We present a formal derivation of the Mino–Sasaki–Tanaka–Quinn–Wald (MSTQW) equation describing the self-force on a (semi-) classical relativistic point mass moving under the influence of quantized linear metric perturbations on a curved background space–time. The curvature of the space–time implies that the dynamics of the particle and the field is history-dependent and as such requires a non-equilibrium formalism to ensure the consistent evolution of both particle and field, viz., the worldline influence functional and the closed- time-path (CTP) coarse-grained (...) effective action. In the spirit of effective field theory, we regularize the formally divergent self-force by smearing the local part of the retarded Green’s function and employing a quasi-local expansion. We derive the MSTQW–Langevin equations describing the perturbations of the particle’s worldline about its semi-classical trajectory resulting from interactions with the quantum fluctuations of the linear metric perturbations. Finally, we demonstrate that the quantum fluctuations of the field could, in principle, leave imprints on gravitational waveforms expected to be observed by gravitational interferometers, thereby encoding information about tree-level perturbative quantum gravity. (shrink)

Self-Interest before Adam Smith inquires into the foundations of economic theory. It is generally assumed that the birth of modern economic science, marked by the publication of The Wealth of Nations in 1776, was the triumph of the 'selfish hypothesis'. Yet, as a neo-Epicurean idea, this hypothesis had been a matter of controversy for over a century and Smith opposed it from a neo-Stoic point of view. But how can the Epicurean principles of orthodox economic theory be reconciled with (...) the Stoic principles of Adam Smith's philosophy? Pierre Force shows how Smith's theory refutes the 'selfish hypothesis' and integrates it at the same time. He also explains how Smith appropriated Rousseau's 'republican' critique of modern commercial society, and makes the case that the autonomy of economic science is an unintended consequence of Smith's 'republican' principles. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Montaigne and the Coherence of EclecticismPierre ForceSince the publication of Pierre Hadot's essays on ancient philosophy by Arnold Davidson in 1995,2 Michel Foucault's late work on "the care of the self"3 has appeared in a new light. We now know that Hadot's work was familiar to Foucault as early as the 1950s.4 It is also clear that Foucault's notion of "techniques of the self" is very close (...) to what Hadot calls "spiritual exercises." At the same time, there are important differences between the views of these two philosophers, and Hadot has often expressed his regret that Foucault's untimely death prevented them from exploring these differences.5 One important point of disagreement was the status of eclecticism. In Foucault's interpretation of ancient philosophy, the "constitution of the self" implied a personal choice among disparate philosophical references: "Writing as a personal exercise done by the self and for the self, is an art of disparate truth."6 In a 1989 article Hadot argued from a historical point of view that, so far as Stoicism and Epicureanism were concerned, [End Page 523] eclecticism had no place in a mature practice of philosophy. Foucault's favorite example, Seneca's Letters to Lucilius, in which Stoic arguments were invoked along with Epicurean arguments, was a work for beginners. In a mature practice of Stoicism, one would stick to the arguments of the Stoic school, choose them for their coherence, and instead of trying to forge a spiritual identity for oneself through writing, one would "liberate oneself from one's individuality in order to raise oneself up to universality."7 Hadot added that "it is only in the New Academy—in the person of Cicero, for instance—that a personal choice is made according to what reason considers as most likely at a given moment."8 This discussion of Foucault may give the impression that Hadot was somewhat dismissive of eclecticism. Yet in a 2001 interview Hadot claimed that he had always admired Cicero's intellectual independence, and he proposed a reappraisal "of an attitude that has always had a bad reputation: eclecticism."9Something very similar is a stake in the work of Alexander Nehamas, as Lanier Anderson and Joshua Landy showed in their study of his Art of Living. In the conception of philosophy as a "way of life" (Hadot) or "care of the self" (Foucault) or "self-fashioning" (Nehamas), a central issue is the relationship between theoretical coherence and the coherence of the person who theorizes. Elaborating on Nehamas's chapter on Montaigne, Anderson and Landy argue that there is a move in Montaigne away from doctrinal coherence and towards a coherence of the self. As they put it, "the harmonious whole Montaigne commends [... ] is not a coherent body of fact or theory; it is the unified self of the theorizer."10 Anderson and Landy show that this brings up all kinds of difficulties: can this unified self be other than a fiction? If that is the case, how can philosophy be a way of life? Nehamas's answer is very much in the spirit of the late Foucault: there is a coherence of the self in Montaigne, and this coherence is the product of writing as a philosophical activity. The self is fashioned through writing.Because Montaigne writes in the ancient tradition of philosophy as a way of life, one may recall Hadot's suggestion that Foucault's notion of [End Page 524] "writing the self" is an intriguing but historically inaccurate description of ancient philosophical practice. But perhaps Hadot agrees with Foucault after all, since in his most recent interviews, he speaks favorably of eclecticism, a notion that is central to Foucault's analysis of self-fashioning through writing. The case of Montaigne is particularly interesting for these purposes, not only because the Essays seem to be the prototypical example of "writing the self," but also because eclecticism is both discussed and practiced throughout the Essays. I propose to take a fresh look at this issue by investigating the status of eclecticism in Montaigne's Essays. This must start with an examination of the philosophical tradition most closely associated with... (shrink)

