Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is an established method for integrating values into technical design. It has been applied to different technologies and, more recently, to artificial intelligence (AI). We argue that AI poses a number of challenges specific to VSD that require a somewhat modified VSD approach. Machine learning (ML), in particular, poses two challenges. First, humans may not understand how an AI system learns certain things. This requires paying attention to values such as transparency, explicability, and accountability. Second, ML (...) may lead to AI systems adapting in ways that ‘disembody’ the values embedded in them. To address this, we propose a threefold modified VSD approach: 1) integrating a known set of VSD principles (AI4SG) as design norms from which more specific design requirements can be derived; 2) distinguishing between values that are promoted and respected by the design to ensure outcomes that not only do no harm but also contribute to good; and 3) extending the VSD process to encompass the whole life cycle of an AI technology in order to monitor unintended value consequences and redesign as needed. We illustrate our VSD for AI approach with an example use case of a SARS-CoV-2 contact tracing app. (shrink)

This paper provides a phenomenological analysis of postphenomenological philosophy of technology. While acknowledging that the results of its analyses are to be recognized as original, insightful, and valuable, we will argue that in its execution of the empirical turn, postphenomenology forfeits a phenomenological dimension of questioning. By contrasting the postphenomenological method with Heidegger’s understanding of phenomenology as developed in his early Freiburg lectures and in Being and Time, we will show how the postphenomenological method must be understood as mediation theory, (...) which adheres to what Heidegger calls the theoretical attitude. This leaves undiscussed how mediation theory about ontic beings involves a specific ontological mode of relating to beings, whereas consideration of this mode is precisely the concern of phenomenology. This ontological dimension is important to consider, since we will argue that postphenomenology is unwittingly technically mediated in an ontological way. The upshot of this is that in its dismissal of Heidegger’s questioning of technology as belonging to “classical philosophy of technology,” postphenomenology implicitly adheres to what Heidegger calls technology as Enframing. We argue that postphenomenology overlooks its own adherence to the theoretical attitude and ultimately to Enframing, and we will conclude with calling for a phenomenological questioning of the dimension that postphenomenology presently leaves unthought, meaning that we will develop a plea for a rehabilitation of the ontological dimension in the philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Adequate epistemic justification is best conceived as the appearance, over time, of knowledge to the subject. ‘Appearance’ is intended literally, not as a synonym for belief. It is argued through consideration of examples that this account gets the extension of ‘adequately justified belief’ at least roughly correct. A more theoretical reason is then offered to regard justification as the appearance of knowledge: If we have a knowledge norm for assertion, we do our best to comply with this norm when we (...) express as assertions only beliefs that appear to us to be knowledge. If we are doing our best, there is little point in further sanctions. So a norm of knowledge for assertion would lead to a secondary norm of justified belief as the appearance of knowledge, marking a point at which our assertions may be corrected but should not be blamed. (shrink)

Spinoza's Ethics is one of the most remarkable, important, and difficult books in the history of philosophy: a treatise simultaneously on metaphysics, knowledge, philosophical psychology, moral philosophy, and political philosophy. It presents, in Spinoza's famous 'geometric method', his radical views on God, Nature, the human being, and happiness. In this wide-ranging 2006 introduction to the work, Steven Nadler explains the doctrines and arguments of the Ethics, and shows why Spinoza's endlessly fascinating ideas may have been so troubling to his (...) contemporaries, as well as why they are still highly relevant today. He also examines the philosophical background to Spinoza's thought and the dialogues in which Spinoza was engaged - with his contemporaries, with ancient thinkers, and with his Jewish rationalist forebears. His book is written for the student reader but will also be of interest to specialists in early modern philosophy. (shrink)

The last decade has witnessed the mass distribution and adoption of smart home systems and devices powered by artificial intelligence systems ranging from household appliances like fridges and toasters to more background systems such as air and water quality controllers. The pervasiveness of these sociotechnical systems makes analyzing their ethical implications necessary during the design phases of these devices to ensure not only sociotechnical resilience, but to design them for human values in mind and thus preserve meaningful human control over (...) them. This paper engages in a conceptual investigations of how meaningful human control over smart home devices can be attained through design. The value sensitive design (VSD) approach is proposed as a way of attaining this level of control. In the proposed framework, values are identified and defined, stakeholder groups are investigated and brought into the design process and the technical constraints of the technologies in question are considered. The paper concludes with some initial examples that illustrate a more adoptable way forward for both ethicists and engineers of smart home devices. (shrink)

