Louisa Shea explores modernity's debt to Cynicism by examining the works of thinkers who turned to the ancient Cynics as a model for reinventing philosophy and ...

Lam, Joseph The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI caught the world by surprise, in spite the fact that he had earlier indicated this possibility. In a series of interviews that were published in 2011 as a book by the German journalist Peter Seewald, Benedict clearly stated: If a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right and, under some circumstances, also an obligation to (...) resign. (shrink)

Lying is an important moral phenomenon that most people are affected by on a daily basis—be it in personal relationships, in political debates, or in the form of fake news. Nevertheless, surprisingly little is known about what actually constitutes a lie. According to the traditional definition of lying, a person lies if they explicitly express something they believe to be false. Consequently, it is often assumed that people cannot lie by more indirectly communicating believed‐false claims, for instance by merely conversationally (...) implicating them. In this paper, we subject this claim to an empirical test. In a preregistered study of 300 participants, we investigate how people judge cases of implicit deceptions that would usually be excluded by the traditional definition of lying (i.e., conversational implicatures, presuppositions, and nonverbal actions). Our results show that people do in fact consider it possible to lie by indirect means, suggesting that people have a broader concept of lying than is usually assumed. Moreover, our findings indicate that lie judgments are closely tied to the extent to which agents are perceived as having committed themselves to the believed‐false claims they have communicated. We discuss the implications of our results for the traditional definition of lying and propose a new commitment‐based definition of lying that can account for the findings of our experiment. (shrink)

Theories of quantum gravity generically presuppose or predict that the reality underlying relativistic spacetimes they are describing is significantly non-spatiotemporal. On pain of empirical incoherence, approaches to quantum gravity must establish how relativistic spacetime emerges from their non-spatiotemporal structures. We argue that in order to secure this emergence, it is sufficient to establish that only those features of relativistic spacetimes functionally relevant in producing empirical evidence must be recovered. In order to complete this task, an account must be given of (...) how the more fundamental structures instantiate these functional roles. We illustrate the general idea in the context of causal set theory and loop quantum gravity, two prominent approaches to quantum gravity. (shrink)

This article asks how the application of digital technologies is changing the organization of the agri-food system in the context of the third food regime. The academic debate on digitalization and food largely focuses on the input and farm level. Yet, based on the analysis of 280 digital services and products, we show that digital technologies are now being used along the entire food commodity chain. We argue that digital technologies in the third food regime serve on the one hand (...) as a continuation of established information and communication technologies, thus deepening certain features of the existing food regime such as the retail sector’s control over global commodity chains. On the other hand, digital technologies also introduce new forms of control and value extraction based on the use of data and pave the way for large tech companies to take over market shares in the agri-food sector. Finally, we find that multinational agri-food companies are starting to take on the business models of leading digital tech companies, for instance by developing digital platforms throughout the agri-food system. We argue that this shows that the broader economic restructuring of neoliberal capitalism towards digital capitalism is also making its way into the agri-food system. (shrink)

In this book, readers will engage with the philosophies behind their favorite social media platforms, examine how the design features in these platforms shape habits and imagination, and gain dialogue-based skills to bring virtue back into virtual spaces. The authors draw from writing on virtue ethics and Catholic Social Teaching to demonstrate the potential goodness of technology. Eight of the main themes of Catholic Social Teaching are used to build a framework for designing technology to promote human flourishing.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, EarlyView.

We consider to what extent the fundamental question of spacetime singularities is relevant for the philosophical debate about the nature of spacetime. After reviewing some basic aspects of the spacetime singularities within general relativity, we argue that the well known difficulty to localize them in a meaningful way may challenge the received metaphysical view of spacetime as a set of points possessing some intrinsic properties together with some spatiotemporal relations. Considering the algebraic formulation of general relativity, we argue that the (...) spacetime singularities highlight the philosophically misleading dependence on the standard geometric representation of spacetime. †To contact the author, please write to: Department of Philosophy, University of Lausanne, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland; e-mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

The present study examines cross-cultural differences in people’s concept of lying with regard to the question of whether lying requires an agent to _say_ something they believe to be false. While prominent philosophical views maintain that lying entails that a person explicitly expresses a believed-false claim, recent research suggests that people’s concept of lying might also include certain kinds of deception that are communicated more indirectly. An important drawback of previous empirical work on this topic is that only few studies (...) have investigated people’s concept of lying in non-Western samples. In the present study, we compare people’s intuitions about lying with indirect deceptions (i.e., presuppositions, conversational implicatures, and non-verbal actions) in a sample of _N_ = 255 participants from Russia and _N_ = 300 participants from the United Kingdom. Our findings show a strong degree of similarity between lie ratings of participants from Russia and the United Kingdom, with both samples holding it possible for agents to lie with deceptive statements and actions that do not involve the agent _saying_ something they believe to be false. (shrink)