Although being generally safe, the use of Deep Brain Stimulation has been associated with a significant number of patients experiencing postoperative psychological and neurological harm within experimental trials. A proportion of these postoperative severe adverse effects have lead to the decision to medically prescribe device deactivation or removal. However, there is little debate in the literature as to what is in the patient’s best interest when device removal has been prescribed; in particular, what should be the conceptual approach to ethically (...) guide the decision to remove or maintain implants. The purpose of this article is to examine the ethical issues raised when patients refuse brain device explantation despite medical prescription. In order to illustrate these issues, we report and discuss a clinical case involving a patient suffering from treatment resistant depression who experienced forms of postoperative self-estrangement, as well as suicidal attempts, but who resists giving consent to device explantation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In the standard case of justifiable killing in self‐defence one agent without provocation tries to kill a second agent and the second agent's only way to avoid death is to kill his attacker. It is widely accepted that such killings in self‐defence are morally justifiable, but it has proved difficult to show why this is so. Recently, Montague has put forward an account in terms of forcing a choice between lives, and Teichman has propounded a quasi‐Hobbesian rights‐based (...) account of self‐defence. I argue that neither Montague nor Teichman has succeeded in providing an adequate justification for killing in self‐defence. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper is a reply to three objections raised by Seumas Miller against a ‘forced‐choice’account of the morality of self‐defence. It is argued that Miller's first objection rests on a misconception of how the forced‐choice account is supposed to work; that his second objection is simply mistaken; and that his third objection overlooks how the forced‐choice account explicitly accommodates the moral difference between self‐defence and ‘other‐defence.’Finally, it is suggested that Miller's entire approach is defective in its failure (...) to examine the principle of justice which underlies the forced‐choice account, and whether it applies to standard self‐defence situations. (shrink)

The phenomenon of self-healing forces has again and again challenged doctors in the different historical periods of medical science. They relied on effects of self-healing forces in diagnosis and therapy. They also tried to explain these effects based on the current model of organism. The understanding of this phenomenon has always influenced the understanding of therapy and played a role in defining the concept of health and disease. In the 17th and 18th century the idea of self-healing (...) force was interpreted as a phenomenon related to the organic forces, whereas in the 19th century the explanation was reduced to a materialistic mechanism. Nowadays the knowledge of heath-shock-proteins open the way of a new understanding of the organic defense mechanisms. (shrink)

In a broadly Kantian context, it is often assumed that practical self-consciousness and rational self-determination can only be understood in opposition to pleasure and desire. I argue instead that, already for Kant, rational self-determination is itself a determination of our faculty of desire. Drawing on resources from Kant and Hegel, the paper shows that sensible desire can be understood as a self-determination of our vital forces which is connected to a sensible awareness of our practical existence. (...) In order to constitute what Kant calls a higher faculty of desire, we need to develop a practical self-consciousness of this sensible desire. As Hegel develops this idea, such self-consciousness involves grasp of the very form of desire that is occluded in its sensible form, as well as a reflexive redoubling of desire whereby desire becomes its own object. (shrink)

John Sallis, Force of Imagination: The Sense of the Elemental. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 2000, pp. 237 + xiv.John Sallis, Logic of Imagination: The Expanse of the Elemental. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 2012, pp. 287.The most common German word for imagination, especially after Kant, is Einbildungskraft. If one were to translate John Sallis’s title, Force of Imagination, back into German, it would be something like Die Kraft der Einbildungskraft. “Force” would constitute the beginning (...) and the end, performing a redoubling that overpowers the “in-forming” itself. By contrast, the word Einbildungskraft does not appear at all—not even once, much less redoubled—in the first part of Hegel’s “System of Science,” the science of the experience of consciousness, namely, Die Phänomenologie des Geistes. It is not as though Hegel shies from discussions of productive and associative imagination in Kant, Fichte, and Schelling both prior to and after his ow .. (shrink)

