Climate change is one of the greatest collective action problems ever faced. The social and cultural barriers to intersubjectively motivating concern and agency are sweeping. It seems all but impossible to imagine politically viable solutions commensurate with the realities of the problem, and likewise find visionary ways of framing this problem to inspire meaningful solutions. One therefore perceives an abyss between ‘problem’ and ‘solution,’ as expressed in irreconcilable debates between problem-driven and solution-driven strategies for motivating climate action. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s (...) dialectical phenomenology of motivation and class consciousness in particular, I argue that his call for a “thinkable politics” can help activists bring problem-driven and solution-driven motives for climate response into productive relation. (shrink)

After decades of institutional failure to address climate change, the need for ethically-motivated collective action is clear. It is equally clear that this issue is not widely perceived as an ethical problem. As founders of climate ethics research, Dale Jamieson and Stephen Gardiner offer compelling accounts to explain why. Nevertheless, questions of ethical motivation in the face of institutional failure arguably mark an impasse in these otherwise essential contributions. This essay identifies the philosophical limits of Jamieson and Gardiner’s accounts of (...) ethical motivation while advancing an alternative philosophy of motivation that reframes the institutional barriers to climate responsibility. (shrink)

Most computational theories of cognition lack a representation of physiology. Understanding the cognitive effects of compounds present in the environment is important for explaining and predicting changes in cognition and behavior given exposure to toxins, pharmaceuticals, or the deprivation of critical compounds like oxygen. This research integrates physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model predictions of caffeine concentrations in blood and tissues with ACT-R's fatigue module to predict the effects of caffeine on fatigue. Mapping between the PBPK model parameters and ACT-R model (...) parameters is informed by the neurophysiological literature and established associations between ACT-R modules and brain regions. The results from three such parameter mappings are explored to explain observed data from sleep-deprived participants performing the psychomotor vigilance test with and without caffeine. Predicted caffeine concentrations in the brain are used to modulate procedural parameters in the fatigue module to explain caffeine's effects on multiple performance metrics. (shrink)

Tim Crane addresses the ancient question of how it is possible to think about what does not exist. He argues that the representation of the non-existent is a pervasive feature of our thought about the world, and that to understand thought's representational power ('intentionality') we need to understand the representation of the non-existent.

Elements of Mind provides a unique introduction to the main problems and debates in contemporary philosophy of mind. Author Tim Crane opposes those currently popular conceptions of the mind that divide mental phenomena into two very different kinds (the intentional and the qualitative) and proposes instead a challenging and unified theory of all the phenomena of mind. In light of this theory, Crane engages students with the central problems of the philosophy of mind--the mind-body problem, the problem of intentionality (or (...) mental representation), the problem of consciousness, and the problem of perception--and attempts to find solutions to these problems. A fresh and engaging exploration of the main issues in the philosophy of mind, Elements of Mind is easily accessible to students with no background in the subject. (shrink)

Preface ix 1 Meaning and the Means to an Understanding of Ends 2 Why Is an Eye? 21 3 Adaptationism and Engineering 39 4 On Five "-Isms" 67 5 Function, Selection, and Explanation 87 6 Deflating Function 119 7 Artifacts and Organisms 139 References 167 Index 177.

Abstract The only biologically respectable notion of human nature is an extremely permissive one that names the reliable dispositions of the human species as a whole. This conception offers no ethical guidance in debates over enhancement, and indeed it has the result that alterations to human nature have been commonplace in the history of our species. Aristotelian conceptions of species natures, which are currently fashionable in meta-ethics and applied ethics, have no basis in biological fact. Moreover, because our folk psychology (...) finds this misleading Aristotelian conception highly tempting, we are in fact better off if we refrain from mentioning human nature altogether in debates over enhancement. Content Type Journal Article Category Special Issue Pages 1-16 DOI 10.1007/s13347-012-0063-x Authors Tim Lewens, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RH UK Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433. (shrink)

Godfrey-Smith ( 2001 ) has distinguished three types of adaptationism. This article builds on his analysis, and revises it in places, by distinguishing seven varieties of adaptationism. This taxonomy allows us to clarify what is at stake in debates over adaptationism, and it also helps to cement the importance of Gould and Lewontin’s ‘Spandrels’ essay. Some adaptationists have suggested that their essay does not offer any coherent alternative to the adaptationist programme: it consists only in an exhortation to test adaptationist (...) hypotheses more thoroughly than was usual in the 1970s. Here it is argued that the ‘Spandrels’ paper points towards a genuinely non-adaptationist methodology implicit in much evolutionary developmental biology. This conclusion helps to expose the links between older debates over adaptationism and more recent questions about the property of evolvability. (shrink)

