Current theories of knowledge, art, and power are locked into sterile debates around the question of representation. This book examines the limits of antirepresentationalism in these fields and argues that the anarchist tradition can point the way beyond our contemporary crisis of representation. The author rereads the theory and practical experiences of anarchism from the nineteenth century to the present, proposing a radical revision of received notions of the subject - from the equation of anarchy with literary decadence to the (...) interpretation of anarchism as yet another discourse founded on a notion of the human essence. What emerges, instead, is a complex portrait of anarchism as a body of thought that provides the framework for a kind of critical realism, with implications for fields ranging from aesthetics to economics, from philosophy to politics. Jesse Cohn teaches English at Purdue University North Central. (shrink)

Within the field of indie comics, politics are most visible–and most closely scrutinized–in the nonfictional genres of graphic journalism, history, and autobiography. Discussion of these tends to foreground questions of representation and identification; apart from them, as in the film criticism of the Screen era, a certain formalism predominates. Here, the unselfconscious narration of concrete facts and experiences supposedly typifying works such as Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis or Lynda Barry's One Hundred Demons may be taken as a shortcoming, a failure to (...) "lay bare the devices" and to foreground the medium, whereas a... (shrink)

Research suggests that the explicit reasoning we offer to ourselves and to others is often rationalization, that we act instead on instincts, inclinations, stereotypes, emotions, neurobiology, habits, reactions, evolutionary pressures, unexamined principles, or justifications other than the ones we think we’re acting on, then we tell a post hoc story to justify our actions. I consider two benefits of rationalization, once we realize that rationalization is sincere. It allows us to work out, under practical pressure of rational consistency, which are (...) good reasons to act on. Rationalization also prompts us to establish meaningful patterns out of merely permissible options. (shrink)

The question ‘ What is addiction?’ seems to ask for a clinical or biological answer. The research on addiction has progressed much faster in biology and neuroscience than our philosophical understanding of that research.1 Therefore, it can be tempting to look to the relevant psychology or neuroscience to answer our philosophical questions, which ends up treating addiction entirely as a psychological or neurological matter. However, many of our questions about addiction are not fundamentally biological or neurological questions. Here, I suggest (...) that an answer to one question about addiction, the question of what addiction is, turns on the decidedly more philosophical. (shrink)

Research suggests that the explicit reasoning we offer to ourselves and to others is often rationalization, that we act instead on instincts, inclinations, stereotypes, emotions, neurobiology, habits, reactions, evolutionary pressures, unexamined principles, or justifications other than the ones we think we’re acting on, then we tell a post hoc story to justify our actions. This is troubling for views of moral progress according to which moral progress proceeds from our engagement with our own and others’ reasons. I consider an account (...) of rationalization, based on Robert Audi’s, to make clear that rationalization, unlike simple lying, can be sincere. Because it can be sincere, and because we also have a desire to be consistent with ourselves, I argue that rationalization sets us up for becoming better people over time, and that a similar case can be made to explain how moral progress among groups of people can proceed via rationalization. (shrink)

People with Scrupulosity have rigorous, obsessive moral beliefs that lead to extreme and compulsive moral acts. These fascinating outliers raise profound questions about human nature, mental illness, moral belief, responsibility, and psychiatric treatment. Clean Hands? Uses a range of case studies to examine this condition and its philosophical implications.

Scrupulosity raises fascinating issues about the nature of moral judgment and about moral responsibility. After defining scrupulosity, describing its common features, and discussing concrete case studies, we discuss three peculiar aspects of moral judgments made by scrupulous patients: perfectionism, intolerance of uncertainty, and moral thought-action fusion. We then consider whether mesh and reasons-responsiveness accounts of responsibility explain whether the scrupulous are morally responsible.

Albert Borgmann's notion of the "device paradigm" can be used to explain a widely experienced frustration encountered in attempts to put people's values into practice in a technological world: Technologies increasingly embraced as a means of disburdening them from social and bodily engagement also increasingly constrain their efforts to express their values through action. Expressive elements of their actions are effectively fixed by, and incorporated in, the devices they adopt. Ethnographic investigation of the "home power" movement in the United States, (...) however, provides evidence of a successful break from the device paradigm. In the process of installing more expensive and less convenient renewable electric power systems in their homes, participants in this movement have achieved a uniquely creative reassertion of alterna tive environmental, community, and work-related values. The resonance between Borgmann's theoretical framework and the home power experience affords both practi cal guidance and grounds for hope that people's use of technology can be brought into greater conformity with more careful formulations of their fundamental values. (shrink)

