Why equality cannot be conditional on a shared human “nature” but has to be for all For centuries, ringing declarations about all men being created equal appealed to a shared human nature as the reason to consider ourselves equals. But appeals to natural equality invited gradations of natural difference, and the ambiguity at the heart of “nature” enabled generations to write of people as equal by nature while barely noticing the exclusion of those marked as inferior by their gender, race, (...) or class. Despite what we commonly tell ourselves, these exclusions and gradations continue today. In Unconditional Equals, political philosopher Anne Phillips challenges attempts to justify equality by reference to a shared human nature, arguing that justification turns into conditions and ends up as exclusion. Rejecting the logic of justification, she calls instead for a genuinely unconditional equality. Drawing on political, feminist, and postcolonial theory, Unconditional Equals argues that we should understand equality not as something grounded in shared characteristics but as something people enact when they refuse to be considered inferiors. At a time when the supposedly shared belief in human equality is so patently not shared, the book makes a powerful case for seeing equality as a commitment we make to ourselves and others, and a claim we make on others when they deny us our status as equals. (shrink)

Algorithms wield increasing control over our lives—over which jobs we get, whether we're granted loans, what information we're exposed to online, and so on. Algorithms can, and often do, wield their power in a biased way, and much work has been devoted to algorithmic bias. In contrast, algorithmic neutrality has gone largely neglected. I investigate three questions about algorithmic neutrality: What is it? Is it possible? And when we have it in mind, what can we learn about algorithmic bias?

It follows from Humean principles of plenitude, I argue, that island universes are possible: physical reality might have 'absolutely isolated' parts. This makes trouble for Lewis's modal realism; but the realist has a way out. First, accept absolute actuality, which is defensible, I argue, on independent grounds. Second, revise the standard analysis of modality: modal operators are 'plural', not 'individual', quantifiers over possible worlds. This solves the problem of island universes and confers three additional benefits: an 'unqualified' principle of compossibility (...) can be accepted; the possibility of nothing can be accommodated; and the identity of indiscernible worlds can be decisively refuted. (shrink)

Introduction -- Sidgwick's metaethics -- Sidgwick's moral epistemology -- Utilitarianism versus dogmatic intuitionism -- Utilitarianism versus egoism.

Tradition has it that, although we experience darkness, we can neither hear nor hallucinate silence. At most, we hear that it is silent, in virtue of lacking auditory experience. This cognitive view is at odds with our ordinary thought and talk. Yet it is not easy to vouchsafe the perception of silence: Sorensen‘s recent account entails the implausible claim that the permanently and profoundly deaf are perpetually hallucinating silence. To better defend the view that we can genuinely hear and hallucinate (...) silence, we must reject the austere picture of conscious experience which underpins the cognitive theory. According to that picture, conscious experience is a simple relation between subjects and objects. In the absence of an object, there is no relation, and so no experience. By enriching this picture, room can be found for the experience of silence. I explore this idea in two phases. First, I defend the thought that we can hear and hallucinate certain forms of silence, such as pauses, in virtue of experiencing contrastive sounds. Second, I draw on Moore‘s analysis of sensation to suggest that simply experiencing silence is a special form of objectless consciousness. I offer two ways of fleshing out this idea. According to the first, auditory experience possesses a temporal field within which the absence of sounds can be perceived. According to the second, purely Moorean account, it is our capacity to listen in the absence of sounds that underlies the phenomenon of experiencing silence. (shrink)

This volume offers authoritative discussions of all aspects of Epicurus's philosophy and then traces out some of its most important subsequent influences throughout the Western intellectual tradition. Such a detailed and comprehensive study of Epicureanism is especially timely given the tremendous current revival of interest in Epicurus and his rivals, the Stoics. The thirty-one contributions in this volume offer an unmatched resource for all those wishing to deepen their knowledge of Epicurus' powerful arguments about happiness, death, and the nature of (...) the material world and our place in it. At the same time, his arguments are carefully placed in the context of ancient and subsequent disputes, thus offering readers the opportunity of measuring Epicurean arguments against a wide range of opponents--from Platonists, Aristotelians and Stoics, to Hegel and Nietzsche, and finally on to such important contemporary philosophers as Thomas Nagel and Bernard Williams. (shrink)

