Part I: The representation of life -- Can life be given a real definition? -- The representation of the living individual -- The representation of the life-form itself -- Part II: Naive action theory -- Types of practical explanation -- Naive explanation of action -- Action and time -- Part III: Practical generality -- Two tendencies in practical philosophy -- Practices and dispositions as sources of the goodness of individual actions -- Practice and disposition as sources of individual action.

While philosophers hold that it is patently absurd to blame robots or hold them morally responsible [1], a series of recent empirical studies suggest that people do ascribe blame to AI systems and robots in certain contexts [2]. This is disconcerting: Blame might be shifted from the owners, users or designers of AI systems to the systems themselves, leading to the diminished accountability of the responsible human agents [3]. In this paper, we explore one of the potential underlying reasons for (...) robot blame, namely the folk's willingness to ascribe inculpating mental states or "mens rea" to robots. In a vignette-based experiment (N=513), we presented participants with a situation in which an agent knowingly runs the risk of bringing about substantial harm. We manipulated agent type (human v. group agent v. AI-driven robot) and outcome (neutral v. bad), and measured both moral judgment (wrongness of the action and blameworthiness of the agent) and mental states attributed to the agent (recklessness and the desire to inflict harm). We found that (i) judgments of wrongness and blame were relatively similar across agent types, possibly because (ii) attributions of mental states were, as suspected, similar across agent types. This raised the question - also explored in the experiment - whether people attribute knowledge and desire to robots in a merely metaphorical way (e.g., the robot "knew" rather than really knew). However, (iii), according to our data people were unwilling to downgrade to mens rea in a merely metaphorical sense when given the chance. Finally, (iv), we report a surprising and novel finding, which we call the inverse outcome effect on robot blame: People were less willing to blame artificial agents for bad outcomes than for neutral outcomes. This suggests that they are implicitly aware of the dangers of overattributing blame to robots when harm comes to pass, such as inappropriately letting the responsible human agent off the moral hook. (shrink)

Can an ugly experiment be a good experiment? Philosophers have identified many beautiful experiments and explored ways in which their beauty might be connected to their epistemic value. In contrast, the present chapter seeks out (and celebrates) ugly experiments. Among the ugliest are those being designed by AI algorithms. Interestingly, in the contexts where such experiments tend to be deployed, low aesthetic value correlates with high epistemic value. In other words, ugly experiments can be good. Given this, we should (...) conclude that beauty is not generally necessary or sufficient for epistemic value, and increasing beauty will not generally tend to increase epistemic value. (shrink)

Imagination is necessary for scientific practice, yet there are no in vivo sociological studies on the ways that imagination is taught, thought of, or evaluated by scientists. This article begins to remedy this by presenting the results of a qualitative study performed on two systems biology laboratories. I found that the more advanced a participant was in their scientific career, the more they valued imagination. Further, positive attitudes toward imagination were primarily due to the perceived role of imagination in problem-solving. (...) But not all problem-solving episodes involved clear appeals to imagination, only maximally specific problems did. This pattern is explained by the presence of an implicit norm governing imagination use in the two labs: only use imagination on maximally specific problems, and only when all other available methods have failed. This norm was confirmed by the participants, and I argue that it has epistemological reasons in its favour. I also found that its strength varies inversely with career stage, such that more advanced scientists do (and should) occasionally bring their imaginations to bear on more general problems. A story about scientific pedagogy explains the trend away from (and back to) imagination over the course of a scientific career. Finally, some positive recommendations are given for a more imagination-friendly scientific pedagogy. (shrink)

In part one of this book I argue for the conditional claim that if Christianity has at least a 50% epistemic probability, then it is rational to commit to living a Christian life (and irrational not to). This claim is supported by a contemporary version of Pascal's wager. In part two, I then proceed to argue that Christianity does have at least a 50% epistemic probability, by advancing versions of the cosmological argument, the fine-tuning argument, and historical arguments for the (...) plausibility of the resurrection (along with a few other relevant considerations). Assessments of the problem of evil and divine hiddenness are also given. Finally, in part three, I discuss the lives of three Christians from the 20th century (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jean Vanier, and Immaculee Ilibagiza) in an effort to illustrate how a life of Christian commitment is not just reasonable, but worth desiring as well--satisfying both the head and the heart. (shrink)

Causation: A Realist Approach Traditional empiricist accounts of causation and laws of nature have been reductionist in the sense of entailing that given a complete specification of the non-causal properties of and relations among particulars, it is therefore logically determined both what laws there are and what events are causally related. It is argued here, however, that reductionist accounts of causation and of laws of nature are exposed to decisive objections, and thus that the time has come for empiricists (...) to break with that tradition. -/- The basic goal of this book, therefore, is to set out and defend realistic accounts of those concepts. In the case of causal relations, for example, Tooley maintains that causation is basically a matter of theoretical relations between states of affairs that underlie and explain relative frequencies. He also argues that such an approach avoids the objections that tell against reductionist accounts and that it does so without making causal relations epistemologically inaccessible. (shrink)

Michael Sandel's opposition to the project of human enhancement is based on an argument that centres on the notion of giftedness. Sandel claims that by trying to ?make better people? we fall prey to, and encourage, an attitude of mastery and thus lose, or diminish, our appreciation of the giftedness of life. Sandel's position and the underlying argument have been much criticised. In this paper I will try to make sense of Sandel's reasoning and give an account of giftedness (...) that defends its relevance for the ethical assessment of the human enhancement project. In order to do so, I will also look at virtue-related notions, such as gratitude and humility, and distinguish the gifted from the merely given. The failure to acknowledge this distinction gives rise to one of the most common objections to Sandel's argument. Other objections will be shown to rest on similar misunderstandings. (shrink)

A plea: If you're going to propose a Bayesian framework for updating self-locating degrees of belief, please read this piece first. I've tried to survey all the extant formalisms, group them by their general approach, then describe challenges faced by every formalism employing a given approach. Hopefully this survey will prevent further instances of authors' re-inventing updating rules already proposed elsewhere in the literature.

