The fan effect says that “activation” spreading from a concept is divided among the concepts it spreads to. Because this activation is not a physical entity, but an abstraction of unknown lower‐level processes, the spreading activation model has predictive but not explanatory power. We provide one explanation of the fan effect by showing that distributed neuronal memory networks (specifically, Hopfield networks) reproduce four qualitative aspects of the fan effect: faster recognition of sentences containing lower‐fan words, faster recognition of sentences when (...) more cues are provided, faster acceptance of studied sentences than rejection of probes, and faster recognition of sentences studied more frequently. These are all a natural result of the dynamics of distributed associative memory. (shrink)

Individualism: The Cultural Logic of Modernity is an edited collection of sixteen essays on the idea of the modern sovereign individual in the western cultural tradition. Reconsidering the eighteenth-century realist novel, twentieth-century modernism, and underappreciated topics on individualism and literature, this volume provocatively revises and enriches our understanding of individualism as the generative premise of modernity itself.

“Trust” is not usually considered a Hobbesian concept, which is odd since it is central to the definition of a covenant. The key to understanding Hobbes’s concept of trust is to be found in his account of conquest— “sovereignty by acquisition”—which is a heavily revised adaptation of the Roman justification of slavery. Hobbes introduces a distinction between servants, who are trusted with liberty, and imprisoned slaves. The servant/master relationship involves mutual trust, an ongoing exchange of benefits (protection for service and (...) obedience), and performance monitoring. In contrast to Quentin Skinner’s and Philip Pettit’s shared concentration on the contrast between slavery and freedom, I argue that the salient analogy is between servants and subjects.The trust relationship between subjects and the sovereign involves defined roles, limited absolutism, and accountability in the early-modern form of licensing subjects to switch political allegiance should a regime fail. (shrink)

“Trust” is not usually considered a Hobbesian concept, which is odd since it is central to the definition of a covenant. The key to understanding Hobbes’s concept of trust is to be found in his account of conquest— “sovereignty by acquisition”—which is a heavily revised adaptation of the Roman justification of slavery. Hobbes introduces a distinction between servants, who are trusted with liberty, and imprisoned slaves. The servant/master relationship involves mutual trust, an ongoing exchange of benefits (protection for service and (...) obedience), and performance monitoring. In contrast to Quentin Skinner’s and Philip Pettit’s shared concentration on the contrast between slavery and freedom, I argue that the salient analogy is between servants and subjects.The trust relationship between subjects and the sovereign involves defined roles, limited absolutism, and accountability in the early-modern form of licensing subjects to switch political allegiance should a regime fail. (shrink)

Zhuangzi often is portrayed as a kind of ethical relativist. This popular reading has been challenged by Philip Ivanhoe, who argues that Zhuangzi is not a relativist but rather that Zhuangzi articulates a normative theory of benignity. In this paper we argue against Ivanhoe’s interpretation. We further argue that Zhuangzi is an ethical nihilist, who rejects all ethical positions.

Wars and crises worldwide force millions of people to flee and seek refuge, often outside their countries of origin. What moral responsibilities do states have towards refugees? In this Ethical Annotation, Dr Jos Philips and his co-authors zoom in on the responsibilities of EU countries. They consider arguments in favour of and against admitting refugees and argue that EU countries must do at least at much as they can do at little cost, and perhaps even more.

Racist jokes are often funny. And part of this has to do with their racism. Many Polish jokes, for example, may easily be converted into moron jokes but are not at all funny when delivered as such. Consider two answers to ‘What has an I.Q. of 1007’: a nation of morons; or Poland. Similarly, jokes portraying Jews as cheap, Italians as cowards, and Greeks as dishonest may be told as jokes about how skinflints, cowards, or dishonest people get on in (...) the world. But they are less funny as such. As this suggests, racist humor is ‘put down’ humor. We laugh, in part, because we find put-downs funny, sometimes even if they are about us. In many contexts, this tendency is relatively harmless; indeed, within reason, it may be therapeutic to join others in a good laugh at oneself. Why, then, all the commotion about racist humor? (shrink)