In a statement too strong even to summarize his own views, Jean-Paul Sartre famously declares in “Existentialism is a Humanism” that “man is nothing other than what he makes of himself.” It is bad faith, according to him, to attribute what I am to my family, culture, condition, etc., because through awareness of what I am and have been, I can determine whether what I am will continue into the future. Human being, as a result, is nothing but what he (...) or she has chosen or decided. In “On the Necessity and Impossibility of Being a Jew,” Jean Améry rejects that view.He explicitly rejects the idea that “I am what I am for myself and in myself, and nothing else.” In doing so, he is one of a group of Jewish thinkers, including Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, who reject Sartre’s ideas about Jewish identity and identi ty more generally, ideas expressed particularly in Reflections on the Jewish Question but amplified by views expressed in “Existentialism is a Humanism” and Being and Nothingness.Those in the group go out of their way to express their gratitude to Sartre f or writing on “the Jewish question” after the war --Sartre who wrote because he saw no mention of the 77,000 Jews in France who were deported and murdered by the Nazis. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to articulate further what may be called an agency theory of self-knowledge. Many theorists have stressed how important agency is to self- knowledge, and much work has been done drawing connections between the two notions.² However, it has not always been clear what _epistemic_ advantage agency gives us in this area and why it does so. I take it as a constraint on an adequate account of how a subject knows her own (...) mental states and acts, that it construe the known mental states and acts realistically and as independent of their self-ascription, and that it deliver genuine epistemic standing to the knower. The main task of the paper will, then, be to explore how our having rational agency with respect to our mental states may be able to secure genuine epistemic warrant for our self-ascriptions of states or acts independent of the ascriptions. This task will be carried out by focussing on the question of what account we should give of our knowledge of what I call our acts of judging. In the remainder of this section, I will do a little to clarify what is meant by that question. Section 2 will attempt to introduce us to elements of the best way to approach the question by considering some alternative strategies. Section 3 is devoted to forming some idea of what _kind_ of warrant we are looking for when considering how agency might give us self-knowledge. Section 4 aims to present a suggestion as to how agency gives us the kind of warrant identified over our acts of judging. Section 5 deals with some objections. (shrink)

La question de savoir si, compte tenu du nombre de ses facultés théoriques et pratiques, l’âme humaine possède une seule force fondamentale qui les unit ou les combine, plusieurs, ou aucune, a appartenu au champ de controverse le plus influent de l’Europe philosophique entre Leibniz et Kant. Johann Nikolaus Tetens a présenté une solution personnelle à ce problème. Sa manière de prouver que l’âme est dotée d’un pouvoir fondamental qui consiste en une parfaite spontanéité propre est aussi éloignée du (...) dogmatisme spéculatif que du cadre d’une psychologie empirique. Tetens formule, en quelque sorte, les conditions de possibilité d’une connaissance de l’âme humaine sans procéder de manière méthodiquement empirique. (shrink)

The author presents Simone Weil’s theory that force, an inherent part of the human condition, generates and regenerates its own existence. She examines three essays by Weil: ‘The Iliad or a Poem of Force’, ‘Reflections on War’, and ‘The Power of Words’. Doering situates the essays historically: their publication in French journals, as World War Two was looming, and again in the mid-1940s when translations of the essays appeared in Dwight Macdonald’s New York journal: politics. She applies to (...) modern times Weil’s conviction that the escalation of war preparations on grounds of national security inexorably undermines the belief in the supreme value of the individual. Major issues include the hyping of war as an act of interior politics, fear as a means of social control, freedom of thought in a permanent war economy, Dorothy Day on violence, the media in a democracy and the Greek concept of nemesis. (shrink)

Forced migration changes people’s lives and their sense of self-continuity fundamentally. One memory-based mechanism to protect the sense of self-continuity and psychological well-being is autobiographical meaning making, enabling individuals to explain change in personality and life by connecting personal experiences and other distant parts of life to the self and its development. Aiming to replicate and extend prior research, the current study investigated whether autobiographical meaning making has the potential to support the sense of self-continuity in (...) refugees. We therefore collected life narratives from 31 refugees that were coded for autobiographical reasoning, self-event connections, and global narrative coherence. In line with prior research, results suggest that autobiographical meaning making relates to a higher sense of self-continuity and less psychological distress. Yet, if refugees experienced many continuing postdisplacement stressors in addition to their forced displacement, autobiographical meaning making was associated with higher self-discontinuity and greater psychological distress, especially with trauma-related symptoms such as memory intrusion and hyperarousal. Altogether, results indicate that autobiographical meaning making helps to compensate the effects of extreme biographical disruptions on the sense of self-continuity, as long as the stress caused by the biographical change is not overwhelming or too protracted. (shrink)