Inspired by the work of Wilfrid Sellars, Michael Williams launches an all-out attack on what he calls "phenomenalism," the idea that our knowledge of the world rests on a perceptual or experiential foundation. The point of this wider-than-normal usage of the term "phenomenalism," according to which even some forms of direct realism deserve to be called phenomenalistic, is to call attention to important continuities of thought between theories often thought to be competitors. Williams's target is not phenomenalism in its (...) classical sense-datum and reductionist form but empiricism generally. Williams examines and rejects the idea that, unless our beliefs are answerable to a "given" element in experience, objective knowledge will be impossible. Groundless Belief was first published in 1977. This second edition contains a new afterword in which Williams places his arguments in the context of some current discussions of coherentism versus the Myth of the Given and explains their relation to subsequent developments in his own epistemological views. (shrink)

The comparison made by Ada Lovelace in 1843 between the Analytical Engine and the Jacquard loom is one of the well-known analogies between looms and computation machines. Given the fact that weaving – and textile production in general – is one of the oldest cultural techniques in human history, the question arises whether this was the first time that such a parallel was drawn. As this paper will show, centuries before Lovelace’s analogy, such a comparison was made by Gottfried (...) Wilhelm Leibniz. During the 17th century, Leibniz compared his calculating machines with another textile machine, the stocking frame, a machine which mechanized knitting and which was invented in 1589. During the following centuries, this machine was considered as a technological wonder and as a creation of God, and, during the last decades of the 17th century, Leibniz emphasized the need to consider it and other textile machines mathematically. What, then, were the reasons for the parallel drawn between this machine and Leibniz’s automatic computation machines? And what were the consequences of this analogy concerning the artisanal knowledge embedded in manual textile practices? (shrink)

Think of a secret that you're keeping from others. It shouldn't take long; behavioral scientist Michael Slepian finds that on average, we are keeping as many as thirteen secrets at any given time. His research involving more than 50,000 participants from around the globe shows that the most common secrets include: lies we've told, addiction or mental health challenges, a hidden relationship, financial struggles, and more. Our secrets can weigh heavily upon us. Yet the burden of secrecy, Slepian (...) argues, rarely stems from the work it takes to keep a secret hidden. Rather, secrets are something we must "carry" because we do so alone, without the support of others. Whether we are motivated to protect our reputation, a relationship, or a loved one's feelings, or are pursuing some personal or professional goal, one thing is clear: holding back some part of our inner world is often lonely and isolating. But it doesn't have to be. Filled with fresh insight into one of the most universal-yet least understood-aspects of human behavior, The Secret Life of Secrets sheds a fascinating new light on questions like: At what age do children develop the cognitive capacity for secrecy? Do all secrets come with the same mental load? How can we reconcile our secrets with the human desire to relate, connect, and be known? When should we confess our secrets? Who makes for the ideal confidant? And can certain types of secrets actually enhance our well-being? (shrink)

This is a Portuguese translation of "Abortion and Infanticide," Philosophy & Public Affairs, 2/11972, 37–65. -/- This essay deals with the question of the morality of abortion and infanticide. The fundamental ethical objection traditionally advanced against these practices rests on the contention that human fetuses and infants have a right to life, and it is this claim that is the primary focus of attention here. Consequently, the basic question to be discussed is what properties a thing must possess in order (...) to have a serious right to life. The approach involves defending, then, a basic principle specifying a condition living things must satisfy to have a serious right to life, and the answer given makes it unlikely that this condition is satisfied by human fetuses and infants, though this tentative conclusion could be altered by future scientific studies of the development of the human brain. As things stand at the moment, however, it seems unlikely that developing humans acquire the physical basis of the psychological capacities on which the right to continued existence rests, and therefore unless there are other substantial objections to abortion and infanticide that undercut the above line of thought, the conclusion is that such practices are not intrinsically wrong. (shrink)

This is a Japanese translation of "Abortion and Infanticide" from Philosophy & Public Affairs 2/1, 1972, 37–65. -/- This essay deals with the question of the morality of abortion and infanticide. The fundamental ethical objection traditionally advanced against these practices rests on the contention that human fetuses and infants have a right to life, and it is this claim that is the primary focus of attention here. Consequently, the basic question to be discussed is what properties a thing must possess (...) in order to have a serious right to life. The approach involves defending, then, a basic principle specifying a condition living things must satisfy to have a serious right to life, and the answer given makes it unlikely that this condition is satisfied by human fetuses and infants, though this tentative conclusion could be altered by future scientific studies of the development of the human brain. As things stand at the moment, however, it seems unlikely that developing humans acquire the physical basis of the psychological capacities on which the right to continued existence rests, and therefore unless there are other substantial objections to abortion and infanticide that undercut the above line of thought, the conclusion is that such practices are not intrinsically wrong. (shrink)

