Robert Hanna presents a fresh view of the Kantian and analytic traditions that have dominated continental European and Anglo-American philosophy over the last two centuries, and of the connections between them. But this is not just a study in the history of philosophy, for out of this emerges Hanna's original approach to two much-contested theories that remain at the heart of contemporary philosophy. Hanna puts forward a new 'cognitive-semantic' interpretation of transcendental idealism, and a vigorous defense of (...) Kant's theory of analytic and synthetic necessary truth, making this compelling reading for all who are interested in these fundamental philosophical issues. (shrink)

Robert Hanna argues for the importance of Kant's theories of the epistemological, metaphysical, and practical foundations of the "exact sciences"--relegated to the dustbin of the history of philosophy for most of the 20th century. In doing so he makes a valuable contribution to one of the most active and fruitful areas in contemporary scholarship on Kant.

There are perceptual states whose representational content cannot even in principle be conceptual. If that claim is true, then at least some perceptual states have content whose semantic structure and psychological function are essentially distinct from the structure and function of conceptual content. Furthermore the intrinsically “orientable” spatial character of essentially non-conceptual content entails not only that all perceptual states contain non-conceptual content in this essentially distinct sense, but also that consciousness goes all the way down into so-called unconscious or (...) subpersonal mental states. Both my argument for the existence of essentially non-conceptual content and my theory of its structure and function have a Kantian provenance. (shrink)

An observation of Hume’s has received a lot of attention over the last decade and a half: Although we can standardly imagine the most implausible scenarios, we encounter resistance when imagining propositions at odds with established moral (or perhaps more generally evaluative) convictions. The literature is ripe with ‘solutions’ to this so-called ‘Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’. Few, however, question the plausibility of the empirical assumption at the heart of the puzzle. In this paper, we explore empirically whether the difficulty we (...) witness in imagining certain propositions is indeed due to claim type (evaluative v. non-evaluative) or whether it is much rather driven by mundane features of content. Our findings suggest that claim type plays but a marginal role, and that there might hence not be much of a ‘puzzle’ to be solved. (shrink)

In a recent New Yorker cartoon, a man is fixing a sink. His partner, standing nearby skeptically asks, “Do you really know what you are doing, or do you only google-​know?” This cartoon perfectly captures the mixed relationship we have with googling, or knowing via digital interface, particularly via search engines. On the one hand, googling is now the dominant source of socially useful knowledge. The use of search engines for this purpose is almost completely integrated into many of our (...) lives. On the other, the point the cartoon is making resonates with nearly all of us: users often recognize that there are risks and trade-​offs associated with gaining certain kinds of information via online search. These facts about googling make it particularly interesting to the applied epistemologist. Our practices involving search engines not only have a distinctive character, that character puts some traditional epistemic questions in a new light. This chapter will examine two of those questions. The first concerns the extent to which googling raises problems similar to familiar quandaries surrounding testimonial knowledge. The second –​and more radical –​concerns whether googling is a type of distributed or extended knowledge. (shrink)

The Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harm says that an event is overall harmful for someone if and only if it makes her worse off than she otherwise would have been. I defend this account from two common objections.

This book is thus a battle of wits. . . . [A] vivid sketch of the conflict between two basic outlooks."—Library Journal "[O]ne leaves this book feeling enriched and challenged.

L'obtention du droit de vote en avril 1944 et une participation active à la Résistance semblent représenter le début de quelque chose de nouveau pour les femmes françaises. Etudier la vie quotidienne des femmes à Toulouse pendant et après la guerre - à travers des sources écrites et orales - montre que les années d'après-guerre, avec la réintégration des hommes, le rétablissement de la politique traditionnelle et le retour de la normalité quotidienne, ont poussé les femmes à reprendre leurs habitudes (...) d'avant-guerre dans l'espace domestique. Il semble que, paradoxalement, les conditions créées par la guerre aient fourni des possibilités nouvelles aux femmes. Elles ont eu accès à une certaine autonomie, ont mesuré leurs capacités professionnelles, ont assumé de nouvelles responsabilités, et elles ont exprimé leurs opinions politiques pour la première fois. (shrink)

Contents - Introduction; The Problem of Thomas Hobbes; Formalistic Views of Representation; 'Standing For' - Descriptive Representation; 'Standing For' - Symbolic Representation; Representing as 'Acting For' - The Analogies; The Mandate ...

