In their response to our article (Keestra and Cowley, 2009), Hacker and Bennett charge us with failing to understand the project of their book Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (PFN; Bennett and Hacker, 2003) and do this by discussing foundationalism, linguistic conservatism and the passivity of perception. In this rebuttal we explore disagreements that explain the alleged errors. First, we reiterate our substantial disagreement with Bennett and Hacker (B&H) regarding their assumption that, even regarding much debated concepts like (...) ‘consciousness’, we can assume conceptual consensus within a community of competent speakers. Instead, we emphasize variability and divergence between individuals and groups in such contexts. Second, we plead for modesty in conceptual analysis, including the use of conceptual ambiguities as heuristics for the investigation of explanatory mechanisms. Third, we elucidate our proposal by discussing the interdependence of perception and action, which in some cases appear to be problematic for PFN. Fourth, we discuss why our view of conceptual innovation is different from B&H’s, as we plead for linking explanatory ingredients with conceptual analysis. We end by repeating our particular agreement with their mereological principle, even though we present different reasons: psychological concepts should not be applied to mere components or operations of explanatory mechanisms, for which another vocabulary should be developed. (shrink)

This collection of recent articles by leading scholars is designed to illuminate one of the greatest and most influential philosophical books of all time. It includes incisive commentary on every major theme and argument in the Meditations, and will be valuable not only to philosophers but to historians, theologians, literary scholars, and interested general readers.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:MEANING IN A '.REALIST PERSPECTivE STEPHEN THERON National University of Lesotho Lesotho I DISCUSSION OF meaning and ref,erring in the terms laid down in a classic article of Frege's has generated a stereotyped attitude to the question in the minds of many. It is simply assumed that meaning is, as it were, the contrary of reference. In logic this is 11eflected by the assumed pamdigm of there being (...) formal systems which al'e.called purely formal to the extent that they are ' uninterpreted ', i.e. ·divol'ced from all questions of reference.1 If as a matter of history we accept that modern logic has grown basically out of Kantian soil, then it should not surprise that it is generally linked with a form of apriorism. The violence of the movement against ' psychologism ' shows how strong the danger is of linking the necessities of logic with those supposed epistemic necessities the non-Kantian realist can only regard as spurious. Anyhow this paper will be less·directly about logic than about those supposed necessities. I mean such constraints as Jonathan Bennett calls in general the " veil of perception " 2, ·as if perceiving, which should be an un- :veiling or bringing to lighrt, at the same time obscures what is seen or thought. The same idea recurs in the recent theory of 1 Of. Henry Veateh, Intentional Logic (Yale, 1952): In trying to subsume ordinary intentional relations like that of subject. predicate under the more abstract forms of a completely uninterpreted relational pattern... treated simply as a one-term relation on a par with all the... n-term real relations •. • mathematical logicians have in effect changed the character of such intentional relations completely.... (pp. 7778 ) :i See J. L. Mackie's Problems from Locke. ~9 30 STEPHEN THERON 'internal realism', just a more confusing name for transcendental idealism so far as I can see. There is of course no sense to the idea of checking what we claim to know against what we do not yet know. Yet he:re we should not be discussing precisely truth but the quite separate ontological question whether " THE WORLD is independent of any particular representrution we have of it" (Putnam's notion of the 'metaphysical realism' he rejects), whether "reality is altogether independent of experience," as Michael Devitt argues.3 This is a question of the being of the world, which existed before I d1d. Even as concerns the present moment, the wor1d is such that I or you might not exist, and this contingency of cognitive beings, severally or generally, to the actual world, as a possibility inherent in it, may not without more ado be identified with the quite different possibility of another world, like to this e.x:cept for the absence of me or you. For the former is a real if passive possibility in a thing, viz., the world, the latter is merely an alternative conception or idea of a different and merely possible thing. The concept of my dog with a broken leg is a different concept from that of my dog as healthy, but it is of the same dog, and that is why I don't want him to break his 1eg. The world without me was and would be the same world, though differently conceived. This is the basic requirement of realism, which philosophers have often violated, confusing the metaphysical with the epistemological, the real with the certain. For example Descartes reasoned fallaciously from his being certain, as he thought, of the soul's but not of the body's existence to the ontological separateness of these two. Kant, again, seemed to reason from duty as a pure concept or epistemic entity to the real separwteness, as a positivie value, of the motive of duty from any motive of pleasure or aspiration to happiness. Yet it is possible, indeed probable, that in reality soul and body, a M. Devitt," Realism and the Renegade Putnam," Nous 1983, p. 297. MEANING IN A REALIST PERSPECTIVE 31 though distinguishable, do not have separate acts of existence,,and, in any human existence, that the motive of duty both cannot and ought not to be separated from the distinguishable... (shrink)

