We must suffer, suffer into truth. –AeschylusThe outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in late 2019 along with the ensuing shutdowns and scramble for a vaccine provided unprecedented soil for various conspiracy t...

This book develops a new theory of determinism that offers fresh insights into questions of how intentions and other mental events relate to neural events, how both come about, and how both result in actions. Honderich tests his theory against neuroscience, quantum theory, and possible philosophical refutations, and discusses the consequences of determinism and near-determinism for life-hopes, knowledge, and personal feelings.

_Can attitudes like those that have seemed welded to indeterminism and free will_ _actually go with determinism? Is it not a contradiction to suppose so? The little_ _Oxford University Press book_ _How Free Are You?_ _in its first edition, much_ _translated, was a summary of the indigestible or anyway not widely digested_.

The late J. L. Mackie and his work were a focus for much of the best philosophical thinking in the Oxford tradition. His moral thought centres on that most fundamental issue in moral philosophy – the issue of whether our moral judgements are in some way objective. The contributors to this volume, first published in 1985, are among the most distinguished figures in moral philosophy, and their essays in tribute to John Mackie present views at the forefront of the subject. (...) Five of the essays give a new understanding of the objectivity of moral judgements. These are by Simon Blackburn, R.M. Hare, John McDowell, Susan Hurley and Bernard Williams. The remaining contributors – Philippa Foot, Steven Lukes, Amartya Sen, David Wiggins – give their attention to problems which are equally compelling, such as the defence of a moral outlook based on a conception of a need and of what follows from it. The volume also includes the addresses given by Simon Blackburn and George Cawkwell at the memorial service for John Mackie, and a list of his publications, compiled by Joan Mackie. (shrink)

This text examines the exact nature of the relation between mental and neural events; how both sorts of events come about; and their relation to actions. The answers that Honderich provides in Volume I constitute a new determinist philosophy of mind.

What follows here is the first chapter, 'Change and Reform', of a book that inquires into the distinctions and rationale of the political tradition of conservatism. The book, now much enlarged and revised, was originally Conservatism, published in 1989 as a contribution to an election. Now, in particular, each chapter ends with a sizeable section on what replaced the Labour Party in Britain, the New Labour Party. For good measure, the final section of the second chapter, partly on something known (...) as The Third Way, is added to the final section of the first chapter below. To the book's progress towards finding the rationale of the tradition of conservatism, as you will anticipate, is added progress towards deciding on the nature of New Labour. An actual analysis of the ideology and reality of the tradition of conservatism is of use in deciding whether New Labour is in it, and maybe a start towards answering the question of New Labour's place in history. The other chapters, after the first one on change and reform: Theory, Other Thinking, Incentives; Human Nature, Dealing With It; Freedoms; Government; Societies; Equalities; Desert, Conclusions. The book is published by the estimable Pluto Press . -------------------------. (shrink)

The difference for present purposes between ourselves and stones, chairs and our computers is that we are conscious. The difference is fundamental. Being conscious is sufficient for having a mind in one sense of the word ‘mind’, and being conscious is necessary and fundamental to having a mind in any decent sense. What is this difference between ourselves and stones, chairs and our computers? The question is not meant to imply that there is a conceptual or a nomic barrier in (...) the way of non-biological things being conscious. It may happen one decade that the other minds problem will shoot up the philosophical agenda and get a lot of attention as a result of a wonderful computer attached to perceptual and behavioural mechanisms, and that the thing will in the end be taken as conscious, rightly. Our question is not what things can be conscious, but what the Property or nature of consciousness is. (shrink)