Philosophical accounts of punishment are primarily concerned with punishment by the (or: a) state. More specifically, they attempt to explain why the (a) state may justifiably penalize those who are judged to violate its laws and the conditions under which it is entitled to do so. But any full account of these matters must surely be grounded in an account of the nature and purpose of the state and the justification of state authority. Because they are not so grounded, deterrence (...) and retributive theories are incomplete as they are typically formulated. The intuitions behind these theories can be satisfied in a variety of complete theories, i.e., theories that understand the justification of punishment in relation to the justification of state authority. A consequence of this is that at least some of the intuitions underlying deterrence and retributive theories can be satisfied at the same time by a given theory. (shrink)

This book argues that ultimately human rights can be actualized, in two senses. By answering important challenges to them, the real-world relevance of human rights can be brought out; and people worldwide can be motivated as needed for realizing human rights. Taking a perspective from moral and political philosophy, the book focuses on two challenges to human rights that have until now received little attention, but that need to be addressed if human rights are to remain plausible as a global (...) ideal. Firstly, the challenge of global inequality: how, if at all, can one be sincerely committed to human rights in a structurally greatly unequal world that produces widespread inequalities of human rights protection? Secondly, the challenge of future people: how to adequately include future people in human rights, and how to set adequate priorities between the present and the future, especially in times of climate change? The book also asks whether people worldwide can be motivated to do what it takes to realize human rights. Furthermore, it considers the common and prominent challenges of relativism and of the political abuse of human rights. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of human rights, political philosophy, and more broadly political theory, philosophy and the wider social sciences. **Open access**, Table of contents: 1. Introduction: Two New Challenges to Human Rights and the Question of Motivation Part I: Preparing the Ground 2. Human Rights: A Conception 3. Common Challenges to Human Rights: The Relativist and the Political Pawns Challenge Part II: Novel Challenges to Human Rights 4. The Challenge of Global Inequality 5. The Challenge of Future People Part III: Getting to Realization 6. The Question of Motivation: Can People Be Motivated as Needed for Realizing Human Rights? 7. Conclusion. (shrink)

This text provides a critique of the subjective Bayesian view of statistical inference, and proposes the author's own error-statistical approach as an alternative framework for the epistemology of experiment. It seeks to address the needs of researchers who work with statistical analysis.

Can human rights incorporate future people and their interests, considering all the risks and uncertainties by which these interests are surrounded? Given problems such as climate change, resource depletion and pollution, human rights cannot afford not to be able to do this if they are to remain relevant. On the other hand, taking future people on board may lead to (another) multiplication of human rights claims, and this is hardly good news either. Therefore, an adequate account of how to incorporate (...) the interests of future people into human rights is much needed. It should also tell us about the weight of protecting these interests compared with that of providing other human rights protections. This chapter aims to give the first outlines of such an account. I will call it sufficientarian, because it understands human rights as articulating a ‘threshold of enough’. (shrink)

This paper investigates the moral duties that human rights NGOs, such as Amnesty International, and development NGOs, such as Oxfam, have in relation to human rights – especially in relation to the human right to a decent standard of living. The mentioned NGOs are powerful new agents on the global scene, and according to many they might be duty-bearers in relation to human rights. However, until now their moral duties have hardly been investigated. The present paper investigates NGO duties in (...) relation to human rights by looking in particular to a moral theory recently proposed by Leif Wenar, a theory which has some similarities to utilitarianism. In applying this theory, a case for human-rights duties of NGOs is developed mainly by considering the indispensable role that civil society plays in protecting human rights. The paper concludes that, at least, NGOs bear duties with regard to human rights when, as in certain real-life cases, NGO involvement is the only way to achieve acceptable protection against standard threats to certain goods, such as a decent standard of living. (shrink)

