The imaginative context in which artificial intelligence is embedded remains a crucial touchstone from which to understand and critique both the histories and prospective futures of an AI-driven world. A recent article from Cave and Dihal sets out a narrative schema of four hopes and four corresponding fears associated with intelligent machines and AI. This article seeks to respond to the work of Cave and Dihal by presenting a gendered reading of this schema of hopes and fears. I offer a (...) brief genealogy of narratives which feature female automata, before turning to examine how gendered technology today—particularly AI assistants like Siri and Alexa—reproduces the historical narratives associated with intelligent machines in new ways. Through a gendered reading of the hopes and fears associated with AI, two key responses arise. First, that the affective reactions to intelligent machines cannot be readily separated where such machines are gendered female. And second, that the gendering of AI technologies today can be understood as an attempt to reconcile the opposing hopes and fears AI produces, and that this reconciliation is based on the association of such technologies with traditional notions of femininity. Critically, a gendered reading enables us to problematize the narratives associated with AI and expose the power asymmetries that lie within, and the technologies which arise out of, such narratives. (shrink)

Independence was a core value of the movement for disability rights. People with disabilities did not have to be dependent, advocates claimed; they were robbed of autonomy by poverty, social prejudice, and architectural barriers. Recently, critics have noted that the emphasis on independence equates personhood with autonomy, reason, and self-awareness, thereby excluding those who are incapable of self-determination. The stigma of dependency is communicated to caregivers whose work is devalued and undercompensated. These values are echoed in the life writing of (...) people with disabilities, which tends to present a singular narrative voice, even when the author requires assistance in the physical or intellectual work of composition. The 1979 Mexican memoir-testimonio Gaby Brimmer, collaboratively authored by the acclaimed journalist Elena Poniatowska, Brimmer, her mother, and her paid caregiver is a notable exception. Consisting of interwoven dialogue among its three informants, Gaby Brimmer enacts dependency at the level of form, while exploring the challenges and opportunities of interdependence in societies that devalue the giving and receiving of care. (shrink)

Genomic and biobank research has undergone exponential growth in Africa. Traditionally this resulted in exploitative research practices in the form of so-called ‘parachute research’ with little or no consideration for capacity building. However there has been a recent growth of research and consortia where capacity building and equitable research have been a key objective of the research, and attention is now focused on the governance of this research. The importance of solidarity in genomic biobank research in high income countries is (...) well established and such an ethos reflects the communal based worldviews prevalent in many African communities. However, if the governance of the research is to foster equitable research practices, there must be some reciprocal benefit. This chapter will explore the impact that reciprocity will have on solidarity and how this may manifest in a governance framework in Africa. Particular focus will be given to capacity building and benefit sharing to enable the research to develop for the benefit of the local population, in a manner that promotes trust and fairness. This chapter will conclude with some recommendations on how to ensure reciprocity is enshrined in a governance framework for genomic biobank research in Africa. (shrink)

The challenge is there: the social problems of technology--problems related to the environment, the energy crisis, traffic problems, social engineering--so discipline-spanning in their interactions with other realms of life... are, at bottom, problems of social and political values.... They cannot be solved, in any realistic and adequate way, without the collaboration of philosopher-generalists, broad humanists, and social science generalists working with engineers and technological experts.... The more multidisciplinary technological problems become, the more important such programs [in science, technology, and society] (...) will turn out to be. Hans Lenk, Research in Philosophy & Technology 7 (1984): 50, 52. (shrink)

This article explores how visual images of dependency and care reflect and reinforce perceptions of people who are ill, disabled, or otherwise dependent, those who sustain them, and the meaning of the work they do. Scenes of care are a valuable index for understanding cultural assumptions about who is deserving of care, how and where care should be given, and who is obligated to serve as a giver of care. It positions these images in the context of the emphasis, within (...) the disability rights movement, on independence. I argue that the insistence on independence entails a form of what Lauren Berlant calls "cruel optimism"—desire for the very things that undermine happiness and well-being—because they rely on a willful disregard of the inevitable interdependency that is a fact of all human existence, as well as the particular forms of dependency that pertain to many disabled bodies. The end of the article considers works of visual art that challenge dominant modes for representing how care is given and received. If the invisibility of caregiving is one aspect of our willful forgetting that all bodies are dependent, I'll argue that visual images of care are an essential resource for recognizing and reimagining its status in our society. One desired outcome of such reconsideration would be to complicate the meaning of autonomy—as it relates to choosing disability—as well as how the work of caregiving is acknowledged and valued. (shrink)