The distinction between presentism and eternalism is usually sought in some formula like ‘Only presently existing things exist’ or ‘Past, present, and future events are equally real’. I argue that ambiguities in the copula prevent these slogans from distinguishing significant opposed positions. I suggest in addition that one can find a series of significant distinctions if one takes spacetime structure into account. These presentisms and eternalisms are not contradictory. They are complementary elements of a complete naturalistic philosophy of time.

In this paper, we argue that the Anthropocene is relevant for philosophy of technology because it makes us sensitive to the ontological dimension of contemporary technology. In §1, we show how the Anthropocene has ontological status insofar as the Anthropocenic world appears as managerial resource to us as managers of our planetary oikos. Next, we confront this interpretation of the Anthropocene with Heidegger’s notion of “Enframing” to suggest that the former offers a concrete experience of Heidegger’s abstract, notoriously difficult, and (...) allegedly totalitarian concept. In consequence, technology in the Anthropocene cannot be limited to the ontic domain of artefacts, but must be acknowledged to concern the whole of Being. This also indicates how the Anthropocene has a technical origin in an ontological sense, which is taken to imply that the issue of human responsibility must be primarily understood in terms of responsivity. In the final section, we show how the Anthropocene is ambiguous insofar as it both accords and discords with what Heidegger calls the “danger” of technology. In light of this ambiguity, the Earth gains ontic-ontological status, and we therefore argue that Heidegger’s unidirectional consideration concerning the relation between being and beings must be reoriented. We conclude that the Anthropocene entails that Heidegger’s consideration of the “saving power” of technology as well as the comportment of “releasement” must become Earthbound, thereby introducing us to a saving Earth. (shrink)

In this paper we inquire into the fundamental assumptions that underpin the ideal of the Bio-Based Economy as it is currently developed . By interpreting the BBE from the philosophical perspective on economy developed by Georges Bataille, we demonstrate how the BBE is fully premised on a thinking of scarcity. As a result, the BBE exclusively frames economic problems in terms of efficient production, endeavoring to exclude a thinking of abundance and wastefulness. Our hypothesis is that this not only entails (...) a number of internal tensions and inconsistencies with regard to the ideal of BBE, but ultimately undermines the ideal itself, by pushing purported regenerativity into a cataclysmic and terminal discharge. We here point to the strategies that the BBE employs in this exclusion, the fundamental assumptions regarding the relation between energy and economy that underpin this endeavor, as well as to the resulting inconsistencies and their catastrophic consequences. We finally argue for the introduction of the presently excluded question of abundance and wastefulness and explore the implications of such a question for the ideal of a zero-waste humanity. (shrink)

The potential for vaccines to prevent the spread of infectious diseases is crucial for vaccination policy and ethics. In this paper, I discuss recent evidence that the current COVID-19 vaccines have only a modest and short-lived effect on reducing SARS-CoV-2 transmission and argue that this has at least four important ethical implications. First, getting vaccinated against COVID-19 should be seen primarily as a self-protective choice for individuals. Second, moral condemnation of unvaccinated people for causing direct harm to others is unjustified. (...) Third, the case for a harm-based moral obligation to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is weak. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, coercive COVID-19 vaccination policies (e.g., measures that exclude unvaccinated people from society) cannot be directly justified by the harm principle. (shrink)

Drawing upon research in philosophical logic, linguistics and cognitive science, this study explores how our ability to use and understand language depends upon our capacity to keep track of complex features of the contexts in which we converse.