Why characterize addiction at all? George Graham reasonably points out that a good understanding of addiction should exchange “surface resemblances…[for] real facts about explanatory forces”. Understanding causes and cures of addiction will indeed help addicts’ lives more than the best characterization could. But we should beware the false dichotomy. Determining “real facts about explanatory forces” is valuable, and so is characterizing “surface resemblances.”Philosophers’ déformation professionnelle often inclines us to look for essential features of natural phenomena, leading to broad definitions that (...) capture disparate phenomena. But, instead of characterizing addiction in general, why not. (shrink)

We sometimes want to understand irrational action, or actions a person undertakes given that their acting that way conflicts with their beliefs, their desires, or their goals. What is puzzling about all explanations of such irrational actions is this: if we explain the action by offering the agent’s reasons for the action, the action no longer seems irrational, but only a bad decision. If we explain the action mechanistically, without offering the agent’s reasons for it, then the explanation fails to (...) explain the behavior as an action at all. I focus on cases that result from compulsion or irresistible desire, especially addiction, and show that this problem of explaining irrational actions may be insurmountable because, given the constraints on action explanations, we cannot explain irrational actions both as irrational and as actions. (shrink)

Contemporary energy and environmental problems continue to pose fundamental challenges to Western models of a successful pattern of life. From the perspective of an integrated study of science, technology, and society, energy and environmental problems can be seen more specifically to raise significant questions about economic decision rules as expressions of those models –i.e.,. as mechanisms for rationalizing traditional energy and environmental patterns of behavior.

Research suggests that the explicit reasoning we offer to ourselves and to others is often rationalization, that we act instead on instincts, inclinations, stereotypes, emotions, neurobiology, habits, reactions, evolutionary pressures, unexamined principles, or justifications other than the ones we think we’re acting on, then we tell a post hoc story to justify our actions. This is troubling for views of moral progress according to which moral progress proceeds from our engagement with our own and others’ reasons. I consider an account (...) of rationalization, based on Robert Audi’s, to make clear that rationalization, unlike simple lying, can be sincere. Because it can be sincere, and because we also have a desire to be consistent with ourselves, I argue that rationalization sets us up for becoming better people over time, and that a similar case can be made to explain how moral progress among groups of people can proceed via rationalization. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

The earlier volume in this series dealt with two religions of Indian origin, namely, Buddhism and Jainism. The Indian religious scene, however, is characterized by not only religions which originated in India but also by religions which entered India from outside India and made their home here. Thus religious life in India has been enlivened throughout its history by the presence of religions of foreign origin on its soil almost from the very time they came into existence. This volume covers (...) three such religions—Zoraoastrianism, Judaism, and Islam. In the case of Zoraostianism, even its very beginnings are intertwined with India, as Zoroastrianism reformed a preexisting religion which had strong links to the Vedic heritage of India. This relationship took on a new dimension when a Zoroastrian community, fearing persecution in Persia after its Arab conquest, sought shelter in western India and ultimately went on to produce India’s pioneering nationalist in the figure of Dadabhai Naoroji ( 1825-1917), also known as the Grand Old Man of India. Jews found refuge in south India after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E. and have remained a part of the Indian religious scene since then, some even returning to Israel after it was founded in 1948. Islam arrived in Kerala as soon as it was founded and one of the earliest mosques in the history of Islam is found in India. Islam differs from the previously mentioned religions inasmuch as it went on to gain political hegemony over parts of the country for considerable periods of time, which meant that its impact on the religious life of the subcontinent has been greater compared to the other religions. It has also meant that Islam has existed in a religiously plural environment in India for a longer period than elsewhere in the world so that not only has Islam left a mark on India, India has also left its mark on it. Indeed all the three religions covered in this volume share this dual feature, that they have profoundly influenced Indian religious life and have also in turn been profoundly influenced by their presence in India. (shrink)

The DSM–5 characterizes mental disorders as significant disturbances in cognition, emotion, or behavior. But what might unite the disturbances on this list? We hypothesize that mental disorders can all be meaningfully characterized as failures of attention. We understand these as failures to distribute attention in the way one has most reason to, and we include both failures of tendency and of ability. We discuss six examples of mental disorders and offer a preliminary gloss of how to recast each as centrally (...) involving a failure of attention. We close by highlighting theoretical and practical upshots of our proposal. (shrink)