My first experience as a clinician was in a Therapeutic Community for service users with personality disorder. As well as having personality disorder, many of the Community members also suffered from related conditions, such as addiction and eating disorders. Broadly speaking, these conditions are what we might call ‘disorders of agency’. Core diagnostic symptoms or maintaining factors of disorders of agency are actions and omissions: patterns of behaviour central to the nature or maintenance of the condition. For instance, borderline personality (...) disorder is diagnosed in part via deliberate self-harm and attempted suicide, reckless and impulsive behaviour, substance use, violence, and outbursts of anger; addiction is diagnosed via maladaptive patterns of drug consumption; eating disorders involve eating too much or too little. If a service user is to improve let alone recover from these disorders, they must change the diagnostic or maintaining pattern of behaviour (cf. Pearce and Pickard, 2010). For instance, service users with borderline personality disorder must stop self-harming; addicts need to quit using drugs or alcohol; anorexics must eat. (shrink)

Hanna Pitkin argues that Wittgenstein's later philosophy offers a revolutionary new conception of language, and hence a new and deeper understanding of ourselves and the world of human institutions and action.

ABSTRACTDespite advances in the conceptualisation of facial mimicry, its role in the processing of social information is a matter of debate. In the present study, we investigated the relationship b...

Drug use and drug addiction are severely stigmatised around the world. Marc Lewis does not frame his learning model of addiction as a choice model out of concern that to do so further encourages stigma and blame. Yet the evidence in support of a choice model is increasingly strong as well as consonant with core elements of his learning model. I offer a responsibility without blame framework that derives from reflection on forms of clinical practice that support change and recovery (...) in patients who cause harm to themselves and others. This framework can be used to interrogate our own attitudes and responses, so that we can better see how to acknowledge the truth about choice and agency in addiction, while avoiding stigma and blame, and instead maintaining care and compassion alongside a commitment to working for social justice and good. (shrink)

Robert Hanna works out a unified contemporary Kantian theory of rational human cognition and knowledge. Along the way, he provides accounts of intentionality and its contents, sense perception and perceptual knowledge, the analytic-synthetic distinction, the nature of logic, and a priori truth and knowledge in mathematics, logic, and philosophy. This book is specifically intended to reach out to two very different audiences: contemporary analytic philosophers of mind and knowledge, and contemporary Kantian philosophers or Kant-scholars. At the same time, it (...) rides the crest of a wave of exciting and revolutionary emerging new trends and new work in the philosophy of mind and epistemology, with a special concentration on the philosophy of perception. What is revolutionary in this new wave are its strong emphases on action, on cognitive phenomenology, on disjunctivist direct realism, on embodiment, and on sense perception as a primitive and proto-rational capacity for cognizing the world. Hanna makes a fundamental contribution to this philosophical revolution by giving it a specifically contemporary Kantian twist, and by pushing these new lines of investigation radically further. (shrink)

? We gratefully acknowledge the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson, which provided a grant for the support of this work. E.T. is also supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the McDonnell Project in Philosophy and the Neurosciences. 1 See David Woodruff Smith.

In Neal Stephenson’s fictional novel, Diamond Age (1995), the protagonist Nell acquires a prototype of what we might today recognise as a highly sophisticated e-reader with a voice-assistant. This e-reader, the “Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer”, uses artificial intelli- gence to serve as Nell’s personal teacher. What is key to the Primer is how it is designed to respond to Nell. The Primer has a theory of Nell – her needs, her real-world situation, her abilities – and it tailors its lessons (...) for her. The Primer is a highly personalised artificially intelligent device. For many readers – myself included – the Primer was a utopian vision of the bespoke digital tutors of the future. The appearance of new media and technologies in the early 2000s all pointed to the near-term reality of devices like Primers. The real-life experience of personalised digital media, though, is so far from Stephen- son’s vision that it is hard to imagine we will ever get there. Nell’s time with the Primer develops her intellectually, emotionally, and physically. Our “bespoke” media experience, by contrast, is more likely to turn us in on ourselves rather than guide us to live well in our societies. Personalised media is making us more like Narcissus: our consumption is driven by personal choices and automated algorithms that reflect what we already want to hear, see, and consume, and we are captivated. Central to our understanding of the problems with the personalisation of digital media are filter bubbles and echo chambers. These phenomena are used interchangeably by some, but in distinct ways by others. I take the position that filter bubbles and echo chambers are distinct phenomena, but ones that raise similar epistemic worries. I begin with a general discussion of filter bubbles and echo chambers, and I introduce the concept of “selective exposure” as central to both phenomena. There is minimal uniformity across uses of the terms “filter bubble” and “echo chamber”. Consequently, I divide the later discussion into two more precise topics: homophily and polarisation. I conclude with some future-looking comments about responsibility and the epistemic risks posed by digital personalisation. (shrink)