In the unfolding debate on the prospects, challenges and viability of the imminent transition towards a ‘Bio-Based Society’ or ‘Bio-based Economy’—i.e. the replacement of fossil fuels by biomass as a basic resource for the production of energy, materials and food, ‘big’ concepts tend to play an important role, such as, for instance, ‘sustainability’, ‘global justice’ and ‘naturalness’. The latter concept is, perhaps, the most challenging and intriguing one. In public debates concerning biotechnological interactions with the natural environment, the use of (...) terms such as ‘nature’ and ‘naturalness’ is both inevitable and hazardous . Indeed, various conflicting interpretations of naturalness play a role on both sides of the current debate. This paper aims to analyse and critically assess the role of ‘nature-speak’ in the BBS transition. We will begin with a concise overview of the vicissitudes of the nature-concept so far, focussing on how modern science and technology have challenged and affected our understanding of what nature is. Subsequently, we describe how ‘naturalness’ functions in the unfolding BBS debate. Finally, we will focus on a particular case study, namely the production of rubber with the help of natural latex coming from dandelion plants rather than from rubber trees. On the one hand, this is presented as a more natural and nature-friendly way of producing rubber. On the other hand, it is a sophisticated process, involving high technology and primarily focussed on competitiveness on the global market. To what extent or in what sense can dandelion latex be regarded as more natural? And what can we learn from this case study when it comes to addressing naturalness in the broader conceptual and bio-political arena? (shrink)

Design for Values (DfV) philosophies are a series of design approaches that aim to incorporate human values into the early phases of technological design to direct innovation into beneficial outcomes. The difficulty and necessity of directing advantageous futures for transformative technologies through the application and adoption of value-based design approaches are apparent. However, questions of whose values to design are of critical importance. DfV philosophies typically aim to enrol the stakeholders who may be affected by the emergence of such a (...) technology. However, regardless of which design approach is adopted, all enrolled stakeholders are human ones who propose human values. Contemporary scholarship on metahumanisms, particularly those on posthumanism, have decentred the human from its traditionally privileged position among other forms of life. Arguments that the humanist position is not (and has never been) tenable are persuasive. As such, scholarship has begun to provide a more encompassing ontology for the investigation of nonhuman values. Given the potentially transformative nature of future technologies as relates to the earth and its many assemblages, it is clear that the value investigations of these design approaches fail to account for all relevant stakeholders (i.e., nonhuman animals). This paper has two primary objectives: (1) to argue for the cogency of a posthuman ethics in the design of technologies; and (2) to describe how existing DfV approaches can begin to envision principled and methodological ways of incorporating non-human values into design. To do this, the paper provides a rudimentary outline of what constitutes DfV approaches. It then takes up a unique design approach called Value Sensitive Design (VSD) as an illustrative example. Out of all the other DfV frameworks, VSD most clearly illustrates a principled approach to the integration of values in design. (shrink)

Steven Crowell has been for many years a leading voice in debates on twentieth-century European philosophy. This volume presents thirteen recent essays that together provide a systematic account of the relation between meaningful experience and responsiveness to norms. They argue for a new understanding of the philosophical importance of phenomenology, taking the work of Husserl and Heidegger as exemplary, and introducing a conception of phenomenology broad enough to encompass the practices of both philosophers. Crowell discusses Husserl's analyses of first-person (...) authority, the semantics of conscious experience, the structure of perceptual content, and the embodied subject, and shows how Heidegger's interpretation of the self addresses problems in Husserl's approach to the normative structure of meaning. His volume will be valuable for upper-level students and scholars interested in phenomenological approaches to philosophical questions in both the European and the analytic traditions. (shrink)

This paper offers a twofold ontological conceptualization of technology in the Anthropocene. On the one hand, we aim to show how the Anthropocene occasions an experience of our inescapable inclusion in the technological structuring of reality that Martin Heidegger associates with cybernetics. On the other hand, by confronting Heidegger’s thought on technology with Georges Bataille’s consideration of technological existence as economic and averted existence, we will criticize Heidegger’s account by arguing that notwithstanding its inescapable inclusion in cybernetics, technology in the (...) Anthropocene itself fosters an experience of what remains excluded. We conclude by indicating how such an experience is relevant for contemporary philosophical investigation of technology. (shrink)

Emerging technologies such as cloud computing, augmented and virtual reality, artificial intelligence and robotics, among others, are transforming the field of manufacturing and industry as a whole in unprecedent ways. This fourth industrial revolution is consequentially changing how operators that have been crucial to industry success go about their practices in industrial environments. This short paper briefly introduces the notion of the Operator 4.0 as well as how this novel way of conceptualizing the human operator necessarily implicates human values in (...) the technologies that constitute it. Similarly, the design methodology known as value sensitive design (VSD) is drawn upon to discuss how these Operator 4.0 technologies can be design for human values and, conversely, how a potential value-sensitive Operator 4.0 can be used to strengthen the VSD methodology in developing novel technologies. (shrink)