Husserl famously argues that it is essential to perception to present the perceived object in perspectives. Hence, there is no – and there cannot be – perception without perspectival givenness. Yet, it seems that there are counterexamples to this essentialist claim, for we seem to be able to imagine beings that do not perceive in perspectives. Recently, there have been some accounts in the literature that critically discuss those counterexamples and assess to what extent they succeed in challenging Husserl’s essentialist (...) claim. In this paper I discuss three different answers to these counterexamples, all of them are found wanting. I offer a novel solution, taking into account some crucial findings of the contemporary debate about imagination and modality. I argue that this new solution is capable of fully vindicating Husserl’s essentialist claim. Finally, I reconstruct Husserl’s own way to treat such counterexamples, in order to showcase the notion of modality Husserlian phenomenology relies on. I argue for the hitherto widely underappreciated point that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology cannot appeal to strictly absolute modality but that the kind of modality in Husserlian phenomenology is conditional on the facticity that we have the transcendental structure we do in fact have. (shrink)

Comment: This translation contains a correction of an argument in the original English edition, a correction that was subsequently made in the 1999 English Paperback edition, The correction is described below in the final paragraph. Differences in language can seriously restrict one's access to, and knowledge of, the philosophical work that's being done in other countries, and before the publication in 1997 of my book Time, Tense, and Causation, I was not aware of the depth of interest, in Italy, in (...) analytical philosophy in general, and metaphysics in particular. Since that time, however, I've had the opportunity of talking to, and corresponding with, Italian philosophers who are currently working very intensely on problems in the philosophy of time. I very much enjoyed those discussions, and so I'm very pleased indeed that my book has now been translated into Italian. -/- The introduction to the book will provide readers with quite a detailed overview of my approach to the philosophy of time, and of the main theses that I am defending. But perhaps it will be helpful here if I try to sketch, very briefly, the big picture. -/- The central issue in the philosophy of time concerns the choice between tensed and tenseless accounts of the nature of time – or, as I prefer to express it, between dynamic and static conceptions of reality. According to tensed (or dynamic) accounts, there are significant ontological differences between the past, the present, and the future – either because the world contains intrinsic tensed properties of passiveness, presentness, and futurity, or else because the past, the present, and the future are not all equally real. In contrast, according to tenseless (or static) views of the nature of time, there are no intrinsic tensed properties, and the past, the present, and the future are all equally real. In this book, I defend a dynamic view of time dash specifically, one according to which, while the past and the present are now real, the future is not. This view has, of course, a very long history, with a version of it having been defended by Aristotle in his famous discussion of the sea battle tomorrow, in which he argued that, although it is now true – indeed necessarily so – that either there will be a sea battle tomorrow or there will not be one, it is not now true that there will be a sea battle tomorrow, and not now true that there will not be one. Only when tomorrow comes will the world contain states of affairs that make one of these propositions true, and the other false. -/- But while this general view of the nature of time has a very long and distinguished history – and also seems, intuitively, quite appealing – it has become clear, especially in this century, that it is exposed to very strong objections – objections moreover, that come not merely from philosophy, but also from contemporary physics, and especially from Einstein's special theory of relativity. One of the main challenges accordingly, for any defense of a tensed or dynamic view of time, is to show that those objections can be answered. -/- In grappling with those objections, however, one thing that emerged very clearly was that some theses that defenders of tensed approaches to time have traditionally viewed as absolutely essential must be abandoned as unsound. The result is that. I was led to a view of the nature of time that is, in many respects, intermediate between tenseless views of time and traditional tensed approaches. In particular, advocates of traditional tensed views almost always maintain that the simplest temporal facts are themselves inherently tensed: they consist of facts such as, for example, that is certain apple is now red. But I maintain that, on the contrary, the simplest temporal facts, rather than being intrinsically tensed, are facts to the effect, for example, that a certain apple is now red at time t. On this fundamental issue, then, I agree with those who accept a tenseless or static view of time, since they too hold that the simplest tensed facts ¬– and indeed all tensed facts – are not tensed facts. How, then, does my approach to the nature time differ from a tenseless or static approach? The answer is that I also maintain that, although basic tensed facts are not inherently tensed, the world is nevertheless a dynamic one, since every present moment is a point at which things come into existence. Events, therefore, are not merely actual or nonactual – as is maintained by advocates of tenseless approaches to time. Rather an event is actual as of some time, and not actual as of other times. One needs, therefore, a temporally indexed notion of actuality, according to which an event is not actual until the time at which it occurs, and given that notion, one can explain, in a straightforward fashion, what it is for events to lie in the past, the present, and the future, and in the way that entails that the past and the present are real, but the future is not. -/- One task, as I have said, is to show that the many objections that have been advanced against dynamic conceptions of the world dash by philosophers – such as McTaggart, Quine, Smart, Putnam, and Mellor – can be answered. But even if, as I claim, this can be done, one is still left, of course, with the question of what positive reason there is, if any, for accepting a tensed or dynamic view of the world. -/- The argument that I develop in response to this question centers upon the concept of causation, and here I argue, first, that there are decisive objections to reductionist approaches to causation; secondly, that it is possible to set out a very plausible realistic account of the nature of causation; and, thirdly, that the crucial postulates that are involved in that account can only be satisfied in a dynamic world – indeed only in a dynamic world in which the past and the present are real, but the future is not. -/- This way of defending the view that our world is a dynamic one also has implications for some other issues – in particular, issues connected with the subtle and very difficult metaphysical question of the relation between time and causation. Thus, after setting out the above argument, I attempt to show that if causation can exist only in a dynamic world, then one can both demonstrate that backward causation is logically impossible and defend the view that the direction of time is to be defined in terms of the direction of causation, rather than vice versa. -/- Finally, a comment on the text. It involves one major change from the original English edition – namely in sections 4. 6.2 and 4.7. The change in those sections involves the crucial part in my argument both for the claim that our world is one where the past and present are real, but the future is not, and for the claim that backward causation is logically impossible. It was pointed out to me by Kenji Murota, a graduate student of philosophy at Keio University, that there was a problem in my original formulation of that argument. I'm grateful to him for his incisive criticism, and I'm pleased that I've had the opportunity of correcting that argument in the present edition. (shrink)