Marx may be taken to hold that productive forces (e.g. the steam engine) explain productive relations (e.g. capitalism) more than the other way on, and that productive relations explain superstructures (e.g. the legal system) more than the other way on. There are no satisfactory standard causal understandings of these claims about explanatory primacy. That is, no standard causal understanding saves Marx from the traditional objection that relations very greatly affect forces, and superstructures very greatly affect relations. One satisfactorily articulated attempt (...) to save Marx has been the attempt to understand the claims teleologically. Three such understandings can be distinguished, but they do not work. The first fails since it attempts to explain events by way of abstract objects. The second fails since it attempts to explain a thing by means of that thing. The third fails for a related reason. Each understanding also fails for another reason as fundamental. So?called teleological explanations are in fact claims that standard causal explanations exist, which relevant explanations conflict with the ruling idea of Marx's philosophy, that history is somehow independent of men's consciousness and wills. There may be no evidence that Marx himself intended historical materialism to be understood teleologically. There may be evidence against. (shrink)

Consider three answers to the question of what it actually is for you to be aware of the room you are in. It is for the room in a way to exist. It is for there to be only physical activity in your head, however additionally described. It is for there to be non-spatial facts somehow in your head. The first theory, unlike the other two, satisfies five criteria for an adequate account of consciousness itself. The criteria have to do (...) with the seeming nature of this consciousness, and with subjectivity, reality including non-abstractness, mind-body causation, and the differences between perceptual, reflective and affective consciousness. The theory of consciousness as existence is not open to the objection having to do with a deluded brain in a vat. The theory, as any theory of consciousness needs to, explains its own degree of failure in characterizing consciousness. It releases neuroscience and cognitive science from nervousness about consciousness, and leaves all of consciousness a subject for science. The theory is a reconstruction of our conception of consciousness. It may be that we should carry forward several theories of consciousness. But they will have to be compared in terms of truth to the five criteria for an adequate theory. (shrink)

Richard M Weaver, a thinker and writer celebrated for his unsparing diagnoses and realistic remedies for the ills of our age, is known largely through a few of his works that remain in print. This new collection of Weaver's shorter writings, assembled by Ted J Smith III, Weaver's leading biographer, presents many long-out-of-print and never-before-published works that give new range and depth to Weaver's sweeping thought. Included are eleven previously unpublished essays and speeches that were left in near-final form at (...) the time of Weaver's death in 1963. In all, there are some one hundred and twenty-six essays, speeches, book reviews, and editorials. (shrink)

Round-table discussion on the topic of the title. Difficult to abstract more accurately.

The same two kinds of conditional connections in the world, each dependent on the situation, hold between each event in certain sets of events that we can call causal circumstances for the lighting. A causal circumstance cc) included the event that for some reason we pick out and call the cause -- the striking s).

This piece is reflection in preparation for lectures in the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Sussex, and Bath. It conveys the sequence and general content of an argument for a different answer to the question of what it is to be conscious. The piece is new, but not what is still to come, a completed articulation in a book. That will include second and no doubt third thoughts, not to mention more scholarship.

Perceptual and other consciousness is left out of or is not adequately characterized in naturalist accounts, including eliminative materialism and neural functionalism. We need a radically new start. Phenomenologically, if you are perceptually conscious, then a world—a changing totality of things—must somehow exist. Partly because with consciousness nothing is hidden and all can be reported without inference, perceptual consciousness itself is literally to be understood as things existing spatio-temporally. This account of consciousness as existence does not reduce it to mental (...) worlds and satisfies our conviction of the reality of consciousness—mainly we do not think of it as ethereal or gossamer. The account also explains fundamental subjectivity, as the naturalist accounts cannot, and passes a test having to do with the mind-body problem. It is a near-naturalism. The account can be defended against objections about brains in vats, chairs in minds, and leaving out consciousness. (shrink)

The most prominent part of the current philosophy of mind has been a little invaded by science, some say infected, notably cognitive science but also physics. So long as it remains philosophy at all, it is not greatly more empirical than it was. It is somewhat more empirical. It has also been computerized -- subjected to the paradigm of computation -- and made curiously speculative. Whatever it has gained, does it have less of the virtue of philosophy generally? We can (...) do with a test case. One is provided by Introducing Consciousness by David Papineau. (shrink)