Addiction is standardly characterized as a neurobiological disease of compulsion. Against this characterization, I argue that many cases of addiction cannot be explained without recognizing the value of drugs to those who are addicted; and I explore in detail an insufficiently recognized source of value, namely, a sense of self and social identity as an addict. For people who lack a genuine alternative sense of self and social identity, recovery represents an existential threat. Given that an addict identification carries expectations (...) of continued consumption despite negative consequences, there is therefore a parsimonious explanation of why people who identify as addicts continue to use drugs despite these consequences: they self‐identify as addicts and that is what addicts are supposed to do. I conclude by considering how it is nonetheless possible to overcome addiction despite this identity, in part by imagining and enacting a new one. Importantly, this possibility requires the availability of social support and material resources that are all too frequently absent in the lives of those who struggle with addiction. (shrink)

One of the most brilliant political theorists of our time, Hannah Arendt intended her work to liberate, to convince us that the power to improve our flawed arrangements is in our hands. At the same time, Arendt developed a metaphor of "the social" as an alien, appearing as if from outer space to gobble up human freedom; she blamed it—not us—for our public paralysis. In _The Attack of the Blob_, Hanna Pitkin seeks to resolve this seeming paradox by tracing (...) Arendt's notion of "the social" throughout her writings. Doing this, Pitkin developes a resolution that considers everything from language to the nature of political theory itself. (shrink)

Introduction It is by no means obvious that someone interested in politics and society needs to concern himself with philosophy; nor that, in particular, ...

Building on contemporary research in embodied cognition, enactivism, and the extended mind, this book explores how social institutions in contemporary neoliberal nation-states systematically affect our thoughts, feelings, and agency. Human beings are, necessarily, social animals who create and belong to social institutions. But social institutions take on a life of their own, and literally shape the minds of all those who belong to them, for better or worse, usually without their being self-consciously aware of it. Indeed, in contemporary neoliberal societies, (...) it is generally for the worse. In The Mind-Body Politic, Michelle Maiese and Robert Hanna work out a new critique of contemporary social institutions by deploying the special standpoint of the philosophy of mind—in particular, the special standpoint of the philosophy of what they call essentially embodied minds—and make a set of concrete, positive proposals for radically changing both these social institutions and also our essentially embodied lives for the better. (shrink)

The financial sector has seen a transformation towards ‘sustainable’ finance particularly in Europe, driven also by unprecedented regulatory reforms. At the same time, many are sceptical about the real impact of these reforms, fearing that they are triggering a paradoxical financialisation of sustainability. Building on recent research on institutional logics and institutional fields formation, we examine changes in the EU regulatory dynamics as characterised by shifts in framing the relationship between sustainability and finance. Deploying a longitudinal approach, consisting of archival (...) data and semi-structured interviews, we explore the development of EU sustainable finance regulation as an extended, interactive and contested process. Specifically, we suggest that regulatory dynamics depend on the hybrid configuration of the social constituencies supporting sustainable finance reforms and on shifts in the overall prevalence of the financial logic in society. Our paper sheds light on the inherent contradictions and limitations of sustainable finance as a means for transformative sustainability reforms. (shrink)

