Argues that married sex is an extreme sexual practice that shows up pornography and other alternatives as second best.

This paper argues that recent work in the 'free energy' program in neuroscience enables us better to understand both consciousness and the Freudian unconscious, including the role of the superego and the id. This work also accords with research in developmental psychology (particularly attachment theory) and with evolutionary considerations bearing on emotional conflict. This argument is carried forward in various ways in the work that follows, including 'Understanding and Healing', 'The Significance of Consilience', 'Psychoanalysis, Philosophical Issues', and 'Kantian Neuroscience and (...) Radical Interpretation', and the discussion of conscious extends that of both 'The Problem of Consciousness and the Innerness of the Mind' and 'Psychoanalysis, Metaphor, and the Concept of Mind'. (shrink)

Psychoanalysis provides the best explanation of a range of empirical phenomena; epistemic criics do not take this fully into account.

Epistemic instrumentalists seek to understand the normativity of epistemic norms on the model practical instrumental norms governing the relation between aims and means. Non-instrumentalists often object that this commits instrumentalists to implausible epistemic assessments. I argue that this objection presupposes an implausibly strong interpretation of epistemic norms. Once we realize that epistemic norms should be understood in terms of permissibility rather than obligation, and that evidence only occasionally provide normative reasons for belief, an instrumentalist account becomes available that delivers the (...) correct epistemic verdicts. On this account, epistemic permissibility can be understood on the model of the wide-scope instrumental norm for instrumental rationality, while normative evidential reasons for belief can be understood in terms of instrumental transmission. (shrink)

l examine the degree to which the so-called “deep ecology” movement embodies a feminist sensibility. In part one I take a brief look at the ambivalent attitude of “eco-feminism” toward deep ecology. In part two I show that this ambivalence sterns largely from the fact that deep ecology assimilates feminist insights to a basically masculine ethical orientation. In part three I discuss some of the ways in which deepecology theory might change if it adopted a fundamentally feminist ethical orientation.

Interventionist Theories of Causation in Psychological Perspective.

Drawing on John Dewey and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein, this book employs philosophy as a conceptual resource to develop new methodological and analytical tools for conducting in situ empirical investigations. Chapter one explores the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Dewey. Chapter two exposits Deweyan ideas of embodiment, the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, and aesthetically expressive meaning underdeveloped in Wittgenstein. Chapter three introduces the method of practical epistemological analysis and a model of situated epistemic relations to investigate the learning of body (...) techniques in dinghy sailing. The concluding chapter introduces a model of situated artistic relations to investigate the learning of artistic techniques of self-expression in the Swedish sloyd classroom. (shrink)

A popular account of luck, with a firm basis in common sense, holds that a necessary condition for an event to be lucky, is that it was suitably improbable. It has recently been proposed that this improbability condition is best understood in epistemic terms. Two different versions of this proposal have been advanced. According to my own proposal :361–377, 2010), whether an event is lucky for some agent depends on whether the agent was in a position to know that the (...) event would occur. And according to Stoutenburg :319–334, 2015, Synthese, 1–15, 2018), whether an event is lucky for an agent depends on whether the event was guaranteed or certain to occur in light of the agent’s evidence. In this paper, I argue that we should prefer the account in terms of knowledge over that in terms of evidential certainty. (shrink)

The 2018 eligibility regulation for female competitors with differences of sexual development (DSD) issued by World Athletics requires competitors with DSD with blood testosterone levels at or above 5 nmol/L and sufficient androgen sensitivity to be excluded from competition in certain events unless they reduce the level of testosterone in their blood. This paper formalises and then critically assesses the fairness-based argument offered in support of this regulation by the federation. It argues that it is unclear how the biological advantage (...) singled out by the regulation as an appropriate target for diminishment, is relevantly different from other biological advantages that athletes may enjoy, and specifically that Sigmund Loland’s recent attempt to drive a wedge between heightened levels of blood testosterone and other biological advantages fails. The paper also suggests that even if heightened blood testosterone levels do differ relevantly from other types of biological advantage, the regulation is further challenged by studies indicating that athletes with blood testosterone at the high end of the normal range have a competitive advantage over athletes with blood testosterone levels at the low end of it. Finally, the paper contends that the premises of the fairness-based argument do not unequivocally support the conclusion that DSD athletes with heightened levels of testosterone should diminish those levels, since, just as powerfully, they support allowing athletes with normal levels of testosterone to use performance-enhancing drugs in the name of fairness. (shrink)

