiences involved in expert bodily action: merging into the flow; immersion in the flow; emergence out of flow. I argue against the claim (...) that flow experience does not involve an awareness of agency for each of these features, while conceding that fluent agency does not involve self-awareness in the thetic sense. I challenge the assumption that the awareness of fluent agency must be understood in terms of a thetic awareness of agency. Instead, I develop an Anscombean account of the awareness of fluent agency in terms of the phenomenal character of knowing one’s aims. I respond to the challenge that if an Anscombean account of the awareness of agency is to succeed, then agents must be able to answer Anscombean questions. I consider the objection that awareness of agency is not a form of self-awareness by outlining an account of self-awareness as self-synthesis that is distinct from self-perception and self-ascription, but which makes room for self-awareness in expert bodily action. (shrink)

Do Quine and Carnap distort the social nature of inquiry by privileging individual epistemic subjects? This objection is at the heart of Donald Davidson’s claim that Quine fails to grasp the significance of the concept of truth. In Carnap’s case, the objection may be detected in Charles Morris’s call to ground scientific philosophy in semiotics, the science of signs, rather than syntax, the formal investigation of languages. Drawing out the challenge from Morris’s proposal requires examining a neglected influence on this (...) neglected philosopher: his advisor George Herbert Mead’s social theory of mind. I argue that Morris and Davidson can both be understood as demanding that scientific philosophers socialize their conception of objectivity. (shrink)

The Gifford Lectures were established in 1885 at the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh to promote the discussion of 'Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term - in other words, the knowledge of God', and some of the world's most influential thinkers have delivered them. The 1901–2 lectures given in Edinburgh by American philosopher William James are considered by many to be the greatest in the series. The lectures were published in book form in (...) 1902 and have been reprinted many times. James, who was educated in the United States and Europe, and spent much of his career teaching philosophy at Harvard, was very influential in the development of modern psychology, and in these twenty lectures he explores the personal experience of religion. Some of the topics include religion and neurology, 'the sick soul', saintliness, and mysticism. (shrink)

In this unique work, James P. Sterba argues that traditional ethics has yet to confront the three significant challenges posed by environmentalism, feminism, and multiculturalism. He maintains that while traditional ethics has been quite successful at dealing with the problems it faces, it has not addressed the possibility that its solutions to these problems are biased in favor of humans, men, and Western culture. In Three Challenges to Ethics: Environmentalism, Feminism, and Multiculturalism, Sterba examines each of these challenges. In (...) the case of environmentalism, he argues that traditional ethics must incorporate conflict resolution principles that favor nonhumans over humans in a significant range of cases. In terms of feminism, he maintains that traditional ethics should rule out gendered family structures and implement an ideal of androgyny. In regard to multiculturalism, he contends that traditional ethics must endorse an ethics that is secular in character and that can survive an extensive comparative evaluation of both Western and non-Western moral ideals and cultures. The only textbook devoted to this topic, Three Challenges to Ethics is an engaging text for introductory courses in ethics and moral problems and is also interesting and provocative reading for scholars and general readers. (shrink)

Rather than representing a break with his earlier philosophical undertakings, The Birth of Tragedy can be seen as continuous with them and Nietzsche's later works. James Porter argues that Nietzsche's argumentative and writerly strategies resemble his earlier writings on philology in his 'staging' of meaning rather than in his advocacy of various positions. The derivation of the Dionysian from the Apollinian, and the interest in the atomistic challenges to Platonism, are anticipated in earlier works. Also the theory of the (...) all-too-human subject is a thread that runs throughout Nietzsche's oeuvre, critically undoing what his philosophy appears to erect, confirming that Nietzsche is a most unreliable witness to his own meaning. As well as studying the relation of The Birth of Tragedy to later writings, the author examines it on its own terms as a self-standing and complete piece of imagining, with close regard to the self-presentation of the work itself. (shrink)