This paper considers the physical accounts of causation in terms of conserved quantities in the light of the theory of general relativity. As it is rather well-known among physicists, there are several difficulties with the notions of conservation and localization of the (gravitational) energy-momentum within general relativity. We first begin to review the so-called conserved quantity theory of causation mainly due to Dowe and Salmon, then we discuss some consequences of these difficulties for this physical account of causation. We argue (...) that these difficulties are due to the fundamental nature of the space-time structure as described by GR, which the conserved quantity theory of causation does not account for. (shrink)

Ontic structuralism or ontic structural realism in the philosophy of physics can be broadly considered as an interpretative strategy providing a set of conceptual and metaphysical tools—or, more ambitiously, an ontological framework—in order to account for central features of current fundamental physics. This article aims to review the main structuralist interpretative moves in the context of our two best fundamental physical theories of matter and spacetime, namely, quantum theory and general relativity. We highlight in particular the structuralist understanding of permutation (...) invariance, entanglement and nonlocality in quantum theory, and of the dynamical features of spacetime, diffeomorphism invariance and background independence in general relativity. (shrink)

David Rothenberg, a philosophy professor and Jazz musician, has been improvising with nonhuman animals for years, among his playing partners are birds and whales, known to be territorial animals. As Deleuze and Guattari propose that the origin of art is precisely the territorialising animal and more a function of nature than a specifically human cultural achievement, their concept of territory and rhythm offers a non-anthropocentric way of looking at these encounters. Rothenberg’s sonic experiments in resonance and interspecies interaction do not (...) rely on language, thus I argue that the human and the nonhuman animals form a temporary joint territory via sonic rhythms and engage in a mutual becoming by forming a rhizome. His sound thinking practice thus also helps in decentralising further anthropocentric models of music and art. (shrink)

This artists’ text examines the relationship between photographic images and Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) environments. We note that such scripted image worlds necessitate a fundamental reconsideration of the capacities of image, its formation, reproduction, storage and circulation. As an archaeologist would document an excavation, extending conventional methods through 3D visualization technology to work in new ways with the archaeological record, we chose to document a world built and razed digitally by a now dormant group of anonymous gamers called the Yung (...) Cum Bois (YCBs). We turn to some definitions of griefer as a subcultural phenomenon within online culture to attempt to contextualize our involvement some more, thinking through the forms of image-gathering that grief play has generated, such as scripted object attacks where image-objects spawn and self-replicate, continually spurting out copies of themselves, lagging the region, slowing down frame rates, consuming land resources. Here we witness images blockading network logistics. This was active fieldwork. We got involved. We applied visualization technology learnt from archaeological computing research to the avatars, temporary structures and abandoned ruins of an online world, Second Life (SL). We patched together a kind of virtual photogrammetry, enabling the monumentalization of avatars, objects and scenarios, recompiling these into new configurations and uploading them freely to be reused, detourned and weaponized by our virtual friends. We situate this endeavour within a cobbled history of imaging technology, the networked self and its pathologies, riffling through our own image dump. Here. (shrink)

ObjectiveMisophonia is an unusually strong aversion to a specific class of sounds – most often human bodily sounds such as chewing, crunching, or breathing. A number of studies have emerged in the last 10 years examining misophonia in adults, but little is known about the impact of the condition in children. Here we set out to investigate the well-being profile of children with misophonia, while also presenting the first validated misophonia questionnaire for children.Materials and MethodsWe screened 142 children using our (...) novel diagnostic [the Sussex Misophonia Scale for Adolescents ]. This allowed us to identify a group of children already manifesting misophonia at that age – the first population-sampled cohort of child misophonics examined to date. Children and their parents also completed measures of well-being and creative self-construct.ResultsData show that children with misophonia have significantly elevated levels of anxiety and obsessive compulsive traits. Additionally children with misophonia have significantly poorer life-satisfaction, and health-related quality of life. As predicted, they show no differences in creative self-construct.ConclusionTogether our data suggest the first evidence in population sampling of poorer life outcomes for children with misophonia, and provide preliminary convergent and discriminant validation for our novel misophonia instrument. Our data suggest a need for greater recognition and therapeutic outlets for adolescents with misophonia. (shrink)

Hesitations about accepting whole-heartedly Norris et al.'s suggestion to abandon feedback in speech processing models concern (1) whether accounting for all available data justifies additional layers of complexity in the model and (2) whether characterizing Merge as non- interactive is valid. Spoken word recognition studies support the nature of Merge's lexical level and suggest that phonemes should comprise the prelexical level.