We implemented a user-centered approach to the design of an artificial intelligence (AI) system that provides users with access to information about the workings of the United States federal court system regardless of their technical background. Presently, most of the records associated with the federal judiciary are provided through a federal system that does not support exploration aimed at discovering systematic patterns about court activities. In addition, many users lack the data analytical skills necessary to conduct their own analyses and (...) convert data into information. We conducted interviews, observations, and surveys to uncover the needs of our users and discuss the development of an intuitive platform informed from these needs that makes it possible for legal scholars, lawyers, and journalists to discover answers to more advanced questions about the federal court system. We report on results from usability testing and discuss design implications for AI and law practitioners and researchers. (shrink)

This article contributes empirical findings and sociological theoretical perspectives to discussions of the role of community lay health workers, including in improving the health of individuals and communities. We focus on the role of the Health Trainer (HT), at its inception described as one of the most innovative developments in UK Public Health policy. As lay health workers, HTs are tasked with reducing health inequalities in disadvantaged communities by supporting clients to engage in healthier lifestyles. HTs are currently sociologically under-researched, (...) particularly in relation to occupational identity work, and the boundary work undertaken inter-occupationally with other health workers. To address this research lacuna, a qualitative study was undertaken with 25 HTs based in the Midlands region of the UK. In theorising our findings, we employ a novel combination of symbolic interactionist conceptualisation of 1) identity work, and of 2) boundary work. The article advances knowledge in the field of health and exercise by investigating and theorising how HTs construct, work at, manage, and communicate about professional/occupational boundaries, in order to provide personalised support to their clients in achieving and sustaining healthy behaviour change within the constraints of clients’ lifeworlds. (shrink)

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of 'lenses' and 'tensions' to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the 'mess' of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of ‘lenses’ and ‘tensions’ to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the ‘mess’ of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

In two posthumously published essays, ‘History of Astronomy’ and ‘Of the Nature of that Imitation which takes place in what are called The Imitative Arts’, Adam Smith suggests provocatively that philosophy is an ‘art of imagination’ and that we take the same ‘very high intellectual pleasure’ in appreciating systematic scientific theories and in listening to musical ‘systems’, i.e., complex works of non-programmatic instrumental music. In this paper, I reconstruct the view of imagination, as the cognitive faculty primarily responsible for perception (...) and appreciation of such ‘systems’, that undergirds these claims, and argue that it is to be understood as aiming at ideal ends – in the first instance, at beauty or an order among variety (systematicity). Smith thus offers a distinctive view of aesthetic imagination, as neither freely playing nor imitative (two common views of imagination both in his time and ours) but rather as aiming at, and progressively realizing non-rational norms of order (again, at least in the first instance, an ideal of beauty). (shrink)