Armed Forces personnel are exposed to traumatic experiences during their work; therefore, they are at risk of developing emotional difficulties such as post-traumatic stress disorder, following traumatic experiences. Despite evidence to suggest that self-compassion is effective in reducing the symptoms of PTSD, and greater levels of self-compassion are associated with enhanced resilience, self-compassion in armed forces personnel and armed forces veterans remains under-researched. As a result, it is not known if therapeutic approaches that use self-compassion interventions (...) are an acceptable and effective treatment for this population. Having previously shown that a one-off self-compassion exercise has temporary beneficial psychophysiological effects in non-clinical participants, we conducted this proof-of concept study to investigate whether this exercise is equally beneficial in veterans who had experienced deployment to a combat zone. Additionally, we examined if brief a self-compassion exercise can temporarily reduce hyperarousal symptoms and increase feelings of social connectedness. The current study also investigated the association between PTSD symptom severity, emotion regulation, and self-compassion in 56 veterans. All participants listened to a loving-kindness meditation for self-compassion and psychophysiological recordings were taken throughout. Psychophysiological effects were observed including heart-rate, skin conductance, and heart-rate variability to determine associations with PTSD and changes in response associated with the self-compassion induction. PTSD symptom severity, dispositional emotion regulation, and self-compassion were measured, and participants also completed state measures of hyperarousal and social connectedness before and after the LKM-S. The findings partially demonstrated that self-compassion can be elicited in a veteran population but there were considerable individual differences in psychophysiological responses. The findings are discussed in light of existing theories of PTSD and self-compassion and the implications of using self-compassion based psychological approaches with veterans. (shrink)

Resumen En este artículo de investigación trataré de repensar, dentro de la intuición marcada por Heidegger en su interpretación de Kant, el papel que juega la noción de imaginación, en su vinculación inexorable, por un lado, con la apercepción trascendental, y con el tiempo, por otro, a fin de alcanzar, al menos, un esbozo temático de tal imaginación en términos de auto-afección radical del sí-mismo. Y todo ello para mostrar la posibilidad de una lectura interpretativa que haga valer la importancia, (...) justamente, de un sí mismo y/o mismidad.In this paper, I will try to rethink Heidegger’s interpretation of the role of transcendental imagination within his understanding of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. My paper focuses on the connection between transcendental apperception on the one hand and the time on the other. In this sense, I will try to develop a thematic outline of such imagination in terms of radical self-affection of Selfhood. And this in order to show the possibility of an interpretative reading that asserts the importance, precisely, of a self and/or selfhood. (shrink)

During the twentieth century, the view that assertions and norms are valid insofar as they respond to principles independent of all local and temporal contexts came under attack from two perspectives: the partiality of translation and the intersubjective constitution of the self, understood as responsive to recognition. Defenses of universalism have by and large taken the form of a thinning out of substantive universalism into various forms of proceduralism. Alessandro Ferrara instead launches an entirely different strategy for transcending the (...) particularity of context without contradicting our pluralistic intuitions: a strategy centered on the exemplary universalism of judgment. Whereas exemplarity has long been thought to belong to the domain of aesthetics, this book explores the _other_ uses to which it can be put in our philosophical predicament, especially in the field of politics. After defining exemplarity and describing how something unique can possess universal significance, Ferrara addresses the force exerted by exemplarity, the nature of the judgment that discloses exemplarity, and the way in which the force of the example can bridge the difference between various contexts. Drawing not only on Kant's _Critique of the Power of Judgment_ but also on the work of Hannah Arendt, John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Jürgen Habermas, Ferrara outlines a view of exemplary validity that is applicable to today's central philosophical issues, including public reason, human rights, radical evil, sovereignty, republicanism and liberalism, and religion in the public sphere. (shrink)

Mind, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzab001.

A 'self-refutation argument' is any argument which aims at showing that a certain thesis is self-refuting. This study was the first book-length treatment of ancient self-refutation and provides a unified account of what is distinctive in the ancient approach to the self-refutation argument, on the basis of close philological, logical and historical analysis of a variety of sources. It examines the logic, force and prospects of this original style of argumentation within the context of ancient (...) philosophical debates, dispelling various misconceptions concerning its nature and purpose and elucidating some important differences which exist both within the ancient approach to self-refutation and between that approach, as a whole, and some modern counterparts of it. In providing a comprehensive account of ancient self-refutation, the book advances our understanding of influential and debated texts and arguments from philosophers like Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, the Academic sceptics, the Pyrrhonists and Augustine. (shrink)

Many of the major self-determination movements of the 20th and early 21st Centuries did not go smoothly, but resulted in forced or semi-forced transfers of groups of people from one country to another. Forced population transfers are not, of course, supported by major theorists of self-determination and secession. However, the problems that make population transfers extremely common in actual cases of self-determination and secession, are not squarely faced in many theories of self-determination. And, I shall argue, (...) certain leading theories of self-determination and secession would make population transfers almost inevitable in practice, even if not called for or sanctioned in theory. This is a major stumbling block for any attempt to move from an abstract account of self-determination towards a working theory. In this paper I take a first step towards addressing this problem. I shall show how any approach to dealing with secession, including “primary rights” accounts, “remedial rights only” accounts, and even “consensual” accounts, must be able to deal with the inevitable problem of population transfers, if it is to be a complete and plausible theory. I shall also show how population transfers, to the extent that we can always expect them to take place, can be made as just as possible, in light of any approach to the problem of secession. I will not here attempt to adjudicate between different approaches to secession and self-determination. To that extent, my argument may be seen as a friendly addition to all of the above approaches, showing how they may try to meet an objection which they have not yet faced. (shrink)

In this paper, we answer a question asked in Koepke et al. regarding a Mathias criteria for Tree-Prikry forcing. Also we will investigate Prikry forcing using various filters. For completeness and self inclusion reasons, we will give proofs of many known theorems.