Schutzian Phenomenology and Hermeneutic Traditions links Alfred Schutz to the larger hermeneutic tradition in Continental thought, illuminating the deep affinity between Schutzian phenomenology and hermeneutics. The essays collected here explore a broad spectrum of Schutzian themes and concerns, from Schutz’s concrete affinities to hermeneutic traditions, his interpretationism and the pragmatist nature of Schutz’s thought, to questions concerning the role of the media and music in our understanding of the life-world and intersubjectivity. The essays go on to explore the practical applicability (...) of Schutz’s thoughts on questions regarding economics, literature, ethics and the limits of human understanding. Given its emphasis on the application of Schutzian ideas and concepts, this book willbe of special interest to a wide range of readers in the social sciences and humanities, who are interested in the application of phenomenology to social, political, and cultural phenomena. (shrink)

Few have given much thought to how a state of freedom and justice should be organized. This book is the result of the author s 35-year odyssey in search of an answer. He has taken a multi-disciplinary approach, reading widely over many years in the realms of Politics and Economics, Sociology and Philosophy, History and Law. This approach has led to some fresh insights which do not fit into the current left wing/right wing political analysis straitjacket. Comparing the consensus (...) theory of the origin of the state, popularized by Rousseau, with the less well-known conflict theory as expounded by Franz Oppenheimer, the author argues that most states have arisen from the conquest of one class over another, or one tribe over another. Thus the modern state is characterized by a ruling class exercising the coercive power of the state, denying freedom and justice to the rest in varying degrees. Thus the state can be our greatest enemy the 20th century provides plenty of evidence for that. To counter the abuse of power, the author follows the work of Frederic Bastiat in describing a minimal state, limited to the defence of the territory and to maintaining law and order.". (shrink)

An important appeal of strategy-proofness is the robustness that it implies. Under a strategy-proof voting rule, every individual has an optimal strategy independently of the behavior of all other voters, namely truth-telling. In particular, optimal play is robust with respect to the beliefs voters may have about the type and the behavior of the other voters. Following Blin and Satterthwaite (Economet J Economet Soc 45(4):881–888, 1977), we call this logically weaker property “belief-independence.” In this paper, we give a number of (...) examples of voting rules that are belief-independent but not strategy-proof. However, we also show that belief-independence implies strategy-proofness under a few natural additional conditions. The notion of belief-independence naturally leads to a the strengthening of strategy-proofness to “robust” strategy-proofness which requires that no voter whose true preference may come from a restricted domain can benefit by submitting any unrestricted preference ordering given any unrestricted preference profile for all other voters. There are examples of strategy-proof voting rules (on a restricted domain) that are not robustly strategy-proof, but under natural additional conditions the two properties are shown to be equivalent. (shrink)

For decades, interdisciplinary research efforts have accumulated insights that diminish the significance of the classic nature versus nurture dichotomy, instead calling for a nuanced, multifactorial approach to ontogeny. Similarly, the role of genes in both phylogeny and ontogeny, once seen as rather deterministic, is now conceptualized as highly dependent on environmental factors, including behavior. Linguistic theories have, in principle, made an effort to incorporate these changing views. However, the central claim of the given paper is that this apparent compliance (...) with biological insights remains superficial. As such, considerable disconnects between linguistic theory and what is known about the biological underpinnings of complex traits persist, negatively impacting pertinent views on language acquisition, language universals and the evolution of language. Given the breadth of these fields of study, the aim of this paper is to tackle the root of the problem: It begins by sketching out linguistic nativism as conceptualized within generativism, pointing to aspects within this position that stand in conflict with the interdisciplinary literature. It will then review select areas of research in a succinct manner in order to substantiate the criticism and characterize the counterposition as found within the biological sciences. The paper will culminate in addressing these disconnects on conceptual grounds, i.e. invoking the term emergence as employed in neuroscience as a possible means to reconcile those biological insights with linguistic nativism. (shrink)

Professor Michael Edgeworth McIntyre is an eminent scientist who has also had a part-time career as a musician. From a lifetime's thinking, he offers this extraordinary synthesis exposing the deepest connections between science, music, and mathematics, while avoiding equations and technical jargon. He begins with perception psychology and the dichotomization instinct and then takes us through biological evolution, human language, and acausality illusions all the way to the climate crisis and the weaponization of the social media, and beyond that (...) into the deepest parts of theoretical physics - demonstrating our unconscious mathematical abilities. He also has an important message of hope for the future. Contrary to popular belief, biological evolution has given us not only the nastiest, but also the most compassionate and cooperative parts of human nature. This insight comes from recognizing that biological evolution is more than a simple competition between selfish genes. Rather, he suggests, in some ways it is more like turbulent fluid flow, a complex process spanning a vast range of timescales. Professor McIntyre is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) and has worked on problems as diverse as the Sun's magnetic interior, the Antarctic ozone hole, jet streams in the atmosphere, and the psychophysics of violin sound. He has long been interested in how different branches of science can better communicate with each other and with the public, harnessing aspects of neuroscience and psychology that point toward the deep 'lucidity principles' that underlie skilful communication. (shrink)