What kinds of contributions can sociologists make to debates about ethics? What makes sociological investigation of morality and ethical issues distinct from philosophical concerns? Is there a place for a separate subfield within the discipline of sociology that deals specifically with questions of ethics and morality? This book places these questions on the sociological agenda. The first part of the book addresses the 'ethical turn' in sociology, and includes chapters on defining ethics and morality, lay understandings of ethics, sociological accounts (...) of moral life, and the relation of sociology to bioethics. These chapters examine alternative conceptions to mainstream discussions regarding embodiment and ethics. The book provides insight into both recent debates in the humanities and social sciences about the circulation and transfer of bodily fluids, tissues, and organs, and the gift-exchange, reciprocity practices, and institutions that make these body economies possible. (shrink)

According to the Desiderative Lockean Thesis, there are necessary and sufficient conditions, stated in the terms of decision theory, for when one is truly said to want. What one is truly said to want, it turns out, varies remarkably by context—and to an underappreciated degree. To explain this context-sensitivity—and closure properties of wanting—I advance a Desiderative Lockean view that is distinctive in having two context-sensitive parameters.

The authors explore the changing dynamics of gendered familial caregiving in urban China within the context of economic reforms and the continued cultural influence of xiao. Data collected in China through interviews with 110 familial caregivers were used to examine cultural and structural influences on the caregiving behavior of adult children. Results from multiple regression analyses provide evidence of a gendered division of parental care tasks, a decline in the patrilocal tradition of caregiving, and a strong social pressure that influences (...) caregiving behavior. Structural factors linked to caregiving performance included family size, lack of pensions for elders, and caregivers’ employment status and income. Findings portend deleterious effects for the women who are now caregivers as they are likely to live longer but be more financially dependent and have fewer children available to help them. (shrink)

You want to see the concert, but don’t want to take a long drive (even though the concert is far away). Such *strongly conflicting desire ascriptions* are, I show, wrongly predicted incompatible by standard semantics. I then object to possible solutions, and give my own, based on *some-things-considered desire*. Considering the fun of the concert, but ignoring the drive, you want to see the concert; considering the boredom of the drive, but ignoring the concert, you don’t want to take the (...) drive. (shrink)

What is a human being? The twentieth and twenty-first century tradition known as 'philosophical anthropology' has approached this question with unusual sophistication, experimentalism, and subtlety. Such innovations as Arnold Gehlen's description of humans as naturally 'deficient' beings in need of artificial institutions to survive; Max Scheler's concept of 'spirit' (Geist) as the physically and organically irreducible realm of persons and spiritual acts; and Helmuth Plessner's analysis of the way human embodiment transcends spatial locations and limitations ('ex-centric positionality') have inspired generations (...) of European intellectuals. This edited collection from an international network of scholars critically engages the philosophical anthropologies of Scheler, Plessner, Gehlen, Blumenberg, and others in unparalleled detail, showing their applicability to the themes of nature and naturalism, organic life, comparative primatology, cultural anthropology, paleoanthropology, the body, addiction, and death. The volume sets a new standard for Anglophone scholarship on this tradition and will be required reading for specialists in twentieth-century philosophy, history of the human sciences, history of the life sciences, and philosophies of human nature. (shrink)

Philosophers have lately seized upon Sperling's partial report technique and subsequent work on iconic memory in support of controversial claims about perceptual experience, in particular that phenomenology overflows cognitive access. Drawing on mounting evidence concerning postdictive perception, I offer an interpretation of Sperling's data in terms of cue-sensitive experience which fails to support any such claims. Arguments for overflow based on change-detection paradigms (e.g. Landman et al., 2003; Sligte et al., 2008) cannot be blocked in this way. However, such paradigms (...) are fundamentally different from Sperling's and, for rather different reasons, equally fail to establish controversial claims about perceptual experience. (shrink)

