The appeal to expert opinion is an argument form that uses the verdict of an expert to support a position or hypothesis. A previous scheme-based treatment of the argument form is formalized within a Bayesian network that is able to capture the critical aspects of the argument form, including the central considerations of the expert's expertise and trustworthiness. We propose this as an appropriate normative framework for the argument form, enabling the development and testing of quantitative predictions as to how (...) people evaluate this argument, suggesting that such an approach might be beneficial to argumentation research generally. We subsequently present two experiments as an example of the potential for future research in this vein, demonstrating that participants' quantitative ratings of the convincingness of a proposition that has been supported with an appeal to expert opinion were broadly consistent with the predictions of the Bayesian model. (shrink)

This book is less about disjunction than about the English word ‘or’, and it is less for than against formal logicians—more exactly, against those who maintain that formal logic can be applied in certain ways to the evaluation of reasoning formulated in ordinary English. Nevertheless, there are many things to interest such of those persons who are willing to overlook the frequent animadversions directed against their kind in the book, and this review will concentrate on them.

Bayesian probability has recently been proposed as a normative theory of argumentation. In this article, we provide a Bayesian formalisation of the ad Hitlerum argument, as a special case of the ad hominem argument. Across three experiments, we demonstrate that people's evaluation of the argument is sensitive to probabilistic factors deemed relevant on a Bayesian formalisation. Moreover, we provide the first parameter-free quantitative evidence in favour of the Bayesian approach to argumentation. Quantitative Bayesian prescriptions were derived from participants' stated subjective (...) probabilities (Experiments 1 and 2), as well as from frequency information explicitly provided in the experiment (Experiment 3). Participants' stated evaluations of the convincingness of the argument were well matched to these prescriptions. (shrink)

To reconcile the standard possible worlds model of knowledge with the intuition that ordinary agents fall far short of logical omniscience, a Stalnakerian strategy appeals to two components. The first is the idea that mathematical and logical knowledge is at bottom metalinguistic knowledge. The second is the idea that non-ideal minds are often fragmented. In this paper, we investigate this Stalnakerian reconciliation strategy and argue, ultimately, that it fails. We are not the first to complain about the Stalnakerian strategy. But (...) in contrast to existing complaints, we want to cause trouble for the strategy directly on its home turf. That is, we will advance our objection while granting both the plausibility of the fragmentation component—save for an extreme version of it—and that of the metalinguistic component. Once our central objection to the Stalnakerian strategy is in place, we will show how it negatively affects Adam Elga and Augustín Rayo’s recent attempt to apply the Stalnakerian strategy in the context of Bayesian decision theory. (shrink)

Adam Smith was not just a pioneer of political economy; he was also a moral philosopher who aspired to write a systematic theory of law. Though he never completed the project - he asked the executors of his estate to burn his notes - his major published works contain a multitude of passages from which significant portions of his legal theory can be reconstructed. Many of Smith's views are of great relevance to present-day issues. He proposed financial regulation restricting (...) the freedom of individuals, which he likened to the necessity of equipping buildings with firewalls. In light of the global firestorm caused by the most recent banking crisis, Smith's ideas appear strikingly modern. (shrink)

