While federal action on climate change is stalled, regional organizing strategies are proving effective. Leveraging regional economic opportunities available through climate protection offers high odds to gain support from constituencies that have raised economic objections to global warming abatement. An emerging clean energy technology revolution offers opportunities to turn them into allies. The clean energy revolution is a branch of the high tech potentially attractive to investors. Clean energy generation and end-use efficiency represent a $3.5 trillion market over the coming (...) 20 years, even with no new public priority. Clean energy production entails use of a wider landscape than fossil fuels, offering rural development opportunities. Climate Solutions, an advocacy group, has jointly issued a clean energy market and policy analysis with major Northwest utilities and economic development agencies. Climate Solutions is also organizing Northwest rural constituencies to take full advantage of the clean energy revolution. (shrink)

Heightened political polarization challenges civic educators seeking to prepare youth as citizens who can navigate affective boundaries. Current approaches to civic education do not yet account for the emotional basis of citizenship. This paper presents an argument for critical affective literacy in civic education classrooms. Drawing from concepts and theories in critical emotion studies, affective citizenship, and agonistic political theory, critical affective civic literacy challenges the rationalistic bent of civic education, and offers instructional strategies for educating the political emotions of (...) students. The voices of late-arrival migrant youth enacting affective citizenship are featured in order to help illuminate the contributions of critical affective literacy to social studies research and practice. (shrink)

Roughly, animalism is the doctrine that each of us is identical with an organism. This paper explains and defends a hylemorphic version of animalism. I show how hylemorphic animalism handles standard objections to animalism in compelling ways. I also show what the costs of endorsing hylemorphic animalism are. The paper's contention is that despite the costs, the view is worth taking seriously.

Stokes’ earlier chapter in this volume argued that, given the role ethical considerations play in our judgments of what to believe, ethical factors will put limits on the extent to which we can embrace particularism about conspiracy theories. However, that will only be the case if there are ethical problems with conspiracy theory as a practice (rather than simply as a formal class of explanation). Utilising the Lakatosian framework for analysing conspiracy theories developed by Steve Clarke, this paper identifies a (...) morally costly feature of conspiracy theorizing: its tendency to generate and expand new accusations purely to defend the core theory from countervailing evidence. Such 'auxiliary accusations' violate important norms around justified accusation, which supplies a defeasible, but important, reason to be reluctant to take part in the practice of conspiracy theorizing. (shrink)

Aristotelian substance theory tells us that substances have structures (read: forms) as proper parts. This claim has recently been defended by Kathrin Koslicki who dubbed it the ‘Neo-Aristotelian Thesis.’ Strangely, Aristotelianism has not yet been universally embraced by philosophers – partly because some of its claims, such as the Neo-Aristotelian Thesis – are viewed by some as counterintuitive at best. In this paper, I argue for Aristotelianism by showing its philosophical usefulness: specifically, I put it to use in saving the (...) metaphysical doctrine of endurantism and some central mereological doctrines (such as Transitivity) from recent attacks. This utility gives us reason to endorse Aristotelianism. Along the way, I defend Koslicki's argument for the Neo-Aristotelian Thesis from a recent criticism, thus helping provide still more reason to endorse Aristotelianism: namely, Koslicki's vindicated argument. (shrink)

Central to Fischer and Ravizza's theory of moral responsibility is the concept of guidance control, which involves two conditions: (1) moderate reasons-responsiveness, and (2) mechanism ownership. We raise a worry for Fischer and Ravizza's account of (1). If an agent acts contrary to reasons which he could not recognize, this should lead us to conclude that he is not morally responsible for his behaviour; but according to Fischer and Ravizza's account, he satisfies the conditions for guidance control and is therefore (...) morally responsible. We consider ways in which the account of guidance control might be mended. (shrink)

Tschacher and Haken have recently applied a systems-based approach to modeling psychotherapy process in terms of potentially beneficial tendencies toward deterministic as well as chaotic forms of change in the client’s behavioral, cognitive and affective experience during the course of therapy. A chaotic change process refers to a greater exploration of the states that a client can be in, and it may have a potential positive role to play in their development. A distinction is made between on the one hand, (...) specific instances of instability which are due to techniques employed by the therapist, and on the other, a more general instability which is due to the therapeutic relationship, and a key, necessary result of a successful therapeutic alliance. Drawing on Friston’s systems-based model of free energy minimization and predictive coding, it is proposed here that the increase in the instability of a client’s functioning due to therapy can be conceptualized as a reduction in the precisions with which the client’s prior beliefs about themselves and their world, are held. It is shown how a good therapeutic alliance results in the emergence of a new hierarchical level in the client’s generative model of themselves and their relationship with the world. The emergence of this new level of functioning permits the reduction of the precisions of the client’s priors, which allows the client to ‘open up’: to experience thoughts, emotions and experiences they did not have before. It is proposed that this process is a necessary precursor to change due to psychotherapy. A good consilience can be found between this approach to understanding the role of the therapeutic alliance, and the role of epistemic trust in psychotherapy as described by Fonagy and Allison. It is suggested that beneficial forms of instability in clients are an underappreciated influence on psychotherapy process, and thoughts about the implications, as well as situations in which instability may not be beneficial for therapy, are considered. (shrink)

