We argue that the confusing pattern of evidence concerning colour categorization reported by Saunders & van Brakel is unsurprising. On a perspectival view, categorization may follow semantic or pragmatic attributes. Colour lacks clear semantic attributes; as a result categorization is necessarily pragmatic and context-sensitive. This view of colour categorization helps explain the developmental delay in colour naming.

Schyns et al. argue that flexibility in categorisation implies “feature creation.” We argue that this notion is flawed, that flexibility can be explained by combinations over fixed feature sets, and that feature creation would in any case fail to explain categorisation. We suggest that flexibility in categorisation is due to pragmatic factors influencing feature combination, rendering feature creation unnecessary.

Millikan's nondescriptionist approach applies an account of meaning to concepts in terms of designation. The essentialism that provides the principal grounds for rigid designation, however, receives no empirical support from concepts. Whatever the grounding, this view not only faces the problems of rigid designation in theories of meaning, it also calls for a role for pragmatics more consonant with descriptionist theories of concepts.

Van Gelder presents the dynamical hypothesis as a novel law of qualitative structure to compete with Newell and Simon's (1976) physical symbol systems hypothesis. Unlike Newell and Simon's hypothesis, the dynamical hypothesis fails to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for cognition. Furthermore, imprecision in the statement of the dynamical hypothesis renders it unfalsifiable.

In aesthetics there is a long tradition according to which beauty is the object of love. One construal of this suggests a sentimentalist theory of beauty: beauty just is the object of an emotion aptly described as love. The first step toward such a view would be to discern whether we can make sense of at least some kind of aesthetic affect as at least some kind of love. I suggest that we can by taking up a thought from Frank (...) Sibley, according to whom aesthetic properties reflect non-aesthetic values that “go deep into human life and interests” or that “mean much to us” given the kinds of lives we live. I show how we might think that a variety of aesthetic affect represents its object as embodying life-affirming value and as such we can see a variety of aesthetic affect as a kind of love of life. It remains to be seen whether this can be leveraged into a theory of beauty narrowly construed. (shrink)

I argue against the analytic moral functionalist view propounded by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit. I focus on the ‘input’ clauses of our alleged ‘folk moral theory’. I argue that the examples they give of such input clauses cannot plausibly be interpreted as analytic truths. They are in fact substantive moral claims about the moral ‘domain’. It is a substantive claim that all human beings have equal moral standing. There are those who have rejected this, such as Herman Göring. He (...) was loyal to a sub-class of humankind, but he suffered no conceptual confusion. Claims about what is morally relevant are substantive claims that cannot be known on purely conceptual grounds. (shrink)

I argue against the analytic moral functionalist view propounded by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit. I focus on the ‘input’ clauses of our alleged ‘folk moral theory’. I argue that the examples they give of such input clauses cannot plausibly be interpreted as analytic truths. They are in fact substantive moral claims about the moral ‘domain’. It is a substantive claim that all human beings have equal moral standing. There are those who have rejected this, such as Herman Göring. He (...) was loyal to a sub‐class of humankind, but he suffered no conceptual confusion. Claims about what is morally relevant are substantive claims that cannot be known on purely conceptual grounds. (shrink)

The publication of _Reading Capital_—by Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, Roger Establet, Pierre Macherey, and Jacques Rancière—in 1965 marked a key intervention in Marxist philosophy and critical theory, bringing forth a stunning array of concepts that continue to inspire philosophical reflection of the highest magnitude. _The Concept in Crisis_ reconsiders the volume’s reading of Marx and renews its call for a critique of capitalism and culture for the twenty-first century. The contributors—who include Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, and Fernanda Navarro—interrogate Althusser's contributions (...) in particular within the context of what is surely the most famous collective reading of Marx ever undertaken. Among other topics, they offer a symptomatic critique of Althusser; consider his writing as a materialist production of knowledge; analyze the volume’s conceptualization of value and crisis; examine how leftist Latin American leaders like Che Guevara and Subcomandante Marcos engaged with Althusser and _Reading Capital_; and draw out the volume's implications and use for feminist theory and praxis. Retrieving the inspiration that drove Althusser's reinterpretation of Marx, _The Concept in Crisis_ explains why _Reading Capital_'s revolutionary inflection retains its critical appeal, prompting readers to reconsider Marx's relevance in an era of neoliberal capitalism. Contributors. Emily Apter, Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, Bruno Bosteels, Adrian Johnston, Warren Montag, Fernanda Navarro, Nick Nesbitt, Knox Peden, Nina Power, Robert J. C. Young. (shrink)