“I am only what I make myself to be”, Fichte tells us. In this paper, I outline Fichte’s views on sex, marriage and gender, with two aims. Firstly, to elucidate an aspect of his moral theory which has received little attention, and secondly to argue that Fichte’s distinctive stance on selfhood, freedom, and normativity lead to a revisionary account of gender expression and identity, where people can freely carve out their own identity, irrespective of “nature”. In this paper, I therefore (...) outline Fichte’s own views, highlighting what I see as a tension in the texts between essentialism and antiessentialism about gender, before reconstructing a neo-Fichtean view which foregrounds the anti-essentialist aspect. (shrink)

In 1889, the German philologist Friedrich Blass isolated a section of Chapter 20 from Iamblichus’ Exhortation to Philosophy (mid- or late 3rd Century CE) as an extract from a lost sophistic or philosophical treatise from the late 5th Century BCE. In this article, I introduce the text, which is now known as 'Anonymus Iamblichi' (or 'the anonymous work preserved in Iamblichus') by appeal to its two main contexts (source preservation and original historical composition), translate and discuss all eight surviving fragments (...) in their entirety, and provide some closing remarks about its importance to this history of democratic thought. The text itself presents a series of very carefully interwoven arguments concerning the three “parts” of excellence (ἀρετή) – wisdom, courage, and eloquence – and their successful application in society. In the course of presenting this case, Anonymus Iamblichi comments on the conditions under which one should learn to be excellent (Fragments 1-2) and the ends to which one should direct one’s excellence (Fragments 3-4); he provides an anthropological discussion of the weaknesses of human psychology and its effects on the good man (Fragments 5-6) and an hypothetical thought experiment concerning the “Superman” (which naturally solicits comparison with Nietzsche’s übermensch) and his inability to overcome the multitude in a lawless state (Fragments 6 and 8); and a positive defense of law and justice, reflecting a pro-democratic philosophical perspective (Fragments 7-8) – a rara avis indeed in ancient philosophy. (shrink)

In Aotearoa/new Zealand, organ donation and transplantation rates for Māori and non-Māori differ. This article outlines why this is so, and why some groups may be reticent about or object to organ donation and transplantation. In order to do this, I draw on the conceptual and methodological lens of phenomenology and apply what Van Manen calls the existential themes of lived body (corporeality), lived space (spatiality), lived time (temporality) and lived other (relationality and communality) to a discussion of the cultural (...) values and spiritual beliefs of Māori around tissue donation. Specifically, the aim of the article is to encourage non-Māori, who will already be aware that diverse cultural traditions transmit different beliefs about organ donation and transplantation, to recognize the existence of a deeper understanding of what this difference may mean for people on a felt level and how it might impact on lived experience. (shrink)

Here, Rhonda Martens offers the first extended study of Kepler's philosophical views and shows how those views helped him construct and justify the new astronomy.

Dr. Floyd-Thomas’s paper brings nuance to the discussion of pride and the hubris brought by the Westernized Enlightenment across disciplines. As much as I have the impulse to throttle others or shout or spit with the onslaught of mis-truths and ‘alternative facts’, this would not be a wise moment to conclude inquiry as an oral historian, or a Christian ethicist. I ask, can we decolonize ourselves, our syllabi, the canon, and thus our students with grace, understanding, even forgiveness so as (...) not to repeat the trespasses? (shrink)