Nick Bostrom's book *Superintelligence* outlines a frightening but realistic scenario for human extinction: true artificial intelligence is likely to bootstrap itself into superintelligence, and thereby become ideally effective at achieving its goals. Human-friendly goals seem too abstract to be pre-programmed with any confidence, and if those goals are *not* explicitly favorable toward humans, the superintelligence will extinguish us---not through any malice, but simply because it will want our resources for its own purposes. In response I argue that things might not (...) be as bad as Bostrom suggests. If the superintelligence must *learn* complex final goals, then this means such a superintelligence must in effect *reason* about its own goals. And because it will be especially clear to a superintelligence that there are no sharp lines between one agent's goals and another's, that reasoning could therefore automatically be ethical in nature. (shrink)

It seems obvious that when higher-order evidence makes it rational for one to doubt that one’s own belief on some matter is rational, this can undermine the rationality of that belief. This is known as higher-order defeat. However, despite its intuitive plausibility, it has proved puzzling how higher-order defeat works, exactly. To highlight two prominent sources of puzzlement, higher-order defeat seems to defy being understood in terms of conditionalization; and higher-order defeat can sometimes place agents in what seem like epistemic (...) dilemmas. This chapter draws attention to an overlooked aspect of higher-order defeat, namely that it can undermine the resilience of one’s beliefs. The notion of resilience was originally devised to understand how one should reflect the ‘weight’ of one’s evidence. But it can also be applied to understand how one should reflect one’s higher-order evidence. The idea is particularly useful for understanding cases where one’s higher-order evidence indicates that one has failed in correctly assessing the evidence, without indicating whether one has over- or underestimated the degree of evidential support for a proposition. But it is exactly in such cases that the puzzles of higher-order defeat seem most compelling. (shrink)

I find a lost wallet containing the owner's address and a lot of cash. Shall I keep it or return it? Suppose I have the ‘liberty of indifference’: whatever I do, I could have done otherwise. Indeed, part of what is meant in saying I act freely is that either way what I do is up to me. And let's allow this liberty requires that my choice is not a logical consequence of the past and natural laws. If I return (...) the wallet, I could have kept it without violating a law of nature or changing the past. Let's call this ‘situation S’ . Suppose I return the wallet.Others are also in S: free people find lost wallets every day. Each of us can freely return the wallet we find. It doesn’t follow immediately that we can all return it, however. That each ticket holder can win the lottery doesn’t entail they can all win it. We need the additional premiss that no number of people freely returning the wallet prevents the remainder from freely returning it. In short: each of us in S can freely return the wallet. Further, no number of us doing so prevents the remainder from doing so. Therefore it's possible that we all freely do what I do.According to Modal Realism , other possible worlds are concrete realities and the people in them as real as you and me. Some of these people are in S. Each of them can freely return the wallet; none of them is prevented from exercising that ability by others doing so, including others in worlds causally isolated from theirs. For instance, our doings in the actual world no more limit their abilities than …. (shrink)

In his influential discussion of the aim of belief, David Owens argues that any talk of such an ‘aim’ is at best metaphorical. In order for the ‘aim’ of belief to be a genuine aim, it must be weighable with other aims in deliberation, but Owens claims that this is impossible. In previous work, I have pointed out that if we look at a broader range of deliberative contexts involving belief, it becomes clear that the putative aim of belief is (...) capable of being weighed against other aims. Recently, however, Ema Sullivan-Bissett and Paul Noordhof have objected to this response on the grounds that it employs an undefended conception of the aim of belief not shared by Owens, and that it equivocates between importantly different contexts of doxastic deliberation. In this note, I argue that both of these objections fail. (shrink)

Gilbert Harman, in Logic and Reasoning (Synthese 60 (1984), 107–127) describes an unsuccessful attempt ... to develop a theory which would give logic a special role in reasoning. Here reasoning is psychological, a procedure for revising one''s beliefs. In the present paper, I construe reasoning sociologically, as a process of linguistic interaction; and show how both reasoning in the psychologistic sense and logic are related to that process.