Aufgrund der vielen Spuren in Kants Reflexionen und in der Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten kann es als sicher gelten, daß Kant die Theory of Moral Sentiments von Adam Smith gut gekannt hat. Vor allem die Figur eines unparteiischen Zuschauers mußte ihn interessieren, da Smith, der zwar eine moral-sense- Theorie entwickelt hat, diesen Typus von Ethik in einem gewissen Sinne rationalisiert, dann nämlich, wenn er die unparteiischen Zuschauer durch die Applikation allgemeiner Moralregeln urteilen läßt. Die Abhandlung konzentriert sich auf (...) das moralische Selbstbewußtsein, also auf den Begriff des Gewissens, bei Smith und Kant. Sie zeichnet die Rolle des unparteiischen Zuschauers in Smith's Konzept des Gewissens nach, das dieser als einen inneren Gerichtshof versteht. Die Abhandlung wendet sich dann Kant zu und skizziert dessen Idee einer wirklich auf Vernunft gegründeten Moral, die zugleich die Idee einer wirklich autonomen Moral ist. Auf der Basis dieser Idee ist aber die Vorstellung vom Gewissen als innerem Gerichtshof unhaltbar. Es muß daher überraschen, daß Kant bedauerlicherweise an dieser herkömmlichen Vorstellung vom Gewissen festhält und daß er damit weit hinter das begriffliche Niveau seines Entwurfs einer autonomen Moral zurückfällt. Es ergibt sich daraus für jeden, der mit der Idee der Kantschen Ethik sympathisiert, die Aufgabe, ein richtiges Verständnis des Gewissens zu formulieren. Because of the many traces in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and in the notices which Kant left behind, we know for sure that Kant was well acquainted with Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments . Especially the concept of an impartial spectator must have interested Kant since Adam Smith, though developing a moral-sense-theory of morals, in a way rationalises this type of ethics when he comes to understand the impartial spectator as judging not by his moral sense, but by the application of general moral rules. The paper concentrates on moral self-consciousness, i.e. on the concept of conscience in Smith and in Kant. It outlines the role of the impartial spectator Smith's theory of conscience which he understands as an intrapersonal court of justice. Turning to Kant, a sketch is drawn of his idea how really to base morals on reason, thereby formulating the concept of morals that really deserves to be called autonomous. On the basis of the Kantian idea of morals, however, the conception of conscience as an intrapersonal court of justice is untenable. To every reader it must therefore be a surprise, and indeed a real pity, that Kant nevertheless sticks to this traditional idea of conscience, thus falling far back behind the conceptual level of his own theory of morals. So, it is up to every one who sympathizes with a Kantian style of moral theory, to spell out the right way of understanding conscience. (shrink)

The main questions in philosophical research on attention concern its nature and impact. Regarding its nature, one might ask what sort of thing attention is; regarding its impact, one might ask what sort of thing attention does. While these questions have been asked by philosophers for thousands of years, they have had a resurgence in recent years due to advancements in the cognitive and neural sciences. This chapter will cover some historical context as prelude to a discussion of the contemporary (...) debates, ending with issues that are as of yet still on the horizon. Topics covered include the divide between voluntary/involuntary, endogenous/exogenous, and top-down/bottom-up attention; the Posner cueing task; Treisman and the binding problem; Mack and Rock on inattentional blindness; Grassia, Campbell, and Dickie on attention, perception, and knowledge; the debate between Block, Dehaene, and others on consciousness and attention; Wu on attention and action; and future directions for attention research in predictive processing models, neuroethics, technology, and addiction. (shrink)

The foundation for a system of morals, this 1749 work is a landmark of moral and political thought. Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.

The Significance Argument (SA) for the irreducibility of consciousness is based on a series of new puzzle-cases that I call multiple candidate cases. In these cases, there is a multiplicity of physical-functional properties or relations that are candidates to be identified with the sensible qualities and our consciousness of them, where those candidates are not significantly different. I will argue that these cases show that reductive materialists cannot accommodate the various ways in which consciousness is significant and must allow massive (...) vagueness in conscious experience. I also will argue that a nonreductive theory of the conscious-of relation can easily provide a very satisfying, unified explanation of the ways in which this relation is significant. (shrink)

Das Buch behandelt Kants Versuch, innerhalb seiner Ethik Sittengesetz, Naturgesetz und Freiheit im moralischen Handeln in Einklang zu bringen. Im ersten Teil stehen die Begriffe der Freiheit und des Willens bei Kant im Mittelpunkt. Der zweite Teil untersucht detailliert die Kernpunkte der kantischen Ethik: den (letztlich gescheiterten) Versuch, Freiheit und Naturkausalit t auszus hnen, und die Theorie des Handelns nach Moralgesetzen, deren Wahl den freien Willen als eigentliches Moment ausmacht. Am Ende steht die Einsicht in ein hoch entwickeltes, differenziertes gedankliches (...) System, das unserer Alltagsauffassung von moralischer Verantwortung erstaunlich nahe kommt. (shrink)