While a vast body of research has been dedicated to understanding social problems and psychological disorders, we know remarkably little about the positive aspects of life, the things that make life worth living. This volume brings together the latest findings on the causes and consequences of human happiness and well-being. The book covers a wide variety of disciplines, encompassing evolutionary biology, positive psychology, economics and social science, neuroscience and peace studies. Contributors to the volume include some of the most distinguished (...) scholars in the field: social scientist Robert Putnam, evolutionary psychiatrist Randolph Nesse, psychologist Howard Gardner, economist Robert Frank, the founder of the Positive Psychology movement Martin Seligman, and the economic psychologist and Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman. (shrink)

I argue that an evaluational conception of love collides with the way we value love. That way allows that love has causes, but not reasons, and it recognizes and celebrates a love that refuses to justify itself. Love has unjustified selectivity, due to its arbitrary causes. That imposes a non-tradability norm. A love for reasons, rational love or evaluational love would be propositional, and it therefore allows that the people we love are tradable commodities. A moralized conception of love is (...) no less committed to treating those we love as tradable commodities; it is just that they are tradable moral commodities. An evaluative criterion of adequacy, I suggest, encourages the opposite view ? a non-rational and non-evaluational concept of love. Such a love can set up partial obligations, which may even demand that one sacrifice one's life. Only a love that has causes but not reasons can have the kind of value that we think love has, and thus it would only be rational to pursue and foster such a love. (shrink)

What is the purpose of art? What drives us to make it? Why do we value it? Nick Zangwill argues that the function of art is to have certain aesthetic properties in virtue of its non-aesthetic properties, and this function arises because of the artist's insight into the nature of these dependence relations and her intention to bring them about.

I develop a broadly reliabilist theory of non-ideal epistemic rationality and argue that if it is correct we should reject the recently popular idea that the standards of non-ideal epistemic rationality are mere social conventions.

§1.1 What m otivated the perpetrators of the holocaust? Christopher Browning and Daniel Goldhagen differ in their analysis of Reserve Police Battalion 101 (Browning 1992, Goldhagen 1996). The battalion consisted of around 500 ‘ordinary’ Germ ans who, during the period 1942-44, killed around 40,000 Jews and who deported as m any to the death cam ps. Browning and Goldhagen differ over the m otivation wit h which the m en killed. I want to com m ent on a central aspect (...) of this debate. (shrink)

Die {raquo}Revolution der Denkart{laquo} hat nicht nur den Anlauf genommen, welchem sie ihren Namen verdankt.! Gezahlt werden noch weitere Umstellungen der Theorie bildung als bloG die kopernikanische Kants. Hier interessieren gleich zwei. Die eine liefert den Gegenstand, die entsprechende, RevolutionPhanomenologie.