According to many commentators, Davidson’s earlier work on philosophy of action and truth-theoretic semantics is the basis for his reputation, and his later forays into broader metaphysical and epistemological issues, and eventually into what became known as the triangulation argument, are much less successful. This book by two of his former students aims to change that perception. In Part One, Verheggen begins by providing an explanation and defense of the triangulation argument, then explores its implications for questions concerning semantic normativity (...) and reductionism, the social character of language and thought, and skepticism about the external world. In Part Two, Myers considers what the argument can tell us about reasons for action, and whether it can overcome skeptical worries based on claims about the nature of motivation, the sources of normativity and the demands of morality. The book reveals Davidson’s later writings to be full of innovative and important ideas that deserve much more attention than they are currently receiving. (shrink)

Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are notoriously uninterested in truthtelling. They also often appear uninterested even in constructing plausible falsehoods. What stands out above all is the brazenness and frequency with which they repeat known falsehoods. In spite of this, they are not always greeted with incredulity. Indeed, Republicans continue to express trust in Donald Trump in remarkable numbers. The only way to properly make sense of what Trump and Johnson are doing, we argue, is to give a greater role (...) to audience relativity - and in some cases, audience participation - in notions like bullshitting and bald-faced lying. In this paper, we develop a new understanding of bullshitting, one that includes bald-faced lying, and recognizes that different communicative acts may be directed at different audiences with a single utterance. In addition, we argue for recognition of the category of bald-faced bullshitting, a particular speciality of both Trump and Johnson, and one especially useful to authoritarian leaders. (shrink)

Elliott Sober and his defenders think of selection, drift, mutation, and migration as distinct evolutionary forces. This paper exposes an ambiguity in Sober's account of the force of selection: sometimes he appears to equate the force of selection with variation in fitness, sometimes with ‘selection for properties’. Sober's own account of fitness as a property analogous to life-expectancy shows how the two conceptions come apart. Cases where there is selection against variance in offspring number also show that selection and drift (...) cannot be distinguished in the way Sober hopes for. These issues have significance beyond the parochial matter of the coherence of Sober's system. There is no good principled answer to the question of which features of a population should count among the contributors to fitness. This means there is no non-arbitrary account of the nature of selection. (shrink)

We provide a direct method for proving Craig interpolation for a range of modal and intuitionistic logics, including those containing a "converse" modality. We demonstrate this method for classical tense logic, its extensions with path axioms, and for bi-intuitionistic logic. These logics do not have straightforward formalisations in the traditional Gentzen-style sequent calculus, but have all been shown to have cut-free nested sequent calculi. The proof of the interpolation theorem uses these calculi and is purely syntactic, without resorting to embeddings, (...) semantic arguments, or interpreted connectives external to the underlying logical language. A novel feature of our proof includes an orthogonality condition for defining duality between interpolants. (shrink)

What is the value of having medical students engage in creative production as part of their learning? Creating something new requires medical students to take risks and even to fail--something they tend to be neither accustomed to nor comfortable with doing. “Making stuff” can help students prepare for such failures in a controlled environment that doesn’t threaten their professional identities. Furthermore, doing so can facilitate students becoming resilient and creative problem-solvers who strive to find new ways to address vexing questions. (...) Though creating something new can be fun, this is not the main outcome of interest. Rather, the principle reason we recommend devoting precious curricular time to creative endeavors is because it helps medical students become better doctors. (shrink)

This work provides proof-search algorithms and automated counter-model extraction for a class of STIT logics. With this, we answer an open problem concerning syntactic decision procedures and cut-free calculi for STIT logics. A new class of cut-free complete labelled sequent calculi G3LdmL^m_n, for multi-agent STIT with at most n-many choices, is introduced. We refine the calculi G3LdmL^m_n through the use of propagation rules and demonstrate the admissibility of their structural rules, resulting in auxiliary calculi Ldm^m_nL. In the single-agent case, we (...) show that the refined calculi Ldm^m_nL derive theorems within a restricted class of (forestlike) sequents, allowing us to provide proof-search algorithms that decide single-agent STIT logics. We prove that the proof-search algorithms are correct and terminate. (shrink)

The pressure of oversight and scrutiny in the business-to-business purchasing process has the potential to cause psychological distress in purchasing professionals, giving rise to apprehensions about being ethically inappropriate. Utilizing depth interviews with public sector purchasing professionals in a phenomenological approach, the authors develop the notion of ethical purchasing dissonance to explain the psychological distress. An inductively derived conceptual framework is presented for ethical purchasing dissonance that explores its potential antecedents and consequences; illustrative propositions are presented, and managerial implications are (...) discussed. (shrink)