Though the vegetarian movement sparked by Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation has achieved some success, there is more animal suffering caused today due to factory farming than there was when the book was originally written. In this paper, I argue that there may be a technological solution to the problem of animal suffering in intensive factory farming operations. In particular, I suggest that recent research indicates that we may be very close to, if not already at, the point where we (...) can genetically engineer factory-farmed livestock with a reduced or completely eliminated capacity to suffer. In as much as animal suffering is the principal concern that motivates the animal welfare movement, this development should be of central interest to its adherents. Moreover, I will argue that all people concerned with animal welfare should agree that we ought to replace the animals currently used in factory farming with animals whose ability to suffer is diminished if we are able to do so. (shrink)

Advanced AI systems are rapidly making their way into medical research and practice, and, arguably, it is only a matter of time before they will surpass human practitioners in terms of accuracy, reliability, and knowledge. If this is true, practitioners will have a prima facie epistemic and professional obligation to align their medical verdicts with those of advanced AI systems. However, in light of their complexity, these AI systems will often function as black boxes: the details of their contents, calculations, (...) and procedures cannot be meaningfully understood by human practitioners. When AI systems reach this level of complexity, we can also speak of black-box medicine. In this paper, we want to argue that black-box medicine conflicts with core ideals of patient-centered medicine. In particular, we claim, black-box medicine is not conducive for supporting informed decision-making based on shared information, shared deliberation, and shared mind between practitioner and patient. (shrink)

Ulrich Beck's best selling Risk Society established risk on the sociological agenda. It brought together a wide range of issues centering on environmental, health and personal risk, provided a rallying ground for researchers and activists in a variety of social movements and acted as a reference point for state and local policies in risk management. The Risk Society and Beyond charts the progress of Beck's ideas and traces their evolution. It demonstrates why the issues raised by Beck reverberate widely throughout (...) social theory and covers the new risks that Beck did not foresee, associated with the emergence of new technologies, genetic and cybernetic. The book is unique because it offers both an introduction to the main arguments in Risk Society and develops a range of critical discussions of aspects of this and other works of Beck. (shrink)

An important topic in the ethics of technology is the extent to which recent digital technologies undermine user autonomy. Supporting evidence includes the fact that recent digital technologies are known to have an impact on attention, which balances "bottom-up" and "top-down" influences on cognition. As described in numerous papers, these technologies manipulate bottom-up influences through cognitive fluency, intermittent variable rewards, and other techniques, making them more attractive to the user. We further reason that recent digital technologies reduce the user’s ability (...) to exert top-down attention due to the scale of the content—they provide far more content at a much faster pace than other technologies, which over time reweights the balance of attention in favor of bottom-up influences. After reviewing evidence for these effects, including their temporal duration, we consider their downstream effects on both autonomy and creativity. We find that while the impact of recent digital technologies on top-down attention may allow for more idea generation, that creativity also depends on control, which is undermined by these technologies. We are more circumspect with autonomy, reasoning that in certain cases it might not make sense to see user autonomy as harmed through these effects. We conclude with other ways that recent digital technologies may improve creativity, which may act as an offset to the detrimental impacts of these technologies. (shrink)

National Artificial Intelligence (AI) strategies articulate imaginaries of the integration of AI into society and envision the governing of AI research, development and applications accordingly. To integrate these central aspects of national AI strategies under one coherent perspective, this paper presented an analysis of Germany’s strategy ‘AI made in Germany’ through the conceptual lens of ordoliberal political rationality. The first part of the paper analyses how the guiding vision of a human-centric AI not only adheres to ethical and legal principles (...) consistent with Germany’s liberal democratic constitutional system but also addresses the risks and promises inherent to the ordoliberal problematization of freedom. Second, it is scrutinized how the strategy cultivates the fear of not achieving technological sovereignty in the AI sector. Thereby, it frames the global AI race as a race of competing (national) approaches to governing AI and articulates an ordoliberal approach to governing AI (the ‘third way’), according to which government has to operate between the twin dangers of governing too much and not governing enough. Third, the paper analyses how this ordoliberal proportionality of governing structures Germany’s Science Technology & Innovation Policy. It is shown that the corresponding risk-based approach of regulating AI constitutes a security apparatus as it produces an assessment of fears: weighting the fear of the failure to innovate with the fear of the ramifications of innovation. Finally, two lines of critical engagement based on this analysis are conducted. (shrink)