Since Bennett, Draper, and Frith published a paper in this journal in 2000 considering the possible criminalisation of HIV transmission, an important legal development has taken place. February 2001 saw the first successful United Kingdom prosecution for the sexual transmission of disease for over a century, when Stephen Kelly was convicted in Glasgow of recklessly injuring his former girlfriend by infecting her with HIV. Whether English criminal law can apply criminal penalties in such a case, however, still remains (...) uncertain.This paper, in addition to providing some background to the Kelly case, briefly explores the current possibilities for prosecution under English law. It then proceeds to outline and comment on the issues relevant to criminalisation, responding in part to points made by Bennett, Draper, and Frith and also by Bird and Leigh Brown in a recent article in the British Medical Journal. (shrink)

The object of this paper is to argue that the relationship between intentions and meaning has been misconstrued by some influential recent theories of meaning. The theories I have in mind derive from earlier work by H. P. Grice, but have undergone extensive development and modification in the hands of Grice himself,, Stephen Schiffer, Jonathan Bennett and others. There have been, during much the same period, developments of Austin’s work on speech acts in which the same Gricean influence (...) is unmistakable; indeed, such influence has affected interpretations of Austin’s work itself, by such writers as Strawson, Searle, and Vendler. (shrink)

This collection presents some of the most vital and original recent writings on Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, the three greatest rationalists of the early modern period. Their work offered brilliant and distinct integrations of science, morals, metaphysics, and religion, which today remain at the center of philosophical discussion. The essays written especially for this volume explore how these three philosophical systems treated matter, substance, human freedom, natural necessity, knowledge, mind, and consciousness. The contributors include some of the most prominent writers (...) in the field, including Jonathan Bennett, Michael Della Rocca, Jan A. Cover, Catherine Wilson, Stephen Voss, Edwin Curley, Don Garrett, and Margaret D. Wilson. (shrink)

The experience of having to suffer debilitating pain is far too common in the United States, and many patients continue to be inadequately treated by their doctors. Although many physicians freely admit that their pain management practices may have been somewhat lacking, many more express concern that the prescribing of heightened levels of opioid analgesics may result in closer regulatory scrutiny, criminal investigation, or even criminal prosecution.Although several researchers have examined the regulatory environment and the threat of sanction or harm (...) it poses to physicians and patients, few have examined the likelihood of investigation or prosecution stemming from the aggressive use of opioids in physician-directed pain management. Accordingly, in an effort to assess whether the fear of prosecution is realistic and, if so, what factors contribute to its likelihood, we surveyed chief prosecutors in four states about their knowledge, opinions, and attitudes concerning opioids and the prosecution of physicians stemming from the treatment of patients who were either terminally ill or suffering from chronic noncancer pain. (shrink)