Causality is the relation between cause and effect, and causation either the causing of something or the relation between cause and effect. What follows here is an account of the fundamental relation or connection between an effect, say the windshield wipers starting to work in this car, and what precedes it. What precedes it, fundamentally, is a causal circumstance or causally sufficient condition. This includes a number of conditions, one of them usually called the cause of the effect, say flipping (...) the switch. (shrink)

This enviable piece of philosophy has been as successful as any other in the past three decades of the determinism and freedom debate. It has given rise to a continuing controversy. At its centre is what seems to be a refutation of what seems to be the cast-iron principle that in order for someone to be morally responsible for an action, it must be possible that he or she could have done otherwise. The principle has been assumed by philosophers persuaded (...) that determinism is incompatible with freedom and also by philosophers persuaded that determinism is compatible with freedom. However, Frankfurt's article has mainly been read as lending support to the Compatibilist idea. (shrink)

This new book, published in the United Kingdom under the first title above and in the United States and Canada under the second, consists in argument about what makes for right or wrong in general, and then argument about right or wrong with respect to Palestine, 9/11, the Iraq War, 7/7, and what is to come. Hence, with respect to the latter connected things, it also makes judgements as to shares of moral responsibility. Six of its 29 sections appear below. (...) The first two are 'Our Questions' and 'A Division of Labour, Philosophy's Part'. The next one is one of three in the book on judging right and wrong by democracy. The fourth is one of several in the book about understanding, judging, and inciting terrorism. The last two sections are about the Iraq War. To locate this thinking in the context of the book as a whole, which justifies Zionism but not neo-Zionism, have a look at the table of contents at the end. There is also a German translation of the first half of the book. Have a look too if you want at a review of the book by Tam Dalyell, lately M.P. for Linlithgow and Father of the House of Commons, and a review by Steve Poole, author of Unthink, and at Italian and Belgian interviews on the subject. There is also a video of a 40-minute television programme made from the book. (shrink)

The traditional objection to Mill's principle governing the interference of state and society in the lives of individuals is that it excludes interference only in the case of actions that harm nobody at all. Interpretations of Mill's essay which escape this objection have been suggested by J. C. Rees and Richard Wollheim. In one case Mill is said to have been concerned with harm to established interests, in the other with harm which arises by way of the beliefs of those (...) injured. The author of the present article proposes an alternative interpretation which better represents Mill's intention and escapes objections which may be raised against the principles expounded by Rees and Wollheim. Once again, however, Mill's principle emerges as seriously flawed. (shrink)

Revisionism in the theory of moral responsibility is, roughly, the idea that some aspect of our responsibility practices, attitudes, or concept is in need of revision. In this paper, I argue that (1) in spite of being an increasingly prevalent thread in discussions of moral responsibility, revisionism is poorly understood, (2) the limited critical discussion there has been of it does not reflect the complexities and nuances of revisionist theories, and (3) at least one species of revisionismmoderate revisionism- has some (...) advantages over conventional compatibilist and incompatibilist theories. If I am right, one result is that the outcome of prominent debates about the compatibility (or not) of determinism and our commonsense thinking about moral responsibility may be less crucial than they seem. (shrink)

(I) John Searle's conception of consciousness in the 'Mind the Gap' issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies remains short on content, no advance on either materialism or traditional dualism. Still, it is sufficiently contentful to be self-contradictory. And so his Biological Subjectivity on Two Levels, like materialism and dualism, needs replacing by a radically different conception of consciousness -- such as Consciousness as Existence. (II) From his idea that we can discover 'gaps', seeming absences of causal circumstances, in our (...) experience of deciding and acting, Searle is led to the positing of a self and to mysterious causing. (III) In fact philosophers of determinism and freedom over three centuries have concerned themselves with what are now termed 'gaps'. Searle's advance is a useful terminological one. Compatibilist philosophers of freedom, contrary to what is said, have not missed any point at all. A successor to both Compatibilism and Incompatibilism is needed. (IV) Searle's previous account of deciding and acting in Biological Subjectivity on Two Levels does indeed fail because of its epiphenomenalism. (V) The culmination of his paper, his preferred hypothesis now about deciding and acting, is that down-up causation is true of it but not left-right causation. Quantum Theory as often interpreted doesn't work down-up but does work left-right. The hypothesis is entirely in the tradition of the Incompatibilist and Libertarian philosophers of determinism and freedom, whom Searle has joined, but is factually incredible. (shrink)