A sentimentalist theory of morality explains all moral evaluations as manifestations of certain emotions, ones that David Hume and Adam Smith, in their related but divergent accounts, call moral sentiments. The two theories have complementary successes and failures in capturing familiar features of the experience of making moral evaluations. Thinking someone courageous or dishonest need not involve having goals or feelings of desire, and Hume’s theory captures that well; but its account of how our moral evaluations are about or directed (...) toward people or actions is deficient. Smith’s theory readily explains how moral sentiments can be about things (and which things they are about), but at the cost of construing some central moral evaluations as goal-directed desires that are simply not like that. Present-day sentimentalists also face the challenge of combining these two desiderata. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas's vision of atonement is generally considered more conceptually expansive than Anselm of Canterbury's. Where Aquinas's multipartite account of Christ's passion incorporates a variety of biblical motifs, Anselm appears to narrow the focus to satisfactory debt-repayment alone. This article proposes two approaches for reframing the comparison between the two accounts. I argue first that both Anselm and Aquinas considered debt-repayment necessary but not sufficient in itself to accomplish all that is needed for the remittance of sin and the restoration (...) of humanity. For Anselm, as for Aquinas, Christ must also liberate captives, defeat the devil, amend Adam's sin by recapitulation and win merit in which his members participate. The first reframing thus locates Anselm in much closer proximity to Aquinas than has generally been supposed. The second reframing throws light on a significant divergence between the two. I argue that the kenotic trajectory of abasement and ascent, pictured in the Philippian hymn, is put to strikingly different use by each theologian. This second reframing throws into sharp relief Aquinas's emphasis on Christ's suffering as a theological priority which Anselm does not share. Looking to Anselm's Benedictine context, I contend, yields one possible means of accounting for this departure. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.3 (2001) 483-503 [Access article in PDF] China and the Ideal of Order in John Webb's An Historical Essay.... Rachel Ramsey Scholars of seventeenth-century intellectual history have generally relegated John Webb to the footnotes of their work on universal language schemes, architectural history, and Sino-European relations. 1 In this essay I suggest that Webb's An Historical Essay Endeavoring a Probability that the (...) Language of the Empire of China is the Primitive Language (1669), which argues that for 5000 years China preserved the language spoken by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, makes significant contributions to seventeenth-century intellectual history and to our understanding of early modern European perceptions of China. When Webb's Essay is placed within the context of the seventeenth-century debates about the "primitive" language of Eden, China's ancient history, and the idealization of that empire's harmonious and prosperous culture, its deeply political nature becomes apparent.The Jesuit accounts and those of other travelers to China were especially appealing to English readers living in the aftermath of the civil wars and the turmoil of the early years of the Restoration because they offered glimpses of a seemingly ideal state ruled by a stable monarchy and blessed with seemingly infinite resources and unimaginable wealth; however, these accounts included evidence that China had maintained an unbroken historical record that antedated the Flood, thus implicitly challenging the veracity of the Old Testament account of Noah and the Universal Deluge. Webb's Essay solves the problem posed by the Jesuit accounts of China's ancient history by placing them within a revised biblical narrative; this solution makes it possible for him to claim that China's [End Page 483] exemplary status is a result of its possession of the primitive language and its socio-political virtues are the consequence of its Noachian origins. The revised biblical narrative not only made Webb's encomium to that country more acceptable to a bible-reading public and protestant king but offered a politically-safe way for him to criticize the restored English monarchy by contrasting it to an idealized account of China's social and political state. More specifically, the circumstances of Webb's years of service in the Office of the King's Works help us further understand what attracted a seventeenth-century architect to the Jesuit accounts of China and what motivated him to write the first English treatise on the Chinese language. Webb's political career allows us to read AnHistoricalEssay as a politico-theological justification for a reasoned critique of the patronage system which Webb held accountable for his thwarted career ambitions. Webb's Career and the Politics of the Restoration John Webb lived through some of England's most turbulent history and witnessed firsthand the effects of monarchical instability and regicide, the uncertainties of the Commonwealth, and the shortcomings of the Restoration. Born to a Somerset family in 1611 and educated at the Merchant Taylors' school, Webb became Inigo Jones's pupil in 1628 and served as his "Clerk Engrosser" from 1633 to 1641 in the Office of the King's Works, where Jones was Surveyor. During the early years of the English revolution Webb served as his mentor's deputy in London after Jones fled north with Charles I, but he was dismissed from his post in 1643 following an "accusation from one Mr. Carter to the Committee of the Revenue, that the said Mr. Jones was at Oxford." 2 During his absence from the Office of the Works, Webb supposedly sent detailed plans of London's fortifications and smuggled jewelry to the king, for which he was briefly imprisoned. 3 After Charles I's execution in 1649, Webb worked on several country houses, including those of the Earl of Rutland at Belvoir, the Earl of Peterborough at Drayton, and Sir Justinian Isham at Lamport but he was firmly excluded from holding any political post as a former consort of the martyred King. 4 He held an appointment briefly... (shrink)