Does objectivity exist in the news media? In The Invention of Journalism Ethics, Stephen Ward argues that given the current emphasis on interpretation, analysis, and perspective, journalists and the public need a new theory of objectivity. He explores the varied ethical assertions of journalists over the past few centuries, focusing on the changing relationship between journalist and audience. This historical analysis leads to an innovative theory of pragmatic objectivity that enables journalists and the public to recognize and avoid biased (...) and unbalanced reporting. Ward convincingly demonstrates that journalistic objectivity is not a set of absolute standards but the same fallible but reasonable objectivity used for making decisions in other professions and public institutions. Considered a classic in the field since its first publication in 2004, this second edition includes new chapters that bring the book up to speed with journalism ethics in the twenty-first century by focusing on the growing dominance of online journalism and calling for a radical approach to journalism ethics reform. Ward also addresses important developments that have occurred in the last decade, including the emergence of digital journalism ethics and global journalism ethics. (shrink)

Death, like many social problems, has become medicalized. In response to this medicalization, physician-assisted suicide has emerged as one alternative among many at the end of life. And although the practice is currently legal in the states of Oregon and Washington, opponents still argue that PAS is unethical, is inconsistent with a physician's role, and cannot be effectively regulated. In comparison, Switzerland, like Oregon, permits PAS, but unlike Oregon, non-physicians and private organizations play a significant role in assisted death. Could (...) the Swiss model be the answer? The following essay explores the Swiss model of assisted suicide for its potential to enhance the regulation of PAS, reduce physician involvement, and perhaps demedicalize the way we die. (shrink)

According to a natural view of instrumental normativity, if you ought to do φ, and doing ψ is a necessary means for you to do φ, then you ought to do ψ. In “Instrumental Normativity: In Defense of the Transmission Principle,” Benjamin Kiesewetter defends this principle against certain actualist-inspired counterexamples. In this article I argue that Kiesewetter’s defense of the transmission principle fails. His arguments rely on certain principles—Joint Satisfiability and Reason Transmission—which we should not accept in the unqualified forms (...) needed to establish his conclusion. (shrink)

This paper discusses some problems with the field of educational studies and considers the role of post-structuralist theory in shifting the study of education away from a 'technical rationalist' approach towards an 'intellectual intelligence' stance that stresses contingency, disidentification and risk-taking.

In this clearly written undergraduate textbook, Stephen Laumakis explains the origin and development of Buddhist ideas and concepts, focusing on the philosophical ideas and arguments presented and defended by selected thinkers and sutras from various traditions. He starts with a sketch of the Buddha and the Dharma, and highlights the origins of Buddhism in India. He then considers specific details of the Dharma with special attention to Buddhist metaphysics and epistemology, and examines the development of Buddhism in China, Japan, (...) and Tibet, concluding with the ideas of the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh. In each chapter he includes explanations of key terms and teachings, excerpts from primary source materials, and presentations of the arguments for each position. His book will be an invaluable guide for all who are interested in this rich and vibrant philosophy. (shrink)

The publication of Michel Foucault’s lectures at the Collège de France in the late 1970s has provided new insight into crucial developments in his late work, including the return to an analysis of the state and the introduction of biopolitics as a central theme. According to one dominant interpretation, these shifts did not entail a fundamental methodological break; the approach Foucault developed in his work on knowledge/power was simply applied to new objects. The present article argues that this reading — (...) which is colored by the overwhelming privilege afforded to Discipline and Punish in secondary literature — obscures an important modification in Foucault’s method and diagnostic style that occurred between the introduction of biopolitics in 1976 (in Society Must Be Defended) and the lectures of 1978 ( Security, Territory, Population) and 1979 ( Birth of Biopolitics). Foucault’s initial analysis of biopolitics was couched in surprisingly epochal and totalizing claims about the characteristic forms of power in modernity. The later lectures, by contrast, suggest what I propose to call a ‘topological’ analysis that examines the ‘patterns of correlation’ in which heterogeneous elements — techniques, material forms, institutional structures and technologies of power — are configured, as well as the redeployments through which these patterns are transformed. I also indicate how attention to the topological dimension of Foucault’s analysis might change our understanding of key themes in his late work: biopolitics, the analysis of thinking, and the concept of governmentality. (shrink)