This chapter reconstructs Adorno's practices of listening to music through the prism of two categories: exact listening and inconsistent listening. Exact listening depends upon a distinct kind of intellectual confidence about the capacity for an intellectual to listen to and comprehend the forms of a given work. This practice entails his well‐known writings on the resistant powers of fractured forms in late Beethoven and the Second Viennese School; as well as his critiques of Wagner, Stravinsky, jazz, popular music, and (...) the culture industry. By contrast, inconsistent listening, found particularly in Adorno's writings on Mahler and Berg, acknowledges a significant measure of uncertainty as to what forms constitute a locus of social resistance. In these writings, Adorno shows readers more explicitly what it means to grapple with music's ineffability through his use of parataxis, extra‐musical hallucinations, and contradictory or paradoxical assertions. The chapter frames its reconstruction of Adorno's dual listening practices by delineating the philosophical importance of music's ineffability for Adorno's negative conception of utopian truth‐content. (shrink)

In this essay I defend the following two claims: first, given appropriate circumstances, neither voluntary active euthanasia, nor assisting someone to commit suicide, is in any way morally wrong; secondly, there should be no laws prohibiting such actions, in the relevant cases. -/- The discussion is organized as follows. In the first section, I set out some preliminary concepts and distinctions. Then, in sections two and three, I offer two arguments in support of the thesis that assisted suicide and (...) voluntary active euthanasia are not morally wrong. Finally, in section four, I ask whether there is any reason for thinking that, even if, as I have argued, voluntary active euthanasia and assisted suicide are not morally wrong, they should, nevertheless, not be legally permitted, and I argue that this is not the case. (shrink)

William Rowe has argued that if there is an infinite sequence of improving worlds then an essentially perfectly good being must actualize some world in the sequence and must not actualize any world in the sequence. Since that is impossible, there exist no perfectly good beings. I show that Rowe's argument assumes that the concept of a maximally great being is incoherent. Since we are given no reason to believe that the concept of a maximally great being is incoherent (...) we have no reason to believe Rowe's Argument from Improvability is sound. (shrink)

We are material beings in a material world, but we are also beings who have experiences and feelings. How can these subjective states be just a matter of matter? To defend materialism, philosophical materialists have formulated what is sometimes called "the phenomenal-concept strategy," which holds that we possess a range of special concepts for classifying the subjective aspects of our experiences. In Consciousness Revisited, the philosopher Michael Tye, until now a proponent of the the phenomenal-concept strategy, argues that the (...) strategy is mistaken. A rejection of phenomenal concepts leaves the materialist with the task of finding some other strategy for defending materialism. Tye points to four major puzzles of consciousness that arise: How is it possible for Mary, in the famous thought experiment, to make a discovery when she leaves her black-and-white room? In what does the explanatory gap consist and how can it be bridged? How can the hard problem of consciousness be solved? How are zombies possible? Tye presents solutions to these puzzles -- solutions that relieve the pressure on the materialist created by the failure of the phenomenal-concept strategy. In doing so, he discusses and makes new proposals on a wide range of issues, including the nature of perceptual content, the conditions necessary for consciousness of a given object, the proper understanding of change blindness, the nature of phenomenal character and our awareness of it, whether we have privileged access to our own experiences, and, if we do, in what such access consists. (shrink)

Think of a secret that you're keeping from others. It shouldn't take long; behavioral scientist Michael Slepian finds that on average, we are keeping as many as thirteen secrets at any given time. His research involving more than 50,000 participants from around the globe shows that the most common secrets include: lies we've told, addiction or mental health challenges, a hidden relationship, financial struggles, and more. Our secrets can weigh heavily upon us. Yet the burden of secrecy, Slepian (...) argues, rarely stems from the work it takes to keep a secret hidden. Rather, secrets are something we must "carry" because we do so alone, without the support of others. Whether we are motivated to protect our reputation, a relationship, or a loved one's feelings, or are pursuing some personal or professional goal, one thing is clear: holding back some part of our inner world is often lonely and isolating. But it doesn't have to be. Filled with fresh insight into one of the most universal-yet least understood-aspects of human behavior, The Secret Life of Secrets sheds a fascinating new light on questions like: At what age do children develop the cognitive capacity for secrecy? Do all secrets come with the same mental load? How can we reconcile our secrets with the human desire to relate, connect, and be known? When should we confess our secrets? Who makes for the ideal confidant? And can certain types of secrets actually enhance our well-being? (shrink)

Many people seek help because they feel dragged down by a sense of inner deadness that persists in an otherwise full and meaningful life. These individuals who seem filled with emotions somehow remain untouched by even their own inner experiences. This is a deadness that persists in the midst of plenty, a deadness that can cripple their entire life or part of it. This book portrays attempts to fathom psychic deadness, but more important, it shows what is involved in enduring (...) and working with deadness on a day-to-day, session-by-session basis. Often, the therapy relationship becomes a laboratory in which varying states of deadness-aliveness can be tied to what is going on between patient and therapist, as well as in the patient's life. In many cases, according to Eigen, the emotional tone of the therapy can be the most important element. Patient and therapist work to discover what the patient is looking for, that is, the precise combination of psychic nutrients, responses, attitudes, and tones required for a given individual, or even a given moment, so that a person can begin to open, and the deadness can lift. (shrink)

This essay deals with the question of the morality of abortion and infanticide. The fundamental ethical objection traditionally advanced against these practices rests on the contention that human fetuses and infants have a right to life, and it is this claim that is the primary focus of attention here. Consequently, the basic question to be discussed is what properties a thing must possess in order to have a serious right to life. The approach involves defending, then, a basic principle specifying (...) a condition living things must satisfy to have a serious right to life, and the answer given makes it unlikely that this condition is satisfied by human fetuses and infants, though this tentative conclusion could be altered by future scientific studies of the development of the human brain. As things stand at the moment, however, it seems unlikely that developing humans acquire the physical basis of the psychological capacities on which the right to continued existence rests, and therefore unless there are other substantial objections to abortion and infanticide that undercut the above line of thought, the conclusion is that such practices are not intrinsically wrong. (shrink)

