Recent writers claim that responsibilist virtue epistemology courts skepticism, owing to the fact that most of us lack the virtues it deems necessary for justified belief and knowledge. A powerful version of this objection is the challenge from situationist social psychology pressed by Alfano (2012, 2013) and Olin and Doris (2014). This paper develops a new version of responsibilism that is immune from this objection, and shows that this view has many advantages over other forms of virtue epistemology. My responsibilism (...) dispenses with the ubiquitous but (I argue) mistaken idea that responsibilist virtue properties must be understood in terms of character traits. My view parallels an often overlooked form of virtue ethics suggested by Thomson (1997) that some situationists (e.g., Harman (2001)) have praised. That form shares with other forms the thought that virtue properties are normatively fundamental, but it adds that act-attaching ones are prior to person-attaching ones, and require no backing by character traits. Far from being an ad hoc retreat position, I argue that this view is independently attractive. (shrink)

The uncanny valley—the unnerving nature of humanlike robots—is an intriguing idea, but both its existence and its underlying cause are debated. We propose that humanlike robots are not only unnerving, but are so because their appearance prompts attributions of mind. In particular, we suggest that machines become unnerving when people ascribe to them experience, rather than agency. Experiment 1 examined whether a machine’s humanlike appearance prompts both ascriptions of experience and feelings of unease. Experiment 2 tested whether a machine capable (...) of experience remains unnerving, even without a humanlike appearance. Experiment 3 investigated whether the perceived lack of experience can also help explain the creepiness of unfeeling humans and philosophical zombies. These experiments demonstrate that feelings of uncanniness are tied to perceptions of experience, and also suggest that experience—but not agency—is seen as fundamental to humans, and fundamentally lacking in machines. (shrink)

According to models of objectification, viewing someone as a body induces de-mentalization, stripping away their psychological traits. Here evidence is presented for an alternative account, where a body focus does not diminish the attribution of all mental capacities but, instead, leads perceivers to infer a different kind of mind. Drawing on the distinction in mind perception between agency and experience, it is found that focusing on someone's body reduces perceptions of agency but increases perceptions of experience. These effects were found (...) when comparing targets represented by both revealing versus nonrevealing pictures or by simply directing attention toward physical characteristics. The effect of a body focus on mind perception also influenced moral intuitions, with those represented as a body seen to be less morally responsible but more sensitive to harm. These effects suggest that a body focus does not cause objectification per se but, instead, leads to a redistribution of perceived mind. (shrink)

BREYSIG: SEIN U. ERK. GESCHICHTL. DINGE BD. 3.

Bu çalışmada, düşünme ile karşılaşmalar arasındaki içkin ilişkinin irdelenmesi amaçlanmaktadır. Karşılaşmalar içinden yaratıcı düşünmenin sahih bir analizini yapabilmek için, antik dönemden modern döneme kadar düşünce tarihi içinden bir güzergah izlenecektir. Bu anlamda, temel amaç olarak, içinde kritik düşünürlerin düşüncelerinin karşılaşarak hep biraz fazlasını açığa vurarak ilerlediği düşünsel bir patikanın izi sürülecektir. Buradaki, biraz fazlası ifadesi önemlidir. Çünkü o, biraz fazlası, kendini hep daha fazla kritik ve üretici karşılaşmalar içinden devam ettirmek isteyen yaratıcı düşünmenin edimsel gücüyle ilgilidir. Bunu açığa çıkarmak adına, (...) trajik diyaloglarda köklenen ve devam ederek Deleuze düşüncesine ve belki de ötesine uzanan eleştirel düşünmenin bir yolu takip edilecektir. Bu yönüyle, iki trajik yazar olan Sophocles ve Euripides’ in düşüncesinden, Nietzsche, Heidegger ve Deleuze düşüncesine kadar kritik düşünürler arasında gerçekleşen her bir kritik karşılaşmanın, yaratıcı düşünmenin edimsel gücü olarak kendini hep yeniden açığa vurduğu iddia edilecektir. Bu iddia ortaya konulurken, öznellik temelli ve akılcı bir eksende hareket eden ve yaratıcı düşünmenin gücünü zayıflatan geleneksel düşünce, Platon düşüncesi merkeze alınarak eleştirilecektir. (shrink)

M̀atter Matters is a work of genius. The work exhibits a breathtaking spread of erudition from antiquity to the present, mobilized to elucidate the early modern significance of the concept of matter. The slight play of words in the title expresses the principal thesis of the work, that mathematics is intelligible for Descartes if and only if matter exists as its object. Smith understands, better than anyone, how Descartes could claim, literally, that "my physics is nothing but geometry." Many will (...) be convinced, some dismayed, and all will be dazzled by this book.'---Thomas M. Lennon, The University of Western Ontario". (shrink)