(I) John Searle's conception of consciousness in the 'Mind the Gap' issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies remains short on content, no advance on either materialism or traditional dualism. Still, it is sufficiently contentful to be self-contradictory. And so his Biological Subjectivity on Two Levels, like materialism and dualism, needs replacing by a radically different conception of consciousness -- such as Consciousness as Existence. (II) From his idea that we can discover 'gaps', seeming absences of causal circumstances, in our (...) experience of deciding and acting, Searle is led to the positing of a self and to mysterious causing. (III) In fact philosophers of determinism and freedom over three centuries have concerned themselves with what are now termed 'gaps'. Searle's advance is a useful terminological one. Compatibilist philosophers of freedom, contrary to what is said, have not missed any point at all. A successor to both Compatibilism and Incompatibilism is needed. (IV) Searle's previous account of deciding and acting in Biological Subjectivity on Two Levels does indeed fail because of its epiphenomenalism. (V) The culmination of his paper, his preferred hypothesis now about deciding and acting, is that down-up causation is true of it but not left-right causation. Quantum Theory as often interpreted doesn't work down-up but does work left-right. The hypothesis is entirely in the tradition of the Incompatibilist and Libertarian philosophers of determinism and freedom, whom Searle has joined, but is factually incredible. (shrink)

Three theses about the mind, when conjoined with a certain understanding of lawlike connection, escape the objection that they constitute an epiphenomenalism and so conflict with our conviction of the efficacy of the mental. Certain alternatives to the given picture of the mind, one of them an Identity Theory, are in various respects less defensible. The given picture can be defended against considerations deriving from a contextual conception of the mental, and from an elaborated objection having to do with the (...) holism of the mental. The Identity Theory mentioned above appears to be inconsistent, and a further picture of the mind, with very different presuppositions, has the disability among others that it does not provide for mental efficacy. Also, the presuppositions raise great problems. (shrink)

There are great goods desired by all of us, and the lack of themmakes for bad lives. One sample of bad African lives involves aloss of 20 million years of living time. The questions raised bythese and other facts are to be answered by the Principle ofHumanity, about bad lives and rationality. It is superior tomorality of relationship and all else, and in a way is undeniable.The principle together with other things issues in six propositions.One gives us a moral responsibility, (...) our politicians at our head,for the terrorism of September 11. To be ordinary is not to beinnocent. Another proposition is that the Palestinians have a moralright to their terrorism. The latter proposition can be given stillmore support than in the book from which this paper derives. (shrink)

Hallucination: the perception of an impossible image. That which can never appear suddenly does so anyways - a private world that appears only to the eye of the one imagining it... until now. Ted Serios, psychic photographer, claimed he could project images directly from his mind onto photographic film. Under the sign of the psychic photograph, “Hallucinating Ted Serios” is a theorization of the dominant forms of uncertainty that persist in postmodern evaluations of representation, interpretation and identity. The central thesis (...) of this paper is that the imaginary and the real have collapsed into the spectral hallucination of one another, rendering impossible the rhetorical separation of hallucination from image. With the collapse of the boundary between the fictive and the real, the world of representation becomes intelligible only as an imaginary phenomenon; with the collapse between the object and the observer, interpretation is rendered deceptively magical; and, with the collapse between the self and its anonymous double, identity itself is relegated to a state of impossibility. Consequently, under the persisting signs of the imaginary, the magical and the impossible, “Hallucinating Ted Serios” asserts that in our contemporary world there no longer exists the possibility of failed performativity – psychic, imaginary or otherwise. (shrink)