This article considers the ways in which a liberal society ought to view the potential to cognitively or physically enhance children. At present, the dominant approach in the literature is to leave this decision to parents. I suggest that the parental choice approach is often inadequate and fails to account properly for the interests of children and wider society in enhancement decisions. Instead I suggest that the state should play a greater role in determining when, and how, to enhance. To (...) make this case, I compare the case of enhancement with existing practices of education, an area in which the state already plays a significant role. Finally I suggest that some concerns with a statist approach are not as serious as has been argued. (shrink)

Supporters of political realism and republicanism as well as students of political feasibility and non-ideal theory progressively focus on the dimension of power in the political relation. Yet we lack the theoretical framework to represent these features of power. In this essay, I take a first step towards designing the necessary conceptual tools for such a framework by analyzing the relations between the concepts of power and normativity that define the political relation. Adopting a ‘methodological cynicism’, I analyse the reasons (...) that motivate cynics who are only interested in power to obey a norm against force or violence and to seek legitimacy. This allows us to characterize external or mediate relations between power and normativity (such as the relation underlying political theory’s ambition of offering normative guidance for power) and identify internal and immediate relations between power and normativity. (shrink)

argues that when reproduction is sexual, natural selection can explain why individual organisms possess the traits they do. In stating his argument Matthen makes use of a conception of individual organisms as receptacles for collections of genes—a conception that cannot do the work Matthen requires of it. Either these receptacles are abstract objects, such as bare possibilities for organisms, or they are concrete. The first reading is too weak, since it allows selection to explain individual traits in both sexual and (...) asexual contexts. The only concrete entities we might think of as receptacles for collections of genes are male or female gametes. It is true that in the sexual context selection explains why an individual gamete combines with a second gamete of one type rather than another; however, this is not to say that selection explains why an individual organism has the traits it does. (shrink)

What, if anything, is wrong with typological thinking? The question is important, for some evolutionary developmental biologists appear to espouse a form of typology. I isolate four allegations that have been brought against it. They include the claim that typological thinking is mystical; the claim that typological thinking is at odds with the fact of evolution; the claim that typological thinking is committed to an objectionable metaphysical view, which Elliott Sober calls the ‘natural state model’; and finally the view (endorsed (...) by Ron Amundson and Günter Wagner) that typological thinking—and specifically evolutionary developmental biology’s typological thinking—is committed to a peculiar form of causation that does not fit neatly into the causal models endorsed by population genetics. I argue that, properly understood, the typological thinking of evolutionary developmental biology does not run into any of these problems. *Received April 2008; revised August 2009. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, CB2 3RH Cambridge, United Kingdom; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

The four tenets of the Strong Program are compatible with a scientific realism founded on an externalist epistemology. Such an epistemology allows that appropriate norms of rationality may differ from time to time, and from community to community, and thereby enables the realist to embrace strong forms of the ‘symmetry principle’. It also suggests a fruitful collaborative research program in externalist social epistemology. Some of what the Edinburgh School says about truth can also be accepted. But the realist should reject (...) the School's argument for the claim that there is no distinction between being rational and being locally accepted as rational, which seems to rest on a kind of epistemological internalism. Introducing the Strong Program Realism and the four tenets A stronger reading of symmetry Conflict and cooperation A note on discovery and justification Relativism and realism Truth Points of contention: the restriction of explanatory contrasts Points of contention: standards of rationality. (shrink)

Against transmission -- For attention -- Education in the minor key -- Anthropology, art and the university.

Jakob von Uexküll’s (1864-1944) account of Umwelt has been proposed as a mediating concept to bridge the gap between ecological psychology’s realism about environmental information and enactivism’s emphasis on the organism’s active role in constructing the meaningful world it inhabits. If successful, this move would constitute a significant step towards establishing a single ecological-enactive framework for cognitive science. However, Uexküll’s thought itself contains different perspectives that are in tension with each other, and the concept of Umwelt is developed in representationalist (...) terms that conflict with the commitments of both enactivism and ecological psychology. One central issue shared by all these approaches is the problem of how a living being experiences its environment. In this paper, we will look at Uexküll’s reception in French philosophy and highlight the different ways in which the concept of Umwelt functions in the work of Georges Canguilhem, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gilles Deleuze. This analysis helps clarify different aspects of Uexküll’s thought and the deeper philosophical implications of importing his concepts into embodied cognitive science. This paper is part of a recent trend in which enactivism engages with continental philosophy in a way that both deepens and transcends the traditional links to phenomenology, including most recently the thought of Georg W. F. Hegel and Gilbert Simondon. However, no more than a brief outline and introduction to the potentials and challenges of this complex conceptual intersection can be given here. Our hope is that it serves to make more explicit the philosophical issues that are at stake for cognitive science in the question of experienced environments, while charting a useful course for future research. (shrink)