Autonomous weapons systems (AWS), sometimes referred to as “killer robots”, are receiving evermore attention, both in public discourse as well as by scholars and policymakers. Much of this interest is connected with emerging ethical and legal problems linked to increasing autonomy in weapons systems, but there is a general underappreciation for the ways in which existing law might impact on these new technologies. In this paper, we argue that as AWS become more sophisticated and increasingly more capable than flesh-and-blood soldiers, (...) it will increasingly be the case that such soldiers are “in the power” of those AWS which fight against them. This implies that such soldiers ought to be considered hors de combat, and not targeted. In arguing for this point, we draw out a broader conclusion regarding hors de combat status, namely that it must be viewed contextually, with close reference to the capabilities of combatants on both sides of any discreet engagement. Given this point, and the fact that AWS may come in many shapes and sizes, and can be made for many different missions, we argue that each particular AWS will likely need its own standard for when enemy soldiers are deemed hors de combat. We conclude by examining how these nuanced views of hors de combat status might impact on meaningful human control of AWS. (shrink)

This commentary attempts to contribute to a further elucidation of Dominic Smith’s call for a rehabilitation of the transcendental in philosophy of technology. On the one hand, it focuses on why such a rehabilitation is deemed necessary, particularly in light of Smith’s diagnosis of a contemporary tendency towards reification and presentism. Postphenomenology is discussed as a challenge and invitation to further clarify the stakes. On the other hand, this commentary inquires into how Smith envisages the achievement of a rehabilitation of (...) the transcendental. Further attention is given to Smith’s idea of a renewed sense of the transcendental. Following his own cues and situating this renewal in the philosophical tradition, the question whether the involved philosophical praxis should be primarily understood as political is brought to the fore. In so doing, Smith’s reading and extension of Luciano Floridi’s attempts to move beyond Kant receive special attention, since the transcendental is here understood in terms of conditions of feasibility. The challenge put to Smith is to contrast this approach with social-constructivist approaches on the one hand, and Stiegler’s thought regarding technics and the transcendental on the other. Finally, Smith’s commitment to taking exception is analyzed to ask how and which logic is at play there. (shrink)

Ce livre presente une investigation critique de la science generale de l'etre, instituee par Aristote au titre de la science de l'etant en tant qu'etant. L'auteur met en lumiere ce qu'est l'etre pour Aristote, ce que signifie precisement le type d'unite de ses significations multiples, et quelles sont les structures, principes et concepts epistemologiques par lesquels le reel peut etre explique dans son ensemble. L'originalite aristotelicienne qui se revele dans son apprehension horizontale du reel, est a la fois responsable de (...) son naufrage historique dans l'ocean dominant des pensees hierarchisantes, et de son renouveau axtremement stimulant pour la pensee actuelle. (shrink)

What are the inherent claims that lie at the core of religion? Which of them are defensible by reason, and which are not? Potential answers to these questions and more, from influential philosophers past and present, may be found in this short book edited by Steven M. Cahn. Featuring fifty-two classic and contemporary readings, Exploring Philosophy of Religion: Text and Readings is a topically-organized anthology that presents broad coverage of seven major areas in the philosophy of religion - the (...) concept of God, the existence of God, religious language, miracles and mysticism, belief in God, resurrection and immortality, and religious pluralism - in a clear and accessible format. With guiding introductory material from Professor Cahn, each of the readings has been carefully selected and edited for maximum clarity and comprehensiveness; only the most essential material is included. To further foster understanding, the text also features an appendix consisting of Professor Cahn's monograph, God, Reason, and Religion, which provides a synthesis and interpretation of the crucial issues raised throughout the readings. (shrink)