In his Autobiography, John Stuart Mill tells us that though his conviction regarding the equality of the sexes was a result of his earliest engagements with political subjects, it remained an abstract idea before his relationship with Harriet Taylor began. Crediting her as the author of “all that was best” in his writings, Mill's praise of his wife has not been well received by many of his readers, and scholars have long questioned her capacities as an intellectual and as a (...) political thinker. I argue that such doubts reflect a narrow standard for adjudicating Taylor Mill's intellectual worth, and what counts as intellectual labor more broadly. Examining Taylor Mill's own writings in fact illuminates and challenges the gendering practices that have sustained scholarly interrogations of Taylor Mill and of her relationship to JS Mill. I make this case first by drawing attention to her “experiential politics” as a credible source of intellectual scholarship, and second by raising questions about the gendered aspects of how intellectual labor has been defined and evaluated in studies of the canon. (shrink)

The 2008 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) provides a landmark articulation of the universality of human rights. It affirms in strong terms that all human beings have a claim to full inclusion and equal participation in society, something denied to many because of disability. The CRPD is an ambitious document with far-reaching and fundamental implications. This interdisciplinary collection of essays takes up pressing philosophical, legal, and practical issues raised by the CRPD and the ongoing process (...) of its implementation. Combining clear legal and philosophical overviews with ground-breaking conceptual analyses, the collection aims to advance the academic debate about human rights and disability and to serve as a useful resource for policymakers, ethicists, disability activists, jurists, and all those interested in the human rights of persons with disabilities. With contributions by Jackie Leach Scully, Marcus Düwell, Jenny Goldschmidt, Sigrid Graumann, Caroline Harnacke, Jan Vorstenbosch, Esther van Weele, Joel Anderson, Jos Philips. (shrink)

The Liberalism Trap identifies a methodological problem in contemporary political theory: focus on liberalism has become an interpretive custom directing engagements with politics. Though scholars have long analysed the meaning, merits, successes or failings of liberalism, little attention is paid to how such preoccupations shape the way we study political questions and texts. Evaluating the effects of these preoccupations is what motivate the book. To interrogate those effects, Philips turns to John Stuart Mill-the so-called father of modern liberalism. As (...) she argues, Mill's canonical status as a liberal is habitually substituted for his political arguments such that the now standard association of Mill with liberalism conditions how and why he is read. Offering a comparative reading of Mill's proposals concerning gender, class, and empire, Philips instead recovers a thinker motivated not by ideological certainties, but by a politics of uncertainty. In so doing, she draws into view the complex strategies that Mill employs across his work on domestic and imperial questions, strategies obscured by his liberal mantle. Her recovery of Mill's uncertain politics sets into relief the interpretive costs of reading through liberalism. That even the paradigmatic liberal is unduly constrained by this label ought to give us pause. Taking a break from liberalism, Philips shows that we gain a more nuanced account of Mill's politics, and critical and evaluative distance from our own customs of interpretation. With these interventions, The Liberalism Trap integrates an innovative reading of a canonical thinker with a methodological critique of interpretive practices in contemporary political theory. (shrink)

Richter begins with a set of counter examples to a position that he acknowledges is not important to me. He goes on to produce counter examples to a position I do not hold. And he concludes by imputing a project to me that I nowhere endorse and by ridiculing that project. Part of his confusion is my fault since what I have done is not entirely consistent with what I claimed to have done. So let me try to clarify and (...) to develop what I take to be valuable in my paper.To begin with, it was not my main intent to offer an account of the ordinary use of the term ‘racist’. Indeed, for reasons that will be dear presently, I now think that the attempt to provide such an account is misguided. Whether I have offered an account of what Richter calls a ‘central use’ depends on what he means by ‘central use.’ Judging from his proposed counter examples, he seems to hold that whatever satisfies the definition of a central use of some expression ‘e’ will be acknowledged by all competent speakers as a case of e.In this sense of ‘central use’ I have not offered an account of a central use of ‘racist’ either. What, then, have I done? (shrink)