Does the universe embody beautiful ideas? Artists as well as scientists throughout human history have pondered this "beautiful question." With Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek as your guide, embark on a voyage of related discoveries, from Plato and Pythagoras up to the present. Wilczek's groundbreaking work in quantum physics was inspired by his intuition to look for a deeper order of beauty in nature. In fact, every major advance in his career came from this intuition: to assume that the universe embodies (...) beautiful forms, forms whose hallmarks are symmetry--harmony, balance, proportion--and economy. There are other meanings of "beauty," but this is the deep logic of the universe--and it is no accident that it is also at the heart of what we find aesthetically pleasing and inspiring. As he reveals here, this has been the heart of scientific pursuit from Pythagoras, the ancient Greek who was the first to argue that "all things are number," to Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and into the deep waters of twentieth-century physics. Gorgeously illustrated, A Beautiful Question is a mind-shifting book that braids the age-old quest for beauty and the age-old quest for truth into a thrilling synthesis. Yes: the world is a work of art, and its deepest truths are ones we already feel, as if they were somehow written in our souls.--From publisher description. (shrink)

One of our great contemporary scientists presents ten insights that illuminate what every thinking person needs to know about what the world is and how it works. Nobel Prize winner Frank Wilczek's Fundamentals is built around a simple but profound idea: the models of the world we construct as children are practical and adequate for everyday life, but they do not bring in the surprising and mind-expanding revelations of modern science. To do that, we must look at the world anew, (...) combining clear thinking with an openness to wonder. This "born again" world is in many ways larger, fuller, and much stranger than it appears. Through an exploration of space, time, matter, and ideas--and equipped with facts, questions, and brilliant speculations--Wilczek guides us through the past, present, and future of fundamental science. Readers will emerge with an expanded vision of our universe. Author Bio: Frank Wilczek won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2004 for work he did as a graduate student. He was among the earliest MacArthur fellows, and has won many awards both for his scientific work and his writing. He is the author of A Beautiful Question, The Lightness of Being, Fantastic Realities, Longing for the Harmonies, and hundreds of articles in leading scientific journals. His "Wilczek's Universe" column appears regularly in the Wall Street Journal. Wilczek is the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founding director of the T. D. Lee Institute and chief scientist at the Wilczek Quantum Center in Shanghai, China, and a distinguished professor at Arizona State University and Stockholm University. (shrink)

In the Aristotelian tradition, the psychological difference between virtue and continence is commonly understood in terms of inner harmony versus inner conflict. Virtuous agents experience inner harmony between feeling and action because they do not care to do other than what their circumstances call for, whereas continent agents feel conflicted about doing what is called for because of competing concerns. Critics of this view argue, however, that when the circumstances require sacrificing something of genuine value, virtuous agents can indeed feel (...) conflicted about acting well. But if this is so, what differentiates virtuous from merely continent agency? This essay argues that the traditional distinction conflates two aspects of virtue as well as two species of continence. And distinguishing between them provides resources for making sense of the complex relationship between inner conflict and good moral agency. (shrink)

To what extent should we use technological advances to try to make better human beings? Leading philosophers debate the possibility of enhancing human cognition, mood, personality, and physical performance, and controlling aging. Would this take us beyond the bounds of human nature? These are questions that need to be answered now.

Der Übergang vom Verhältnisbewußtsein zum Selbstbewußtsein kann unmöglich nur vom Verhältnisbewußtsein aus gedacht werden, weil wir uns eine Welt, in der das Bewubtsein unserer selbst verteilt ist auf die Dimensionen der Handlung vor deren Zentrierung in uns, gar nicht vorstellen können. Jedes Tableau der Handlungsmöglichkeiten, so abstrakt es auch abgefaßt sein mag, ist gebunden an Vorstellungen möglicher Handlungssubjekte, denen wir Handlungsmöglichkeiten zuschreiben. Handlungstheorie ist daher notwendig Reflexion unserer Praxis, in der wir uns selbst als Selbstbewußtsein erfahren, das seinem Verhältnisbewubtsein enthoben (...) ist, ohne dieses dadurch selbst schon aufzuheben zu können. Daß uns Freiheit im Handeln unaufhebbar prekär und problematisch bleiben mub, ist die Grundvoraussetzung dafür, dab wir Handlungstheorien historisch und bereichsbezogen ständig neu entwerfen müssen. Das Verhältnis von Handlungsphilosophie zu Handlungstheorien kann daher so gefaßt werden, daß Handlungsphilosophie die Grundbegrifflichkeit in kritischer Absicht bereitstellt, die den bereichsorientierten, mehr oder weniger deskriptiven Handlungstheorien abgehen muß. Dazu muß die ontologische Differenz von Handlung und Interpretation methodologisch ernst genommen werden. Die radikale Andersheit der hier zu begründenden Konzeption liegt vor allem in der Ansicht, daß Handlungen nicht als isolierbare Ereignis-Entitäten aufgefaßt werden können, die gegenüber der »Welt der Tatsachen des Bewußtseins« eine kausale, d.h. von der Welt des Bewußtseins abgetrennte Rolle übernehmen. (shrink)