Moral philosophy is the study of what morality is and what it requires of us. As Socrates said, it's about "how we ought to live"-and why. It would be helpful if we could begin with a simple, uncontroversial definition of what morality is. Unfortunately, we cannot. There are many rival theories, each expounding a different conception of what it means to live morally, and any definition that goes beyond Socrates's simple formula-tion is bound to offend at least one of them. (...) This should make us cautious, but it need not paralyze us. In this chapter, I will describe the "minimum conception" of morality. (shrink)

Organizations have neither a right to the vote nor a weighty right to life. We need not enfranchise Goldman Sachs. We should feel few scruples in dissolving Standard Oil. But they are not without rights altogether. We can owe it to them to keep our promises. We can owe them debts of gratitude. Thus, we can owe some things to organizations. But we cannot owe them everything we can owe to people. They seem to have a peculiar, fragmented moral status. (...) What explains this? Individualistic views explain this in terms of individualistic notions alone. Such notions don’t invoke any distinctive features of organizations. They just invoke the features of individual members of organizations. Collectivistic views, instead, explain this in terms of collective notions alone. Such notions don’t invoke the features of individual members of organizations. They just invoke the features of those organizations. We argue that neither approach works. Instead, one needs to synthesize the two approaches. Some individual interests, we think, are distinctively collective. We, as individuals, have a distinctive interest in playing a part in successful collective action. From this, so we argue, flows the apparently peculiar, fragmented moral status of organizations. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between naturalism and morality and to assess their compatibility. Naturalism is defined as respect for science, for its methods and results. From this respect for science, one can infer two distinct philosophical naturalisms: the methodological and the metaphysical. The relationship between these forms of naturalism and morality depends on the correct conception of morality. This paper differentiates between objectively realistic conception and all other conceptions and argues that while other conceptions (...) can easily fit morality into a naturalistic worldview, objectively realistic conception faces theoretical challenges, including the challenge of explaining how moral facts and concepts play an explanatory role and the challenge of bridging the is/ought gap. The paper focuses on Railton's ethical naturalism as a prominent naturalistic theory of morality and evaluates its ability to overcome these challenges. The conclusion is that, so long as we consider a theory like Railton's, naturalism and realistically conceived morality are incompatible. (shrink)

I argue that justice and love are interconnected, where one makes little sense in isolation from the other. Love and justice have often been conceived as not only sharply distinct, but divergent in their aims and sometimes, conflicting in their demands. Justice has been perceived as having no place in loving relations, while some have argued that the particularistic and partial nature of loving is inconsistent with impartial, universal morality. I refer to this perceived contrast as the “love and justice (...) dichotomy,” LJD. I will briefly examine a few theories of love and care to illustrate the history of the LJD, and explore those theorists whose work challenges the LJD, particularly Velleman’s. I then argue for the beginnings of in what a feminist-focused theory of love consists (empowering and promoting the autonomy of the beloved), resulting in a further breaking down of the LJD. Drawing upon these challenging works and my own conception of love, I argue that the LJD is an illusion. (shrink)