Aristotle’s theory of spontaneous generation offers many puzzles to those who wish to understand his theory both within the context of his biology and within the context of his more general philosophy of nature. In this paper, I approach the difficult and vague elements of Aristotle’s account of spontaneous generation not as weaknesses, but as opportunities for an interesting glimpse into the thought of an early scientist struggling to reconcile evidence and theory. The paper has two goals: to give as (...) charitable and full an account as possible of what Aristotle’s theory of spontaneous generation was, and to examine some of its consequences; and to reflect on Aristotle as a scientist, and what his comments reveal about how he approached a difficult problem. In particular, I propose that the well-recognized problem of the incompatibility between Aristotle’s concept of spontaneity and his theory of spontaneous generation presents an opportunity for insight into his scientific methodology when approaching ill-understood phenomena. (shrink)

A study both of the aims of education and the appropriate means of achieving those aims. It is suitable for courses in philosophy of education, foundations of education and the history of ideas.

This is the first detailed study to explore the little-understood notions of "knowing who someone is," "knowing a person's identity," and related locutions. It locates these notions within the context of a general theory of believing and a semantical theory of belief- and knowledge-ascriptions.The books's main contention is that what one knows, when one knows who someone is, is not normally an identity in the numerical sense of "a = b," but rather a certain sort of predication to know who (...) someone is is just to know that that person is F, where "F" is a predicate that is "important," in a technical sense defined by the authors, for the purposes determined by context. Their book offers a rigorous formal semantics for ascriptions of knowing and of knowing-who in particular, solving such well-known problems and paradoxes as Kripke's Puzzle, and Quines difficulties with de re belief, along the way.The authors apply their analysis to each of several important issues in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and ethical theory in which the previously unexamined notion of "knowing who" has loomed large-the mechanics of linguistic referring, the foundations of epistemic logic, problems of self-knowledge and self-regarding belief, universalizability and "Golden Rule" arguments in ethics, and moral "personalism" versus "impartialism."Stephen Boër is Professor of Philosophy at the Ohio State University. William Lycan is Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina and author of Logical Form in Natural Language. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

The interventionist account of causation has been largely dismissed as a serious candidate for application in physics. This dismissal is related to the problematic assumption that physical causation is entirely a matter of dynamical evolution. In this article, I offer a fresh look at the interventionist account of causation and its applicability to thermodynamics. I argue that the interventionist account of causation is the account of causation that most appropriately characterizes the theoretical structure and phenomenal behavior of thermodynamics.

An introduction to and critique of the latest trends in critical theory.

Winner of 2002 Edward Goodwin Ballard Prize In a penetrating and lucid discussion of the enigmatic relationship between the work of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Steven Galt Crowell proposes that the distinguishing feature of twentieth-century philosophy is not so much its emphasis on language as its concern with meaning. Arguing that transcendental phenomenology is indispensable to the philosophical explanation of the space of meaning, Crowell shows how a proper understanding of both Husserl and Heidegger reveals the distinctive contributions (...) of each to that ongoing phenomenological project. (shrink)

Although the adverse implications of physician advertising are the subject of a fierce and sustained debate, there is almost no scholarly discussion on the ethical repercussions of physician advertising bans. The present paper draws attention to these repercussions as they exist today in most of the world, with particular focus on three serious implications for the public: uncertainty about the physician's interests, namely, that patients must trust the physician to put patient wellbeing ahead of possible gains when taking medical decisions; (...) uncertainty about alternative treatments, namely, that patients must trust in the physician's treatment decisions; and uncertainty about the exclusive patient–physician relationship, namely, that patients must develop and maintain a good relationship with one physician. Physician advertising bans continue to tell the public in most of the modern world that these are irrelevant or inappropriate issues, meaning that they are effectively left to the public to resolve. (shrink)