The procedures of canonical quantization of the gravitational field apparently lead to entities for which any interpretation in terms of spatio-temporal localization or spatio-temporal extension seems difficult. This fact is the main ground for the suggestion that can often be found in the physics literature on canonical quantum gravity according to which spacetime may not be fundamental in some sense. This paper aims to investigate this radical suggestion from an ontologically serious point of view in the cases of two standard (...) forms of canonical quantum gravity, quantum geometrodynamics and loop quantum gravity. We start by discussing the physical features of the quantum wave functional of quantum geometrodynamics and of the spin networks of loop quantum gravity that motivate the view according to which spacetime is not fundamental. We then point out that, by contrast, for any known ontologically serious understanding of quantum entanglement, the commitment to spacetime seems indispensable. Against this background, we then critically discuss the idea that spacetime may emerge from more fundamental entities. As a consequence, we finally suggest that the emergence of classical spacetime in canonical quantum gravity faces a dilemma: either spacetime ontologically emerges from more fundamental non-spatio-temporal entities or it already belongs to the fundamental quantum gravitational level and the emergence of the classical picture is merely a matter of levels of description. On the first horn of the dilemma, it is unclear how to make sense of concrete physical entities that are not in spacetime and of the notion of ontological emergence that is involved. The second horn runs into the difficulties raised by the physics of canonical quantum gravity. (shrink)

Appealing to imagination for modal justification is very common. But not everyone thinks that all imaginings provide modal justification. Recently, Gregory and Kung :620–663, 2010) have independently argued that, whereas imaginings with sensory imageries can justify modal beliefs, those without sensory imageries don’t because of such imaginings’ extreme liberty. In this essay, I defend the general modal epistemological relevance of imagining. I argue, first, that when the objections that target the liberal nature of non-sensory imaginings are adequately developed, those objections (...) also threaten the sensory imaginings. So, if we think that non-sensory imaginings are too liberal for modal justification, we should say the same about sensory imaginings. I’ll finish my defense by showing that, when it comes to deciding between saying that all imaginings are prima facie justificatory and saying that no imaginings are justificatory, there is an independent reason for accepting the former. (shrink)

Lam, Joseph On 11 April 2015 Pope Francis called for a special of Year of Mercy, which subsequently was symbolically inaugurated with the opening of the Holy Doors of the Basilicas of St Peter and of St John in Rome on 8 December. According to the Argentinian Pontiff, upon whose episcopal ministry is placed the maxim miserendo atque eligendo, mercy is the key element leading to the rediscovery of the spiritual joy that appears to have faded away in the life (...) of the church. To counter this pessimism, Francis reminds his flock of the affectionate and tenderhearted look of God, whose merciful and loving gaze enriches and liberates the life of every Christian: 'Thanks solely to this encounter or renewed encounter with God's love, which blossoms into an enriching friendship, we are liberated from our narrowness and self-absorption'. Yet, Francis in his major teaching documents seems to caution against the concept of happiness, even though his description of the effects produced by the mercy and joy of the Gospel leads to human growth, within which human happiness is understood as a right. He has called for an integral development that includes society's most neglected members,6 and that respects and includes all forms of existence. Nonetheless, it is not a soft choice, as if mercy opens the door to all forms of pleasure as long as they make people happy. (shrink)