Variation in addiction suggests that a good definition will be précising: it should serve a purpose. The authors canvass the various purposes served by a definition of addiction in psychiatric, social, legal, economic, interpersonal and scientific contexts. They argue that addiction is a strong and habitual want that significantly reduces control and leads to significant harm. What counts as significant varies relative to purpose and context. The authors offer a basic account of the nature of control and how and why (...) it can be reduced. The chapter explores the nature of harm and why it is part of the definition. And it concludes by suggesting that progress in understanding addiction depends on bearing in mind the various purposes and contexts of enquiry, together with the common-sense but often neglected point that both control and harm come in degrees. (shrink)

"Fortune is a woman, and if you want to keep her under, you've got to knock her around some."--Niccolò Machiavelli Hanna Pitkin's provocative and enduring study of Machiavelli was the first to systematically place gender at the center of its exploration of his political thought. In this edition, Pitkin adds a new afterword, in which she discusses the book's critical reception and situates the book's arguments in the context of recent interpretations of Machiavelli's thought. "A close and often brilliant (...) exegesis of Machiavelli's writings."-- The American Political Science Review. (shrink)

В статті розкривається спосіб тлумачення віджняни в ранній йогачарі і пояснюються рівні віджняни та шлях їх очищення – пробудження. Буддисти переосмислили присутнє у філософській культурі Індії поняття віджняна, витлумачивши його дгармічним (миттєвим, унікальним, безсутнісним). Йогачарини ж, в прагненні з’ясувати причини оманливої позапотоковості віджнян, доповнили шість традиційних рівнів усвідомлення, алаєю-віджняною та кліштамано-віджняною. Вони ж впровадили поняття біджі, які накопичує алая-віджняна. Через васані відбувається забруднення усвідомлення, яке породжує дукгу. Очищення віджняни – звільнення від впливу накопичених біджів. Біджі – відбиток попередніх дгарм, який (...) продукує жагу відтворення миттєвої, а отже, неминуче зниклої реальності. (shrink)

Scolnicov highlights Harold Pinter as an experimental playwright who attempted to free the theatre from the legacy of realism, causality, and motivation.

When philosophers want an example of a person who lacks the ability to do otherwise, they turn to psychopathology. Addicts, agoraphobics, kleptomaniacs, neurotics, obsessives, and even psychopathic serial murderers, are all purportedly subject to irresistible desires that compel the person to act: no alternative possibility is supposed to exist. I argue that this conception of psychopathology is false and offer an empirically and clinically informed understanding of disorders of agency which preserves the ability to do otherwise. First, I appeal to (...) standard clinical treatment for disorders of agency and argue that it undermines this conception of psychopathology. Second, I offer a detailed discussion of addiction, where our knowledge of the neurobiological mechanisms underpinning the disorder is relatively advanced. I argue that neurobiology notwithstanding, addiction is not a form of compulsion and I explain how addiction can impair behavioural control without extinguishing it. Third, I step back from addiction, and briefly sketch what the philosophical landscape more generally looks like without psychopathological compulsion: we lose our standard purported real-world example of psychologically determined action. I conclude by reflecting on the centrality of choice and free will to our concept of action, and their potency within clinical treatment for disorders of agency. (shrink)

By “essentially embodied Kantian selves,” I mean necessarily and completely embodied rational conscious, self-conscious, sensible (i.e., sense-perceiving, imagining, and emoting), volitional or willing, discursive (i.e., conceptualizing, judging, and inferring) animals, or persons, innately possessing dignity, and fully capable not only of free agency, but also of a priori knowledge of analytic and synthetic a priori truths alike, with egocentric centering in manifestly real orientable space and time. The basic theory of essentially embodied Kantian selves was spelled out by Kant over (...) the course of slightly less than two decades, between 1768 and 1787, but above all, it flows from an empirical realist and metaphysical reading of the “Refutation of Idealism” that Kant inserted into the Postulates of Empirical Thought section in the 1787 edition of the first Critique. In my opinion, all rational but also “human, all-too-human” creatures like us are, synthetic a priori necessarily, essentially embodied Kantian selves. Let’s call that the essentially embodied Kantian selves thesis, or for short, EEKST. If EEKST is true, then it’s synthetic a priori impossible for the selves of creatures like us to exist independently of our own living organismic animal bodies or beyond the deaths of those bodies, whether temporarily or permanently, by any means whatsoever. Indeed, the very ideas of disembodied selves, their survival after death, and of human immortality, while minimally logically consistent, are in fact conceptually empty and incoherent, even over and above the synthetic a priori impossibility of such things, since the term “myself” indexically picks out an essentially embodied Kantian self, all of whose core features require grounding in a particular living organismic animal body. According to the recent and contemporary movement of transhumanism, the selves of creatures like us can not only exist independently of our bodies, as functional systems of representational content that are inherently able to be implemented or realized in digital-mechanical technology and uploadable to servers, but also to survive accidental or natural human death in server-limbo, then be downloaded into technologically enhanced partially mechanical humanoid bodies or even into wholly artificially-created completely mechanical non-humanoid bodies, survive in these new implementations or realizations for an indefinitely long time, repeat that process, and possibly even become immortal. Transhumanism is in fact metaphysically equivalent to Swedenborgianism, which Kant so effectively criticizes and wittily derides in his 1766 book, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics. Moreover, and more importantly, if EEKST is true, then, just like Swedenborgianism, transhumanism is not only conceptually empty and incoherent, but also synthetic a priori impossible. And what’s more, it’s also existentially and morally reprehensible. In short, then, the belief in transhuman selves is nothing but a reprehensible noumenal fantasy or Hirngespinst. (shrink)