Kant’s claims about supersensible objects, and his account of the epistemic status of such claims, remain poorly understood, to the detriment of our understanding of Kant’s metaphysical and epistemological system. In the Critique of Practical Reason, and again in the Critique of Judgment, Kant claims that we have practical cognition (Erkenntnis) and knowledge (Wissen) of the moral law and of our supersensible freedom; that this cognition and knowledge cohere with, yet go beyond the limits of, our theoretical cognition; and that (...) this knowledge grounds rational belief (Vernunftglaube) in the existence of God, the immortality of our soul, and the real possibility of the “highest good.” This essay untangles some of these claims about practical cognition, practical knowledge, and practical belief and their relation to Kant’s account of theoretical cognition and theoretical knowledge. There is a core conception of cognition and knowledge underlying the accounts of theoretical cognition and practical cognition, which allows for a principled distinction between cases of practical knowledge and practical belief. Kant’s doctrine of the “fact of reason” turns out to be crucial to his claims about legitimacy of and distinction between the two forms of practical cognition, one which constitutes knowledge and another which cannot. (shrink)

The subject matter of this essay is a certain understanding of the value of equality which I will call ‘relational egalitarianism’ – a view which locates the value of equality not in distributions but in social and political relationships. This is a suitable topic for a contribution to a volume based on themes from the work of G.A. Cohen for two, somewhat contradictory, reasons.

This paper develops a novel, neo-republican account of just state surveillance in the information age. The goal of state surveillance should be to avoid and prevent domination, both public and private. In light of that conception of justice, the paper makes three substantive points. First, it argues that modern state surveillance based upon information technology and predicated upon a close partnership with the tech sector gives the state significant power and represents a serious potential source of domination. Second, it argues (...) that, nonetheless, state surveillance can serve legitimate republican ends and so unilateral and private technological attempts to block it may be wrongful. Third, it argues that, despite the serious normative failings of current institutions, state surveillance can be justly regulated and made accountable through a legal liability regime that incentivizes tech company intermediaries to ally with civil society groups in order to safeguard the privacy rights of potential subjects of state surveillance. (shrink)

This book explores how the creations of great authors result from the same operations as our everyday counterfactual and hypothetical imaginations, which cognitive scientists refer to as 'simulations'. Drawing on detailed literary analyses as well as recent research in neuroscience and related fields, Patrick Colm Hogan develops a rigorous theory of the principles governing simulation that goes beyond any existing framework. He examines the functions and mechanisms of narrative imagination, with particular attention to the role of theory of mind, (...) and relates this analysis to narrative universals. In the course of this theoretical discussion, Hogan explores works by Austen, Faulkner, Shakespeare, Racine, Brecht, Kafka and Calvino. He pays particular attention to the principles and parameters defining an author's narrative idiolect, examining the cognitive and emotional continuities that span an individual author's body of work. (shrink)

Rawls’s difference principle and the position dubbed ‘luck egalitarianism’ are often viewed as competing theories of distributive justice. However, recent work has emphasised that Rawlsians and luck egalitarians are working with different understandings of the concept of justice, and thus not only propose different theories, but different theories of different things. Once they are no longer seen in direct competition, there are some questions to be asked about whether these two theories can be consistently endorsed alongside one another. In this (...) essay, I (begin to) investigate whether Rawls’s theory (or elements of it) and (some form of) luck egalitarianism can be consistently endorsed. -/- I begin by outlining the main aspects of Rawls’s theory and luck egalitarianism, showing them to be different kinds of theory and therefore not in direct competition. I then propose an understanding of how these ideas came to be seen to be in direct competition. Finally, I outline five different ways in which one might consistently be (some kind of) a luck egalitarian and (some kind of) a Rawlsian, and try to say something about what is to be said for and against each of these ways of combining the theories. (shrink)