One of the most influential men of his time, philosopher, psychologist, educator, and author William James (1842-1910) helped lead the transition from a predominantly European-centered nineteenth-century philosophy to a new "pragmatic" American philosophy. Helping to pave the way was his seminal book Pragmatism (1907), in which he included a chapter on "Truth," an essay which provoked severe criticism. In response, he wrote the present work, an attempt to bring together all he had ever written on the theory of knowledge, (...) including an article on the function of cognition, later polemic and expository contributions, and some replies to previous criticism. The result was a full and definitive expression of the pragmatist "epistemology" from James' point of view. In the book, he urges the reader to "turn away from abstractions, verbal solutions, fixed principles, and pretended absolutes and look for concreteness and facts, action and power," arguing that "the ultimate test for us of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires." For students, scholars--anyone interested in William James or the history of American philosophical thought--this book offers an in-depth exposition of the influential ideas of one of the greatest American thinkers. Unabridged republication of the edition originally published by Longmans, Green and Co., New York and London, 1909. (shrink)

Scepticism about ought simpliciter is the view that there is no such thing as what one ought simpliciter to do. Instead, practical deliberation is governed by a plurality of normative standpoints, each authoritative from their own perspective but none authoritative simpliciter. This paper aims to resist such scepticism. After setting out the challenge in general terms, I argue that scepticism can be resisted by rejecting a key assumption in the sceptic’s argument. This is the assumption that standpoint-relative ought judgments bring (...) with them a commitment to act in accordance with those judgments. Instead, I propose an alternative account of our normative concepts according to which only ought simpliciter judgments commit one to acting in accordance with those judgments. In addition to answering the sceptical challenge, the proposal offers an independently motivated account of what makes a concept normatively authoritative. (shrink)

In addition to being one of the world's most influential philosophers, Aristotle can also be credited with the creation of both the science of biology and the philosophy of biology. He was the first thinker to treat the investigations of the living world as a distinct inquiry with its own special concepts and principles. This book focuses on a seminal event in the history of biology - Aristotle's delineation of a special branch of theoretical knowledge devoted to the systematic investigation (...) of animals. Aristotle approached the creation of zoology with the tools of subtle and systematic philosophies of nature and of science that were then carefully tailored to the investigation of animals. The papers collected in this volume, written by a pre-eminent figure in the field of Aristotle's philosophy and biology, examine Aristotle's approach to biological inquiry and explanation, his concepts of matter, form and kind, and his teleology. (shrink)

James I. The Political Works of James I. Reprinted from the Edition of 1616. With an Introduction by Charles Howard McIlwain. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1918. cxi, 354 pp. Reprinted 2002 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.

Now in a third edition, Introduction to Philosophy: Classical and Contemporary Readings is a highly acclaimed, topically organized collection that covers five major areas of philosophy--theory of knowledge, philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, freedom and determinism, and moral philosophy. Editor Louis P. Pojman enhances the text's topical organization by arranging the selections into a pro/con format to help students better understand opposing arguments. He also includes accessible introductions to each chapter, subsection, and individual reading, a unique feature for an (...) anthology of this depth. While the book focuses on a compelling sampling of classical material--including selections from Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant--it also incorporates some of philosophy's best twentieth-century and contemporary work, featuring articles by Bertrand Russell, Richard Taylor, John Searle, Thomas Nagel, and others. This third edition contains an expanded glossary, more extensive section introductions, and twelve new selections: Karl Popper: "Epistemology without a Knowing Subject" Richard Rorty: "Dismantling Truth: Solidarity Versus Objectivity" Daniel Dennett: "Postmodernism and Truth" Bruce Russell: "The Problem of Evil: Too Much Suffering" David Chalmers: "Against Materialism: Can Consciousness Be Reductively Explained?" Baron Paul Henri d'Holbach: "A Defense of Determinism" Michael Levin: "A Compatibilist Defense of Moral Responsibility" Plato: Socratic Morality: "Crito" Herodotus: "Custom Is King" J. L. Mackie: "The Subjectivity of Values" Louis P. Pojman: "A Critique of Mackie's Theory of Moral Subjectivism" Thomas Nagel: "Moral Luck". (shrink)

One of the great American pragmatic philosophers alongside Peirce and Dewey, William James (1842–1910) delivered these eight lectures in Boston and New York in the winter of 1906–7. Though he credits Peirce with coining the term 'pragmatism', James highlights in his subtitle that this 'new name' describes a philosophical temperament as old as Socrates. The pragmatic approach, he says, takes a middle way between rationalism's airy principles and empiricism's hard facts. James' pragmatism is both a method of (...) interpreting ideas by their practical consequences and an epistemology which identifies truths according to their useful outcomes. Furnished with many examples, the lectures illustrate pragmatism's response to classic problems such as the question of free will versus determinism. Published in 1907, this work further develops James's approach to religion and morality, introduced in The Will to Believe (1897) and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), both reissued in this series. (shrink)