This article examines the crisis management capabilities of Japan's Self Defense Forces (SDF) in the areas of United Nations (UN) peacekeeping, counter-terrorism, and disaster relief. The three types of overseas operations were all initiated by Japan as a response to international crises. While SDF crisis management capabilities for UN peacekeeping operations have steadily evolved, room for improvement remains. For example, Japan's commitment to logistic and rapid deployment missions could be strengthened. Regarding the second type of operations, counter-terrorism, Japan's crisis (...) management capabilities were enhanced by the passing of a novel Anti-Terrorism Law in October 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. The law legalized a SDF oil-fuelling mission in the Indian Ocean in support of the US-led war on terror in Afghanistan. Compared to the first two types of missions, SDF crisis management capabilities in disaster relief are the least controversial. This is due to the nature of the SDF as politically neutral and their humanitarian and non-military activities. This article highlights and compares the strengths and weaknesses of Japan's capabilities in the three types of SDF overseas operations. It demonstrates that a number of problem areas remain, including the need for legal amendment as well as the enhancement of public support and political consensus. The Japanese government and the SDF should face up to these challenges so that Japan can become better positioned to react quickly to crisis situations that require the dispatch of the SDF. (shrink)

Freedom and its internal relation to reason is fundamental to Descartes’ philosophy in general, and to his _Meditations on First Philosophy_ in particular. Without freedom his entire enquiry would not get off the ground, and without understanding the rôle of freedom in his work, we could not understand what motivates key parts of his metaphysics. Yet, not only is freedom a relatively overlooked element, but its internal relation to reason has gone unnoticed by most studies of his philosophy. Self, (...) Reason, and Freedom: A New Light on Descartes’ Metaphysics, by defending freedom’s internal relation to reason, sheds new light on Descartes’ metaphysics and restores the often dismissed _Fourth Meditation_ to the core of his metaphysics as he conceived it. Implicit in that relation is a rejection of any authority external to reason. Andrea Christofidou shows how this lends strength and explanatory force to Descartes’ enquiry, and reveals his conception of the unity of the self and of its place in the world. Self, Reason, and Freedom: A New Light on Descartes’ Metaphysics is essential reading for students and scholars of Descartes and anyone studying seventeenth-century philosophy. (shrink)

What does the fact that we feel shame tell us about the nature of self? Does shame testify to the presence of a self-concept, a self-ideal, and a capacity for critical self-assessment, or does it rather, as some have suggested, point to the fact that the self is in part socially constructed? Should shame primarily be classified as a self-conscious emotion, is it rather a distinct social emotion, or might this forced alternative be misguided? (...) In the chapter, I contrast certain prevalent cognitivist accounts of shame with different proposals that can be found in the phenomenological tradition and ultimately argue that prototypical forms of shame provide vivid examples of other-mediated forms of self-experience. (shrink)

Stubborn belief, like self-deception, is a species of motivated irrationality. The nature of stubborn belief, however, has not been investigated by philosophers, and it is something that poses a challenge to some prominent accounts of self-deception. In this paper, I argue that the case of stubborn belief constitutes a counterexample to Alfred Mele’s proposed set of sufficient conditions for self-deception, and I attempt to distinguish between the two. The recognition of this phenomenon should force an amendment (...) in this account, and should also make a Mele-style deflationist think more carefully about the kinds of motivational factors operating in self-deception. (shrink)

Extant research has shown personality to be a predictor of engagement in academic dishonesty. The current study seeks to determine whether the type of personality measure affects predictive efficacy by comparing single stimulus and forced-choice measures of personality using a sample of 278 undergraduate students in two U.S. universities. Students scoring high on conscientiousness reported as engaging in fewer academic cheating behaviors than those scoring low on conscientiousness regardless of whether conscientiousness was measured using the forced-choice or single stimulus scale (...) format. In addition, the forced-choice and single stimulus measures each contributed significant unique variance to prediction of academic dishonesty. For agreeableness, scores on the single stimulus measure were negatively correlated with academic dishonesty whereas there was a positive relationship found for the forced-choice measure. Overall, the forced-choice format of the Occupational Personality Questionnaire 32r did not show higher validities than the single stimulus IPIP counterpart in predicting self-reported academic dishonesty. Implications for future research and management education are discussed. (shrink)