Probabilism is the view that a rational agent's credences should always be probabilistically coherent. It has been argued that Probabilism follows, given the assumption that an epistemically rational agent ought to try to have credences that represent the world as accurately as possible. The key claim in this argument is that the goal of representing the world as accurately as possible is best served by having credences that are probabilistically coherent. This essay shows that this claim is false. In (...) certain cases, the goal of having accurate credences is best served by being probabilistically incoherent. Assuming that an epistemically rational agent ought to try to have credences that are as accurate as possible, it follows that in certain cases a rational agent ought to have probabilistically incoherent credences. (shrink)

"The Communism of Thought takes as its point of departure a passage in a letter from Dionys Mascolo to Gilles Deleuze: "I have called this communism of thought in the past. And I placed it under the auspices of Hölderlin, who may have only fled thought because he was unable to live it: 'The life of the spirit between friends, the thoughts that form in the exchange of words, by writing or in person, are necessary to those who seek. Without (...) that, we are by our own hands outside thought.'"What, in light of that imperative, is a correspondence? What is given to be understood by the word, let alone the phenomenon? What constitutes a correspondence? What occasions it? On what terms and according to what conditions may one enter into that exchange "necessary," in Hölderlin's words, "to those who seek"? Pursuant to what vicissitudes may it be conducted? And what end(s) might a correspondence come to have beyond the ostensible end that, to all appearances, it (inevitably) will be said to have had?". (shrink)

Why is the American policy debate not focused more intensely on the relative merits or demerits of our current approach to drugs and of possible alternatives to it? The lack of discussion of this issue is rather striking, given that America has the most serious drug problem in the world, that alternatives to a prohibitionist approach are under serious consideration in other countries, and that the grounds for reconsidering our current approach are, I shall argue, so weighty. -/- One (...) consideration that tells against our present approach to drugs is that prohibition simply does not work. For we have, after all, been pursuing this approach in the case of heroin since the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914, and what has been the outcome? We have the worst heroin problem in the world. Moreover, our brief experiment in banning the consumption of what is undoubtedly our most harmful drug, alcohol, during Prohibition, turned out to be an utter failure. -/- A second consideration, often noted is the striking difference in our treatment of drugs such as alcohol and nicotine, on the one hand, and drugs such as marijuana, heroin, and LSD, on the other. This difference is so familiar that it may no longer seem strange. If so, it is worth asking the following question. If you were on a desert island, with a plentiful supply of both tobacco plants and opium poppies, and you knew that your son or daughter was going to wind up addicted either to nicotine or to heroin, which would you prefer? If your choice is nicotine you have chosen a drug that, according to the testimony of most heroin addicts, is the more addictive of the two drugs. In addition, given access to heroin that has not been combined with dangerous chemicals, your son or daughter could be a lifelong addict without suffering serious organ damage. But a lifelong addiction to tobacco is often, of course, a very different story. -/- In this article, then, I consider in detail perhaps the two most important reasons for reconsidering our current drug policy: first, the difficulty of providing any adequate justification for the restrictions that prohibitive laws place on people's liberty, and secondly, the enormous social and personal cost associated with a prohibitionist approach. (shrink)

Many philosophers assume that, when making moral decisions under uncertainty, we should choose the option that has the greatest expected moral value, regardless of how risky it is. But their arguments for maximizing expected moral value do not support it over rival, risk-averse approaches. In this paper, I present a novel argument for maximizing expected value: when we think about larger series of decisions that each decision is a part of, all but the most risk-averse agents would prefer that we (...) consistently choose the option with the highest expected value. To the extent that what we choose on a given occasion should be guided by the entire series of choices we prefer, then on each occasion, we should choose the option with the highest expected moral value. (shrink)

The essay is a response to an invitation to offer reflections on Richard Lennan’s recent book Tilling the Church for a panel at the annual gathering of the Karl Rahner Society. It situates the work within the distinctive spiritual and intellectual heritage shared by Karl Rahner, Pope Francis, and Lennan’s scholarly community and vocational home at Boston College, namely by reading it through an intentionally Ignatian lens. The review overlays the volume’s ecclesiological explorations with reference to the Spiritual Exercises and (...) to the contours of the current emphasis or re-emergence of the Ignatian tradition on a global stage given the last eleven years and the unique pulpit they provide via the Petrine Office. The piece argues that the adaptability and flexibility of the Ignatian heritage finds profound and lasting resonance with Lennan’s recent project and hopeful agenda. (shrink)

The “doctrine of the given” that Fales defends holds that there are certain experiences such that we can have justified beliefs about their “contents” that are not based on any other beliefs, and that the rest of our justified empirical beliefs rest on those “basic beliefs.” The features of experience basic beliefs are about are said to be “given.” Fales holds that some basic beliefs are infallible, having a kind of clarity that guarantees their truth to the believer. (...) In addition, some basic beliefs are fallible, typically due to failure to devote full attention to one’s experience. (shrink)

I argue that, given evidence of the factors that tend to distort our intuitions, ethical intuitionists should disown a wide range of common moral intuitions, and that they should typically give preference to abstract, formal intuitions over more substantive ethical intuitions. In place of the common sense morality with which intuitionism has traditionally allied, the suggested approach may lead to a highly revisionary normative ethics.