In this, the first book devoted to Peter Achinstein's influential work in philosophy of science, twenty distinguished philosophers, including four Lakatos award winners, address various aspects of Achinstein's influential views on the nature of scientific evidence, scientific explanation, and scientific realism. It includes short essays by Steve Gimbel and Jeff Maynes, Nancy Cartwright, Jordi Cat, Victor DiFate, Jerry Doppelt, Adam Goldstein, Philip Kitcher, Fred Kronz, Deborah Mayo, Greg Morgan, Helen Longino, John Norton, Michael Ruse, Bas van Fraassen, Stathis Psillos, (...) Larry Laudan, Richard Richards, Kent Staley, and Jim Woodward with replies to each contributor from Peter Achinstein. Readers will come away with an understanding of the current debate in multiple areas of philosophy of science and how various contemporary issues are connected. (shrink)

It is widely supposed that agreements made in response to coercion are entered into involuntarily for that reason. This paper argues that that supposition is false and that it has generated a good deal of avoidable confusion in the courts and among some legal commentators. Agreements entered into involuntarily of course, have no legal standing. But, on any plausible account of coercion, agreements entered into in response to coercion are an inevitability of social life. To prohibit them would be to (...) prohibit many agreements we ought to and do enforce (e.g. labor agreements entered into under threat of strike). This is not to deny that agreements induced by certain uses of force or certain threats of force have and ought to have no standing. But here it is the type of force or threat that invalidates the agreement, not the use of coercion per se. (shrink)

It has often been held that human beings have worth and dignity because they are rational. But "reason" has meant different things to different philosophers. I argue that given what is meant by reason (practical reason) in economics, Decision theory and much moral philosophy, It is doubtful that rationality entitles a being to any special status at all. Moreover, And more generally, All historical appeals to reason to ground such claims are covert appeals to some more specific set of human (...) capacities. The move from reason to rights, Then, Rests on certain assumptions about the good. (shrink)

Descartes is often accused of having fragmented the human being into two independent substances, mind and body, with no clear strategy for explaining the apparent unity of human experience. Deborah Brown argues that, contrary to this view, Descartes did in fact have a conception of a single, integrated human being, and that in his view this conception is crucial to the success of human beings as rational and moral agents and as practitioners of science. The passions are pivotal in (...) this, and in a rich and wide-ranging discussion she examines Descartes' place in the tradition of thought about the passions, the metaphysics of actions and passions, sensory representation, and Descartes' account of self-mastery and virtue. Her study is an important and original reading not only of Descartes' account of mind-body unity but also of his theory of mind. (shrink)

The Department of Defense is working at all levels to rationalize its data management strategy (Stenbit, 2003). However, though this strategy is broad in its application, its reach has thus far not extended to specialized areas of interest such as modeling and simulation. Now, however, the rapid development of net-centric technologies and methods provides new opportunities for the modeling and simulation community within the DoD and in fact offers opportunities to bring together communities of practice (such as C2, logistics) in (...) ways that can help to bring greater coordination in use of data and systems and enable more rapid configuration of models that can bridge separate domains. The specific components that we shall address here include: -/- 1. Ontologies 2. Strategy for the identification and treatment of authoritative data 3. Service oriented architectures (including Web Services) 4. Semantic search 5. Reasoning and analysis engines 6. Data Interoperability . (shrink)

Described as the ‘exemplary liberal’, John Stuart Mill is employed to support a dizzying array of different, even competing visions of liberalism. That he has been so widely appropriated is certainly a result of the plural perspectives and tensions embedded in Mill’s political writings. Yet, while Mill scholars have generally been attuned to these tensions, contemporary critics of liberalism have been less careful in their uses of his work. Mill is used as an archetype of liberalism, and is often depicted (...) as a less complex thinker than is justified. He is now a popular target in debates concerning the dilemmas of liberal individualism, and the inadequacies of liberal approaches to culture, harm, and to progress in the context of empire. Such studies present Mill as a thinker driven by ideological certainty, whereas he is more appropriately regarded as someone moved by political uncertainty. Drawing on his Autobiography, I recover Mill’s appreciation for the uncertainties of political thought and action to... (shrink)

