We are obsessed with self-improvement; it’s a billion-dollar industry. But apps, workshops, speakers, retreats, and life hacks have not made us happier. Obsessed with the endless task of perfecting ourselves, we have become restless, anxious, and desperate. We are improving ourselves to death. The culture of self-improvement stems from philosophical classics, perfectionist religions, and a ruthless strain of capitalism—but today, new technologies shape what it means to improve the self. The old humanist culture has given way to artificial intelligence, social (...) media, and big data: powerful tools that do not only inform us but also measure, compare, and perhaps change us forever. This book shows how self-improvement culture became so toxic—and why we need both a new concept of the self and a mission of social change in order to escape it. Mark Coeckelbergh delves into the history of the ideas that shaped this culture, critically analyzes the role of technology, and explores surprising paths out of the self-improvement trap. Digital detox is no longer a viable option and advice based on ancient wisdom sounds like yet more self-help memes: The only way out is to transform our social and technological environment. Coeckelbergh advocates new “narrative technologies” that help us tell different and better stories about ourselves. However, he cautions, there is no shortcut that avoids the ancient philosophical quest to know yourself, or the obligation to cultivate the good life and the good society. (shrink)

This second edition of the book contains a new chapter on the notions of natural-kind words and natural kinds.

Being Inclined is the first book-length study in English of the work of Felix Ravaisson, France's most influential philosopher in the second half of the nineteenth century. Mark Sinclair shows how Ravaisson, in his great work Of Habit, understands habit as tendency and inclination in away that provides the basis for a philosophy of nature and a general metaphysics. In examining Ravaisson's ideas against the background of the history of philosophy, and in the light of later developments in French (...) thought, Sinclair shows how Ravaisson gives an original account of the nature ofhabit as inclination, within a metaphysical framework quite different to those of his predecessors in the philosophical tradition.Being Inclined sheds new light on the history of modern French philosophy and argues for the importance of the neglected nineteenth-century French spiritualist tradition. It also shows that Ravaisson's philosophy of inclination, of being-inclined, is of great import for contemporary philosophy, andparticularly for the contemporary metaphysics of powers given that ideas about tendency have recently come to prominence in discussions concerning dispositions, laws, and the nature of causation. Being Inclined therefore offers a detailed and faithful contextualist study of Ravaisson's masterpiece,demonstrating its continued importance for contemporary thought. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s oft-repeated statement that physical objects are mere representations has given rise to various phenomenalist interpretations. Here I understand phenomenalism to be the view that physical objects are actual or possible perceptions. I argue for a novel phenomenalist interpretation: for Kant a physical object is nothing but the sum of actual and possible perceptions that agree with its empirical concept. I argue that this interpretation is supported by the textual evidence and that this interpretation is not vulnerable to objections (...) commonly made to phenomenalist interpretations. I also argue that the textual evidence provides more support for it than for other phenomenalist interpretations. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant's final publication in ethics was The Doctrine of Virtue, Part II of the 1797 The Metaphysics of Morals. This text presents Kant's normative ethical theory. This guide is meant to be read alongside Kant's text, combining accessible explanations and novel interpretations of this difficult text. It is the first book in English devoted to The Doctrine of Virtue, one of Kant's most significant works. -/- Timmons divides the guide into five parts. Part I reviews Kant's life, the history (...) and significance of The Doctrine of Virtue, and situates Kant's ethics within his general metaphysical and epistemological views. Part II is devoted to the General Introduction to The Metaphysics of Morals, which is essential for understanding Kant's ethics. Part III and Part IV turn to The Doctrine of Virtue itself, exploring Kant's defense of a system of duties and corresponding virtues. Part V examines Kant's conception of moral education, the practice of virtue, and the conclusion to the book where Kant explains why the discipline of ethics does not include religion as a doctrine of duties to God. Timmons concludes the book highlighting key aspects of The Doctrine of Virtue, situating Kant's ethical theory in relation to other normative ethical theories. This guide is a vital resource for both students and scholars interested in ethics and the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 15-30, January 2022. We offer an account of mental health and well-being using the predictive processing framework. According to this framework, the difference between mental health and psychopathology can be located in the goodness of the predictive model as a regulator of action. What is crucial for avoiding the rigid patterns of thinking, feeling and acting associated with psychopathology is the regulation of action based on the valence of affective states. In PPF, valence (...) is modelled as error dynamics—the change in prediction errors over time. Our aim in this paper is to show how error dynamics can account for both momentary happiness and longer term well-being. What will emerge is a new neurocomputational framework for making sense of human flourishing. (shrink)