This paper explores the debate between perfectionists and anti-perfectionists in the context of children. It suggests that the most influential and compelling arguments in favour of anti-perfectionism are adult-centric. It does this by considering four leading reasons given in favour of anti-perfectionism and shows that none apply in the case of children. In so doing, the paper defends a perfectionist account of upbringing from the attacks made against perfectionism more generally. Furthermore, because the refutation of the various anti-perfectionist arguments are (...) made exclusively dealing with children, the paper suggests that the perfectionist view of upbringing is compatible with anti-perfectionist restrictions on dealing with adults. This dual view combining perfectionism for children and anti-perfectionism for adults is referred to as restricted perfectionism. (shrink)

This article considers the justification of laws to religious citizens. It does via a consideration of the debate surround the teaching of Intelligent Design. It argues that one widely held view of political morality, public reason liberalism, requires that schools should allow teaching ID. This is contrary to the views of many defenders of this theory. I show that this argument reveals a deep problem with public reason liberalism, and that it undermines the judgement of the court in the high (...) profile case of Kitzmiller vs Dover. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Aidan Lyon and Mark Colyvan have proposed an explanation of the structure of the bee's honeycomb based on the mathematical Honeycomb Conjecture. This explanation has instantly become one of the standard examples in the philosophical debate on mathematical explanations of physical phenomena. In this critical note, I argue that the explanation is not scientifically adequate. The reason for this is that the explanation fails to do justice to the essentially three-dimensional structure of the bee's honeycomb.

Michael and has argued that species have intrinsic essences. This paper rebuts Devitt’s arguments, but in so doing it shores up the anti-essentialist consensus in two ways that have more general interest. First, species membership can be explanatory even when species have no essences; that is, Tamsin’s membership of the tiger species can explain her stripyness, without this committing us to any further claim about essential properties of tigers. Second, even the views of species that appear most congenial to essentialism—namely (...) phenetic and genotypic cluster accounts—do not entail strong forms of intrinsic essentialism. (shrink)

The UK-based deliberations that led up to the legalisation of two new ‘mitochondrial donation’ techniques in 2015, and which continued after that time as regulatory details were determined, featured a division of advisory labour that is common when decisions are made about new technologies. An expert panel was convened by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, charged with assessing the scientific and technical aspects of these techniques. Meanwhile, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics addressed the ethical issues. While this division of (...) labour was undertaken in the name of thoroughness, I argue here that it can have the unintended consequence that hybrid questions that simultaneously involve ethical and technical aspects—especially questions about where to set evidential thresholds for the acceptance of new technology—do not receive enough attention. (shrink)

The UK-based deliberations that led up to the legalisation of two new ‘mitochondrial donation’ techniques in 2015, and which continued after that time as regulatory details were determined, featured a division of advisory labour that is common when decisions are made about new technologies. An expert panel was convened by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), charged with assessing the scientific and technical aspects of these techniques. Meanwhile, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics addressed the ethical issues. While this division (...) of labour was undertaken in the name of thoroughness, I argue here that it can have the unintended consequence that hybrid questions that simultaneously involve ethical and technical aspects—especially questions about where to set evidential thresholds for the acceptance of new technology—do not receive enough attention. (shrink)

This paper examines the neo-Aristotelian account of species natures as ‘life-forms’, which we owe to Philippa Foot, Michael Thompson and their defenders. I begin by developing two problems for their view: a problem of underdetermination and a problem generated by psychological work on ‘folk essentialism’. I move on to consider their important transcendental argument, which suggests that claims about life-forms are presupposed by all efforts to describe the organic world. In response, I sketch a neo-Kantian projectivist position, which agrees that (...) life-forms are presupposed in these contexts, while denying that such life-forms are real. This position makes a better sense of the phenomena cited in support of the neo-Aristotelian view, while avoiding the problems raised for that view in the first half of this paper. (shrink)

Explores the role of eliminating fear in Epicurean ethics and physics, focusing on techniques to eliminate the fear of death and the fear of the gods. Includes a taxonomy of types of fear and types of therapy for fear.