Consider the following situation. It is the first day of school, and the new third-grade students file into the classroom to be shown to their seats for the coming year. As they enter, the third-grade teacher notices one small boy who is particularly unkempt. He looks to be in desperate need of bathing, and his clothes are dirty, torn and tight-fitting. During recess, the teacher pulls aside the boy's previous teacher and asks about his wretched condition. The other teacher informs (...) her that he always looks that way, even though the boy's family is quite wealthy. The reason he appears as he does, she continues, is that the family observes an odd practice according to which the children do not receive many important things – food, clothing, bathing, even shelter – unless they specifically request them. Since the boy, like many third-graders, has little interest in bathing and clean clothes, he just never asks for them. (shrink)

Michael J. Zimmerman offers a conceptual analysis of the moral ‘ought’ that focuses on moral decision-making under uncertainty. His central case, originally presented by Frank Jackson, concerns a doctor who must choose among three treatments for a minor ailment. Her evidence suggests that drug B will partially cure her patient, that one of either drug A or C would cure him completely, but that the other drug would kill him. Accepting the intuition that the doctor ought to choose drug (...) B, Zimmerman argues that moral obligation consists in performing the action that is ‘prospectively best,’ that is ‘that which, from the moral point of view, it is most reasonable for the agent to choose’ given the evidence available to her at the time.Zimmerman defends his Prospective View of moral obligation against two main competitors in the long, first chapter of the book. According to the Objective View, a person ought to choose what is, in fact, the best option. The doctor ought to give her patient whichever drug will actually cure him. The fact that the doctor cannot know whether this is drug …. (shrink)

The concept that peope have of themselves as a 'person' is one of the most intimate notions that they hold. Yet the way in which the category of the person is conceived varies over time and space. In this volume, anthropologists, philosophers, and historians examine the notion of the person in different cultures, past and present. Taking as their starting point a lecture on the person as a category of the human mind, given by Marcel Mauss in 1938, the (...) contributors critically assess Mauss's speculation that ntions of the person, rather than being primarily philosophical or psychological, have a complex social and ideological origin. Discussing societies ranging from ancient Greece, India, and China to modern Africa and Papua New Guinea, they provide fascinating descriptions of how these different cultures define the person. But they also raise deeper theoretical issues: What is universally constant and what is culturally variable in people's thinking about the person? How can these variations be explained? Has there been a general progressive development toward the modern Western view of the person? What is distinctive about this? How do one's notions of the person inform one's ability to comprehend alternative formulations? These questions are of compelling interest for a wide range of anthropologists, philosophers, historians, psychologists, sociologists, orientalists, and classicists. The book will appeal to any reader concerned with understanding one of the most fundamental aspects of human existence. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars's "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" begins with an argument against sense-datum epistemology. There is some question about the validity of this attack, stemming in part from the assumption that Sellars is concerned with epistemic foundationalism. This paper recontextualizes Sellars's argument in two ways: by showing how the argument of EPM relates to Sellars's 1940s work, which does not concern foundationalism at all; and by considering the view of H.H. Price, Sellars's teacher at Oxford and the only classical (...) datum theorist to receive substantive comment in EPM. Timm Triplett has claimed that Sellars's discussion simply begs the question against Price, but this depends on the mistaken assumption that Sellars's concern is with foundationalism. On the contrary, Sellars's argument concerns the assumption that the innate capacity for sensory experience counts as "thinking in presence" in the way needed for empiricist accounts of content acquisition. Price's distinction between noticing universals and being aware of them encapsulates the tensions empiricists face here. (shrink)

This book introduces a new approach to the issue of radical scientific revolutions, or "paradigm-shifts," given prominence in the work of Thomas Kuhn. The book articulates a dynamical and historicized version of the conception of scientific a priori principles first developed by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. This approach defends the Enlightenment ideal of scientific objectivity and universality while simultaneously doing justice to the revolutionary changes within the sciences that have since undermined Kant's original defense of this ideal. Through a (...) modified Kantian approach to epistemology and philosophy of science, this book opposes both Quinean naturalistic holism and the post-Kuhnian conceptual relativism that has dominated recent literature in science studies. Focussing on the development of "scientific philosophy" from Kant to Rudolf Carnap, along with the parallel developments taking place in the sciences during the same period, the author articulates a new dynamical conception of relativized a priori principles. This idea applied within the physical sciences aims to show that rational intersubjective consensus is intricately preserved across radical scientific revolutions or "paradigm-shifts and how this is achieved. (shrink)

This book introduces a new approach to the issue of radical scientific revolutions, or "paradigm-shifts," given prominence in the work of Thomas Kuhn. The book articulates a dynamical and historicized version of the conception of scientific a priori principles first developed by the philosopher Immanuel Kant. This approach defends the Enlightenment ideal of scientific objectivity and universality while simultaneously doing justice to the revolutionary changes within the sciences that have since undermined Kant's original defense of this ideal. Through a (...) modified Kantian approach to epistemology and philosophy of science, this book opposes both Quinean naturalistic holism and the post-Kuhnian conceptual relativism that has dominated recent literature in science studies. Focussing on the development of "scientific philosophy" from Kant to Rudolf Carnap, along with the parallel developments taking place in the sciences during the same period, the author articulates a new dynamical conception of relativized a priori principles. This idea applied within the physical sciences aims to show that rational intersubjective consensus is intricately preserved across radical scientific revolutions or "paradigm-shifts and how this is achieved. (shrink)