From the Editor’s Introduction: -/- THE INTERNAL LIMITATIONS OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING -/- We carry, unavoidably, the limits of our understanding with us. We are perpetually confined within the horizons of our conceptual structure. When this structure grows or expands, the breadth of our comprehensions enlarges, but we are forever barred from the wished-for glimpse beyond its boundaries, no matter how hard we try, no matter how much credence we invest in the substance of our learning and mist of speculation. -/- (...) The limitations in view here are not due to the mere finitude of our understanding of ourselves and of the world in which we live. They are limitations that come automatically and necessarily with any form of understanding. They are, as we shall see, part and parcel of any organization or ordering of data that we call information. -/- The consequences of these limitations are varied: As a result of them, hermeneutics cannot help but be hermetic; scientific theories of necessity are circumscribed by the boundaries of the ideas that define them; formal systems must choose between consistency and comprehensiveness; philosophical study, because it includes itself within its own proper subject matter, is forced to be reflexive in its self-enclosure. The fundamental dynamic shared by all forms of understanding testifies to an internal limitative keystone. (shrink)

Self-Governance and Cooperation offers solutions to two fundamental problems in moral philosophy, one concerning the nature and requirements of morality and the other the nature and requirements of practical reason. Robert Myers’s achievement is not just that his solutions are original and plausible, but that his arguments acknowledge and demonstrate the need to approach the problems as an inseparable pair. Philosophical tradition tells us that questions about the content of morality cannot be answered in isolation from questions about its (...) rational force, and that, even more so, questions about the place of morality in practical reason cannot be answered without taking a stand on contested questions of substantive ethics. Myers’s book is a welcome counterforce to a tendency in contemporary moral philosophy to artificially subdivide the subject. (shrink)

Simone Weil's rejection of pacifism -- The empire of force -- Love of neighbor versus totalitarianism -- Values for reading the universe -- Reading and justice -- Simone Weil and the Bhagavad-Gita -- Justice and the supernatural -- Neither victim nor executioner -- Appendix : English translations of Simone Weil's essays.

1. The present paper is a continuation of my “Self-Ownership, World Ownership, and Equality,” which began with a description of the political philosophy of Robert Nozick. I contended in that essay that the foundational claim of Nozick's philosophy is the thesis of self-ownership, which says that each person is the morally rightful owner of his own person and powers, and, consequently, that each is free to use those powers as he wishes, provided that he does not deploy them (...) aggressively against others. To be sure, he may not harm others, and he may, if necessary, be forced not to harm them, but he should never be forced to help them, as people are in fact forced to help others, according to Nozick, by redistributive taxation. (shrink)

Self-Governance and Cooperation offers solutions to two fundamental problems in moral philosophy, one concerning the nature and requirements of morality and the other the nature and requirements of practical reason. Robert Myers’s achievement is not just that his solutions are original and plausible, but that his arguments acknowledge and demonstrate the need to approach the problems as an inseparable pair. Philosophical tradition tells us that questions about the content of morality cannot be answered in isolation from questions about its (...) rational force, and that, even more so, questions about the place of morality in practical reason cannot be answered without taking a stand on contested questions of substantive ethics. Myers’s book is a welcome counterforce to a tendency in contemporary moral philosophy to artificially subdivide the subject. (shrink)

This book offers a philosophical analysis of the moral and legal justifications for the use of force. While the book focuses on the ethics self-defense, it also explores its relation to lesser evil justifications, public authority, the justification of punishment, and the ethics of war. Steinhoff’s account of the moral use of force covers a wide range of topics, including the nature of justification in general, the precise elements of different justifications, the logic of claim- and liberty-rights (...) and of rights forfeiture, the value of human life and its limits, and the principles of reciprocity and precaution. While the author’s analysis is primarily philosophical, it is informed by a metaethical stance that also places heavy emphasis on existing law and legal scholarship. In doing so, the book appeals to widely shared moral intuitions, precepts, and concepts grounded in criminal law. Self-Defense, Necessity, and Punishment offers the most comprehensive and systematic account of the ethics of self-defense. It will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in applied ethics and moral philosophy, philosophy of law, and political philosophy. (shrink)

One of the main obstacles to the realization of intentions for future actions and to the successful pursuit of long-term goals is lack of self-control. But, what does it mean to engage in self-controlled behaviour? On a motivational construal of self-control, self-control involves resisting our competing temptations, impulses, and urges in order to do what we deem to be best. The conflict we face is between our better judgments or intentions and “hot” motivational forces that drive (...) or compel us to act in opposing ways. In contrast, on an executive construal of self-control, the emphasis is not on overcoming temptation, but on overriding or inhibiting “cold” automatically triggered routines and habits that are at odds with what we intend to do. Our general aim in this chapter is to contribute to the development of an overarching theory of self-control by exploring ways in which these two apparently competing frameworks can be reconciled. We propose that self-control is best understood as a hybrid set of skills. We draw on recent work on expert motor skill to highlight important ways in which experts differ from novices in the capacities they deploy and the ways in which they deploy them. We consider analogies (and disanalogies) between the domain of sports expertise and the domain of self-control. We end by considering how such a hybrid approach can help us reconcile a motivational and an executive approach to self-control. (shrink)