I argue that there is moral luck, i.e., that factors beyond our control can affect how laudable or culpable we are.

I argue that addiction is not a chronic, relapsing, neurobiological disease characterized by compulsive use of drugs or alcohol. Large-scale national survey data demonstrate that rates of substance dependence peak in adolescence and early adulthood and then decline steeply; addicts tend to “mature out” in their late twenties or early thirties. The exceptions are addicts who suffer from additional psychiatric disorders. I hypothesize that this difference in patterns of use and relapse between the general and psychiatric populations can be explained (...) by the purpose served by drugs and alcohol for patients. Drugs and alcohol alleviate the severe psychological distress typically experienced by patients with comorbid psychiatric disorders and associated problems. On this hypothesis, consumption is a chosen means to ends that are rational to desire: Use is not compulsive. The upshot of this explanation is that the orthodox view of addiction as a chronic, relapsing neurobiological disease is misguided. I delineate five folk psychological factors that together explain addiction as purposive action: strong and habitual desire; willpower; motivation; functional role; and decision and resolve. I conclude by drawing lessons for research and effective treatment. (shrink)

Peter van Inwagen proposes a criterion of philosophical success. He takes it to support an extremely pessimistic view about philosophy. He thinks that all philosophical arguments for substantive conclusions fail, including the argument from evil. I’m more optimistic on both counts. I’ll identify problems with van Inwagen’s criterion and propose an alternative. I’ll then explore the differing implications of our criteria. On my view, philosophical arguments can succeed and the argument from evil isn’t obviously a failure.

Segal traces the development and use of the psychoanalytic concept of ambivalence from Eugen Bleuler to Freud to Melanie Klein and Wilfred Bion. Segal’s own argument, ultimately, is that ambivalence is an achievement rather than a problem, though only when it is acknowledged and not repressed. Her essay concludes its survey with Freud’s “Civilization and its Discontents” and Segal’s own meditation on the cultural implications of failure to acknowledge ambivalence. In their efforts to overcome ambivalence, groups often depend on the (...) most primitive psychotic mechanisms, dealing with aggression by projecting it outward and thereby creating enmities. Merging with a group superego allows for the perpetrating of atrocities in wars and revolutions that would never be pursued in our personal lives. Segal warns that the price for failing to recognize ambivalence in the nuclear age is very high, perhaps even the survival of the human race. (shrink)

I argue that denial plays a central but insufficiently recognized role in addiction. The puzzle inherent in addiction is why drug use persists despite negative consequences. The orthodox conception of addiction resolves this puzzle by appeal to compulsion; but there is increasing evidence that addicts are not compelled to use but retain choice and control over their consumption in many circumstances. Denial offers an alternative explanation: there is no puzzle as to why drug use persists despite negative consequences if these (...) consequences are not straightforwardly known. I describe the nature of the causal knowledge that one's drug use is causing negative consequences; map the conceptual landscape of denial and explain how it can block such knowledge; and explore some of the processes and mechanisms that have been studied by philosophy and the cognitive sciences and which may underpin denial in addiction, including well-established information-processing biases, motivational influences on belief formation and self-deception, and cognitive deficits with respect to insight and self-awareness. I conclude by suggesting that addiction is as much a disorder of cognition as a disorder of conation. (shrink)