One recurrent objection to the idea that the right kind of reasons for or against an attitude are object-given reasons for or against that attitude is that object-given reasons for or against belief and disbelief are incapable of explaining certain features of epistemic normativity. Prohibitive balancing, the behaviour of bare statistical evidence, information about future or easily available evidence, pragmatic and moral encroachment, as well as higher-order defeaters, are all said to be inexplicable in terms of those object- (...) class='Hi'>given reasons. In this paper, I provide a rebuttal to all these challenges by drawing attention to the object-given reasons for and against the third doxastic state, namely the suspension of judgement. First, I introduce an original picture of how suspension relates to belief and disbelief – as ways of being decided – which yields a novel weighing model of the corresponding reasons. Second, I demonstrate that this new take on doxastic deliberation can accommodate all five features of epistemic normativity. Finally, I extend the weighing model to cover practical deliberation and the suspension of intentions. The resulting theory provides an explanation of why epistemic and practical normativity differ in certain respects in terms of a significant difference between doxastic and conative suspension. (shrink)

Although our subjective impression is of a richly detailed visual world, numerous empirical results suggest that the amount of visual information observers can perceive and remember at any given moment is limited. How can our subjective impressions be reconciled with these objective observations? Here, we answer this question by arguing that, although we see more than the handful of objects, claimed by prominent models of visual attention and working memory, we still see far less than we think we do. (...) Taken together, we argue that these considerations resolve the apparent conflict between our subjective impressions and empirical data on visual capacity, while also illuminating the nature of the representations underlying perceptual experience. (shrink)

The thesis that there is a troublesome explanatory gap between the phenomenal aspects of experiences and the underlying physical and functional states is given a number of different interpretations. It is shown that, on each of these interpretations, the thesis is false. In supposing otherwise, philosophers have fallen prey to a cognitive illusion, induced largely by a failure to recognize the special character of phenomenal concepts.

The generality problem is widely considered to be a devastating objection to reliabilist theories of justification. My goal in this paper is to argue that a version of the generality problem applies to all plausible theories of justification. Assume that any plausible theory must allow for the possibility of reflective justification—S's belief, B, is justified on the basis of S's knowledge that she arrived at B as a result of a highly (but not perfectly) reliable way of reasoning, R. The (...) generality problem applies to all cases of reflective justification: Given that is the product of a process-token that is an instance of indefinitely many belief-forming process-types (or BFPTs), why is the reliability of R, rather than the reliability of one of the indefinitely many other BFPTs, relevant to B's justificatory status? This form of the generality problem is restricted because it applies only to cases of reflective justification. But unless it is solved, the generality problem haunts all plausible theories of justification, not just reliabilist ones. (shrink)

The question "Why?" that is deployed in these exchanges evidently bears the "special sense" Elizabeth Anscombe has linked to the concepts of intention and of a reason for action; it is the sort of question "Why?" that asks for what Donald Davidson later called a "rationalization".2 The special character of what is given, in each response, as formulating a reason ── a description, namely, of the agent as actually doing something, and, moreover, as..

Skeptical hypotheses such as the brain-in-a-vat hypothesis provide extremely poor explanations for our sensory experiences. Because these scenarios accommodate virtually any possible set of evidence, the probability of any given set of evidence on the skeptical scenario is near zero; hence, on Bayesian grounds, the scenario is not well supported by the evidence. By contrast, serious theories make reasonably specific predictions about the evidence and are then well supported when these predictions are satisfied.

Objects have dispositions. As Nelson Goodman put it, “a thing is full of threats and promises”. But sometimes those threats go unfulfilled, and the promises unkept. Sometimes the dispositions of objects fail to manifest themselves, even when their conditions of manifestation obtain. Pieces of wood, disposed to burn when heated, do not burn when heated in a vacuum chamber. And pastries, disposed to go bad when left lying around too long, won’t do so if coated with lacquer and put on (...) display in a baker ’s window. Any account of what a disposition is, or of what it takes for an object to have a disposition, should be compatible with these commonplace observations. To date, I believe, no adequate account of dispositions has been given, and the aim of this paper is to defend one. (shrink)

Frequent public uproar over forms of data science that rely on information about people demonstrates the challenges of defining and demonstrating trustworthy digital data research practices. This paper reviews problems of trustworthiness in what we term pervasive data research: scholarship that relies on the rich information generated about people through digital interaction. We highlight the entwined problems of participant unawareness of such research and the relationship of pervasive data research to corporate datafication and surveillance. We suggest a way forward by (...) drawing from the history of a different methodological approach in which researchers have struggled with trustworthy practice: ethnography. To grapple with the colonial legacy of their methods, ethnographers have developed analytic lenses and researcher practices that foreground relations of awareness and power. These lenses are inspiring but also challenging for pervasive data research, given the flattening of contexts inherent in digital data collection. We propose ways that pervasive data researchers can incorporate reflection on awareness and power within their research to support the development of trustworthy data science. (shrink)

This book concentrates on research done during the last twenty years on the philosophy of quantum mechanics. In particular, the author focuses on three major issues: whether quantum mechanics is an incomplete theory, whether it is non-local, and whether it can be interpreted realistically. Much of the book is concerned with distinguishing various senses in which these questions can be taken, and assessing the bewildering variety of answers philosophers and physicists have given up to now. The book is self-contained (...) in that it presents the necessary parts of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics and also covers other interpretative topics, such as the problem of measurement and the uncertainty relations. A considerable portion of the book is based on original arguments presented by the author in lectures and research papers over the past ten years. However, this material is integrated with a broad coverage of most of the recent research in the field, so as to provide a balanced introduction to the whole subject. (shrink)