There are three distinct questions associated with Simpson's paradox, (i) Why or in what sense is Simpson's paradox a paradox? (ii) What is the proper analysis of the paradox? (iii) How one should proceed when confronted with a typical case of the paradox? We propose a "formar" answer to the first two questions which, among other things, includes deductive proofs for important theorems regarding Simpson's paradox. Our account contrasts sharply with Pearl's causal (and questionable) account of the first two questions. (...) We argue that the "how to proceed question?" does not have a unique response, and that it depends on the context of the problem. We evaluate an objection to our account by comparing ours with Blyth's account of the paradox. Our research on the paradox suggests that the "how to proceed question" needs to be divorced from what makes Simpson's paradox "paradoxical.". (shrink)

There are three distinct questions associated with Simpson’s paradox. Why or in what sense is Simpson’s paradox a paradox? What is the proper analysis of the paradox? How one should proceed when confronted with a typical case of the paradox? We propose a “formal” answer to the first two questions which, among other things, includes deductive proofs for important theorems regarding Simpson’s paradox. Our account contrasts sharply with Pearl’s causal account of the first two questions. We argue that the “how (...) to proceed question?” does not have a unique response, and that it depends on the context of the problem. We evaluate an objection to our account by comparing ours with Blyth’s account of the paradox. Our research on the paradox suggests that the “how to proceed question” needs to be divorced from what makes Simpson’s paradox “paradoxical.”. (shrink)

Several models of macromolecular arrangements in eukaryotic chromosomes have been proposed during the past fifteen years. Many of the models are consistent with physical and chemical data on the molecular components of chromosomes, and a few have the appearance of meeting the requirements for cytological organization in chromosomes. However, one of the most frustrating problems in developing a working model is to provide a scheme that fits genetic function while satisfying the structural parameters. This has not yet been achieved.Although emphasis (...) in this review has been placed on uninemic and polynemic models, alternatives, such as a bineme, for example, remain. It is clear, moreover, that the issue can be resolved only through continued efforts to make direct observations of chromosomes with light and electron microscopy coupled with the additional tools ofX-ray analysis and analytical biochemistry. A recent analysis byWray andStubblefield has led to a rather innovative model of the chromosome, and exemplifies the kind of approach needed to clarify the phenomenon. Furthermore, analyses of meiotic chromosomes may provide valuable insight for relating organization to genetic function . Of particular interest are mutation events as related to subchromatid organization, and the reorganization of chromosomal fibrils during early meiotic stages. At present, and as a generalization, the evidence points more strongly toward at least a binemic arrangement of chromosomal subunits than toward a uninemic one. (shrink)

Achieving the global benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) will require international cooperation on many areas of governance and ethical standards, while allowing for diverse cultural perspectives and priorities. There are many barriers to achieving this at present, including mistrust between cultures, and more practical challenges of coordinating across different locations. This paper focuses particularly on barriers to cooperation between Europe and North America on the one hand and East Asia on the other, as regions which currently have an outsized impact (...) on the development of AI ethics and governance. We suggest that there is reason to be optimistic about achieving greater cross-cultural cooperation on AI ethics and governance. We argue that misunderstandings between cultures and regions play a more important role in undermining cross-cultural trust, relative to fundamental disagreements, than is often supposed. Even where fundamental differences exist, these may not necessarily prevent productive cross-cultural cooperation, for two reasons: (1) cooperation does not require achieving agreement on principles and standards for all areas of AI; and (2) it is sometimes possible to reach agreement on practical issues despite disagreement on more abstract values or principles. We believe that academia has a key role to play in promoting cross-cultural cooperation on AI ethics and governance, by building greater mutual understanding, and clarifying where different forms of agreement will be both necessary and possible. We make a number of recommendations for practical steps and initiatives, including translation and multilingual publication of key documents, researcher exchange programmes, and development of research agendas on cross-cultural topics. (shrink)

The study of anarchism as a philosophical, political, and social movement has burgeoned both in the academy and in the global activist community in recent years. Taking advantage of this boom in anarchist scholarship, Nathan J. Jun and Shane Wahl have compiled twenty-six cutting-edge essays on this timely topic in New Perspectives on Anarchism.