Healthcare is becoming increasingly automated with the development and deployment of care robots. There are many benefits to care robots but they also pose many challenging ethical issues. This paper takes care robots for the elderly as the subject of analysis, building on previous literature in the domain of the ethics and design of care robots. Using the value sensitive design approach to technology design, this paper extends its application to care robots by integrating the values of care, values that (...) are specific to AI, and higher-scale values such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The ethical issues specific to care robots for the elderly are discussed at length alongside examples of specific design requirements that work to ameliorate these ethical concerns. (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to explore and examine what hermeneutic methods can and should be summoned in order to interpret critically an intriguing yet endlessly puzzling sentence in the “Genjōkōan” (現成公案) fascicle of Sōtō sect founder Dōgen’s (道元, 1200–1253) Shōbōgenzō (正法眼蔵). The source material deals with the way perspectives shift dramatically “when riding a boat out to sea, where mountains can no longer be seen (yamanaki kaichū 山なき海中)”? The analogy of sailing past the horizon, so that any trace (...) of land is not visible, and one feels temporarily encircled by the ocean with no other frame of reference available, raises key phenomenological issues regarding the innate partiality or insufficiency of human perception in connection to the Zen goal of awakening to a holistic standpoint that is devoid of divisibility but incorporates an array of standpoints. This passage has been interpreted in diverse ways since the time of early medieval commentaries by Senne and Kyōgō and by Edo-period Sōtō scholiasts, as well as in modern times by various Japanese philosophers and researchers of Dōgen’s texts. (shrink)

The familiar Cartesian sceptical arguments all involve an explanation of our experiences. An account of the persuasive power of the sceptical arguments should explain why this is so. This supports a diagnosis of the error in Cartesian sceptical arguments according to which they mislead us into regarding our perceptual beliefs as if they were justified as inferences to the best explanation. I argue that they have instead a perceptual justification that does not involve inference to the best explanation and that (...) should not be put in doubt by the sceptical hypotheses. (shrink)

In recent years an uneasy peace has descended in U.S. academe between those who feel research universities have done too little to advance the representation of minority groups and women and those who feel that the administrative policies developed to improve representation can and sometimes do come into conflict with core intellectual commitments of universities. Using quantitative and qualitative evidence from interviews with 47 natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics faculty members at a U.S. research university, the paper examines the background (...) characteristics of three sets of protagonists - academic progressives, academic traditionalists, and those whose views bridge the divide - and the way respondents discussed and justified their viewpoints. The paper draws on the theory of strategic action fields to illuminate the structure and dynamics of the conflict and suggests modifications to the theory that would improve its explanatory power for this case. (shrink)

From Plato's Ion to works by contemporary philosophers, this anthology showcases classic texts to illuminate the development of philosophical thought about art and the aesthetic. This volume is the most comprehensive collection of readings on aesthetics and the philosophy of art currently available.

The beginning of the journey -- What this book is about : using ideas from mathematics, economics, and physics to tackle the big questions in philosophy : what is real? what can we know? what is the difference between right and wrong? and how should we live? -- Reality and unreality -- On what there is -- Why is there something instead of nothing? the best answer I have : mathematics exists because it must and everything else exists because it (...) is made of mathematics, with an excursion into artificial intelligence -- Unfinished business -- Unfinished business from chapter two : the nature and purpose of economic models -- How Richard Dawkins got it wrong -- Why Dawkins's argument against intelligent design can't be right and a mathematical analysis of the arguments for the existence of God -- Belief -- Daydream believers -- Most beliefs are ill-considered because most false beliefs are costless to hold -- The next several chapters will explore the consequences of this observation before we return to the question of where our beliefs and knowledge come from -- Unfinished business -- Unfinished business from the preceding chapter : how color vision works, sound, and water waves, the sheer craziness of economic protectionism -- Do believers believe? -- Our ill-considered beliefs about religion : why I believe that almost nobody is deeply religious -- On what there obviously is -- Our ill-considered beliefs about free will, ESP, and life after death -- Diogenes's nightmare -- How is legitimate disagreement possible if you're arguing with someone who is as intelligent and informed as you are, shouldn't you put just as much weight on your opponent's arguments as your own? -- The fact that we persist in disagreeing is strong evidence that we don't really care what's true -- Knowledge -- Knowing your math -- Where mathematical knowledge comes from and logic and why evidence and logic are not enough -- Unfinished business -- Unfinished business from the preceding chapter : the tale of hercules and the hydra, with an excursion into the lore of very large numbers -- Incomplete thinking -- Godel's incompleteness theorem and what it doesn't say about the limits of human knowledge -- The rules of logic and the tale of a Potbellied pig -- The power of logical thought, with excursions into the most counterintuitive theorem in all of mathematics and the tale of a potbellied pig -- The rules of evidence -- What we can and can't learn from evidence, with excursions into the value of preschool and how internet porn prevents rape -- The limits to knowledge -- What physics does and doesn't tell us about what we can and cannot know -- Understanding Heisenberg's uncertainty principle -- Unfinished business -- The oddness of the quantum world and why it matters to game theorists -- Right and wrong -- Telling right from wrong -- Some hard questions about right and wrong and about life and death -- The economist's golden rule -- A rule of thumb for good behavior -- How to be socially responsible -- Putting the rule of thumb into practice -- On not being a jerk -- Goofus and gallant on immigration policy -- The economist on the playground -- Our ill-considered beliefs about fairness in the market place and in the voting booth, contrasted with our carefully considered beliefs about fairness on the playground -- Unfinished business -- How ancient talmudic scholars anticipated modern economic theory -- The life of the mind -- How to think -- Some basic rules for clear thinking, mostly about economics, but also about arithmetic, neurobiology, sin, and eschewing blather -- What to study -- Advice to college students : stay away from the English department and approach the philosophy department with caution, with an excursion into the remarkable life of Frank Ramsey. (shrink)

