“My first long haul flight that didn’t fill up and an empty row for me. I have been blessed by the algorithm ”. The phrase ‘blessed by the algorithm’ expresses the feeling of having been fortunate in what appears on your feed on various social media platforms, or in the success or virality of your content as a creator, or in what gig economy jobs you are offered. However, we can also place it within wider public discourse employing theistic conceptions (...) of AI. Building on anthropological fieldwork into the ‘entanglements of AI and Religion’, this article will explore how ‘blessed by the algorithm’ tweets are indicative of the impact of theistic AI narratives: modes of thinking about AI in an implicitly religious way. This thinking also represents continuities that push back against the secularisation thesis and other grand narratives of disenchantment that claim secularity occurs because of technological and intellectual progress. This article will also explore new religious movements, where theistic conceptions of AI entangle technological aspirations with religious ones. (shrink)

Drawing on observations from on‐ and offline fieldwork among transhumanists and artificial superintelligence/singularity‐focused groups, this article will explore an anthropology of anxiety around the hoped for, or feared, posthuman future. It will lay out some of the varieties of existential hope and existential despair found in these discussions about predicted events such as the “end of the world” and place them within an anthropological theoretical framework. Two examples will be considered. First, the optimism observed at a transhumanist event will be (...) examined to emphasize the positive affective aspects of certain apocalypse scenarios, especially those with an implicit eschatological direction. Second, an online location where examples of existential despair can be noted will be explored further to demonstrate the kinds of negative responses to certain superintelligence/singularity ideas. These examples of existential hope and despair will demonstrate the intrinsic role of anxiety in ideas about a future artificial intelligence apocalypse. (shrink)

_Wittgenstein's Art of Investigation_ is one of the first to focus on and provide an original and detailed analysis of Wittgenstein's grammatical investigations. Beth Sarkey offers us new insight into the historical context and influences on method which will help students understand the intricacies and depth of his work.

Extending her earlier work on a theory of human rights in her 1993 Operative Rights, Singer (emerita, American philosophy presumably, City U. of New York) critiques philosophies from Rousseau to Kymlicka in clarifying her views--influenced by Dewey and Mead (George Herbert, not Margaret)--and applying them to such issues as multiculturalism, minority rights, and conflict resolution. The analysis pivots on her concept of "a normative community" rather than natural rights. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Inherent in providing healthcare for youth lie tensions among best interests, decision-making capacity, rights, and legal authority. Transgender youth experience barriers to needed gender-affirming care, often rooted in ethical and legal issues, such as healthcare provider concerns regarding youth capacity and rights to consent to hormone therapy. Even when decision-making capacity is present, youth may lack the legal authority to give consent. The aims of this paper are therefore to provide an empirical analysis of minor trans youth capacity to consent (...) to hormone therapy and to address the normative question of whether there is ethical justification for granting trans youth the authority to consent to this care. Through qualitative content analysis of interviews with trans youth, parents, and healthcare providers, we found that trans youth demonstrated the understandings and abilities characteristic of the capacity to consent to hormone therapy and that they did consent to hormone therapy with positive outcomes. Employing deontological and consequentialist reasoning and drawing on a foundation of empirical evidence, human rights, and best interests we conclude that granting trans youth with decisional capacity both the right and the legal authority to consent to hormone therapy via the informed consent model of care is ethically justified. (shrink)

To address growing concerns about academic integrity, college students (n?=?758) at honor system and non-honor system institutions were presented with eight scenarios to determine the influence of an honor system on their perceptions of and responses to academic dishonesty. Main effects for honor code status emerged. Students from traditional honor system schools considered the behaviors to be more dishonest, and were more likely to respond that they would report the incident when compared to students attending modified and non-honor system institutions. (...) Findings suggest traditional honor systems, with specific rules and regulations in place, are more effective at cultivating academic integrity among students; modified honor systems may not be as effective as previous research suggests. (shrink)