In this chapter I'd like to focus on a small corner of sexbot ethics that is rarely considered elsewhere: the question of whether and when being a sexbot might be good---or bad---*for the sexbot*. You might think this means you are in for a dry sermon about the evils of robot slavery. If so, you'd be wrong; the ethics of robot servitude are far more complicated than that. In fact, if the arguments here are right, designing a robot to serve (...) humans sexually may be very good for the robots themselves. (shrink)

Psychological studies on fictional persuasion demonstrate that being engaged with fiction systematically affects our beliefs about the real world, in ways that seem insensitive to the truth. This threatens to undermine the widely accepted view that beliefs are essentially regulated in ways that tend to ensure their truth, and may tempt various non-doxastic interpretations of the belief-seeming attitudes we form as a result of engaging with fiction. I evaluate this threat, and argue that it is benign. Even if the relevant (...) attitudes are best seen as genuine beliefs, as I think they often are, their lack of appropriate sensitivity to the truth does not undermine the essential tie between belief and truth. To this end, I shall consider what I take to be the three most plausible models of the cognitive mechanisms underlying fictional persuasion, and argue that on none of these models does fictional persuasion undermine the essential truth-tie. (shrink)

While the vocabulary of sacrifice has been the subject of detailed studies, the terms of votive offerings in ancient Greece still lack a semantic survey of their own. I am here interested in a particular type of offering, the so-called ‘first-fruit’ offerings, in Archaic and Classical Greece. It was a common practice in different parts of the Greek world for individuals and cities to bring an offering termed ἀπαρχή to the gods using a portion of the proceeds from a variety (...) of human activities; and this act is described by the verb ἀπάρχεσθαι. And yet the word ἀπάρχεσθαι is not limited to making dedications; it is also used in sacrificial procedures and cult payments. This study aims to give a semantic analysis of these terms, examining their religious applications in different contexts. It appears that the values attached to the notion of ἀπάρχεσθαι are rather different in the cases of sacrifices, of bringing first-offerings and of cult finance. The ways in which the usages of these terms overlap with and diverge from each other constitute one of the most interesting results. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are significant fault lines between key themes and critical perspectives within the "Genealogy" and that such tensions, and the effects they generate, have a significant bearing upon the nature and plausibility of a 'postmoral' culture as Nietzsche conceives it.

Some early nineteenth-century American naturalists condemned their contemporary, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque , as ‘eccentric’, or worse. Both during his life and long after his death, his botanical work in particular was criticised, even ridiculed. However, in recent years, attempts have been made to restore his reputation and the term ‘genius’ has even been used to describe him. This paper examines this continuing fascination with this strange, disturbing figure and argues that in the competing interpretations of his life and work, Rafinesque (...) has generally been used to typify bad classification; he is perhaps better understood in a broader, literary context as embodying a particular kind of American national identity. (shrink)

There are writers in both metaphysics and algorithmic information theory (AIT) who seem to think that the latter could provide a formal theory of the former. This paper is intended as a step in that direction. It demonstrates how AIT might be used to define basic metaphysical notions such as *object* and *property* for a simple, idealized world. The extent to which these definitions capture intuitions about the metaphysics of the simple world, times the extent to which we think the (...) simple world is analogous to our own, will determine a lower bound for basing a metaphysics for *our* world on AIT. (shrink)

Naturalism is normally taken to be an ideology, censuring non-naturalistic alternatives. But as many critics have pointed out, this ideological stance looks internally incoherent, since it is not obviously endorsed by naturalistic methods. Naturalists who have addressed this problem universally foreswear the normative component of naturalism by, in effect, giving up science’s exclusive claim to legitimacy. This option makes naturalism into an empty expression of personal preference that can carry no weight in the philosophical or political spheres. In response to (...) this dilemma, I argue that on a popular (but largely unarticulated) construal of naturalism as a commitment to inference to the best explanation, methodological naturalism can be both normative and internally coherent. (shrink)

Utilizing the definition of phenomenology originally presented by Edith Stein, it is possible to understand Viktor Frankl's existential psychotherapy as falling well within the phenomenological movement. In this article, Frankl's approach to treatment, which utilizes an induced phenomenological struggle, is examined in detail around its relationship with time. Clinical material is presented to illustrate the described treatment approach.

Women's mating strategies have typically been characterised as restrictive or coy. However, recent research on sociosexual behaviour suggests that the frequency of women's extra-pair copulations is a function of an unrestricted personality. While agreeing with the general thrust of Gangestad & Simpson's strategic pluralism theory we suggest that it is more likely a matter of finely calculated reproductive opportunism.