In "Perversion and the Unnatural as Moral Categories" (Ethics, 90:191-202, January 1980) David Levy argues against a number of theories of perversion by means of the method of counter-example. This is inappropriate since many familiar accounts are not attempts to provide a "one-over-many" formula for a core of clear cases. Rather, like Levy himself, many understand perversions as "unnatural" or "non-human" actions, i.e. as distortions of human nature. Here there is agreement on the intension of the term. Differences in the (...) extension arise in virtue of the relational character of the meaning. For what counts as a distortion of human nature depends on the paradigm of human nature one endorses. In these cases the appropriate way to decide between competing lists of perversions is to evaluate the competing paradigms of human nature on which they rest. Typically these paradigms embody important value assumptions. (shrink)

He goes on to criticize major recent attempts to develop nonuniversalist alternatives to skepticism, arguing that they rely on excessively abstract and philosophically indefensible preference satisfaction theories of the good.

Should conflicts among human rights be dealt with by including general principles for priority setting at some prominent place in the practice of human rights? This essay argues that neither setting prominent and principled priorities nor a case-by-case approach are likely to be defensible as general solutions. The main reasons concern how best to realize all human rights for all. Conflicts among human rights are more defensibly addressed by checking whether the conflict has been correctly diagnosed: Do human rights as (...) a whole get due priority? Have feasibility considerations inherent in human rights been considered, and the possibility of bringing in additional dutybearers? If a conflict among human rights is genuine, formal principles for priority setting are of some help. Sometimes, it is clear that these should be “upgraded” to substantive principles and sometimes that they should not. Many cases, however, are as yet unclear and will need further investigation. (shrink)

Two theories dominate the current debate on group agency: functionalism, as endorsed by Bryce Huebner and Brian Epstein, and interpretivism, as defended by Deborah Tollefsen, and Christian List and Philip Pettit. In this paper, I will give a new argument to favour functionalism over interpretivism. I discuss a class of cases which the former, but not the latter, can accommodate. Two features characterise this class: First, distinct groups coincide, that is numerically distinct groups share all their members at all (...) time. Second, we have access to the inner mechanisms of the groups agents, because members know what they have decided on. I construct a counterexample with these features allowing me to reject interpretivism about group agency in favour of functionalism. (shrink)

This article argues that universities have duties to negotiate contracts with the pharmaceutical industry that are favourable to the world’s poor, and to do more research into diseases which disproportionately strike the global poor. It is argued that these duties are related to human rights (in particular to a human right to health) and that they are therefore very weighty. Furthermore, these duties are in line with some of the most important things that Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), a (...) worldwide group of students and academics, wants universities to do. A number of objections are discussed, among other things to do with safeguarding pharmaceutical innovation, and it is argued that the aforementioned duties should, as UAEM also advocates, often be combined with efforts on the part of universities to work towards more long-term, large-scale institutional arrangements to ensure access to and availability of essential medicines for the global poor. -/- . (shrink)

This paper attempts to explain the significance of the ideologies — or middle-level normative discourse — described by Kenneth Goodpaster in his paper Business Ethics, Ideology, and the Naturalistic Fallacy. It is argued that the propositions constitutive of this discourse are not invokable moral principles (i.e. principles which generate solutions to actual moral problems). Rather, they are characterizations of the normative contexts in which moral decisions are made. As such, they place limits on the ways in which the abstract moral (...) principles of traditional moral theory may be applied or interpreted in making real-life moral decisions. (shrink)

It is widely believed that preferential hiring practices inevitably result in hiring less qualified candidates for jobs. Indeed, this follows analytically from some definitions of preferential hiring (e.g. George Sher's). This paper describes several preferential hiring strategies that do not have this consequence. Sher's definition is thus shown to be inadequate and an alternative definition is proposed.

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