Stories of firms that exceed local compliance requirements in their environmental performance appear routinely. However, we have limited theoretical explanations of what propels these firms to exceed compliance. Our theory suggests that global competitive and institutional pressures lead multinational firms to develop highlevel, environmental management systems (EMS) that make them more competitive. For economic and other reasons, select firms make the choice to rationalize their collective environmental performance to the highest common denominator rather than the lowest. Regulations around the world (...) differ widely and are a moving target in many settings. The need to comply with such myriad, shifting rules leads to firms creating EMS to help stay ahead of regulations worldwide. Using institutional and internationalization theories as our basis, we offer a propositional model concerning global competitive/institutional pressures and their effects on corporate environmental performance. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the implications of the model. (shrink)

This volume engages with post-humanist and transhumanist approaches to present an original exploration of the question of how humankind will fare in the face of artificial intelligence. With emerging technologies now widely assumed to be calling into question assumptions about human beings and their place within the world, and computational innovations of machine learning leading some to claim we are coming ever closer to the long-sought artificial general intelligence, it defends humanity with the argument that technological 'advances' introduced artificially into (...) some humans do not annul their fundamental human qualities. Against the challenge presented by the possibility that advanced artificial intelligence will be fully capable of original thinking, creative self-development and moral judgement and therefore have claims to legal rights, the authors advance a form of 'essentialism' that justifies providing a 'decent minimum life' for all persons. As such, while the future of the human is in question, the authors show how dispensing with either the category itself or the underlying reality is a less plausible solution than is often assumed. (shrink)

Kant gives what appear to be consequentialist and retributivist reasons for his claim that the state must punish criminal offenders. I argue that Kant’s justification is retributivist and not consequentialist. In particular, I argue that Kant’s justification is found in his argument that we must attribute to an offender’s reason the judgment that she must be punished. I argue that other retributivist interpretations as well as interpretations that prioritize consequentialist reasons have little textual support. I also reconstruct an argument that (...) Kant implies for his claim that ius talionis is the proper criterion for determining the quality and quantity of punishment. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Quine''s indispensability argument, with particular emphasis on what is meant by ''indispensable''. I show that confirmation theory plays a crucial role in answering this question and that once indispensability is understood in this light, Quine''s argument is seen to be a serious stumbling block for any scientific realist wishing to maintain an anti-realist position with regard to mathematical entities.

A collection of scholarly essays, __Complexity Theory and the Philosophy of Education__ provides an accessible theoretical introduction to the topic of complexity theory while considering its broader implications for educational change. Explains the contributions of complexity theory to philosophy of education, curriculum, and educational research Brings together new research by an international team of contributors Debates issues ranging from the culture of curriculum, to the implications of work of key philosophers such as Foucault and John Dewey for educational change Demonstrates (...) how social scientists and social and education policy makers are drawing on complexity theory to answer questions such as: why is it that education decision-makers are so resistant to change; how does change in education happen; and what does it take to make these changes sustainable? Considers changes in use of complexity theory; developed principally in the fields of physics, biology, chemistry, and economics, and now being applied more broadly to the social sciences and to the study of education. (shrink)

A specific issue for argumentation theory is whether information and communication technologies play any role in governing argument — that is, as parties engage in practical activities across space and time via ICTs, does technology matter for the interplay of argumentative content and process in managing disagreement? The case made here is that technologies do matter because they are not merely conduits of communication but have a role in the pragmatics of communication and argumentation. In particular, ICTs should be recognized (...) as communication-information services that are delegated degrees of responsibility for managing disagreements arising from practical activities. These services are organized around practical theories for designing disagreement space. However, recognizing this relationship between argument and technology requires accounting for procedures, techniques, or rules and speech acts that are not argumentative propositions in any strict sense but that are consequential for what becomes argumentation in any setting. An account about designing disagreement space, grounded in Jackson and Jacobs’s theory of Disagreement Management, is put forward to address these issues while more generally contributing to understanding argument in context. (shrink)

All normal human beings alive in the last fifty thousand years appear to have possessed, in Mark Turner's phrase, 'impressively atful minds'. Cognitively modern minds produced a staggering list of behavioural singularities - science, religion, mathematics, language, advanced tool use, decorative dress, dance, culture, art - that seems to indicate a mysterious and unexplained discontinuity between us and all other living things. This brute fact gives rise to some tantalizing questions: How did the artful mind emerge? What are the (...) basic mental operations that make art possible for us now, and how do they operate? These are the questions that occupy the distinguished contributors to this book, which emerged from a year-long Getty-funded research project hosted by the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford. (shrink)