This paper explores the debate between perfectionists and anti-perfectionists in the context of children. It suggests that the most influential and compelling arguments in favour of anti-perfectionism are adult-centric. It does this by considering four leading reasons given in favour of anti-perfectionism and shows that none apply in the case of children. In so doing, the paper defends a perfectionist account of upbringing from the attacks made against perfectionism more generally. Furthermore, because the refutation of the various anti-perfectionist arguments are (...) made exclusively dealing with children, the paper suggests that the perfectionist view of upbringing is compatible with anti-perfectionist restrictions on dealing with adults. This dual view combining perfectionism for children and anti-perfectionism for adults is referred to as restricted perfectionism. (shrink)

Few discussions of the ethics of mitochondrial ‘replacement’ techniques have drawn significant ethical distinctions between the two approaches now legal in the U.K. However, Anthony Wrigley, Stephen Wilkinson and John Appleby have together argued that under some circumstances pronuclear transfer (PNT) may be in better ethical standing than maternal spindle transfer (MST). They base their conclusion on what they allege to be different implications of the techniques with respect to non‐identity considerations, which they ground on a version of origin essentialism. (...) I raise a series of problems for their argument, which have cautionary implications for invocations of origin essentialism that go beyond specialized debates regarding MST and PNT. I argue that (i) origin essentialism is a fragile foundation for non‐identity considerations; (ii) gametic essentialism, which Wrigley et al. believe licenses their claims, is more questionable than origin essentialism; (iii) gametic essentialism does not straightforwardly justify their conclusion; and (iv) their conclusion in fact relies on an especially dubious position that we can call chromosomal origin essentialism. No good reasons have yet been supplied to distinguish PNT from MST on ethical grounds, and one should be wary of basing claims with practical impact on fragile foundations relating to origin essentialism. (shrink)

This chapter begins with Augustine of Hippo’s curious assumption, in The City of God, that in The Golden Ass the claim to have been transformed into a donkey was Apuleius’, rather than that of the fictional narrator, Lucius. Why should Augustine have made such a glaring error? The chapter argues that antiquity lacked a strong sense of ‘the narrator’. What we tend to call ‘first-person’, antiquity would have understood as ‘fictional autobiography’, in which the author illusionistically impersonates the narrating character.

"Postmodernism" has become the buzzword of contemporary society. Yet it remains baffling in its variety of definitions, contexts and associations. Beginning Postmodernism aims to offer clear, accessible and step-by-step introductions to postmodernism across a wide range of subjects. It encourages readers to explore how the debates about postmodernism have emerged from basic philosophical and cultural ideas. With its emphasis firmly on "postmodernism in practice," the book contains exercises and questions designed to help readers understand and reflect upon a variety of (...) positions in the following areas of contemporary culture: philosophy and cultural theory; architecture and concepts of space; visual art; sculpture and the design arts; popular culture and music; film, video and television culture; and the social sciences. (shrink)

In some cases, you may release someone from some obligation they have to you. For instance, you may release them from a promise they made to you, or an obligation to repay money they have borrowed from you. But most take it as clear that, if you have an obligation to someone else, you cannot in any way release yourself from that obligation. I shall argue the contrary. The issue is important because one standard problem for the idea of having (...) duties to oneself relies on the impossibility of self-release. The argument is that a duty to oneself would be a duty from which one could release oneself, but that this is an absurdity, and so there can be no duties to oneself. This argument is to be rejected because a duty from which one can release oneself is perfectly possible, and such release occurs quite properly from time to time. (shrink)

Many business practices focus on maximizing material affluence, or wealth, despite the fact that a growing empirical literature casts doubt on whether money can buy happiness. We therefore propose that businesses consider the possibility of "time affluence" as an alternative model for improving employee well-being and ethical business practice. Across four studies, results consistently showed that, even after controlling for material affluence, the experience of time affluence was positively related to subjective well-being. Studies 3 and 4 further demonstrated that the (...) experience of mindàulness and the satisfaction of psychological needs partially mediated the positive associations between time affluence and well-being. Future research directions and implications for ethical business practices are discussed. (shrink)

Most promising responses to skepticism fall into “Moorean” or “rationalist” camps. Mooreans believe that some apparently circular forms of reasoning allow us to have justification to believe that skeptical hypotheses are false. Rationalists believe that we have a priori justification to believe that skeptical hypotheses are false. It can seem that anti-skeptics are stuck choosing between fishy circular reasoning and mysterious a priori justification. I present a new difficulty for rationalism by focusing on skeptical scenarios wherein our faculties of a (...) priori reasoning are untrustworthy. In dealing with these scenarios, rationalists end up having to embrace the same sorts of circular reasoning that Mooreans use to deal with more familiar skeptical scenarios. As a result, there is no viable diagnosis of what's wrong with Moorean reasoning that does not also apply to rationalism: both anti-skeptical approaches are in the same boat when it comes to embracing circular reasoning. (shrink)