The Emotional Construction of Morals is a book about moral judgements – the kinds of mental states we might express by sentences such as, ‘It's bad to flash your neighbors’, or ‘You ought not eat your pets’. There are three basic questions that get addressed: what are the psychological states that constitute such judgements? What kinds of properties do such judgements refer to? And, where do these judgements come from? The first question concerns moral psychology, the second metaethics and the (...) third is best construed as belonging to a domain that has been neglected in analytic value theory: the genealogy of morals. These are all separate branches of ethics, but they are interconnected. The thesis of the book is that moral judgements are emotional attitudes that refer to response-dependent properties, and that these responses have been shaped by cultural history. I call the view Constructive Sentimentalism. The first half of the book deals with sentiments, and the second half with construction. The second half also deals with relativism, because I argue that moral values are constructed differently across cultures and across individuals.Thus described, The Emotional Construction of Morals is a conventional contribution to analytic moral philosophy, taking on some of the core questions in that field and defending positions that have a long philosophical pedigree. Indeed, the theory I defend has roots in Hume and Nietzsche, though it departs from both in various ways. What makes the book somewhat unusual is that it seeks to defend traditional theories by appeal to recent work in psychology, neuroscience, anthropology and related fields. It is an exercise in methodological naturalism and committed to the view that we can answer traditional philosophical questions while treating ethics as a social science. Ethics and naturalism are hard to reconcile because ethics is a normative domain, …. (shrink)

Scholars have a history of crossing intellectual borders (Abbott, 2001). In particular, educators draw from a diversity of intellectuals upon which to base our understanding of, for example, schools and society, curriculum content, teaching, and learning. In addition to icons such as Marx, James, Freud, and Dewey, the works of the Frankfurt School (e.g., Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse), Foucault, Gilligan, Derrida, Gramsci, West, Arendt, and Fraser, just to name a few, have been used to guide our scholarship and practice. However, with (...) the exception of few scholars (e.g., Peters & Ghiraldelli, 2001), one of America's most controversial scholars,1 Richard Rorty, has been largely ignored. This situation is unfortunate .. (shrink)

In “Critique of the Gotha Program,” Marx famously declares that future communist societies will operate on the principle “from each according to [their] ability, to each according to [their] needs!” This paper argues that there is a distinctly anarchist interpretation of Marx’s principle which takes the principle’s primary demand to be the unconditional provision of goods and services. The paper begins by introducing Marx’s “ability to needs principle” (ANP) and the normative concerns that motivated it. The paper then documents the (...) adoption of the ANP by various prominent anarchists—with the anarchist interpretation then presented as a way of resolving the distinctive complaints that lead them to embrace the ANP. Finally, the paper concludes by arguing that conditional exchange is almost always freedom-diminishing, making the proposed interpretation of the ANP an affirmation of the core anarchist commitment to human freedom. (shrink)

Our computational metaphysics group describes its use of automated reasoning tools to study Leibniz’s theory of concepts. We start with a reconstruction of Leibniz’s theory within the theory of abstract objects (henceforth ‘object theory’). Leibniz’s theory of concepts, under this reconstruction, has a non-modal algebra of concepts, a concept-containment theory of truth, and a modal metaphysics of complete individual concepts. We show how the object-theoretic reconstruction of these components of Leibniz’s theory can be represented for investigation by means of automated (...) theorem provers and finite model builders. The fundamental theorem of Leibniz’s theory is derived using these tools. (shrink)

This monograph treats the important topic of the epistemology of diagrams in Euclidean geometry. Norman argues that diagrams play a genuine justificatory role in traditional Euclidean arguments, and he aims to account for these roles from a modified Kantian perspective. Norman considers himself a semi-Kantian in the following broad sense: he believes that Kant was right that ostensive constructions are necessary in order to follow traditional Euclidean proofs, but he wants to avoid appealing to Kantian a priori intuition as the (...) epistemological background for these constructions.Norman's main argument is limited to the thesis that certain Euclidean arguments—in particular, that of Proposition 1.32, the internal-angle-sum theorem—require inferences from diagrams. Interestingly, Norman is not committed to the view that these arguments are proofs. This becomes clear only quite late in the book, when he distinguishes argument from proofs, remarking that the argument he has been focusing on is not rigorous, and so is not a proof. Norman does not, however, explicitly classify all Euclidean arguments as non-proofs. His view is that diagrammatic reasoning can in principle feature in rigorous proofs, but he is not committed to the thesis that any particular argument, Euclidean or otherwise, provides an example of this. Rather than proofs in particular, Norman is more interested in the general issue of justification in mathematics.The argument has three components. First, Norman argues against competing accounts of Euclidean arguments such as empiricism, and ‘Leibnizianism’—the view that diagrams play only a heuristic role. Second, he provides a more direct, or positive, argument that the way we actually follow the standard argument for 1.32 does appeal to the diagram. This is an appeal to the phenomenology of following the argument. Third, he articulates and defends his semi-Kantian position against some objections.The book has a very careful and …. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titles: Introduction Innerism and Outerism Are Some Concepts Inside‐Out? Millikan's Concepts.