A cornerstone of physics, Maxwell‘s theory of electromagnetism, apparently contains a fatal flaw. The standard expressions for the electromagnetic field energy and the self-mass of an electron of finite extension do not obey Einstein‘s famous equation, \, but instead fulfill this relation with a factor 4/3 on the left-hand side. Furthermore, the energy and momentum of the electromagnetic field associated with the charge fail to transform as a four-vector. Many famous physicists have contributed to the debate of this so-called (...) 4/3-problem without arriving at a complete solution. It has generally been assumed that, as originally suggested by Poincaré, the problems are connected to the question of stability of the charge distribution, and that relativistic equivalence between energy and self-mass can only be restored by inclusion of stabilizing forces. Alternative solutions to the problems have also been proposed. Nearly a century ago Fermi suggested a covariant definition of the electromagnetic energy and momentum, and sixty years later Kalckar et al. argued that the 4/3 problem is caused by omission of a relativistic correction in the standard evaluation of the self-force from Coulomb self-interaction. However, the relation between these suggestions has not been clear. We show that the relativistic correction implies that the mechanical momentum of an accelerated rigid body must be defined as the sum of the momenta of its parts for fixed time in the momentary rest frame of the body. For the total momentum of particles and field to be conserved, the total energy–momentum tensor must be divergence free, and this then requires that the momentum of the associated electromagnetic field be defined in the same way, consistent with the suggestion by Fermi. This comprehensive solution of the 4/3-problem demonstrates that there is no conflict of Maxwell‘s theory with special relativity and the questions of equivalence of electromagnetic energy and self-mass and of stability of a classical charge distribution are independent. In appendices we discuss the relations of our treatment with Fermi‘s seminal paper and with a classic paper by Dirac where he evaluated the damping self-force on a point electron from transport of energy and momentum in the electromagnetic field. (shrink)

Sensibility: the indeterminacy of the imagination -- Praxis: the practice of the subject -- Play: the operation of force -- Aestheticization: the transformation of praxis -- Aesthetics: philosophy's contention -- Ethics: the freedom of self-creation.

Within now prolific debates surrounding the compatibility of feminism and multiculturalism in liberal societies, the need arises for a normative conception of women’s self-determination that does not violate the self-understandings or values of women of different backgrounds and forms of life. With reference to the recent British debate about forced marriage, this article proposes an innovative approach to this problem in terms of the idea of ‘plural autonomy’. While the capacity for autonomy is plural, in the sense of (...) varying across cultures, autonomy in any world-view involves a capacity to ‘endorse’ one’s decisions in certain crucial spheres of life. Non-endorsement, coercion or force occurs if one risks being alienated from the (cultural) goods and relationships that structure one’s capacity to act in the world. This approach counsels more caution than prominent liberal approaches with respect to negotiating the contested boundary between freedom and force in a diverse society. (shrink)

What limitations on intervention in support of democratic revolutions does proper regard for the collective right of self-determination impose? Some have held that if intervention in support of democratic revolutions is justified, it must cease once the authoritarian regime has been deposed—that any effort by the intervener to use force to shape the new political order would violate the people’s right of self-determination. This essay argues that proper regard for self-determination is compatible with much more extensive (...) interventions. (shrink)

As proposed for the emergence of modern languages, we argue that modern uses of languages (pragmatics) also evolved gradually in our species under the effects of human self‐domestication, with three key aspects involved in a complex feedback loop: (a) a reduction in reactive aggression, (b) the sophistication of language structure (with emerging grammars initially facilitating the transition from physical aggression to verbal aggression); and (c) the potentiation of pragmatic principles governing conversation, including, but not limited to, turn‐taking and inferential (...) abilities. Our core hypothesis is that the reduction in reactive aggression, one of the key factors in self‐domestication processes, enabled us to fully exploit our cognitive and interactional potential as applied to linguistic exchanges, and ultimately to evolve a specific form of communication governed by persuasive reciprocity—a trait of human conversation characterized by both competition and cooperation. In turn, both early crude forms of language, well suited for verbal aggression/insult, and later more sophisticated forms of language, well suited for persuasive reciprocity, significantly contributed to the resolution and reduction of (physical) aggression, thus having a return effect on the self‐domestication processes. Supporting evidence for our proposal, as well as grounds for further testing, comes mainly from the consideration of cognitive disorders, which typically simultaneously present abnormal features of self‐domestication (including aggressive behavior) and problems with pragmatics and social functioning. While various approaches to language evolution typically reduce it to a single factor, our approach considers language evolution as a multifactorial process, with each player acting upon the other, engaging in an intense mutually reinforcing feedback loop. Moreover, we see language evolution as a gradual process, continuous with the pre‐linguistic cognitive abilities, which were engaged in a positive feedback loop with linguistic innovations, and where gene‐culture co‐evolution and cultural niche construction were the main driving forces. (shrink)