Literature provides us with otherwise unavailable insights into the ways emotions are produced, experienced and enacted in human social life. It is particularly valuable because it deepens our comprehension of the mutual relations between emotional response and ethical judgment. These are the central claims of Hogan's study, which carefully examines a range of highly esteemed literary works in the context of current neurobiological, psychological, sociological and other empirical research. In this work, he explains the value of literary study for a (...) cognitive science of emotion and outlines the emotional organization of the human mind. He explores the emotions of romantic love, grief, mirth, guilt, shame, jealousy, attachment, compassion and pity - in each case drawing on one work by Shakespeare and one or more works by writers from different historical periods or different cultural backgrounds, such as the eleventh-century Chinese poet Li Ch'ing-Chao and the contemporary Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka. (shrink)

Awareness that moral beliefs and practices have changed across time threatens our confidence in our current moral beliefs: if past moral beliefs turned out to be wrong, how can we be sure ours aren't likewise mistaken? In this paper, I set up four desiderata for a successful theory of moral progress: it must allow us to judge that progress has occurred, avoid the image of increasing correspondence towards ahistorical truthmakers, allow for revision in belief, and yet not be disobligating. Rorty's (...) pragmatist account of moral progress delivers on the first three, but at the cost of failing to meet the fourth: it drains moral beliefs of their categorical force. I then outline K.E. Løgstrup’s understanding of the relation between the ‘ethical demand’ and changing, socially mediated norms. While Løgstrup does posit an unchanging ground of normativity - the "ethical demand" to act for the sake of the other whose welfare is in our hands – he also thinks that changing social norms are an indispensable part of ethical life. I argue that Løgstrup's discussion of the ‘refraction’ of the ethical demand through changing social norms provides resources for an account of moral progress that fulfils these four desiderata. (shrink)

This book is an introduction, entirely by example, to the possibilities of using computer models as tools in phosophical research in general and in philosophical logic in particular. Topics include chaos, fractals, and the semantics of paradox; epistemic dynamics; fractal images of formal systems; the evolution of generosity; real-valued game theory; and computation and undecidability in the spatialized Prisoner's Dilemma.

The individualist nature of much contemporary just war theory means that we often discuss cases with single attackers. But even if war is best understood in this individualist way, in war combatants often have to make decisions about how to distribute harms among a plurality of aggressors: they must decide whom and how many to harm, and how much to harm them. In this paper, I look at simultaneous multiple aggressor cases in which more than one distribution of harm among (...) aggressors is available. I show how such cases pose deep questions concerning the nature, role, and scope of the necessity principle, and its relationship to both liability and narrow proportionality. I argue that a hitherto unrecognised measure – ‘narrow proportionality shortfall’ – and its distribution is relevant in choosing how to distribute harms across aggressors. I then extend this analysis to show how this may help us with a puzzle concerning sequential attacks. (shrink)

McCarthy, Homan, and Rozier’s article seeks to bridge a gap between theological and secular bioethics. It should be noted that the “theological” emphasis in the a...

This paper analyzes the metaphysical system developed in Cheyne’s Philosophical Principles of Religion. Cheyne was an early proponent of Newtonianism and tackled several philosophical questions raised by Newton’s work. The most pressing of these concerned the causal origin of gravitational attraction. Cheyne rejected the occasionalist explanations offered by several of his contemporaries in favor of a model on which God delegated special causal powers to bodies. Additionally, he developed an innovative approach to divine conservation. This allowed him to argue that (...) Newton’s findings provided evidence for God’s existence and providence without the need for continuous divine intervention in the universe. (shrink)

An e-mail discussion can be rendered into print in several ways. Rather than trying to imitate a genuine conversation, this is a personal essay containing comments and replies by the other contributors. Most of the substantial points made in the e-mail discussion are contained here, although not always in the order they happened.

In this paper, I offer a theory of substance. There are three steps in the argument. First, I present and explain my definition of substance. Second, I argue that the definition yields the right results: that is, my definition rules that (among other things) events and universals, privations and piles of trash, are not substances, but at least some ordinary physical objects are. Third, I defend the definition by rebutting two obvious objections to it.