How can we take history seriously as real and relevant? Despite the hazards of politically dangerous or misleading accounts of the past, we live our lives in a great network of cooperation with other actors; past, present, and future. We study and reflect on the past as a way of exercising a responsibility for shared action. In each of the chapters of Full History Smith poses a key question about history as a concern for conscious participants in the sharing of (...) action, starting with “What Is Historical Meaningfulness?” and ending with “How Can History Have an Aim?” Constructing new models of historical meaning while engaging critically with perspectives offered by Ranke, Dilthey, Rickert, Heidegger, Eliade, Sartre, Foucault, and Arendt, Smith develops a philosophical account of thinking about history that moves beyond postmodernist skepticism. Full History seeks to expand the cast of significant actors, establishing an inclusive version of the historical that recognizes large-scale cumulative actions but also encourages critical revision and expansion of any paradigm of shared action. (shrink)

Preface -- Why political philosophy? -- Antigone and the politics of conflict -- Socrates and the examined life -- Plato on justice and the human good -- Aristotle's science of regime politics -- The politics of the Bible -- Machiavelli and the art of political founding -- Hobbes's new science of politics -- Locke and the art of constitutional government -- Rousseau on civilization and its discontents -- Tocqueville and the dilemmas of democracy -- In defense of patriotism.

How do minds emerge from developing brains? According to the representational features of cortex are built from the dynamic interaction between neural growth mechanisms and environmentally derived neural activity. Contrary to popular selectionist models that emphasize regressive mechanisms, the neurobiological evidence suggests that this growth is a progressive increase in the representational properties of cortex. The interaction between the environment and neural growth results in a flexible type of learning: minimizes the need for prespecification in accordance with recent neurobiological evidence (...) that the developing cerebral cortex is largely free of domain-specific structure. Instead, the representational properties of cortex are built by the nature of the problem domain confronting it. This uniquely powerful and general learning strategy undermines the central assumption of classical learnability theory, that the learning properties of a system can be deduced from a fixed computational architecture. Neural constructivism suggests that the evolutionary emergence of neocortex in mammals is a progression toward more flexible representational structures, in contrast to the popular view of cortical evolution as an increase in innate, specialized circuits. Human cortical postnatal development is also more extensive and protracted than generally supposed, suggesting that cortex has evolved so as to maximize the capacity of environmental structure to shape its structure and function through constructive learning. (shrink)

Winner of 2002 Edward Goodwin Ballard Prize In a penetrating and lucid discussion of the enigmatic relationship between the work of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, Steven Galt Crowell proposes that the distinguishing feature of twentieth-century philosophy is not so much its emphasis on language as its concern with meaning. Arguing that transcendental phenomenology is indispensable to the philosophical explanation of the space of meaning, Crowell shows how a proper understanding of both Husserl and Heidegger reveals the distinctive contributions (...) of each to that ongoing phenomenological project. (shrink)

The past few years has seen a resurgence in the public interest in space flight and travel. Spurred mainly by the likes of technology billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the topic poses both unique scientific as well as ethical challenges. This paper looks at the concept of generation ships, conceptual behemoth ships whose goal is to bring a group of human settlers to distant exoplanets. These ships are designed to host multiple generations of people who will be born, (...) live, and die on these ships long before it reaches its destination. This paper takes reproductive ethics as its lens to look at how genetic enhancement interventions can and should be used not only to ensure that future generations of offspring on the ships, and eventual exoplanet colonies, live a minimally good life but that their births are contingent on them living genuinely good and fulfilling lives. The paper makes the further claim that if such a thesis holds, it also does so for human enhancement on Earth. (shrink)

Explores the interrelationship of mind, self, emotion and the development of moral consciousness in the Nepalese city of Bhaktapur. The author investigates how the citizens have developed moral awareness in the context of cultural life.