How, if at all, does one's intention to realize an end bear on the justification for taking the means to that end? Theories that allow that intending an end directly provides a reason to take the means are subject to a well-known "bootstrapping" objection. On the other hand, "anti-psychologistic" accounts—which seek to derive instrumental reasons directly from the reasons that support adopting the end itself—have unacceptable implications where an agent faces multiple rationally permissible options. An alternative, predictive, role for intention (...) in means-end reasoning is considered and rejected. A new proposal is then developed, according to which instrumental reasons are not merely reasons to perform an act necessary for a given end, but to perform the act for the sake of that end. (shrink)

1 Introducing Monsieur Foucault Stephen J. Ball Michel Foucault is an enigma, a massively influential intellectual who steadfastly refused to align himself ...

Transnational corporations have become actors with significant political power and authority which should entail responsibility and liability, specifically direct liability for complicity in human rights violations. Holding TNCs liable for human rights violations is complicated by the discontinuity between the fragmented legal/political structure of the TNC and its integrated strategic reality and the international state system which privileges sovereignty and non-intervention over the protection of individual rights. However, the post-Westphalian transition—the emergence of multiple authorities, increasing ambiguity of borders and jurisdiction (...) and blurring of the line between the public and private spheres—should facilitate imposing direct responsibility on transnational firms. Mechanisms for imposing direct responsibility on TNCs are considered including voluntary agreements and international law. However, I conclude that a hybrid public-private regime which relies on non-hierarchical compliance mechanisms is likely to be both more effective and consistent with the structure of the emerging transnational order. (shrink)

This essay responds to Hirstein, Sifferd and Fagan’s book, Responsible Brains, which claims that executive function is the guiding mechanism that supports both responsible agency and the necessity for some excuses. In contrast, I suggest that executive function is not the universal acid and the neuroscience at present contributes almost nothing to the necessary psychological level of explanation and analysis. To the extent neuroscience can be useful, it is virtually entirely dependent on well-validated psychology to correlate with the neuroscientific variables (...) under investigation. The essay considers what executive function is and what the neuroscience adds to our understanding of it. Then it addresses moral and legal responsibility generally, and specific doctrines. Executive function is seldom found to be the most perspicuous approach to any of the general or specific moral and legal questions. (shrink)

This book develops an alternative approach to sentence- and word-meaning, which I dub the speech-act theoretic approach, or STA. Instead of employing the syntactic and semantic forms of modern logic–principally, quantification theory–to construct semantic theories, STA employs speech-act structures. The structures it employs are those postulated by a novel theory of speech-acts. STA develops a compositional semantics in which surface grammar is integrated with semantic interpretation in a way not allowed by standard quantification-based theories. It provides a pragmatic theory of (...) truth, a treatment of logically complex discourse as expressive cognitive states, and a background metaphysics in which the world is a totality of logically simple states of affairs. The book also puts forward an account of how intentional states provide the simple, representational foundation for a superstructure of speech-act structures–a system of thoughts–that far outruns the expressive power of the intentional foundation. In short, it provides an account of cognitive foundations of a language and a naturalistic reduction of semantics through an expressive theory of semantic norms. (shrink)

Provides guiding principles and values for practising responsible global media ethics.