Meet Tega. Blue, fluffy, and AI-enabled, Tega is a relational robot: a robot designed to form relationships with humans. Created to aid in early childhood education, Tega talks with children, plays educational games with them, solves puzzles, and helps in creative activities like making up stories and drawing. Children are drawn to Tega, describing him as a friend, and attributing thoughts and feelings to him ("he's kind," "if you just left him here and nobody came to play with him, he (...) might be sad"). Scholars and members of the public alike have raised the alarm about relational robots, worrying that the relationships that people, and especially children, form with such robots are objectionably inauthentic. We, members of an interdisciplinary team that developed and studies Tega, make this inauthenticity worry precise and offer practical recommendations for addressing it. We distinguish two kinds of (in)authenticity -- inauthenticity as unreality, and inauthenticity as deception -- arguing that neither is just what others have thought it is. With our distinction in hand, we argue that the authenticity concern can be met only through co-design methods -- methods that give stakeholders of all kinds (e.g. parents, educators, and children themselves) a genuine say in how relational robots are built. (shrink)

The February 2004 release of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is a major cultural event. Receiving a tremendous amount of advance publicity due to claims of its anti-Semitism and adulatory responses by conservative Christians who were the first to see it, the film achieved more buzz before its release than any recent film in our memory.1 Gibson himself helped orchestrate the publicity with selective showings of The Passion and strategic appearances on TV shows where he came off as (...) something of a Hollywood eccentric, albeit one who was only too happy to admit to his past sins and to claim that he had achieved “salvation” through his adherence to Christianity. His film, he insisted, would be testament to the truth of Christ and how Christ died so that sinners like Gibson could be saved and enjoy eternal life. (shrink)

John Hartley opens his short history of cultural studies by evoking a sense of the contested nature of the field in the contemporary moment and the intense debates about its objects, scope, methods, and goals: “Even within intellectual communities and academic institutions, there is little agreement about what counts as cultural studies, either as a critical practice or an institutional apparatus. On the contrary, the field is riven by fundamental disagreements about what cultural studies is for, in whose interests it (...) is done, what theories, methods and objects of study are proper to it, and where to set its limits” (1). (shrink)

Metaphor has a double life. It can be described as a directional process in which a stable, familiar base domain provides inferential structure to a less clearly specified target. But metaphor is also described as a process of finding commonalities, an inherently symmetric process. In this second view, both concepts may be altered by the metaphorical comparison. Whereas most theories of metaphor capture one of these aspects, we offer a model based on structure-mapping that captures both sides of metaphor processing. (...) This predicts (a) an initial processing stage of symmetric alignment; and (b) a later directional phase in which inferences are projected to the target. To test these claims, we collected comprehensibility judgments for forward (e.g., “A rumor is a virus”) and reversed (“A virus is a rumor”) metaphors at early and late stages of processing, using a deadline procedure. We found an advantage for the forward direction late in processing, but no directional preference early in processing. Implications for metaphor theory are discussed. (shrink)

Set in the minimalist abode of a sparsely furnished hotel room, Awaiting Oblivion narrates the encounter between a man and a woman, anonymously known as Il and Elle, respectively. The plot revolves around their relationship, the nature of which is the concern of their dialogue. Their dialogue intermittently emerges through a narrative voice that is, however, infused with the very same confusion and vacillation as is their own speech. The man and woman are caught in an undulating relation of attraction (...) and repulsion, as they endeavour to rediscover the desire they once felt for one another. The themes of waiting and forgetting are manifested within the plot in their vain efforts to remember a past event whilst, paradoxically, simultaneously awaiting the event’s recurrence. This event constitutes their first encounter, the memory of which will affect their future relationship. However, each person has his own perception of how this initial encounter had transpired, the memory of which is constantly being revised, over time. The couple engage in lengthy conversations in their attempts to overcome this discrepancy. First, Il expresses his perception of the event. Sensing problematic elements in his account, Elle recounts her version of how things had transpired, while Il attempts accurately to transcribe her words. With time, Il and Elle are able to arrive at a mutually balanced view of the event. Ironically, it is through waiting and forgetting that they are able to arrive at this point. (shrink)