Steven Shapin argues that science, for all its immense authority and power, is and always has been a human endeavor, subject to human capacities and limits.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes and Augustine by Stephen MennSteven NadlerStephen Menn. Descartes and Augustine. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xvi + 415. Cloth, $74.95.As most readers of this journal well know, scholars in the history of philosophy can, however roughly, be divided into two distinct (and sometimes antagonistic) camps: those who think that work on the great philosophers of the past should focus almost exclusively on an analysis of (...) their theses and arguments, and those who believe that we cannot truly understand any philosopher’s ideas without serious investigation into the historical, philosophical and even more general intellectual context of their thought. Stephen Menn’s book is a profoundly good example of the latter school.While it is undeniable that Descartes was strongly influenced by his Jesuit education and by his later reading of latter-day scholastics like Suarez, and that he was motivated in part by a desire to move philosophy beyond its sterile and unprogressive Aristotelian paradigm, one of the crucial questions in Cartesian scholarship concerns the extent to which Descartes was himself an Augustinian Platonist. In this long, brilliant, learned, at times tedious but generally fascinating study, Menn argues that in terms of both method and substance, with respect to motivation, discipline and goals, there was no thinker more important for Descartes’s intellectual development and philosophical project than St. Augustine. Taking on the great triumvirate of French Cartesian scholarship—Gilson, Gueroult and Gouhier, all of whom argued that, while it is possible to find Augustinian elements in Descartes’s philosophy, nonetheless his thought is radically anti-Augustinian, sharing neither “the Augustinian spirit nor the Augustinian conception of philosophy itself” (8–10)—Menn insists that Augustinian principles inform and sustain in a very deep way Descartes’s metaphysics and epistemology. Moreover, Descartes’s general philosophical project is fundamentally the same as that of the Bishop of Hippo: to show how true wisdom can be born only from scientia. For Descartes, this means showing how the failure of Aristotelian science should lead not to a suspicion of science in general, nor to limiting oneself to a skeptical prudentialist moralizing (such as that of the Renaissance humanists), but to a true wisdom based on certain knowledge of the world. That knowledge of the world will, of course, be a mechanistic one, but it will be grounded in an Augustinian metaphysics. In the end—and here is where Menn most clearly takes issue with Gilson [End Page 625] and Co.—the project is to reconcile Christianity and philosophical knowing, precisely what Augustine set out to do.Understanding Augustine, Menn claims, requires an understanding of Plotinus and the Platonist tradition. And this, he further insists, demands that we know the essential elements of Plato’s metaphysics itself. Menn’s pursuit of depth and attention to detail can sometimes be wearying—do we really need in a book such as this a discussion of the variations in Plato’s explanation of how sensible particulars relate to intelligibles between the middle and late dialogues?—but in the end most of it pays off. We find out what Augustine found of value in his reading of Plotinus and what he needed to leave behind. Of the greatest importance, especially for someone seeking to move beyond the materialism of the Manicheans, was a conception of the human soul as an incorporeal thing and an understanding of God or nous as an immaterial and transcendent source of being and, through illumination, of knowledge. “[Augustine] went to the Platonists to learn a method for understanding God and the soul, and he accepts a great deal of the doctrine that comes from this way of understanding them, but he knew from the beginning what it was he wanted to understand: it was the God and the human souls described in the Christian scriptures” (166).What Descartes wanted was much the same, although he hoped to put it to further use by returning from the heights of metaphysics to the most general science of the natural world (physics) and the particular, practical sciences (wisdom) that follow from it. If he could successfully ground his physics in proper metaphysical first principles, then his philosophical goals would... (shrink)