A paradigm case of demanding involves making utterances designed to influence addressees to accede.1 It would be incoherent to say, "I demand that you do x, but I am not saying that you ought to do x," or "I demand that you do x, although I am fully aware that you cannot do x." The extraordinary nature of demanding may be gleaned from anomalous utterances such as "employees may demand time off by notifying scheduling managers at least one month in (...) advance" and "faculty members may demand an extension of the tenure clock in writing to the provost." Demanding is less anomalous in protest rhetoric and in fact an important strategy for marginalized groups who are "criticized for not handling conflicts and controversies... (shrink)

De minimis defenses are an understudied aspect of law, appearing in legal practice more often than in legal theory but rarely garnering any type of extensive analysis in either. This has led to an unfortunate state of affairs in which one term is applied to a set of practices that are, at best, only loosely connected. Using Paul Robinson’s system of defense types, this paper will illustrate the various roles and functions the de minimis defense plays in our legal system. (...) In doing so, it will highlight the dangers of viewing the defense as monolithic and suggest that our terminology surrounding de minimis ought to be revised due to the differing justifications that support the application of each de minimis type. (shrink)

Corporate Philanthropy is multi-dimensional, differs between sectors and involves both individual and organisational decision-making to achieve business and social goals. However, the CP literature characteristically focuses on strategic decisions made by business leaders and ignores the role of employees, especially those in lower status and lower paid positions. To redress this imbalance, we conducted a qualitative study of employees’ involvement in CP processes in ten workplaces in the South East of England to identify whether and how they are involved in (...) CP decision-making and to capture their perspective on the nature of CP and the benefits generated by such activities. We specifically chose to study workplaces where employees are involved in the actual execution of the CP strategy, prioritising companies with a visible presence on the high street. The results illustrate the benefits of involving employees in CP decision-making, which we argue derives in part from the ‘liminal-like states’ that typify CP activities organised by shop floor staff, involving the temporary overturning of hierarchies, humanising of workplaces and opportunities for lower level staff to prioritise their personal philanthropic preferences and signal their charitable identity to colleagues and customers. Whilst the data also suggest that CP decision-making remains predominantly top-down and driven by profit-oriented goals, we conclude that employees should be involved in choosing charitable causes as well as in designing and implementing workplace fundraising, in order to maximise the advantages of CP for the company and for wider society. (shrink)

This book focuses on material culture as a subject of philosophical inquiry and promotes the philosophical study of material culture by articulating some of the central and difficult issues raised by this topic and providing innovative solutions to them, most notably an account of improvised action and a non-intentionalist account of function in material culture. Preston argues that material culture essentially involves activities of production and use; she therefore adopts an action-theoretic foundation for a philosophy of material culture. Part 1 (...) illustrates this foundation through a critique, revision, and extension of existing philosophical theories of action. Part 2 investigates a salient feature of material culture itself—its functionality. A basic account of function in material culture is constructed by revising and extending existing theories of biological function to fit the cultural case. Here the adjustments are for the most part necessitated by special features of function in material culture. These two parts of the project are held together by a trio of overarching themes: the relationship between individual and society, the problem of centralized control, and creativity. (shrink)

Survivors of sexual abuse are frequently met with cultures of silence which make it difficult for their experiences to be acknowledged. Furthermore, many have been subjected to threats and intimidation in efforts to ensure that they remain silent about what has happened to them. One response to such experiences is to keep oneself busy and avoid ever being quiet enough to experience a sense of silence within. However, many spiritual traditions promote the embracing of silence as essential for those seeking (...) spiritual development. This paper explores these diverse experiences of silence for survivors of sexual abuse and considers why spiritualities which promote silence can be problematic. (shrink)

Is appealing to emotions in argumentation ever legitimate and, if so, what is the best way to analyze and evaluate such appeals? After overviewing a normative pragmatic perspective on appealing to emotions in argumentation, I present answers to these questions from pragma-dialectical, informal logical, and rhetorical perspectives, and note positions shared and supplemented by a normative pragmatic perspective. A normative pragmatic perspective holds that appealing to emotions in argumentation may be relevant and non-manipulative; and that emotional appeals may be analyzed (...) as strategies that create pragmatic reasons and assessed by the standard of formal propriety or reasonability under the circumstances. I illustrate the explanatory power of the perspective by analyzing and evaluating some argumentation from Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.” I conclude that a normative pragmatic perspective offers a more complete account of appealing to emotions in argumentation than a pragma-dialectial, informal logical, or rhetorical perspective alone, identifies a range of norms available to arguers, and explains why appealing to emotions may be legitimate in particular cases of argumentation. (shrink)