This article critically engages with the work of Bruno Latour and, in particular, his book We Have Never Been Modern. Looking beyond the wit and brevity of Latour's writing, the article focuses on some of the non-innocent aspects of his vision of a non-modern world. Rather than completely rejecting the `Great Divides' between Nature and Culture, Westerners and non-Westerners, Latour is seen as only interested in erasing these major fault lines of modernity in order to draw them anew. Ultimately, Latour (...) is not asking his readers to doubt the superiority of Western science but only to understand this superiority differently — as contingent and uncertain rather than necessary and secure. Latour is not as alone as he would have us believe in bringing a non-modern world into focus and the article devotes the bulk of its attention to comparing Latour's thoughts with those governing the Euro-American discipline of international relations before and after the end of the Cold War. Latour's particular account of the non-modern condition, it is argued, corresponds well with the shift from realism to neo-realism within international relations and the replacement of bi-polarity by global technological competition as the dominant feature of the international system. Although Latour continues to be regularly attacked in the so-called `Science Wars' as an enemy of Western science, he actually joins forces with leading Euro-American security experts today in contending that the future of both `Science' and the `West' hinges on the careful monitoring and management of hybrid networks of humans and non-humans and not on uncompromising acts of `purification' as has been the strategy in the past. (shrink)

In this volume, Mark Douglas offers a new vision of the history of Christian pacifism within the context of a warming world. He narrates this story in a way that recognizes the complexities of the tradition and aligns it with a coherent theological vision, one that shapes the tradition to encompass the new causes and types of wars fought during the Anthropocene. Along the way, Douglas draws from research in historical climatology to recover the overlooked role that climate changes (...) have always played in shaping not only the Christian pacifist tradition but also the movement of traditions through western history. Scholars across a range of disciplines - peace studies, Christian theology and history, environmentalism, and environmental conflict studies - will benefit from this model of critical and charitable engagement with the complex history of Christian pacifism, the resources of which will be important for addressing wars in a warming world. (shrink)

This book scrutinizes recent work in phonological theory from the perspective of Chomskyan generative linguistics and argues that progress in the field depends on taking seriously the idea that phonology is best studied as a mental computational system derived from an innate base, phonological Universal Grammar. Two simple problems of phonological analysis provide a frame for a variety of topics throughout the book. The competence-performance distinction and markedness theory are both addressed in some detail, especially with reference to phonological acquisition. (...) Several aspects of Optimality Theory, including the use of Output-Output Correspondence, functionalist argumentation and dependence on typological justification are critiqued. The authors draw on their expertise in historical linguistics to argue that diachronic evidence is often mis-used to bolster phonological arguments, and they present a vision of the proper use of such evidence. Issues of general interest for cognitive scientists, such as whether categories are discrete and whether mental computation is probabilistic are also addressed. The book ends with concrete proposals to guide future phonological research.The breadth and depth of the discussion, ranging from details of current analyses to the philosophical underpinnings of linguistic science, is presented in a direct style with as little recourse to technical language as possible. (shrink)

Many people have been enraged lately by the enormous increases in certain generic prescription drugs. But free marketeers defend these prices by arguing that they simply represent what the market will bear, and in a capitalist society there is accordingly nothing wrong with charging them. This paper argues that such a defense is actually contrary to the very principles that free marketeers claim to embrace. These prices are not only unjust and exploitative, but government interference with them would not render (...) the market less free, at least if what it means for a market to be “free” is properly understood. Everyone, even free marketeers with a libertarian or neoliberal bent, should accordingly be against this kind of profiteering. (shrink)

Two recent publications have greatly increased the amount of Wyclif available in translation: the Trialogus, translated by Stephen Lahey, and an anthology translated by Stephen Penn. This review article documents the failings that make these translations worse than useless. A post mortem leads me to claim that the publication of these volumes, the first of which has already been warmly received, is a sign of a gathering crisis in medieval studies, and one that we should take steps to avert.

As the average age of the population increases, so too do the number of people living with chronic illnesses. With limited resources available, the development of dialogue-based e-health systems that provide justified general health advice offers a cost-effective solution to the management of chronic conditions. It is however imperative that such systems are responsible in their approach. We present in this paper two main challenges for the deployment of e-health systems, that have a particular relevance to dialogue and argumentation: collecting (...) and handling health data, and trust. For both challenges, we look at specific issues therein, outlining their importance in general, and describing their relevance to dialogue and argumentation. Finally, we go on to propose six recommendations for handling these issues, towards addressing the main challenges themselves, that act both as general advice for dialogue and argumentation research in the e-health domain, and as a foundation for future work on this topic. (shrink)

Formal arguments have proven that avoiding the Repugnant Conclusion is impossible without rejecting one or more highly plausible population principles. To many, such proofs establish not only a deep challenge for axiology, but also pose an important practical problem of how policymaking can confidently proceed without resolving any of the central questions of population ethics. Here we offer deflationary responses: first to the practical challenge, and then to the more fundamental challenge for axiology. Regarding the practical challenge, we provide an (...) overview of recent literature that explores the implications for public policy of the Repugnant Conclusion and related puzzles within population ethics, and shows that there is more commonality in the implications of different population axiologies than is generally recognized. The upshot is that uncertainty about population ethics presents no important problem for policymaking, and the importance of population ethics to policymaking has been overstated. We then turn to more fundamental issues about axiology, and describe a new series of formal proofs that undermine the idea that any plausible axiology could avoid the Repugnant Conclusion, including those that are assumed to avoid it in the literature. The philosophical upshot is that the Repugnant Conclusion cannot plausibly be avoided, and so it is a mistake to assume as a constraint on a plausible axiology that it must be avoided, as is assumed by most of the literature in population ethics, including by all of the fundamental impossibility theorems. (shrink)