1. Animal Cruelty Industrial farming is appallingly abusive to animals. Pigs. In America, nine-tenths of pregnant sows live in “gestation crates. ” These pens are so small that the animals can barely move. When the sows are first crated, they may flail around, in an attempt to get out. But soon they give up. Crated pigs often show signs of depression: they engage meaningless, repetitive behavior, like chewing the air or biting the bars of the stall. The sows live like (...) this for four months. Gestation crates will be phased out in Europe by the end of 2012, but they will still be used in America.1 In nature, pigs nurse their young for about thirteen weeks. But in industrial farms, piglets are taken from their mothers after about ten days. Because the piglets are weaned prematurely, they develop a lifelong craving to suck and chew. But the farmers don’t want them sucking and chewing on other pigs’ tails. So the growers routinely snip off the tails of all their pigs. They do this with a pair of pliers and no anesthetic. However, the whole tail is not removed; a tender stump remains. The point is to render the area sensitive, so the pigs being chewed on will fight back. Which they do.2 Over 113 million pigs are slaughtered each year in America.3 Typically, these pigs are castrated, their needle teeth are clipped, and one of their ears is notched for identification —all without pain relief.4 In nature, pigs spend up to three quarters of their waking hours foraging and exploring their environment.5 But in the factory farms, “tens of thousands of hogs spend their entire lives ignorant of earth or straw or sunshine, crowded together beneath a metal roof standing on metal slats suspended over a septic tank. ”6 Bored, and in constant pain, the pigs must perpetually inhale the fumes of their own waste. These pigs often get sick, and their ill health is exacerbated by the overcrowding. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Agriculture compared hog farms containing over 10,000 pigs—which is the norm—with farms containing under 2,000 pigs. (shrink)

This paper provides an introduction to the relevant debates revolving the three topics the connections between which are the being discussed in this volume--justice, autonomy, and love--outlining various conceptions and related questions. It also contains an overview of the contributions to the three sections of the volume: I) Justice Within Relationships of Love, II) Loving Partiality and Moral Impartiality, and III) The Political Dimension of Love and Justice.

The foundation for a system of morals, this 1749 work is a landmark of moral and political thought. Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.

The New York Times-bestselling author offers a stirring defense of liberalism against the dogmatisms of our time Not since the early twentieth century has liberalism, and liberals, been under such relentless attack, from both right and left. The crisis of democracy in our era has produced a crisis of faith in liberal institutions and, even worse, in liberal thought. A Thousand Small Sanities is a manifesto rooted in the lives of people who invented and extended the liberal tradition. Taking us (...) from Montaigne to Mill, and from Middlemarch to the civil rights movement, Adam Gopnik argues that liberalism is not a form of centrism, nor simply another word for free markets, nor merely a term denoting a set of rights. It is something far more ambitious: the search for radical change by humane measures. Gopnik shows us why liberalism is one of the great moral adventures in human history--and why, in an age of autocracy, our lives may depend on its continuation. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new theory of the nature of hypocritical blame and why it is objectionable, arguing that hypocritical blame is a form of dishonest signaling. Blaming provides very important benefits: through its ability to signal our commitments to norms and unwillingness to tolerate norm violations, it greatly contributes to valuable norm-following. Hypocritical blamers, however, are insufficiently committed to the norms or values they blame others for violating. As allowing their blame to pass unchecked threatens the signaling system, our (...) strong interest in maintaining valuable norm-following by tracking who has what commitments justifies objecting to hypocritical blame. This theory has a number of strengths over competing accounts: it delivers intuitive verdicts about when blame is objectionable across a range of cases, it is a naturalistic explanation, it is consistent with a leading theory of the nature of blame, it explains why hypocritical pronouncements that don’t feature blame are similiarly objectionable, it does not rely on contentious analyses of the nature of ‘standing’, and it preserves the common intuition that hypocrites are in some way dishonest. (shrink)

Simple claims with the verb ‘seem’, as well as the specific sensory verbs, ‘look’, ‘sound’, etc., require the speaker to have some relevant kind of perceptual acquaintance (Pearson, 2013; Ninan, 2014). But different forms of these reports differ in their perceptual requirements. For example, the copy raising (CR) report, ‘Tom seems like he’s cooking’ requires the speaker to have seen Tom, while its expletive subject (ES) variant, ‘It seems like Tom is cooking’, does not (Rogers, 1972; Asudeh and Toivonen, 2012). (...) This contrast has led some theorists to hold that the matrix subject in CR constructions is uniformly interpreted as the perceptual source (p-source) (Asudeh and Toivonen, 2012; Rett and Hyams, 2014). Others, based on examples of CR reports that seem not to require perception of the referent of the matrix subject, have taken the p-source interpretation instead to be non-uniform across CR reports (Landau, 2011; Doran, 2015). We reconsider these theoretical approaches to copy raising in light of new experimental work probing the sensitivity of these requirements to the matrix verb, the embedded ‘like’-clause, and the context. While we find some motivation for a non-uniform p-source analysis, it comes from importantly different cases than those others have relied on. Furthermore, our findings cast doubt on the prevalent assumption that the perceptual requirements of CR reports are to be captured solely by the presence or absence of the p-source interpretation. We suggest that the data motivating a non-uniform p-source view are better captured by an alternative approach, which makes use of a more minimal evidential source role, in place of the perceptual source role. We close by considering the relationship between English copy raising and evidential constructions cross-linguistically. (shrink)