In an article in Cognition, Machery, Mallon, Nichols, and Stich [Machery et al., 2004] present data which purports to show that “East Asian” native Cantonese speakers tend to have descriptivist intuitions about the referents of proper names, while “Western” native English speakers tend to have causal-historical intuitions about proper names. Machery et al take this finding to support the view that some intuitions, the universality of which they claim is central to philosophical theories, vary according to cultural background. Machery et (...) al hypothesize that the differences in intuitions about reference stem from general psychological differences between Eastern and Western subjects. Machery et al conclude from their findings that the philosophical methodology of consulting intuitions about hypothetical cases is flawed vis ` a vis the goal of determining truths about some philosophical domains. To quote Machery et al, “our data indicate that philosophers must radically revise their methodology” because “the intuitions philosophers pronounce from their armchairs are likely to be a product of their own culture and their academic training” ( [Machery et al., 2004] pp.B9). “The evidence suggests that it is wrong for philosophers to assume a priori the universality of their own semantic intuitions” ( [Machery et al., 2004] pp. B8). In the following study, I present data incompatible with Machery et al’s results. Native Cantonese-speaking immigrants from a Cantonese diaspora 1 in Southern California do not have descriptivist intuitions about the referents of proper names when presented with a Cantonese story and Cantonese questions about reference and truth-value. This data raises questions about the quality of Machery et al’s study and the conclusions they draw from it. (shrink)

In prior work, we have argued that spacetime functionalism provides tools for clarifying the conceptual difficulties specifically linked to the emergence of spacetime in certain approaches to quantum gravity. We argue in this article that spacetime functionalism in quantum gravity is radically different from other functionalist approaches that have been suggested in quantum mechanics and general relativity: in contrast to these latter cases, it does not compete with purely interpretative alternatives, but is rather intertwined with the physical theorizing itself at (...) the level of quantum gravity. Spacetime functionalism allows one to articulate a coherent realist perspective in the context of quantum gravity, and to relate it to a straightforward realist understanding of general relativity. (shrink)

Radical ontic structural realism (ROSR) asserts an ontological commitment to ‘free-standing’ physical structures understood solely in terms of fundamental relations, without any recourse to relata that stand in these relations. Bain ([2013], pp.1621–35) has recently defended ROSR against the common charge of incoherence by arguing that a reformulation of fundamental physical theories in category-theoretic terms (rather than the usual set-theoretic ones) offers a coherent and precise articulation of the commitments accepted by ROSR. In this essay, we argue that category theory (...) does not offer a more hospitable environment to ROSR than set theory. We also show that the application of category-theoretic tools to topological quantum field theory and to algebraic generalizations of general relativity do not warrant the claim that these theories describe ‘object-free’ structures. We conclude that category theory offers little if any comfort to ROSR. 1 Introduction: Ridding Structures of Objects2 The Set-theoretic Peril for Radical Ontic Structural Realism3 Bain’s Categorial Strategy to Save Radical Ontic Structural Realism4 Throwing out the Relations with the Relata5 Categorial and Set-theoretical Structures6 Radical Suggestions from Topological Quantum Field Theory?7 Sheaves of Einstein Algebras as Radical Structures?8 Conclusions. (shrink)

This paper considers two questions. First, what is the scope of the Equal Weight View? Is it the case that meeting halfway is the uniquely rational method of belief-revision in all cases of known peer disagreement? The answer is no. It is sometimes rational to maintain your own opinion in the face of peer disagreement. But this leaves open the possibility that the Equal Weight View is indeed sometimes the uniquely rational method of belief revision. Precisely what is the skeptical (...) import of this fact; is it the case that some form of skepticism triumphs in such cases? The answer to this question is also no. As it turns out, the situations in which it is most plausible that the Equal Weight view is a rational requirement are the ones in which meeting halfway with a disagreeing peer brings you closer to, and not farther from, knowledge. I argue for these theses in a novel way; by looking at the comparative reliability of belief- invariance and meeting halfway using measures of reliability for degrees of belief, and by drawing normative conclusions from such results. The conclusions here can have the effect of reframing the entire debate in the epistemology of disagreement. (shrink)

Confucian ethics as applied to the study of business ethics often relate to the micro consideration of personal ethics and the character of a virtuous person. Actually, Confucius and his school have much to say about the morals of the public administration and the market institutions in a more macro level. While Weber emphasizes the role of culture on the development of the economy, and Marx the determining influence of the material base on ideology, we see an interaction between culture (...) – specifically Confucian business ethics – and the economy. In this paper, we are going to study this interaction in several crucial stages of development of Confucianism. The paper concludes by postulating the relevance of Confucian business ethics to the global knowledge economy. (shrink)

The paper compares ontic structural realism in quantum physics with ontic structural realism about space–time. We contend that both quantum theory and general relativity theory support a common, contentful metaphysics of ontic structural realism. After recalling the main claim of ontic structural realism and its physical support, we point out that both in the domain of quantum theory and in the domain of general relativity theory, there are objects whose essential ways of being are certain relations so that these objects (...) do not possess an intrinsic identity. Nonetheless, the qualitative, physical nature of these relations is in the quantum case (entanglement) fundamentally different from the classical, metrical relations treated in general relativity theory. (shrink)