Ted T. Aoki, the most prominent curriculum scholar of his generation in Canada, has influenced numerous scholars around the world. Curriculum in a New Key brings together his work, over a 30-year span, gathered here under the themes of reconceptualizing curriculum; language, culture, and curriculum; and narrative. Aoki's oeuvre is utterly unique--a complex interdisciplinary configuration of phenomenology, post-structuralism, and multiculturalism that is both theoretically and pedagogically sophisticated and speaks directly to teachers, practicing and prospective. Curriculum in a New Key: The (...) Collected Works of Ted T. Aoki is an invaluable resource for graduate students, professors, and researchers in curriculum studies, and for students, faculty, and scholars of education generally. (shrink)

Abe and his friend Sol are out for a walk together in a part of town they haven't been in before. Passing a Christian church, they notice a curious sign in front that says "$1,000 to anyone who will convert." "I wonder what that's about," says Abe. "I think I'll go in and have a look. I'll be back in a minute; just wait for me." Sol sits on the sidewalk bench and waits patiently for nearly half an hour. Finally, (...) Abe reappears. "Well," asks Sol, "what are they up to? Who are they trying to convert? Why do they care? Did you get the $1,000?" Indignantly Abe replies, "Money. That's all you people care about." Ted Cohen thinks that's not a bad joke. But he also doesn't think it's an easy joke. For a listener or reader to laugh at Abe's conversion, a complicated set of conditions must be met. First, a listener has to recognize that Abe and Sol are Jewish names. Second, that listener has to be familiar with the widespread idea that Jews are more interested in money than anything else. And finally, the listener needs to know this information in advance of the joke, and without anyone telling him or her. Jokes, in short, are complicated transactions in which communities are forged, intimacy is offered, and otherwise offensive stereotypes and cliches lose their sting—at least sometimes. _Jokes_ is a book of jokes and a book about them. Cohen loves a good laugh, but as a philosopher, he is also interested in how jokes work, why they work, and when they don't. The delight at the end of a joke is the result of a complex set of conditions and processes, and Cohen takes us through these conditions in a philosophical exploration of humor. He considers questions of audience, selection of joke topics, the ethnic character of jokes, and their morality, all with plenty of examples that will make you either chuckle or wince. _Jokes:_ more humorous than other philosophy books, more philosophical than other humor books. "Befitting its subject, this study of jokes is... light, funny, and thought-provoking.... [T]he method fits the material, allowing the author to pepper the book with a diversity of jokes without flattening their humor as a steamroller theory might. Such a book is only as good as its jokes, and most of his are good.... [E]ntertainment and ideas in one gossamer package."—_Kirkus Reviews_ "One of the many triumphs of Ted Cohen's Jokes-apart from the not incidental fact that the jokes are so good that he doesn't bother to compete with them-is that it never tries to sound more profound than the jokes it tells.... [H]e makes you feel he is doing an unusual kind of philosophy. As though he has managed to turn J. L. Austin into one of the Marx Brothers.... Reading Jokes makes you feel that being genial is the most profound thing we ever do-which is something jokes also make us feel-and that doing philosophy is as natural as being amused."—Adam Phillips, _London Review of Books_ "[A] lucid and jargon-free study of the remarkable fact that we divert each other with stories meant to make us laugh.... An illuminating study, replete with killer jokes."—Kevin McCardle, _The Herald_ "Cohen is an ardent joke-maker, keen to offer us a glimpse of how jokes are crafted and to have us dwell rather longer on their effects."—Barry C. Smith, _Times Literary Supplement_ "Because Ted Cohen loves jokes, we come to appreciate them more, and perhaps think further about the quality of good humor and the appropriateness of laughter in our lives."—Steve Carlson, _Christian Science Monitor_. (shrink)