The essays in this volume, by international Kant scholars and moral philosophers, discuss Kant's philosophical development and his rejection of earlier moral theories, the role of happiness and inclination in the Groundwork, Kant's moral ...

Orthodox Bayesianism is a highly idealized theory of how we ought to live our epistemic lives. One of the most widely discussed idealizations is that of logical omniscience: the assumption that an agent’s degrees of belief must be probabilistically coherent to be rational. It is widely agreed that this assumption is problematic if we want to reason about bounded rationality, logical learning, or other aspects of non-ideal epistemic agency. Yet, we still lack a satisfying way to avoid logical omniscience within (...) a Bayesian framework. Some proposals merely replace logical omniscience with a different logical idealization; others sacrifice all traits of logical competence on the altar of logical non-omniscience. We think a better strategy is available: by enriching the Bayesian framework with tools that allow us to capture what agents can and cannot infer given their limited cognitive resources, we can avoid logical omniscience while retaining the idea that rational degrees of belief are in an important way constrained by the laws of probability. In this paper, we offer a formal implementation of this strategy, show how the resulting framework solves the problem of logical omniscience, and compare it to orthodox Bayesianism as we know it. (shrink)

The traditional Lewis–Stalnaker semantics treats all counterfactuals with an impossible antecedent as trivially or vacuously true. Many have regarded this as a serious defect of the semantics. For intuitively, it seems, counterfactuals with impossible antecedents—counterpossibles—can be non-trivially true and non-trivially false. Whereas the counterpossible "If Hobbes had squared the circle, then the mathematical community at the time would have been surprised" seems true, "If Hobbes had squared the circle, then sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan at the time would (...) have been thrilled" seems false. Many have proposed to extend the Lewis–Stalnaker semantics with impossible worlds to make room for a non-trivial or non-vacuous treatment of counterpossibles. Roughly, on the extended Lewis–Stalnaker semantics, we evaluate a counterfactual of the form "If A had been true, then C would have been true" by going to closest world—whether possible or impossible—in which A is true and check whether C is also true in that world. If the answer is "yes", the counterfactual is true; otherwise it is false. Since there are impossible worlds in which the mathematically impossible happens, there are impossible worlds in which Hobbes manages to square the circle. And intuitively, in the closest such impossible worlds, sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan are not thrilled—they remain sick and unmoved by the mathematical developments in Europe. If so, the counterpossible "If Hobbes had squared the circle, then sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan at the time would have been thrilled" comes out false, as desired. In this paper, I will critically investigate the extended Lewis–Stalnaker semantics for counterpossibles. I will argue that the standard version of the extended semantics, in which impossible worlds correspond to maximal, logically inconsistent entities, fails to give the correct semantic verdicts for many counterpossibles. In light of the negative arguments, I will then outline a new version of the extended Lewis–Stalnaker semantics that can avoid these problems. (shrink)

Possible-worlds accounts of mental or linguistic content are often criticized for being too coarse-grained. To make room for more fine-grained distinctions among contents, several authors have recently proposed extending the space of possible worlds by "impossible worlds". We argue that this strategy comes with serious costs: we would effectively have to abandon most of the features that make the possible-worlds framework attractive. More generally, we argue that while there are intuitive and theoretical considerations against overly coarse-grained notions of content, the (...) same kinds of considerations also prohibit an overly fine-grained individuation of content. An adequate notion of content, it seems, should have intermediate granularity. However, it is hard to construe a notion of content that meets these demands. Any notion of content, we suggest, must be either implausibly coarse-grained or implausibly fine-grained (or both). (shrink)