**** Reprint of the Indiana U. Press edition of 1966--which is cited in BCL3. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Although declarations of the death of God seem to be provocations announcing the end of the era of theology, this announcement is actually central to the Christian revelation in its most classic forms, as well as to its reworkings in contemporary religious thought. Indeed provocative new possibilities for thinking theologically open up precisely in the wake of the death of God. Already Hegel envisaged a revolutionary new realization of divinity emerging in and with the secular world through its establishment of (...) a total order of immanence. However, in postmodern times this comprehensive order aspired to by modern secularism implodes or cracks open towards the wholly Other. A hitherto repressed demand for the absolute difference of the religious, or for “transcendence”, returns with a vengeance. This difference is what could not be stated in terms of the Hegelian System, for reasons that poststructuralist writers particularly have insisted on: all representations of God are indeed dead. Yet this does not mean that they cannot still be powerful, but only that they cannot assign God any stable identity. Nietzsche’s sense of foreboding concerning the death of God is coupled with his intimations of the demise of representation and “grammar” as epistemologically bankrupt, but also with his vision of a positive potential for creating value in the wake of this collapse of all linguistically articulated culture. He points the way towards the emergence of a post-secular religious thinking of what exceeds thought and representation. (shrink)

Views on addiction are often polarised - either addiction is a matter of choice, or addicts simply can't help themselves. But perhaps addiction falls between the two? This book contains views from philosophy, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, and the law exploring this middle ground between free choice and no choice.

The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. Other animals have stronger muscles or sharper claws, but we have cleverer brains. If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of (...) our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence. But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed AI or otherwise to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation? To get closer to an answer to this question, we must make our way through a fascinating landscape of topics and considerations. Read the book and learn about oracles, genies, singletons; about boxing methods, tripwires, and mind crime; about humanity's cosmic endowment and differential technological development; indirect normativity, instrumental convergence, whole brain emulation and technology couplings; Malthusian economics and dystopian evolution; artificial intelligence, and biological cognitive enhancement, and collective intelligence. (shrink)

This book explores both the embodied nature of social life and the social nature of human bodily life. It provides an accessible review of the contemporary social science debates on the body, and develops a coherent new perspective. Nick Crossley critically reviews the literature on mind and body, and also on the body and society. He draws on theoretical insights from the work of Gilbert Ryle, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, George Herbert Mead and Pierre Bourdieu, and shows how the work of (...) these writers overlaps in interesting and important ways which, when combined, provide the basis for a persuasive and robust account of human embodiment. The Social Body provides a timely review of the theoretical approaches to the sociology of the body. It offers new insights, and a coherent new perspective on the body. It will be valuable reading for students and academics in sociology, philosophy, anthropology, psychology, and cultural studies. (shrink)

Our paradigms of aesthetic value condition the philosophical questions we pose and hope to answer about it. Theories of aesthetic value are typically individualistic, in the sense that the paradigms they are designed to capture, and the questions to which they are offered as answers, center the individual’s engagement with aesthetic value. Here I offer some considerations that suggest that such individualism is a mistake and sketch a communitarian way of posing and answering questions about the nature of aesthetic value.