The Epicurean philosophical system has enjoyed much recent scrutiny, but the question of its philosophical ancestry remains largely neglected. It has often been thought that Epicurus owed only his physical theory of atomism to the fifth-century BC philosopher Democritus, but this study finds that there is much in his ethical thought which can be traced to Democritus. It also finds important influences on Epicurus in Democritus' fourth-century followers such as Anaxarchus and Pyrrho, and in Epicurus' disagreements with his own Democritean (...) teacher Nausiphanes. The result is not only a fascinating reconstruction of a lost tradition, but also an important contribution to the philosophical interpretation of Epicureanism, bearing especially on its ideal of tranquillity and on the relation of ethics to physics. (shrink)

We have now seen that, in what we call the mental world, Consciousness,- there are three grand classes of phenomena, the most familiar of all the facts with ...

"Well-being," "welfare," "utility," and "quality of life," all closely related concepts, are at the center of morality, politics, law, and economics. Griffin's book, while primarily a volume of moral philosophy, is relevant to all of these subjects. Griffin offers answers to three central questions about well-being: what is the best way to understand it, can it be measured, and where should it fit in moral and political thought. With its breadth of investigation and depth of insight, this work holds significance (...) for philosophers as well as for those interested in political and economic theory and jurisprudence. (shrink)

Postmodernism and Education responds to the interest in postmodernism as a way of understanding social, cultural and economic trends. Robin Usher and Richard Edwards explore the impact which postmodernism has had upon the theory and practice of education, using a broad analysis of postmodernism and an in-depth introduction to key writers in the field, including Lacan, Derrida, Foucault and Lyotard. In examining the impact which this thinking has had upon contemporary theory and practice of education, Usher and Edwards (...) concentrate particularly upon how postmodernist ideas challenge existing concepts, structures and hierarchies. (shrink)

_What is This Thing Called Love?_ provides a clear how-to guide for carrying out psychotherapy with couples from a psychoanalytic perspective. The book draws on both early and contemporary psychoanalytic knowledge, explaining how each theory described is useful in formulating couple dynamics and in working with them. The result is an extremely practical approach, with detailed step-by-step instructions on technique, illuminated throughout by vivid case studies. The book focuses on several key areas including: An initial discussion about theories of love. (...) Progression of therapy from beginning to termination. Transference and countertransference and their unique manifestations in couples therapy. Comparisons between couples therapy and individual therapy. Step-by-step instruction on technique. _What is This Thing Called Love?_ is enlivened with humour and humanness. It is crucial reading for psychoanalytic therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, couples therapists and students who want to learn about--or augment their skills in--this challenging modality. (shrink)

A lineage of prominent philosophers who have discussed the second-person relation can be regarded as advancing structural accounts. They posit that the second-person relation effects one transformative change to the structure of practical reasoning. In this paper, I criticise this orthodoxy and offer an alternative, substantive account. That is, I argue that entering into second-personal relations with others does indeed affect one's practical reasoning, but it does this not by altering the structure of one's agential thought, but by changing what (...) reasons can become available. The importance of second-personal thought for action is heterogenous. Second-person relations make possible the emergence of a wide variety of different kinds of practical reasons: creating some, revealing others. Recognising this diminishes the appeal of the traditional, structural accounts of the practical significance of such second-personal relations. Moving away from structural accounts facilitates a more thorough understanding of the intersubjective form of action. (shrink)

The problem of personal identity is often said to be one of accounting for what it is that gives persons their identity over time. However, once the problem has been construed in these terms, it is plain that too much has already been assumed. For what has been assumed is just that persons do have an identity. A new interpretation of Hume's no-self theory is put forward by arguing for an eliminative rather than a reductive view of personal identity, and (...) by approaching the problem in terms of phenomenology, Buddhist psychology, and the idea of a constructed self-image. (shrink)

Every Thing Must Go aruges that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it ...