Collaboration between the arts and health sectors is gaining momentum. Artists are contributing significantly to public health efforts such as vaccine confidence campaigns. Artists and the arts are well positioned to contribute to the social conditions needed to build trust in the health sector. Health professionals, organizations, and institutions should recognize not only the power that can be derived from the insights, artefacts, and expertise of artists and the arts to create the conditions that make trust possible. The health sector (...) must also recognize that, while it can gain much from partnership with artists, artists risk much—namely, the public's trust—when they are in such partnerships. This essay unpacks these claims and considers the care and ethical considerations that must be brought to these partnerships to yield constructive pathways for ethical collaboration as well as for both establishing public trust and continuing to hold the health care profession accountable for becoming more trustworthy. (shrink)

This paper offers a new approach to an old debate about superaddition in Locke. Did Locke claim that some objects have powers that are unrelated to their natures or real essences? The question has split commentators. Some (Wilson, Stuart, Langton) claim the answer is yes and others (Ayers, Downing, Ott) claim the answer is no. This paper argues that both of these positions may be mistaken. I show that Locke embraced a robust epistemic humility. This epistemic humility includes ignorance of (...) the real essences of bodies, of the causal processes underlying the production of natural phenomena, and of God’s method of creation. I show how this epistemic humility offers strong support for an agnostic response to the question of superaddition. Locke did not intend to claim that bodies either do or do not have properties unrelated to their real essences. Instead, his primary goal in discussing the topic was to emphasize the strict limits to human knowledge. (shrink)

The determination of individual moral status is a central factor in the ethical evaluation of controversial practices such as elective abortion, human embryo-destructive research, and the care of the severely disabled and those in persistent vegetative states. A review of recent work on Kant reveals the need for a careful examination of the content of Kant ’s biological and psychological theories and their relation to his views about moral status. Such an examination, in conjunction with Kant ’s practical-metaphysical analysis of (...) the origins of freedom, reveals Kant ’s principled basis for his contention that all human beings possess moral status. (shrink)

In his book Democratic Authority, David Estlund puts forward a case for democracy, which he labels epistemic proceduralism, that relies on democracy's ability to produce good – that is, substantively just – results. Alongside this case for democracy Estlund attacks what he labels ‘utopophobia’, an aversion to idealistic political theory. In this article I make two points. The first is a general point about what the correct level of ‘idealisation’ is in political theory. Various debates are emerging on this question (...) and, to the extent that they are focused on ‘political theory’ as a whole, I argue, they are flawed. This is because there are different kinds of political concept, and they require different kinds of ideal. My second point is about democracy in particular. If we understand democracy as Estlund does, then we should see it as a problem-solving concept – the problem being that we need coercive institutions and rules, but we do not know what justice requires. As democracy is a response to a problem, we should not allow our theories of it, even at the ideal level, to be too idealised – they must be embedded in the nature of the problem they are to solve, and the beings that have it. (shrink)

My wife and I and our three children may stand in various relations: being a family, being a basketball team, and so on. I show that Frege's doctrine of existence, when coupled with this simple point, easily solves the problem of material constitution and blocks the overdetermination argument for eliminativism. It does all this work while providing a plausible and clear reductionistic account of material objects. These seem to be very good reasons for accepting Frege's doctrine of existence.

The target article by Wiggins and Wilbanks (2019) reports on the history and typology of the models of citizen science emerging in health and biomedical research with the rapid dispersion and repur...

Marcel Gauchet argues that whatever impulse previously gave rise to religion is now fully translated by the values of representative politics, empirical method, future orientation and productivity as an end in itself. The good and productive citizen replaces the dutiful Christian. His foundational thesis is twofold: (a) religion is the surrender of human autonomy to a power other than human beings, issuing in a hierarchical social structure thought to be given by nature; and (b), paradoxically, religion has at the same (...) time been the impulse to move away from religion. Christianity in particular is “the religion to exit from religion”, propelling society, particularly in the West, toward a disenchanted world-view, one that is non-supernaturalistic and implies non-hierarchical social arrangements. In recounting his argument, I conclude by agreeing with (b) but disagreeing with (a). I suggest that what Gauchet terms “religion” is better thought of in terms of Sartre’s concept of “bad faith”. In this project, Sartre’s – and Gauchet’s – concept of human freedom in terms of the power of “refusal” may well be complemented by the understanding of the person as empowered through interpersonal solidarity. I argue that this supplies a corrective to Gauchet’s interpretation of Christianity, and, further, is a reason to move away from his liberal idea of the state as neutral towards religions. As the secular and humanist re-articulation of religious traditions, the democratic state of its nature challenges rival interpretations of those traditions, whether fundamentalist or reductionist. (shrink)