In this article, I argue that God is authoritative over us because he is our divine, causal parent. As our causal parent, God has duties to relate to us, but he can only fulfill those duties if he has the practical authority to give us commands aimed at our sanctification. From ought-implies-can reasoning, I conclude that God has that authority. After I make this argument, I show how the view has significant advantages over extant arguments for divine authority and can (...) help solve other significant problems in philosophy of religion. (shrink)

The emergence of the ultralightweight wheelchair has transformed the lives of millions of disabled people. It has radically changed the principles and practices of wheelchair design, manufacture, and prescription and redefined wheelchair users and wheelchair use. Designed and built largely by wheelchair users themselves, it was driven initially by a desire to improve sport performance and later by a wish for improved access to the community and built environment. In this paper, we draw on oral histories and documentary sources to (...) reconstruct its sociotechnical history. We employ the analytical concept of “boundary object” to illuminate how the wheelchair as a technological artifact is implicated in relations of social change and show the role of wheelchair users in the development and emergence of the ultralightweight wheelchair. We highlight the tensions and negotiations within this history and the push and pull between different social groups. The emergence of the ultralightweight wheelchair helped to reconfigure ideas about wheelchairs and their users and allowed wheelchairs to gain a foothold within broader social and technological infrastructures. What makes this account powerful is that this is a success story for a group who have historically been excluded from design processes. (shrink)

It is common to allocate scarce health care resources by maximizing QALYs per dollar. This approach has been attacked by disability-rights advocates, policy-makers, and ethicists on the grounds that it unjustly discriminates against the disabled. The main complaint is that the QALY-maximizing approach implies a seemingly unsatisfactory conclusion: other things being equal, we should direct life-saving treatment to the healthy rather than the disabled. This argument pays insufficient attention to the downsides of the potential alternatives. We show that this sort (...) of discrimination is one of four unpalatable consequences that any approach to priority setting in health care must face. We argue that, given the alternatives, it is far from clear that we should revise the QALY-maximizing approach in response to this objection. (shrink)

This article responds to recent debates in critical algorithm studies about the significance of the term “algorithm.” Where some have suggested that critical scholars should align their use of the term with its common definition in professional computer science, I argue that we should instead approach algorithms as “multiples”—unstable objects that are enacted through the varied practices that people use to engage with them, including the practices of “outsider” researchers. This approach builds on the work of Laura Devendorf, Elizabeth Goodman, (...) and Annemarie Mol. Different ways of enacting algorithms foreground certain issues while occluding others: computer scientists enact algorithms as conceptual objects indifferent to implementation details, while calls for accountability enact algorithms as closed boxes to be opened. I propose that critical researchers might seek to enact algorithms ethnographically, seeing them as heterogeneous and diffuse sociotechnical systems, rather than rigidly constrained and procedural formulas. To do so, I suggest thinking of algorithms not “in” culture, as the event occasioning this essay was titled, but “as” culture: part of broad patterns of meaning and practice that can be engaged with empirically. I offer a set of practical tactics for the ethnographic enactment of algorithmic systems, which do not depend on pinning down a singular “algorithm” or achieving “access,” but which rather work from the partial and mobile position of an outsider. (shrink)

Articulate and perceptive, Intersubjectivity is a text that explains the notions of intersubjectivity as a central concern of philosophy, sociology, psychology, and politics. Going beyond this broad-ranging introduction and explication, author Nick Crossley provides a critical discussion of intersubjectivity as an interdisciplinary concept to shed light on our understanding of selfhood, communication, citizenship, power, and community. The volume traces the contributions of key thinkers engaged within the intersubjectivist tradition, including Husserl, Buber, Kojeve, Merlau-Ponty, Mead, Wittgenstein, Schutz, and Habermas. A (...) clear, concise introduction to a range of difficult concepts and thinkers, Intersubjectivity demystifies this very interdisciplinary subject for advanced and graduate-level students of philosophy, sociology, social psychology, and social and political theory. (shrink)