This paper develops the Diachronic Self-Making View, the view that we are the non-accidentally best candidate referents of our ‘I’-beliefs. A formulation and defence of DSV is followed by an overview of its treatment of familiar puzzle cases about personal identity. The rest of the paper focuses on a challenge to DSV, the Puzzle of Inconstant ‘I’-beliefs: the view appears to force on us inconsistent verdicts about personal identity in cases that we would naturally describe as changes in (...) one’s de se beliefs. To solve this problem, the paper defends the possibility of overlapping people, and addresses a number of objections to this idea. (shrink)

On the traditional doctrine of self-defense, defensive force is permissible not only against Culpable Aggressors but against Innocent Aggressors as well (for example, psychotic aggressors). Some moral philosophers have recently challenged this view, arguing that one may not harm innocent attackers because morality requires culpability as an essential condition of being liable to defensive force. This essay examines and rejects this challenge as both a violation of common sense and as insufficiently grounded in convincing reasons from moral (...) theory. (shrink)

Armed reprisals are the limited use of military force in response to unlawful actions perpetrated against states. Historically, reprisals provided a military remedy for states that had been wronged by another state without having to resort to all-out war in order to counter or deter such wrongful actions. While reprisals are broadly believed to have been outlawed by the UN Charter, states continue to routinely undertake such self-help measures. As part of the roundtable, “The Ethics of Limited Strikes,” (...) this essay examines the doctrine of armed reprisals in light of recent instances of states using force “short of war” in this manner. We argue that the ban on reprisals has been largely ignored by states, and that recent attempts to apply the laws of armed conflict to the cyber domain are further weakening this prohibition. We conclude that this is a potentially dangerous development that lowers the bar for resorting to military force, risking escalation and thereby further destabilizing the international system. (shrink)

Robert Trivers has proposed perhaps the only serious adaptationist account of self-deception—that the primary function of self-deception is to better deceive others. But this account covers only a subset of cases and needs further refinement. A better evolutionary account of self-deception and cognitive biases more generally will more rigorously recognize the various ways in which false beliefs affect both the self and others. This article offers formulas for determining the optimal doxastic orientation, giving special consideration to (...) conflicted self-deception as an alternative to outright self-delusion. A novel taxonomy of self-deception, as it relates to the beliefs held by others, is also presented. While Trivers makes a plausible case for the adaptive value of certain cognitive biases, a more fragmented and nuanced account of the social forces impacting the evolution of self-deception is needed. (shrink)

I defend the view that a significant ethical distinction can be made between justified killing in self-defense and police use of lethal force. I start by opposing the belief that police use of lethal force is morally justified on the basis of self-defense. Then I demonstrate that the state’s monopoly on the use of force within a given jurisdiction invests police officers with responsibilities that go beyond what morality requires of the average person. I argue (...) that the police should primarily be concerned with preserving public safety. As a consequence, police have additional moral permissions to use lethal force. But this also means that the principle of restraint is inherent to the policing function and therefore police are obliged to go to greater lengths to avoid killing. I concede that the just use of police force can be made difficult in extreme situations such as a mass riot. In such cases, police should take proportionate actions necessary to protect the lives of inhabitants by restoring order, which might include calling on military support. I conclude with a cautionary note opposing militarization of the policing role. (shrink)

Self-tracking practices include the use of personal data-gathering apps, wearable devices, and data analysis tools to record patterns from daily activities, as well as the organization, visualization, and analysis of this data. This paper draws on theories of digital labour and feminist political economy to build a framework of digital productive labour that highlights the exploitation of activities external to the formal labour relationship. Self-tracking practices are analysed through the lens of digital productive insofar as they fulfill three (...) roles: they generate the content necessary for sustaining digital networks and producing data that can be captured in commodity form; they aid in the reproduction of the social factory’s labour force; and they cultivate subjectivities amenable to consumption and production in contemporary capitalism. The paper examines the production and commodification of data, highlighting the algorithmic means by which self-trackers are separated from the financial value of their data. This is connected to feminist analyses of unpaid labour, with particular attention to self-tracking’s role as a contemporary form of reproductive labour that replenishes the labour force. Finally, the paper provides an analysis of the themes of self-knowledge, self-discovery, and gamification to understand how these frame self-trackers’ understanding of themselves as labourers, thus reproducing and deepening capitalist subjectivities. The paper concludes by considering self-tracking through the lens of the exploitation of life ‘outside’ the official labour relationship. (shrink)