This account explores the divergent perspectives of supervisor and student interacting in self-study research, showing how both participants were transformed by the experience. Although both supervisor and student had faced similar problems as mature students engaging in doctoral study, and both possessed strong convictions about their chosen paths, their focus was very different. The student, being visually creative, was investigating the value of integrated arts as a transformational learning medium; the supervisor, from a linguistics background, was focused on exploring the (...) nature of written communication. The supervisor/student relationship comprises a complex nexus of interconnections between persons, material objects, times and places: it is never static, but always emerging, with the relationship often ending up being more collegial than at first, as with the authors of this paper. In the counterpoint dialogue presented by student and supervisor, it can be seen that both learned from each other: the student, the rigours of structuring a passionate argument intellectually; the supervisor, to express an intellectual argument more personally. Both authors were transformed by the supervisor/student interaction: the supervisor, in rediscovering the value of interpersonal communication; the student, in mastering a research approach which did justice to her belief in the creative power of the arts. The value of engaging with perspectives which initially appear to be irreconcilable is not just to ‘learn new things’, but to push the inner limits of our perspectives, transforming not only the ways in which we perceive things, but the ways in which we learn. (shrink)

In the deviance literature, sexual assaults at work have not been given the sustained attention that harm to property or violation of production guidelines has received. This omission suggests that sexual harassment is considered normative and that when women fail to accommodate this reality, it is the survivor rather than the perpetrator who is considered deviant. This article reports on 64 cases of attempted or completed rape in a sample of heterosexual and lesbian women workers in a wide range of (...) occupations. Two atypical responses, quitting the job or filing a complaint as a result of a workplace sexual assault, highlight the process by which informal deviance defining occurs in everyday interactions at work. (shrink)

What is the potential significance of community in a prolonged dieta (10-day restricted diet with regular ritual consumption of ayahuasca and other medicinal plants) in a remote jungle location in the Amazon basin of Peru? Pre-dieta experiences including how participants join the community, cleansing routines prior to departure to Peru, sharing with the shaman one's personal intentions and health history, and prior experience with medicinal and entheogenic plants are introduced. Dieta rituals such as tambo housing, meals, hygiene and maintenance, music, (...) ceremony preparations, ceremonial and everyday dieta etiquette, and post-ceremony ritual and day of rest are considered. Bonding with the local support community and those who harvested and crafted the medicinal plant mixtures are evaluated in the context of both dieta and traditional indigenous goals of creating a spiritual practice community of love and trust that embraces people, plants, and all of earth and beyond. (shrink)

Beth Cykowski offers a fresh reading of Heidegger's discussions of animality, arguing that they point beyond received dualisms back to a more essential way of philosophising about life and the relationship to it of the human. His exploration of animality raises deep questions about the status of the human within nature.

This book details a pragmatic approach to the ethical and religious implications of a Darwinian perspective, drawing on the work of thinkers both secular and religious. The approach taken by James, Santayana, Addams, and Dewey should be of interest to scholars of religious naturalism and humanistic ethics.

(2009). Masochism and The Mother, Pedagogy and Perversion. Angelaki: Vol. 14, shadows of cruelty sadism, masochism and the philosophical muse – part one, pp. 117-130.

This article examines, by way of a case study, a community where groundwater has been highly contaminated with nitrate and how that situation brings together matters of public policy, environmental justice, and emerging technology. The Mountain View community lies in an unincorporated area of Bernalillo County, New Mexico; the neighborhood is 77% Hispanic and is a pocket of poverty whose residents are considered at risk for environmental injustice. Groundwater nitrate contamination was discovered in the 1960s, but residents were merely encouraged (...) to dig deeper wells, until 1984 when most residents were put on nearby municipal water after a child was poisoned and hospitalized with methemoglobinemia, known as blue baby syndrome. In situ biodenitrification is an emerging technology that has been shown to completely remediate groundwater nitrate contamination after the injection of a food source for naturally occurring denitrifying bacteria; this technology is being considered for use in Mountain View. (shrink)