What words we use, and what meanings they have, is important. We shouldn't use slurs; we should use 'rape' to include spousal rape (for centuries we didn’t); we should have a word which picks out the sexual harassment suffered by people in the workplace and elsewhere (for centuries we didn’t). Sometimes we need to change the word-meaning pairs in circulation, either by getting rid of the pair completely (slurs), changing the meaning (as we did with 'rape'), or adding brand new (...) word-meaning pairs (as with 'sexual harassment'). A problem, though, is how to do this. One might worry that any attempt to change language in this way will lead to widespread miscommunication and confusion. I argue that this is indeed so, but that's a feature, not a bug of attempting to change word-meaning pairs. The miscommunications and confusion such changes cause can lead us, via a process I call transformative communicative disruption, to reflect on our language and its use, and this can be further, rather than hinder, our goal of improving language. (shrink)

On the traditional relationalist conception of singular thought, a thought has singular content when it is based on an ‘information relation’ to its object. Recent work rejects relationalism and suggests singular thoughts are distinguished from descriptive thoughts by their inferential role: only thoughts with singular content can be employed in ‘direct’ inferences, or inferences that ‘trade on identity’. Firstly this view is insufficiently clear, because it conflates two distinct ideas—one about a kind of inference, the other a kind of process (...) that grounds inferences—under the title, ‘trading on identity’. Secondly, this leaves us without a notion that can be used as an alternative to relationalism about singular thought. The first notion is no more applicable to singular than to descriptive thought. The second may help us better understand singular thought, but does so, not by replacing the view that singular thoughts are information-based, but by helping us understand the nature of information-based thought. (shrink)

Scholars have critiqued mainstream economic approaches to environmental valuation for decades. These critiques have intensified with the increased prominence of environmental valuation in decision-making. This paper has three goals. First, we summarise prominent critiques of monetary valuation, drawing mostly on the work of Clive Spash, who worked extensively on cost–benefit analysis early in his career and then became one of monetary valuation's most thorough and ardent critics. Second, we, as a group of scholars who study relational values, describe how relational (...) values research engages with and addresses many of the critiques of monetary valuation. Third, we offer suggestions for relational values research that continues and deepens its ability to respond to critiques of monetary valuation and contributes to transformative change towards sustainability. (shrink)

The Significance Argument (SA) for the irreducibility of consciousness is based on a series of new puzzle-cases that I call multiple candidate cases. In these cases, there is a multiplicity of physical-functional properties or relations that are candidates to be identified with the sensible qualities and our consciousness of them, where those candidates are not significantly different. I will argue that these cases show that reductive materialists cannot accommodate the various ways in which consciousness is significant and must allow massive (...) vagueness in conscious experience. I also will argue that a nonreductive theory of the conscious-of relation can easily provide a very satisfying, unified explanation of the ways in which this relation is significant. (shrink)

Many favor representationalism about color experience. To a first approximation, this view holds that experiencing is like believing. In particular, like believing, experiencing is a matter of representing the world to be a certain way. Once you view color experience along these lines, you face a big question: do our color experiences represent the world as it really is? For instance, suppose you see a tomato. Representationalists claim that having an experience with this sensory character is necessarily connected with representing (...) a distinctive quality as pervading a round area out there in external space. Let us call it “sensible redness” to highlight the fact that the representation of this property is necessarily connected with the sensory character of the experience. Is this property, sensible redness, really co-instantiated with roundness out there in the space before you? (shrink)

Increasingly, metaphors are the target of political critique: Jewish groups condemn Holocaust imagery; mental health organizations, the metaphorical exploitation of psychosis; and feminists, “rape metaphors.” I develop a novel model for making sense of such critiques of metaphor.