Social networking sites have challenged ethical issues about users’ information security and privacy. SNS users are concerned about their privacy and need to control the information they share and its use. This paper examines the security of SNS by taking a look at the influence of users’ perceived control of information over their information-sharing behaviors. Employing an empirical study, this paper demonstrates the importance of perceived control in SNS users’ information-sharing behaviors. Specifically, perceived control has been found to be negatively (...) related to perceived privacy risk and attitude toward information sharing, which in turn has an impact on their information-sharing behaviors. In addition, gender has been shown to be an important factor that moderates the influences of both perceived control and perceived privacy risk on SNS users’ attitudes toward information sharing. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

This is a chapter of the planned monograph "Out of Nowhere: The Emergence of Spacetime in Quantum Theories of Gravity", co-authored by Nick Huggett and Christian Wüthrich and under contract with Oxford University Press. (More information at www<dot>beyondspacetime<dot>net.) This chapter introduces causal set theory and identifies and articulates a 'problem of space' in this theory.

This paper is about epistemic dilemmas, i.e., cases in which one is doomed to have a doxastic attitude that is rationally impermissible no matter what. My aim is to develop and defend a position according to which there can be genuine rational indeterminacy; that is, it can be indeterminate which principles of rationality one should satisfy and thus indeterminate which doxastic attitudes one is permitted or required to have. I am going to argue that this view can resolve epistemic dilemmas (...) in a systematic way while also enjoying some important advantages over its rivals. (shrink)

'The Probabilistic Mind' is a follow-up to the influential and highly cited 'Rational Models of Cognition'. It brings together developments in understanding how, and how far, high-level cognitive processes can be understood in rational terms, and particularly using probabilistic Bayesian methods.

The standard interpretation of cognitive reflection tests assumes that correct responses are reflective and lured responses are unreflective. However, prior process-tracing of mathematical reflection tests has cast doubt on this interpretation. In two studies (N = 201), we deployed a validated think-aloud protocol in-person and online to test how this assumption is satisfied by the new, validated, less familiar, and less mathematical verbal Cognitive Reflection Test (vCRT). Importantly, thinking aloud did not disrupt test performance compared to a control group. Moreover, (...) verbalized thoughts in both studies revealed that most (but not all) correct responses involved reflection and that most (but not all) lured responses lacked reflection. These data suggest that the vCRT usually satisfies the standard interpretation of the reflection tests (albeit not without exceptions) and that the vCRT can be a good measure of the construct theorized by the two-factor explication of ‘reflection’ (as deliberate and conscious). (shrink)

A theory of aesthetic value should explain what makes aesthetic value good. Current views about what makes aesthetic value good privilege the individual’s encounter with aesthetic value—listening to music, reading a novel, writing a poem, or viewing a painting. What makes aesthetic value good is its benefit to the individual appreciator. But engagement with aesthetic value is often a social, participatory matter: sharing and discussing aesthetic goods, imitating aesthetic agents, dancing, cooking, dining, or making music together. This article argues that (...) we should understand aesthetic value in a way that centers these social forms of aesthetic engagement. To this end, the article argues that there is a social practice of aesthetic valuing, characterized as a participatory practice governed by the value of aesthetic community, which engages us in the social development of our capacities for discretionary valuing and volitional openness. Current theories of aesthetic value have trouble capturing the character of the practice of aesthetic valuing, and this motivates a novel communitarian theory of aesthetic value: aesthetic value is what is worthy of engagement in the social practice of aesthetic valuing. (shrink)

Remarkable progress in the mathematics and computer science of probability has led to a revolution in the scope of probabilistic models. In particular, ‘sophisticated’ probabilistic methods apply to structured relational systems such as graphs and grammars, of immediate relevance to the cognitive sciences. This Special Issue outlines progress in this rapidly developing field, which provides a potentially unifying perspective across a wide range of domains and levels of explanation. Here, we introduce the historical and conceptual foundations of the approach, explore (...) how the approach relates to studies of explicit probabilistic reasoning, and give a brief overview of the field as it stands today. (shrink)