Packed with real-life examples of business decisions gone awry, the 8th Edition of BUSINESS ETHICS: CASE STUDIES AND SELECTED READINGS explores the complex issues of business ethics from the leaders' perspectives. This best-selling text offers a rare collection of readings which examines the business decision-making processes of many types of leaders, while revealing some of the common factors that push them over ethical lines they might not otherwise cross. A combination of short and long cases, readings, hypothetical situations, and current (...) ethical dilemmas, BUSINESS ETHICS: CASE STUDIES AND SELECTED READINGS provides a stimulating and thorough basis for evaluating business ethics, and encourages stronger values in future business leaders. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

This thoughtful new abridgment is enriched by the brilliant commentary which accompanies it. In it, Laurence Dickey argues that the _Wealth of Nations_ contains--and conceals--a great deal of how Smith actually thought a commercial society works. Guided by his conviction that the so-called Adam Smith Problem--the relationship between ethics and economics in Smith's thinking--is a core element in the argument of the work itself, Dickey's commentary focuses on the devices Smith uses to ground his economics in broadly ethical and (...) social categories. An unparalleled guide to an often difficult and perplexing work. (shrink)

The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is Kant's central contribution to moral philosophy, and has inspired controversy ever since it was first published in 1785. Kant champions the insights of 'common human understanding' against what he sees as the dangerous perversions of ethical theory. Morality is revealed to be a matter of human autonomy: Kant locates the source of the 'categorical imperative' within each and every human will. However, he also portrays everyday morality in a way that many readers (...) find difficult to accept. The Groundwork is a short book, but its argument is dense, intricate and at times treacherous. This commentary explains Kant's arguments paragraph by paragraph, and also contains an introduction, a synopsis of the argument, six short interpretative essays on key topics of the Groundwork, and a glossary of key terms. It will be an indispensable tool for anyone wishing to study the Groundwork in detail. (shrink)

In this paper, I investigate whether we can use a world-involving framework to model the epistemic states of non-ideal agents. The standard possible-world framework falters in this respect because of a commitment to logical omniscience. A familiar attempt to overcome this problem centers around the use of impossible worlds where the truths of logic can be false. As we shall see, if we admit impossible worlds where “anything goes” in modal space, it is easy to model extremely non-ideal agents that (...) are incapable of performing even the most elementary logical deductions. A much harder, and considerably less investigated challenge is to ensure that the resulting modal space can also be used to model moderately ideal agents that are not logically omniscient but nevertheless logically competent. Intuitively, while such agents may fail to rule out subtly impossible worlds that verify complex logical falsehoods, they are nevertheless able to rule out blatantly impossible worlds that verify obvious logical falsehoods. To model moderately ideal agents, I argue, the job is to construct a modal space that contains only possible and non-trivially impossible worlds where it is not the case that “anything goes”. But I prove that it is impossible to develop an impossible-world framework that can do this job and that satisfies certain standard conditions. Effectively, I show that attempts to model moderately ideal agents in a world-involving framework collapse to modeling either logical omniscient agents, or extremely non-ideal agents. (shrink)

Throughout the history of Western political thought, the creation of a world community has been seen as a way of overcoming discord between political communities without imposing sovereign authority from above. Jens Bartelson argues that a paradox lies at the centre of discussions of world community. The very same division of mankind into distinct peoples living in different places which makes the idea of a world community morally compelling has also been the main obstacle to its successful realization. His (...) book offers a philosophical and historical analysis of the idea of world community by exploring the relationship between theories of world community and changing cosmological beliefs from the late Middle Ages to the present. (shrink)

I discuss a large number of emotions that are relevant to performance at epistemic tasks. My central concern is the possibility that it is not the emotions that are most relevant to success of these tasks but associated virtues. I present cases in which it does seem to be the emotions rather than the virtues that are doing the work. I end of the paper by mentioning the connections between desirable and undesirable epistemic emotions.