Philosophers have long been interested in love and its general role in morality. This volume focuses on and explores the complex relation between love and justice as it appears within loving relationships, between lovers and their wider social context, and the broader political realm. Special attention is paid to the ensuing challenge of understanding and respecting the lovers’ personal autonomy in all three contexts. Accordingly, the essays in this volume are divided into three thematic sections. Section I aims at shedding (...) further light on conceptual and practical issues concerning the compatibility or incompatibility of love and justice within relationships of love. For example, are loving relations inherently unjust? Might love require justice? Or do love and justice belong to distinct moral domains? The essays in Section II consider the relation between the lovers on the one hand and their broader societal environment on the other. Specifically, how exactly are love and impartiality related? Are they compatible or not? Is it unjust to favor one’s beloved? Finally, Section III looks at the political dimensions of love and justice. How, for instance, do various accounts of love inform how we are to relate to our fellow citizens? If love is taken to play an important role in fostering or hindering the development of personal autonomy, what are the political implications that need to be addressed, and how? In addressing these questions, this book engenders a better understanding both of conceptual and practical issues regarding the relation between love, justice, and autonomy as well as their broader societal and political implications. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars working on the philosophy of love from ethical, political, and psychological angles. (shrink)

We discuss a case where clinical genomic investigation of muscle weakness unexpectedly found a genetic variant that might (or might not) predispose to kidney cancer. We argue that despite its off-target and uncertain nature, this variant should be discussed with the man who had the test, not because it is medical information, but because this discussion would allow the further clinical evaluation that might lead it to becoming so. We argue that while prominent ethical debates around genomics often take ‘results’ (...) as a starting point and ask questions as to whether to look for and how to react to them, the construction of genomic results is fraught with ethical complexity, although often couched as a primarily technical problem. We highlight the need for greater focus on, and appreciation of, the ethical work undertaken daily by scientists and clinicians working in genomic medicine and discuss how public conversations around genomics need to adapt to prepare future patients for potentially uncertain and unexpected outcomes from clinical genomic tests. (shrink)

Faultless disagreement and faultless retraction have been taken to motivate relativism for predicates of personal taste, like ‘tasty’. Less attention has been devoted to the question of what aspect of their meaning underlies this relativist behavior. This paper illustrates these same phenomena with a new category of expressions: appearance predicates, like ‘tastes vegan’ and ‘looks blue’. Appearance predicates and predicates of personal taste both fall into the broader category of experiential predicates. Approaching predicates of personal taste from this angle suggests (...) that their relativist behavior is due to their experience-sensitivity, rather than their evaluative meaning. Furthermore, appearance predicates hold interest beyond what they can teach us about predicates of personal taste. Examination of a variety of uses of appearance predicates reveals that they give rise to relativist behavior for a variety of reasons—including some that apply also to other types of expressions, such as epistemic modals and comparative terms. This paper thus serves both to probe the source of relativist behavior in discourse about personal taste, as well as to map out this kind of behavior in the rich and under-explored discourse about appearances. (shrink)

By examining first-person descriptions of thought insertion I show that thought insertion is a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon. People experiencing this phenomenon have huge difficulty explaining what it is like due to the bizarre nature of the experience. Through careful analysis of first-person descriptions I identify some of the characteristics of thought insertion. I then briefly examine some of the philosophical literature regarding agency, ownership and thought insertion and conclude that the standard account of the basic characteristics of thought insertion (...) is inadequate when we consider the phenomenon as it is experienced. First person descriptions suggest that thought insertion is characterised by a lack of personal ownership and not simply by a loss of agency or authorship. This is an important factor that should inform research and therapeutic intervention. We cannot hope to arrive at appropriate therapeutic intervention or identify underlying neuronal mechanisms for the experience if we cannot say what the experience actually is. I further suggest that more analysis of first-person description is required for an improved account of the phenomenology of thought insertion. (shrink)

Epistemologists of testimony have focused almost exclusively on the epistemic dynamics of simple testimony. We do sometimes testify by ways of simple, single sentence assertions. But much of our testimony is narratively structured. I argue that narrative testimony gives rise to a form of epistemic dependence that is far richer and more far reaching than the epistemic dependence characteristic of simple testimony.