Fließende Identität ist zum Wunschtraum einer ‚androgyn-multiplen‘ Kultur geworden. Utopien im Sinne des totalen Selbstentwurfs verwischen bisherigen Grenzen zwischen Fleisch und Plastik, Körper und Computer. Im postmodernen Plural gilt das Subjekt nur als Momentaufnahme im Fluss weiterer Verwandlungen. Es bedarf mehr denn je eines sinnvollen Durchdenkens: Was ist der Mensch? Edith Steins Denken legt frei, dass es eine Entfaltung gibt vom Unbelebten zum Belebten, über Pflanze und Tier bis zu jenem Wesen, das über Freiheit und Selbstbewusstsein verfügt: dem Menschen. Und (...) zugleich gelangt er aus sich selbst in einem Überstieg, ja, in eine lösende Beziehung: ‚In der Vereinigung mit der Göttlichen Liebe umfasst der geschaffene Geist auch erkennend, selig und frei bejahend sich selbst.‘ Das ist die Identität, um die es dem Menschen in seiner Sinnsuche geht. (shrink)

The commitment not to engage in tax avoidance – to refrain from using aggressive tax planning techniques – has not become part of the corporate social responsibility agenda in Poland. The purpose of this paper is to examine justificatory and explanatory reasons of that significant absence. The analysis unfolds in the following way. After setting out the necessary terminological background, I present main results of the limited empirical study of selected CSR documents, in order to substantiate the claim that tax (...) avoidance is a theme absent from the CSR programs in Poland. Then I put forward the contention that this commitment should be included in such programs, as prima facie justified, and address a selection of objections that can be raised to defeat this contention. Finally, in the last section of the paper, I briefly comment on possible reasons of this absence and show how they elucidate the nature of CSR. (shrink)

This paper argues that perception of one's body ‘from the inside’ provides one with an awareness of acting, and that this awareness explains a previously overlooked feature of one's knowledge of one's own actions. Actions are events: they occur during periods of time. Knowledge of such events must be sensitive to their course through time. Perception of one's body ‘from the inside’ allows one to monitor one's actions as they unfold, thereby sustaining one's knowledge of what one is doing over (...) the period of time in which one is doing it. (shrink)

Some philosophers think that the challenge of justifying punishment can be met by a theory that emphasizes the expressive character of punishment. A particular type of theories of this sort - call it Expressive Retributivism [ER] - combines retributivist and expressivist considerations. These theories are retributivist since they justify punishment as an intrinsically appropriate response to wrongdoing, as something wrongdoers deserve, but the expressivist element in these theories seeks to correct for the traditional obscurity of retributivism. Retributivists often rely on (...) appeals to controversial intuitions involving obscure concepts. While retributive intuitions can be compelling, some worry that the justificatory challenge cannot be met merely by appealing to them. ER tries to enhance the clarity and justificatory power of these intuitions and the concepts they invoke by appealing to an expressive conception of punishment. I argue that these theories fail to justify punishment and that there is reason to think that they cannot, in principle, justify punishment. (shrink)

This study examines the situated use of rules and the social practices people deploy to correct projectable rule violations in pétanque playing activities. Drawing on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis, and using naturally occurring video recordings, this article investigates socially organized occasions of rule use, and more particularly how rules for turn-taking at play are reflexively established in and through interaction. The alternation of players in pétanque is dependent on and consequential for the progressivity of the game and it is a (...) practical problem for the players when a participant projects to break a rule of “who plays next”. The empirical analysis shows that formulating rules is a practice for indicating and correcting incipient violations of who plays next, which retrospectively invoke and establish the situated expectations that constitute the game as that particular game. Focusing on the anticipative corrections of projectable violations of turn-taking rules, this study revisits the concept of rules, as they are played into being, from a social and interactional perspective. We argue and demonstrate that rules are not prescriptions of game conduct, but resources that reflexively render the players’ conducts intelligible as playing the game they are engaging in. (shrink)