Abstract. We argue that all human beings have a special type of dignity which is the basis for (1) the obligation all of us have not to kill them, (2) the obligation to take their well-being into account when we act, and (3) even the obligation to treat them as we would have them treat us, and indeed, that all human beings are equal in fundamental dignity. We give reasons to oppose the position that only some human beings, because of (...) their possession of certain characteristics in addition to their humanity (for example, an immediately exercisable capacity for self-consciousness, or for rational deliberation), have full moral worth. What distinguishes human beings from other animals, what makes human beings persons rather than things, is their rational nature, and human beings are rational creatures by virtue of possessing natural capacities for conceptual thought, deliberation, and free choice, that is, the natural capacity to shape their own lives. (shrink)

Despite its philosophical interest, Susanna Newcome’s Enquiry Into the Evidence of the Christian Religion (1728, revised 1732) has received little attention from commentators. This paper seeks to redress this oversight by offering a reconstruction of Newcome’s innovative argument for God’s existence. Newcome employs a cosmological argument that differs from Thomist and kalām version of the argument. Specifically, Newcome challenges that idea that the causal chains observed in nature can exist independently. She does this through an appeal to findings from Newtonian (...) natural philosophy that suggest that the universe has entropic tendencies. This suggests that the continued operations of nature are dependent on a cause external to the universe. Newcome identifies this external cause with God. Various strengths and weaknesses of Newcome’s argument are discussed and an attempt is made to situate the argument within her broader epistemic framework and the larger context of Newtonian physico-theology. The paper also explores what is known of Newcome’s biography and intellectual milieu. (shrink)

Substructural pluralism about the meaning of logical connectives is best understood as the view that natural language connectives have all (and only) the properties conferred by classical logic, but that particular occurrences of these connectives cannot simultaneously exhibit all these properties. This is just a more sophisticated way of saying that while natural language connectives are ambiguous, they are not so in the way classical logic intends them to be. Since this view is usually framed as a means to resolve (...) paradoxes, little attention is paid to the logical properties of the ambiguous connectives themselves. The present paper sets out to fill this gap. First, I argue that substructural logicians should care about these connectives; next, I describe a consequence relation between a set of ambiguous premises and an ambiguous conclusion, and review the logical properties of ambiguous connectives; and finally, I highlight how ambiguous connectives can explain our intuitions about logical rivalry. (shrink)

One hundred years of French social theory : from structuralism to pragmatism -- The biological metaphor : functionalism and neo-functionalism -- The enigma of everyday life : symbolic interactionism, the dramaturgical approach and ethnomethodology -- The invasion of economic man : from rational choice theory to the new institutionalism -- Sociology meets history : Giddens's theory of modernity -- The history and the present : Foucault's archaeology and genealogy -- The spread of reason : Habermas's critical theory and beyond -- (...) A brave new world? : the empirical turn in social theory -- Conclusion : social theory for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

__The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations_ first edition was winner of the ISA-Northeast’s Yale H. Ferguson Award, and the ISA Theory Section’s Best Book of the Year award._ _The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations_ provides an introduction to the philosophy of science issues and their implications for the study of global politics. The author draws attention to the problems caused by the misleading notion of a single unified scientific method, and proposes a framework that clarifies the variety of (...) ways that IR scholars establish the authority and validity of their empirical claims. Jackson connects philosophical considerations with concrete issues of research design within neopositivist, critical realist, analyticist, and reflexive approaches to the study of world politics. Envisioning a pluralist science for a global IR field, this volume organizes the significant differences between methodological stances so as to promote internal consistency, public discussion, and worldly insight as the hallmarks of any scientific study of world politics. In this second edition, Jackson has centralised the philosophical history of the ‘science question’ into a single chapter, providing a clearer picture of the connections between contemporary concerns about the status of knowledge and classic philosophical debates about the relationship between human beings and the world they inhabit. The central chapters feature more detailed and pedagogically useful illustrations of the methodological positions discussed, making the book even better suited to clarify the philosophical distinctions with respect to which a scientific researcher must locate herself. The second edition will continue to be essential reading for all students and scholars of International Relations, Political Science and Philosophy of Science. (shrink)

Soren Kierkegaard is remembered chiefly in connection with the development of existentialist philosophy in this century, but that view is misleading. In a short and unhappy life he wrote many books and articles on themes that were literary, satirical, religious and psychological, but the diversity and idiosyncratic style of his writing have contributed to a misunderstanding of his ideas. In this book, the only introduction to the full range of Kierkegaard's thought, Patrick Gardiner demonstrates how Kierkegaard developed his ideas (...) and examines his thoughts in light of the doctrines on society that his contemporaries Marx and Feuerbach were creating. Finally he assesses how original and how important Kierkegaard's ideas were and how profoundly they have influenced modern ways of thinking. (shrink)