Over the past three decades, the discourse on the mechanistic approach to scientific modelling and explanation has notably sidestepped the topic of simplicity and fit within the process of model selection. This paper aims to rectify this disconnect by delving into the topic of simplicity and fit within the context of mechanistic explanations. More precisely, our primary objective is to address whether simplicity metrics hold any significance within mechanistic explanations. If they do, then our inquiry extends to the suitability of (...) the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), and related criteria in determining the optimal balance of fit and simplicity of mechanistic models. As our main claims, we argue that mechanistic models inherently lend themselves to considerations of simplicity, and that the AIC and BIC and related criteria are applicable to some submodels of certain kinds of mechanistic models. However, these criteria and related criteria designed for curve fitting and causal modelling are of little help for a comparative assessment of full mechanistic models, and a fundamentally different approach is needed to make determinations of this kind. (shrink)

In earlier work, the author has studied the economic role of planning horizons in making a case for complementarity as the predominant feature of social interdependence. This paper compares the different choice strategies implied by substitution, opposition and conflicts of interest in an economics of fear with those arising from horizon effects, economic complementarity and concerts of interest in an economics based on love. The contrasting implications of a psychological literature on negative vs. positive emotions and their health effects, along (...) with the findings in neurophysiological research about how humans are hard-wired for empathy and compassion leads to some fundamental changes in how we might address and revise social problems through economic analysis. The aim of this paper is to extend a horizonal case for complementarity in the author's previous work into its psychological links to research findings on healthy cognitive function and its emotional basis. An economics of substitution yields quite different conclusions about optimal institutional forms and how we address and frame social relations than are implied by an explicitly horizonal economics of complementary social relations. Recent psychological and neurophysiological studies support a horizonal case for complementarity in social relations, showing that our orthodox substitution assumptions and models of competitive equilibrium should be rejected for a renewed economic analysis based on horizonal models of complementarity and cooperation as a means to achieve greater social well-being in a healthier and more integrative form of social organization. The issues to be explored are not entertained within the currently existing frame of orthodox economics, so we must step beyond our standard habitual assumptions. (shrink)

Fieldwork in Familiar Places challenges the misconceptions about morality, culture, and objectivity that support these skepticisms, to show that we can take ...

What kind of political order would there be in the absence of the state? Jens Bartelson argues that we are currently unable to imagine what might lurk 'beyond', because our basic concepts of political order are conditioned by our experience of statehood. In this study, he investigates the concept of the state historically as well as philosophically, considering a range of thinkers and theories. He also considers the vexed issue of authority: modern political discourse questions the form and content (...) of authority, but makes it all but impossible to talk about the foundations of authority. Largely due to the existing practices of political and scientific criticism, authority appears to be unquestionable. Bartelson's wide-ranging and readable discussion of the suppositions and presuppositions of statehood will be of interest to scholars and upper-level students of political theory and social theory, and philosophy of social science. (shrink)

What makes your life go well for you? In this paper, we give an account of welfare. Our core idea is simple. There are impersonally good and bad things out there: things that are good or bad period, not (or not only) good or bad for someone. The life that is good for you is the life in contact with the good. We’ll understand the relevant notion of ‘contact’ here in terms of manifestation: you’re in contact with a value either (...) when it is manifest in parts of your life or parts of your life are manifest in it. So, the more the good is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the good, the better for you. The more the bad is manifest in your life, or your life manifest in the bad, the worse for you. We’ll argue that this account is extensionally adequate: it explains the welfare value of achievements, friendships, knowledge, pleasures and virtues. Moreover, it has a number of explanatory virtues: it’s unified, elegant and explanatorily powerful. So, we’ll suggest, it’s an excellent account of welfare, and in many ways superior to its main competitors. (shrink)