Tool use rivals language as an important domain of cognitive phenomena, and so as a source of insight into the nature of cognition in general. But the favoured current definition of tool use is inadequate because it does not carve the phenomena of interest at the joints. Heidegger's notion of equipment provides a more adequate theoretical framework. But Heidegger's account leads directly to a non-individualist view of the nature of cognition. Thus non-individualism is supported by concrete considerations about the nature (...) of tools and tool use. (shrink)

10 engaging and original essays argue that Spinoza is the interdisciplinary thinker for our times.This book brings Spinoza outside the realm of academic philosophy, and presents him as a thinker who is relevant to contemporary problems and questions across a variety of disciplines.Discover how Spinoza's theory of bodies transforms our understanding of music, and how it grounds "collective subjectivity" in contemporary politics. Learn how Spinoza's idea of freedom was instrumental to the Haitian revolution of 1791, and how it inspired Samuel (...) Taylor Coleridge's prose and GeorgeEliot's novels. Find out how early modern physics, contemporary architecture, and ecological activism can be rethought through Spinoza's theory of affectivity. (shrink)

Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam during a period of unprecedented scientific, artistic, and intellectual discovery. Upon its release, Spinoza’s Ethics was banned; today it is the quintessential example of philosophical method. Although acknowledged as difficult, the book is widely taught in philosophy, literature, history, and politics. This introduction is designed to be read side by side with Spinoza's work. As a guide to the style, vocabulary, and arguments of the Ethics, it offers a range of interpretive possibilities to prepare (...) students to become conversant with Spinoza's philosophical method and his challenge to conventional thinking. (shrink)

How do social actors get addressees to stop retreating to metadiscussions that derail ground-level discussions, and why do they expect the strategies to work? The question is of both theoretical and practical interest, especially with regard to ground-level discussions of systemic sexism and racism derailed by qualifying “not all men” and “not all white people” perform the sexist or racist actions that are the topic of discussion. I use a normative pragmatic approach to analyze two exemplary messages designed to halt (...) retreats to metadiscussions about using “not all men” and “not all white people” qualifiers in discussions of systemic sexism and racism. I find that social actors use strategies that may at first glance appear to be out of bounds in an ideal critical discussion—e.g., demanding, shouting, cussing, sarcasm, name-calling—to cultivate a context where using not-all qualifiers becomes increasingly costly. The strategies are designed to get addressees to recognize that using not-all qualifiers is not an epistemic correction of a hasty generalization or ethical intervention to halt promulgation of stereotypes about men and white people. Instead, the strategies display that using not-all qualifiers is a fallible sign of willful hermeneutical ignorance, willful ignorance, and an attempt to reassert a measure of social dominance. These findings affirm the need to investigate the various strategies and normative materials social actors actually bring to bear to regulate disagreement. (shrink)

Drawing on decades of experience, a psychotherapist and Zen practitioner makes the Abhidharma--the original psychological system of Buddhism--accessible to a general audience for the first time. The Abhidharma, one of the three major text collections of the original Buddhist canon, explores the critical juncture of Buddhist thought and the therapeutic aspects of the religion and meditation. It frames the psychological system of Buddhism, explaining the workings of reality and the nature of the human mind. Composed of detailed matrixes and lists (...) that outline the interaction of consciousness and reality, The Abhidharma explores the essence of perception and experience, and the reasons and methods behind mindfulness and meditation. Because of its complexity, the Abhidharma has traditionally been reserved only for academic or monastic study; now, for the first time, clinical psychologist Beth Jacobs makes this dynamic, important text and its teachings available to general readers, using practical explanation, personal stories, and vivid examples to gently untangle the technical aspects of the Abhidharma. Jacobs’ work illuminates this classic of Buddhist thought, highlighting the ways it can broaden and deepen our experience of the human psyche and offering profound insights into spiritual practice. (shrink)