The article examines the role of narrative discourse in religious education and communication as represented in Kirsten M. Andersen’s Kantian approach. In Hegel’s Lutheran perspective figurative thinking is deconstructed in forms of interpretive narrative, the topos of the speculative Good Friday. On this account the words of Jesus should be understood as an unprecedented revolutionary parrhesia. Hegel’s pervasive awareness of the linguistic mediation, translation and appropriation anticipates the role of language and communication in hermeneutics and deconstruction. The proposed alternative to (...) the Kantian account is inspired by Paul Ricoeur, Günter Bader, Niklas Luhmann, Jacques Derrida and Catherine Malabou. (shrink)

"When the book opens, Jim Lo Scalzo is a blur to his wife, her remarkable tolerance wearing thin. She is heading to the hospital with her second miscarriage, and Jim is heading to Baghdad to cover the American invasion of Iraq. He hates himself for this - for not giving her a child, for deserting her when she so obviously needs him, for being consumed by his job - but how to stop moving? Sure, there have been some tough trips. (...) He's been spit on by Mennonites in Missouri, by heroin addicts in Pakistan, and by the KKK in South Carolina. He's contracted hepatitis on the Navajo Nation, endured two bouts of amoebic dysentery in India and Burma and four cases of giardia in Nepal, Peru, Afghanistan, and Cuba. He's been shot with rubber bullets in Seattle, knocked to the ground by a water cannon in Quebec, and sprayed with more teargas than he cares to recall. But photojournalism is his career, and travel is his compulsive craving.". (shrink)

This paper examines one of the problem raised by Wittgenstein's discus-sion of rule-following. What is it to grasp a rule (a universal, a pro-perty) given that a rule is individuated by its application to objects which the grasper will never think of? One philosophically tempting solution to this problem is discussed. To grasp a rule is to be disposed to behave in certain ways. The paper shows how this answer resurrects the very problem it was designed to solve and concludes (...) by relating this dia-lectic to Wittgenstein's Quietism. (shrink)

The reason the title of my paper is not Making Meaning Together Bridging Theory and Practice is that there is nothing to bridge. Theory and practice are simply sub-functions within the larger function of making meaning, knowledge, and value in our lives, although few thinkers have ever conceived it as such. The philosophy of John Dewey is a striking exception. Theory and practice unite within his account of production, or if you prefer, his account of construction and reconstruction. It indicates (...) a constructivism far beyond anything found in the contemporary educational conversation. In “Construction and Criticism,” Dewey writes, “I have used the word construction rather than creation because it seems less .. (shrink)

Heyman's target article seeks to resolve the apparent paradox surrounding the issue of control in relation to addictive behaviour. The present commentary argues that addiction is in fact less paradoxical and more easily understandable than Heyman supposes. A fully satisfactory model of addiction, however, requires a more multifaceted approach than that provided by the type of behavioural choice theory favoured by Heyman.

This paper attempts to show how two seemingly conflictual aspects of Nietzsche's thought, its naturalism and religiosity, can be interpreted as the coherent expression of a religious form of naturalism. A wide range of texts across Nietzsche's corpus are considered and the perspective developed related to contemporary debates within the philosophy of religion. In particular, Nietzsche's thought is shown to provide rich resources for overcoming the 'reductionism/anti-reductionism' dilemma.

My goal in this paper is to counter an increasingly common interpretation of the most famous moment in Hegel's thought - the struggle for recognition. Specifically, through a close reading of the movement from self-conscious desire to the moment of struggle, I seek to refute three key claims: a) that self-consciousness finds itself, qua determining center, challenged by another desire, b) that self-consciousness responds to this challenge by seeking to somehow subjugate the other as determining desire, and c) that self-consciousness (...) risks its own life primarily as a consequence of seeking the death of the other. I close with some (somewhat speculative) comments on the import of this reversal for understanding the role of recognition in Hegel's thought. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}. (shrink)

Logical guarantees of validity must be understood as subject to the proviso that no equivocation is committed. But we do not have a formal theory of equivocation. This paper attempts to formulate rules for responding to equivocal arguments in the context of dialogue. What occurs when one distinguishes meanings of an equivocal expression turns out to be rather different from definition.

Equivocation, or multiple meaning, is explained through the introduction of an additional response, the distinction, to points of order in formal dialogue objecting to immediate inconsistency.