The somatic integration definition of life is familiar from the debate on the determination of death, with some bioethicists arguing that it supports brain death while others argue that some brain‐dead bodies exhibit sufficient somatic integration for biological life. I argue that on either interpretation, the somatic integration definition of life implies that neither the preimplantation embryo nor the postimplantation embryo meet the somatic integration threshold condition for organismal human life. The earliest point at which a somatic integration determination of (...) life could be made would be the beginning of the fetal stage, 9 weeks postfertilization. Bioethical implications are considered, specifically with respect to the moral status of the postimplantation embryo in embryo research and abortion. (shrink)

Prompted by the development of the Theory of Challenge and Threat States in Athletes (Jones et al, 2009), recent years has witnessed a considerable increase in research examining challenge and threat in sport. This manuscript provides a critical review of the literature examining challenge and threat in sport, tracing its historical development and some of the current empirical ambiguities. In an attempt to reconcile some of these ambiguities, and utilising neurobiological evidence associated with approach- and avoidance-motivation (cf. Elliot & Covington, (...) 2001), this paper draws upon the Evaluative Space Model (ESM: Cacioppo et al., 1997) and considers the implications for understanding challenge and threat in sport. For example, rather than see challenge and threat as opposite ends of a single bipolar continuum, the ESM implies that individuals could be (1) challenged, (2) threatened, (3) challenged and threatened, or (4) neither challenged or threatened by a particular stimulus. From this perspective it could be argued that the appraisal of some sport situations as both challenging and threatening could be advantageous, whereas the current literature seems to imply that the appraisal of stress as a threat is maladaptive for performance. In drawing upon the ESM, we outline the Evaluative Space Approach to Challenge and Threat and provide several testable hypotheses for advancing understanding of challenge and threat (in sport). We also outline a number of cardiovascular and experiential measures that can be used to examine these hypotheses. In sum, this paper provides a significant theoretical, empirical and practical contribution to our understanding of challenge and threat (in sport). (shrink)

In this response, we first tackle what we take to be the core disagreement between ourselves and Hammersley, namely the justification for our model of social research ethics governance. We then consider what follows from our defence of governance for ethics review and show how these claims attend to the specific concerns outlined by Hammersley.

When Heidegger insists that each of us is distinctive because “the most radical individuation” is both possible and necessary for us, he might mean: it is possible and necessary to be an individual in the most radical way; or it is possible and necessary to engage in the project of becoming a distinct individual in the most radical way; or it is possible and necessary to see the distinct individual that I am, and to do so in the most radical (...) way. Although all three readings are possible and defensible, I’d like to explore in this paper a -type reading of Heidegger’s claim. What would it mean to see the distinct individual that I am in the most radical way? (shrink)

This book is a must-read for researchers interested in taking a high-level, non-mechanistic approach to answering age-old fundamental questions in the brain ...

How Does the Environment Affect the Person? Mark H. Bickhard invited chapter in Children's Development within Social Contexts: Metatheoretical, Theoretical and Methodological Issues, Erlbaum. edited by L. T. Winegar, J. Valsiner, in press.

This text provides an analysis of the life and works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an area often overlooked in accounts of 18th-century heritage. Mark Hulliung restores Rousseau to his historical context, the world of the philosophes, and shows how he employed the arsenal of Voltaire, Diderot and others to launch a powerful attack on their vision of the Enlightenment.

It is an excellent companion to Plato's Dialogues.

It is often stated that optimal global climate policy requires global harmonization of marginal abatement costs – i.e., a single carbon price throughout the world. Chichilnisky and Heal (1994) have shown quite generally that this is only the case if distributional issues are ignored, or if lump-sum transfers are made between countries. Else, a policy in which different regions face different carbon prices may be superior to one with a single global carbon price from a welfare point of view. Still, (...) most integrated assessment models (IAMs) assume away distributional issues and report a single optimal carbon price. We calculate utilitarian-optimal carbon prices under zero cross-regional lump-sum transfers in the multi-region IAM NICE. The result is optimal global climate policy with different regional carbon prices in which the poorest regions face initially low prices, while the richest regions face very high prices from the outset. This entails significant welfare gains over the standard single price optima commonly reported, which, as we argue briefly in conclusion, can be improved upon still by allowing international trading in the corresponding emissions allocations. (shrink)