In this paper I explore what the P4C philosophical novel can contribute to deciding how we should use ethical rules in moral education. As I see it the philosophical novel urges us to regard ethical rule-following with some suspicion. Instead we are directed to appreciate the particular contexts and circumstances of ethical thinking, saying, and doing. But if we don’t teach ethics by the rules, then what is the alternative pedagogy? One possibility is to cultivate ethical expertise by analogy to (...) an epistemic skill model of practical activity, as some moral particularists have urged. Employing a skill model has significant implications for teaching ethics in a wide range of institutional settings where general rules and principles typically prevail. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Christian Ethics: A Very Short Introduction, and: Christian Ethics: A Brief History, and: Behaving in Public: How to Do Christian EthicsBeth K. HaileChristian Ethics: A Very Short Introduction D. Stephen Long Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. 144 pp. $11.95Christian Ethics: A Brief History Michael Banner West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. 160 pp. $24.95Behaving in Public: How to Do Christian Ethics Nigel Biggar Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2011. 142 (...) pp. $16.00In calling ethics “Christian,” the question of distinctiveness, or the normative force of theological claims, inevitably arises. Three new books explore what Christian ethics looks like if it is to take seriously its theological basis for engaging the world.Stephen D. Long, professor of systematic theology at Marquette University, attends to the difficulties in predicating “Christian” of “ethics,” yet he is concerned more with explaining how Christianity can be ethical rather than vice versa. His Christian Ethics: A Very Short Introduction opens with a quote from Christopher Hitchens and later dedicates almost an entire chapter to analyzing the failures of Christian ethics. From the Crusades to colonialism, the Galileo affair to slavery, Long provocatively asks whether modern ethics emerges as a result of the failure of Christian moral claims. While not sidestepping the difficulties in Christian history, Long is careful to note how this history is often distorted to serve the goals of contemporary secular politics, goals which he points out have resulted in the bloody failures of the twentieth century. Perhaps a renewed interest in Christian ethics, Long notes, is a result of the failures of secularism.Long manages to cover a surprising breadth of material in his brief book, from a sweeping historical overview of Christian theology to a final chapter on [End Page 195] the practical matters of sex, money, and political power. Long also summarizes some important theological differences among Christians that lead to practical disagreements about the nature of Christian ethics. His overview of the Catholic-Lutheran convergence on matters of faith and works is particularly helpful in establishing the theological basis for an ecumenical Christian ethics. This historical survey serves to illustrate that ethics is both an integral part of and a contradiction to Christianity. Still, argues Long, while Christianity may claim to be more than ethical, it may never claim to be less.While commendable in breadth, the genre of the “very short introduction” precludes depth and must necessarily omit important information. In his summary of Catholic ethics, for example, Long addresses nominalism and probabilism but omits the Catholic social tradition, a particularly glaring omission given his topic. In the end, the target audience is the educated and curious layperson, more suitable for a church group than a classroom, though this is reflective of the nature of “the very short introduction” series and does not indicate any limitation in Long’s skill as a scholar.In the spirit of brevity, Michael Banner, Fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge, offers Christian Ethics: A Brief History, which, like any brief history, paints with broad and admittedly selective strokes. The aim of this work is not to evaluate the normative value of Christian claims but rather to establish the ethical implications of Christian belief. Unlike Long, who directly addresses the ethical failures of the church, Banner is more apologetic. In clarifying the difficulties of writing a text such as this one, he observes that Christian history has not been guided by texts as much as by action. In this vein, Banner begins not chronologically but with the Rule of St. Benedict and its call to live in a relationship with God and neighbor characterized by love.Banner grounds the theoretical dimension of Christian ethics in this emphasis on practice. Given the way of life Christians are called to, what are its limitations and possibilities? Banner turns to Augustine’s notion of the weakness of the will and the human creature’s need for grace, which he then places in creative tension with Aquinas’s emphasis on the harmony between faith and reason. In somewhat breathtaking conciseness, Banner describes how the Scholastic emphasis on natural law, casuistry, and the categorizing of sins led to what he calls... (shrink)

Wittgenstein plays with language throughout his later philosophy. Imaginary scenes and invented languages turn metaphysical concerns into conceptual play. He sometimes describes his activities as five finger exercises in thinking—exercises that enable us to think differently.