John Greco’s Putting Skeptics in Their Place is an important book. Greco persuasively argues that the best skeptical arguments cannot be easily dismissed and should not be ignored. These arguments cannot be easily dismissed because they defend important conclusions and make no obvious mistake. The arguments should not be ignored because their proper analysis reveals much about central philosophical notions such as knowledge and evidence. While defending these conclusions Greco offers sophisticated metaepistemological and metaphilosophical reflections. Philosophers properly attending to the (...) strongest skeptical arguments will, according to Greco, find themselves heading in the direction of a virtue-based version of reliabilism. Greco defends this general type of theory and outlines the major components of his preferred version of the theory. Greco stops short of defending a fully precise account of knowledge, but he offers a spirited defense of his claim that such a theory should fall somewhere in the family of virtue-based reliabilist theories, a type of theory that Greco calls “agent reliabilism.” Greco concludes with a brief discussion of moral and religious epistemology in which he applies some of the insights gained in his exploration and defense of agent reliabilism. (shrink)

We are often uncertain how to behave morally in complex situations. In this controversial study, Ted Lockhart contends that moral philosophy has failed to address how we make such moral decisions. Adapting decision theory to the task of decision-making under moral uncertainly, he proposes that we should not always act how we feel we ought to act, and that sometimes we should act against what we feel to be morally right. Lockhart also discusses abortion extensively and proposes new ways to (...) deal with the ethical and moral issues which surround it. (shrink)

Science’s theory of evolution purports to explain life and its historical dynamics in a physics/material-only fashion. But this entails a broad reliance on DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) for inheritance (and thus blueprints), which appears to be implausible for a number of unusual innate behaviors. The immediate unfolding challenge, though, is that the inheritance role is conveniently testable via searches for the DNA origins of a number of human behavioral and health tendencies, and despite enormous efforts those searches have thus far largely (...) failed (i.e., the “absolutely beyond belief” missing heritability problem). This existing case for DNA’s inadequacies will be briefly reviewed herein. The subsequent main analysis considers some big challenges facing DNA associated with some evolutionary dynamics—the acquisition of color vision in primates; instinctive behaviors including the egg-laying practices of emerald jewel wasps; kin selection; and our natural religious beliefs. Together these challenges strongly suggest that the acceptance of DNA as the (complete) language of life was premature. The haphazard and ambiguous nature of DNA/genetic specifications is very unlikely to have provided a vehicle for the exacting blueprints required for the many instinctive behaviors or capacities. Life appears to be more complex than biologists believe. Two possible alternative explanations are briefly considered in the wake of these discussions. Finally, does anyone—beginning with academics—care about this unfolding foundational failure? (shrink)

In Thinking of Others, Ted Cohen argues that the ability to imagine oneself as another person is an indispensable human capacity--as essential to moral awareness as it is to literary appreciation--and that this talent for identification is the same as the talent for metaphor. To be able to see oneself as someone else, whether the someone else is a real person or a fictional character, is to exercise the ability to deal with metaphor and other figurative language. The underlying faculty, (...) Cohen argues, is the same--simply the ability to think of one thing as another when it plainly is not. In an engaging style, Cohen explores this idea by examining various occasions for identifying with others, including reading fiction, enjoying sports, making moral arguments, estimating one's future self, and imagining how one appears to others. Using many literary examples, Cohen argues that we can engage with fictional characters just as intensely as we do with real people, and he looks at some of the ways literature itself takes up the question of interpersonal identification and understanding. An original meditation on the necessity of imagination to moral and aesthetic life, Thinking of Others is an important contribution to philosophy and literary theory. (shrink)

In this book, Ted Peters explores the fallacies of the "gene myth" and presents a resounding array of arguments against this kind of all-encompassing genetic determinism. On the scientific side, he correctly points out that genetic influences on behavior are in most instances relatively modest. Does anyone deny that identical twins are still able to practice individual free will? After dispatching some of the sweepingly deterministic conclusions of the "science" of evolutionary psychology with a particularly effective set of rebuttals, Peters (...) arrives at the conclusion that the nature of humanness is an interaction of three things- not one, not two, but three: genetics, environment, and free will. Neglecting any one of these three leads down a path of fuzzy thinking and dangerous consequences. (shrink)