According to the view Rik Peels defends in Responsible Belief, one is responsible for believing something only if that belief was the result of choices one made voluntarily, and for which one may be held responsible. Here, I argue against this voluntarist account of doxastic responsibility and in favor of the rationalist position that a person is responsible for her beliefs insofar as they are under the influence of her reason. In particular, I argue that the latter yields a more (...) plausible account of the conditions under which ignorance may serve as an excuse for wrongdoing. (shrink)

This chapter provide an introductory portrait of global media ethics as an evolving discipline in broad strokes—its motivating questions, its distinct concerns and methods, how the discipline is related to other forms of ethics, and why we need a global media ethics. Since our global world is linked by many forms of media, the chapter argues that we need an accompanying global media ethics that challenges the use of media to promote racism, xenophobia, extreme nationalism, and the denial of human (...) rights. The chapter explores the types of research and writing that comprise global media ethics and concludes with an outline of how a global media ethics can be realized in practice. (shrink)

This book is a comprehensive introduction to media ethics and an exploration of how it must change to adapt to today's media revolution. Using an ethical framework for the new 'mixed media' ethics – taking in the global, interactive media produced by both citizens and professionals – Stephen J. A. Ward discusses the ethical issues which occur in both mainstream and non-mainstream media, from newspapers and broadcast to social media users and bloggers. He re-defines traditional conceptions of journalistic truth-seeking, (...) objectivity and minimizing harm, and examines the responsible use of images in an image-saturated public sphere. He also draws the contours of a future media ethics for the 'new mainstream media' and puts forward cosmopolitan principles for a global media ethics. His book will be invaluable for all students of media and for others who are interested in media ethics. (shrink)

War metaphors are ubiquitous in discussions of everything from political campaigns to battles with cancer to wars against crime, drugs, poverty, and even salad. Why are warfare metaphors so common, and what are the potential benefits and costs to using them to frame important social and political issues? We address these questions in a detailed case study by reviewing the empirical literature on the subject and by advancing our own theoretical account of the structure and function of war metaphors in (...) public discourse. We argue that war metaphors are omnipresent because they draw on basic and widely shared schematic knowledge that efficiently structures our ability to reason and communicate about many different types of situations, and they reliably express an urgent, negatively valenced emotional tone that captures attention and motivates action. Nevertheless, we find that the meaning of war metaphors is intimately tied to the context in which they are used, which may result in either positive or negative outcomes, depending on the situation. Thus, blanket statements about whether or not a war frame is useful are misguided or overly constraining. Here we situate our case study results in relation to popular theories of metaphoric representation and processing and offer some guidelines for using a war framing effectively. This work helps illuminate the complex, dynamic, and nuanced functions of metaphor in cognition in general, and in public discourse in particular. (shrink)

Temporality underpins how living systems coordinate and function. Unlike measures that use mathematical conventions, lived temporalities grant functional cohesion to organisms-in-the-world. In foxtail grasses, for example, self-maintenance meshes endogenous processes with exogenous rhythms. In embrained animals, temporalities can contribute to learning. And cowbirds coordinate in a soundscape that includes conspecifics: social learning allows them to connect copulating with past events such that females exert ‘long-distance’ control over male singing. Using Howard Pattee’s work, we compare the foxtail’s self-maintenance, gender-based cowbird learning (...) and how humans manage multi-scalar activity. We argue that, while all living things coordinate, temporal ranging is typical of vertebrates. As primates, humans too use temporal ranging – they can draw on social learning, anticipate winter and manage coordinated action. However language behaviour grants new control over the scales of time. People connect the impersonal to lived experience in narratives, as they draw on autobiography and enact cultural practices. Humans become singular individuals who use temporal experience to manage affect, relationships, beliefs, fictions, and knowledge. Individual subjectivity permits collaborative and competitive activity based on linking events with quite different histories. As a result, alone of the vertebrates, we claim that humans become time-rangers. (shrink)