Hate speech and misinformation are rife. How to respond? Counterspeech proposals say: with more and better speech. This paper considers the treatment of counterspeech in Maxime Lepoutre’s Democratic Speech In Divided Times. Lepoutre provides a nuanced defence of counterspeech. Some counterspeech, he grants, is flawed. But, he says: counterspeech can be debugged. Once we understand why counterspeech fails – when fail it does – we can engineer more effective counterspeech strategies. Lepoutre argues that the failures of counterspeech can be theorised (...) using the ideology of salience. Negative counterspeech fails because it reinforces the salience of the very ideas or associations that it contests. His solution? Positive counterspeech – a form of counterspeech which avoids the salience trap. I argue that the salience paradigm is ill-suited to theorise the failures of counterspeech. I suggest some alternatives. Further, I show that these alternative paradigms make importantly different practical recommendations – recommendations concerning how we ought to engineer our counterspeech – from those issued by the salience paradigm. (shrink)

Though the vegetarian movement sparked by Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation has achieved some success, there is more animal suffering caused today due to factory farming than there was when the book was originally written. In this paper, I argue that there may be a technological solution to the problem of animal suffering in intensive factory farming operations. In particular, I suggest that recent research indicates that we may be very close to, if not already at, the point where we (...) can genetically engineer factory-farmed livestock with a reduced or completely eliminated capacity to suffer. In as much as animal suffering is the principal concern that motivates the animal welfare movement, this development should be of central interest to its adherents. Moreover, I will argue that all people concerned with animal welfare should agree that we ought to replace the animals currently used in factory farming with animals whose ability to suffer is diminished if we are able to do so. (shrink)

The so-called ‘mental files theory’ in the philosophy of mind stems from an analogy comparing object-concepts to ‘files’, and the mind to a ‘filing system’. Though this analogy appears in philosophy of mind and language from the 1970s onward, it remains unclear to many how it should be interpreted. The central commitments of the mental files theory therefore also remain unclear. Based on influential uses of the file analogy within philosophy, I elaborate three central explanatory roles for mental files. Next, (...) I outline several common criticisms of the file picture, which have been a source of resistance to the view. Finally, I outline several interpretations of the theory, thus highlighting that the best interpretation of the file-theory's central analogy remains a live issue. (shrink)

This paper offers three objections to Leslie’s recent and already influential theory of generics :375–403, 2007a, Philos Rev 117:1–47, 2008): her proposed metaphysical truth-conditions are subject to systematic counter-examples, the proposed disquotational semantics fails, and there is evidence that generics do not express cognitively primitive generalisations.

The paper gives a brief characterization of philosophical problems; points up something of their significance for the culture, the social order, and our lives; indicates the methodology appropriate for the problems; and presents a view of the cultural mission of philosophy today. Philosophy attempts to bring under critical review and to correct errors in the cultural mind of our civilization, the prevailing assumptions and beliefs about our knowledge‐yielding powers, the various sectors of the culture, and the basic structure of the (...) world. It holds the cultural mind accountable to the unavoidable presuppositions of experience, thought, and action. Errors in the cultural mind can lead to distortions in the development of the culture and to social and personal pathologies. I contend that our modern Western cultural mind undermines the humanistic dimension of the culture, and ultimately the whole culture, by a restricted view of our knowledge‐yielding powers and the resulting impoverished view of reality. The mission of philosophy today is to point out the errors in our cultural mind and to work for a humanistic cultural reformation. (shrink)