The use of the character _wang_ 忘 (forgetting) in the _Zhuangzi_ 莊子 has been widely recognized in traditional and contemporary Chinese scholarship, but its meaning remains unclear. This article reviews some notable studies in Sinophone academia concerning the notion of _wang_ in the _Zhuangzi_. The studies, though not necessarily focused on _wang_, shed light on different aspects of the concept, including its relation to self-cultivation, aesthetics, ethics, and ontology. While some scholars see _wang_ as a form of elimination, others stress (...) its relation to other concepts such as _shi_ 適 (fitting). The relation of these two concepts, however, is not yet clear. There are also debates over what makes _wang_ possible, with some linking it to _dao_ 道 and some directing our attention to our daily experience. Despite the limited attention paid to _wang_ to date, the studies reviewed show that it is a crucial aspect of Zhuangzian philosophy and deserves further study. (shrink)

Lam, Joseph The election of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio on the evening of 13 March 2013 stunned as many Vatican observers as had the resignation from the Chair of St Peter announced by Pope Benedict XVI during the ordinary consistory of cardinals at the Vatican on 11 February that year. While the Vaticanisti expected a younger pope, the seventy-six year old Archbishop of Buenos Aires emerged from the conclave as the 266th pope and successor of the ageing German pope. However, the (...) real surprise was Bergoglio's choice of name, which also signalled a new direction for the church's government and pastoral focus. In calling himself Francis, he evoked the way of simplicity that derives from the Gospel. While Benedict's teaching draws much from the Augustinian well, Francis, however, is more attached to Franciscan spirituality and practice. A look at Francis's first apostolic exhortation, 'The Joy of the Gospel', where he quotes Augustine only twice may cement this view. Nevertheless, in spite of these minimal references, Francis holds the Bishop of Hippo in high regard. This is very evident in his homily at the beginning of the last Augustinian general chapter held in Rome, on 28 August 2013. Reflecting on Augustine's restless heart, Francis pointed to two elements of the Augustinian heart. On the one hand, Augustine's restlessness was a craving for God's tender and forgiving love that can only be found in the encounter with Jesus Christ. On the other hand, the love Augustine found stirred in him a new unrest urging him to proclaim the Gospel of loving kindness with courage and without fear. It is not an exaggeration that Augustine was also the bearer of the honorary title, doctor caritatis. In this joyful unrest Augustine was spiritually close to St Francis, who became the disciple of God's humble love for the poor. As for Augustine, who to my knowledge was the first Latin author who designated God as humble, St Francis's love for creation is grounded in God's humility. The central theme of Pope Francis's apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium is the proclamation of God's tender love, a love that constantly renews the lives of the faithful. Therein, Francis takes up the perennial divine quality. Yet, Francis would not be himself if he had not supplemented it with his own emphasis. (shrink)

Von Hippel & Trivers reason that the potential benefits of successfully deceiving others provide a basis for the evolution of self-deception. However, as self-deceptive processes themselves provide considerable adaptive value to an individual, self-deception may have evolved as an end in itself, rather than as the means to an end of improving other-deception.

This paper contends that for Christian philosophy, the classical approaches to Problem of Evil, especially those that attempt to justify God‟s omnipotence, are not adequate answers to the pressing problems of suffering, and that the canonical Gospels offer more valid contentions for defending his benevolence in the face of gross evil. It is therefore attempting to contribute a voice to a long-running debate between classical theist approaches and postmodern arguments for God‟s validity in a world saturated with evil. Positioning itself (...) against the traditional Augustinian and Iranean schools of theodicy, the essay returns to the original ideas that answered the earliest Christians when they were confronted by adversity, the plight of the weak, the wrongdoings of the powerful, but also the death of their teacher and leader, Jesus. These are the ideas recorded in Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, in which contemporary philosophy of religion has found itself exploring new outposts to engage the Problem of Evil. It will also be argued that the nature of these Gospel defences is primarily eschatological, although they cannot be compartmentalized into any single category of religious philosophy. This paper is not intended to serve an expressly Christian purpose. Rather, its main objective is to give a greater exposure to less traditional defences of God in the strictly philosophical context of theodicy. (shrink)