Section I of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is meant to lead us from our everyday conception of morality to the supreme principle of all moral action, officially christened the ‘categorical imperative’ some twenty Academy pages further into the treatise. It is quite striking that in this first section Kant dispenses with the notorious technical language that pervades not just other parts of the Groundwork but also most of the remaining philosophical writings of the critical period. The mere (...) fact that Groundwork I is comparatively accessible does not, of course, make it straightforward or uncontroversial. Kant's readers are faced with, amongst other things, four unconvincing paragraphs on the natural purpose of practical reason (G IV 394–6), a crucial change of topic from good volition to acting from duty (G IV 397), an unstated ‘first proposition’ about moral value that has baffled generations of interpreters (presumably G IV 397–9), and a contentious shift from an allegedly unproblematic principle of practical universalizability to a substantive moral command (G IV 402). (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt collects thirty original chapters on the diverse oeuvre of one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. Carl Schmitt was a German theorist whose anti-liberalism continues to inspire scholars and practitioners on both the Left and the Right. Despite Schmitt's rabid anti-semitism and partisan legal practice in Nazi Germany, the appeal of his trenchant critiques of, among other things, aestheticism, representative democracy, and international law as well as of his theoretical justifications of (...) dictatorship and rule by exception is undiminished. Uniquely located at the intersection of law, the social sciences, and the humanities, this volume brings together sophisticated yet accessible interpretations of Schmitt's sprawling thought and complicated biography. The contributors hail from diverse disciplines, including art, law, literature, philosophy, political science, and history. In addition to opening up exciting new avenues of research, The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt provides the intellectual foundations for an improved understanding of the political, legal, and cultural thought of this most infamous of German theorists. A substantial introduction places the trinity of Schmitt's thought in a broad context. (shrink)

Thus Plotinus (what is his status in the history of metaphysics and in the "Platonic" era, if one follows Heidegger's reading?), who speaks of presence, that is, also of morphē, as the trace of nonpresence, as the amorphous (to gar ikhnos tou amorphous morphē). A trace which is neither absence nor presence, nor, in whatever modality, a secondary modality.In his reading of Heidegger in his 2003 seminar, published as The Beast and the Sovereign, Derrida is particularly troubled by one particular (...) aspect of Heidegger: Heidegger's "superabundant use" of the language of Walten.1 "As you see," Derrida writes of Heidegger's use of Walten, "late in my life of reading Heidegger, I have just discovered a word that seems to .. (shrink)

In a possible world framework, an agent can be said to know a proposition just in case the proposition is true at all worlds that are epistemically possible for the agent. Roughly, a world is epistemically possible for an agent just in case the world is not ruled out by anything the agent knows. If a proposition is true at some epistemically possible world for an agent, the proposition is epistemically possible for the agent. If a proposition is true at (...) all epistemically possible worlds for an agent, the proposition is epistemically necessary for the agent, and as such, the agent knows the proposition. -/- This framework presupposes an underlying space of worlds that we can call epistemic space. Traditionally, worlds in epistemic space are identified with possible worlds, where possible worlds are the kinds of entities that at least verify all logical truths. If so, given that epistemic space consists solely of possible worlds, it follows that any world that may remain epistemically possible for an agent verifies all logical truths. As a result, all logical truths are epistemically necessary for any agent, and the corresponding framework only allows us to model logically omniscient agents. This is a well-known consequence of the standard possible world framework, and it is generally taken to imply that the framework cannot be used to model non-ideal agents that fall short of logical omniscience. -/- A familiar attempt to model non-ideal agents within a broadly world involving framework centers around the use of impossible worlds where the truths of logic can be false. As we shall see, if we admit impossible worlds where “anything goes” in epistemic space, it is easy to avoid logical omniscience. If any logical falsehood is true at some impossible world, then any logical falsehood may remain epistemically possible for some agent. As a result, we can use an impossible world involving framework to model extremely non-ideal agents that do not know any logical truths. -/- A much harder, and considerably less investigated challenge is to ensure that the resulting epistemic space can also be used to model moderately ideal agents that are not logically omniscient but nevertheless logically competent. Intuitively, while such agents may fail to rule out impossible worlds that verify complex logical falsehoods, they are nevertheless able to rule out impossible worlds that verify obvious logical falsehoods. To model such agents, we need a construction of a non-trivial epistemic space that partly consists of impossible worlds where not "anything goes". This involves imposing substantive constraints on impossible worlds to eliminate from epistemic space, say, trivially impossible worlds that verify obvious logical falsehoods. -/- The central aim of this dissertation is to investigate the nature of such non-trivially impossible worlds and the corresponding epistemic spaces. To flag my conclusions, I argue that successful constructions of epistemic spaces that can safely navigate between the Charybdis of logical omniscience and the Scylla of of “anything goes” are hard, if not impossible to find. (shrink)

Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn attention to the technology’s transformative potential, including what some see as its prospects for causing large-scale harm. We review two influential arguments purporting to show how AI could pose catastrophic risks. The first argument — the Problem of Power-Seeking — claims that, under certain assumptions, advanced AI systems are likely to engage in dangerous power-seeking behavior in pursuit of their goals. We review reasons for thinking that AI systems might seek power, that (...) they might obtain it, that this could lead to catastrophe, and that we might build and deploy such systems anyway. The second argument claims that the development of human-level AI will unlock rapid further progress, culminating in AI systems far more capable than any human — this is the Singularity Hypothesis. Power-seeking behavior on the part of such systems might be particularly dangerous. We discuss a variety of objections to both arguments and conclude by assessing the state of the debate. (shrink)

It has recently been argued that a sensitivity theory of knowledge cannot account for intuitively appealing instances of higher-order knowledge. In this paper, we argue that it can once careful attention is paid to the methods or processes by which we typically form higher-order beliefs. We base our argument on what we take to be a well-motivated and commonsensical view on how higher-order knowledge is typically acquired, and we show how higher-order knowledge is possible in a sensitivity theory once this (...) view is adopted. (shrink)

In this paper, I do a few things. I develop a (largely) empirical argument against naïve realism (Campbell, Martin, others) and for representationalism. I answer Papineau’s recent paper “Against Representationalism (about Experience)”. And I develop a new puzzle for representationalists.

Political economy and economic sociology have developed in relative isolation from each other. While political economy focuses largely on macro phenomena, economic sociology focuses on the embeddedness of economic action. The article argues that economic sociology can provide a microfoundation for political economy beyond rational actor theory and behavioral economics. At the same time political economy offers a unifying research framework for economic sociology with its focus on the explanation of capitalist dynamics. The sociological microfoundation for understanding of capitalist dynamics (...) should focus on the expectations actors have regarding future states of the world. Based on a discussion of what I call the four Cs of capitalism, I argue that under conditions of uncertainty, expectations are contingent and should be understood as “fictional expectations.” The capability of humans to imagine future states of the world that can be different from the present is the central basis for a sociological microfoundation of the dynamics of economic macro phenomena. Macroeconomic dynamics are anchored in these “fictional expectations,” which create motifs for engaging in potentially profitable but ultimately incalculable outcomes. This shifts attention to the “management of expectations” as a crucial element of economic activity and to the institutional, political, and cultural foundations of expectations. The reproduction of capitalism is precarious also because of the contingency of expectations conducive to its growth. (shrink)

Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung steht die Analytik des Schonen in Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft. Es wird gezeigt, was Kant zu einer Geschmackskritik in transzendentaler Absicht motiviert und wie er in Form einer entdeckenden Analyse die Erklarung dafur zu finden sucht, warum reine asthetische Urteile mit einem Allgemeingultigkeitsanspruch auftreten konnen, auch wenn sie ihn nicht einlosen konnen. Kritische Betrachtungen der Einleitungen zur Kritik der Urteilskraft und Analysen von Kants Theorie der schonen Form und seiner Theorie der anhangenden Schonheit runden die Untersuchung (...) ab. Der zweiten Auflage der Abhandlung sind ein Register und ein langeres Nachwort beigegeben, das auf einige Titel der neueren Forschungsliteratur eingeht (Ginsborg, Fricke, Henrich, Otto). (shrink)