This article addresses the question of the relevance of brain imaging to legal criteria that are behavioral, that is, that require evaluation of a defendant's actions or mental states. It begins with the legal standard for the admissibility of scientific and technical evidence. Then it considers the relevance of imaging to behavioral legal criteria. The problem is translating mechanistic neuroscience data into the law's folk psychological standards. It uses examples from the criminal law, but the analysis generalizes to behavioral criteria (...) in the civil law. The central question is, “How, precisely, does the proffered scan or data based on scanning answer the specific legal question it supposedly helps answer?” I conclude that, at present, brain imaging has little relevance to behavioral legal criteria. The final section takes note of a rampant disorder, brain overclaim syndrome, and offers a remedy, cognitive jurotherapy. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ‘flesh of the world’ speaks to an embodied connection to the spaces we inhabit deeply, primally, elementally. Flesh suggests water and its circulations, air and its respirations, earth and its conformations, fire and its inspirations. Flesh speaks to our bodily relations with the elements of a more-than-human world. This paper explores the felt imperative to these relations where, as Merleau-Ponty put it, ‘all distance is traversed’ and wherein movement arises not specifically in the body, but in the nexus (...) and intertwining of bodily engagement with the world. There is a primacy to movement that registers in the living body in its carnal ties to the elements of the world’s flesh. The ‘radical reflection’ on the ‘flesh of the world’ to which this analysis aspires in turn bears upon the general field of gestural reciprocities and connections, providing the insight that intimate gestures of the flesh, such as the embrace, are primordial attunements, motions of rhythm and reciprocity, that emanate from the world in identification with it. The embrace is fundamentally, elementally, a gesture of landscape dwelling. A phenomenology of elemental motions provides the textual reminder that to be at home in various landscapes means to know what it is to be embraced corporeally, sensually, within the human and especially the more-than-human folds of the world. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 6, Edition 1 May 2006. (shrink)

This article considers whether psychopaths should be held criminally responsible. After describing the positive law of criminal responsibility in general and as it applies to psychopaths, it suggests that psychopaths lack moral rationality and that severe psychopaths should be excused from crimes that violate the moral rights of others. Alternative forms of social control for dangerous psychopaths, such as involuntary civil commitment, are considered, and the potential legal implications of future scientific understanding of psychopathy are addressed.

In 1937, just as Dobzhansky published the book that later generations would laud as the foundation of the modern synthesis, the American Naturnlist published a symposium on "supraspecific variation in nature and in classification." Alfred C. Kinsey, who later became one of America's most controversial intellectuals for his study of basic behaviors in another sort of WASP,1 led off the symposium with a summary of his extensive work on a family of gall wasps, the Cynipidae. In his article, Kinsey strongly (...) advocated the central theme of the developing synthesis: Evolution at all scales, particularly macroevolution, could be explained by the genetic mechanisms observed in laboratories and local populations. He first complained that some geneticists and naturalists were still impeding a synthesis with their insistence upon causal separation of levels: "Just as some of the geneticists have insisted that the laboratory genetics may explain the nature and origin of Mendelian races, but not of natural species, so others indicate that the qualities of higher categories must be explained on bases other than those involved in species" (1937, p. 208). He then defended the central postulate. (shrink)

John Laumakis has offered a thought-provoking, but ultimately unpersuasive argument in favor of playing to your opponent’s strength instead of playing to their weakness. In the course of this reply, we hope to show that the idea of PTS not only undermines the real goal of athletic competition, but it also rests upon a confusion between matters of morality and the aims of sports, as well as equivocations on the kind of ‘excellence’ one pursues, and the nature of the ‘challenge’ (...) involved in sport. We also plan to raise a serious objection against the logical consistency of PTS and note its incompatibility with real-world game smarts and tactics. Finally, we offer our own explanation for why ‘it is improbable that many coaches and athletes will shift their strategy from PTW to PTS.’. (shrink)

This book reports recent landmark developments and the state of the art in NDS science in psychological theory and research.

This chapter defends the project of global media ethics against the skeptics. The overall question for this chapter can be stated as follows: Is the creation of global media ethics as a whole a realistic and desirable goal? The chapter proceeds by exploring, and responding to, the major criticisms of the project and its idea of moral globalism. It then presents a realistic conception of what can be achieved by global media ethics. The chapter concludes that it is both rational (...) and practically worthwhile to support the project of global media ethics. (shrink)