This paper provides an analysis of the argument from cause and effect and a comparison of its various types with the argument from correlation. It will be claimed that arguments from causality and from correlation should be treated as equivalent for argumentative purposes. The main advantages of this approach as well as possible theo-retical objections will be discussed.

In this third volume of Speculations, a serial imprint created to explore post-continental philosophy and speculative realism, a wide range of topics are covered, from the philosophy of religion to psychoanalysis to the philosophy of science to gender studies, and in a wide variety of formats (articles, interviews, position pieces, translations, and review essays).

With this special volume of Speculations, the editors wanted to challenge the contested term "speculative realism," offering scholars who have some involvement with it a space to voice their opinions of the network of ideas commonly associated with the name.

Humans are unconditionally confronted with social expectations and norms, up to a degree that they, or some of them, have a hard time recognizing what they actually want. This renders them susceptible for introjection, that is, to unwittingly or “unconsciously” mistake social expectations for self-chosen goals. Such introjections compromise an individual’s autonomy and mental health and have been shown to be more prevalent in individuals with rumination tendencies and low emotional self-awareness. In this brain imaging study, we draw on a (...) source memory task and found that introjections, as indicated by imposed tasks that are falsely recognized as self-chosen, involved the bilateral medial prefrontal cortex and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. Notably, reduced right MPFC activation within this condition correlated with trait scores of ruminations and reduced emotional self-awareness, but also introversion. Moreover, correct recognition of tasks as self-chosen involved the right MPFC. Accordingly, the right MPFC may play a role in supporting the maintenance of psychological autonomy and counteract introjection, which individuals with certain personality traits seem to be prone to. This research has significant implications for the study of mechanisms underlying autonomous motivation, goal and norm internalization, decision-making, persuasion, education, and clinical conditions such as depression and burnout. (shrink)

Upon the release of Brokeback Mountain, the conservative film critic, Michael Medved, in a television interview, predicted that a gay western – or maybe he called it a gay cowboy movie – would not attract an audience, presumably on grounds that the intersection of the audience for gay movies and the audience for westerns would yield, as the logicians say, the null set. Medved was proven wrong, as Brokeback, which cost $14 million to produce, went on to earn $83 (...) million on first release in the United States (plus $95 million abroad). But Medved was also wrong in his initial description. Although rodeos, horses, and cattle percolate through the film, Brokeback does not fit the classic American Western movie storyline. From the films of William S. Hart and Tom Mix down through Gary Cooper in The Virginian and High Noon, John Wayne in Stagecoach, Alan Ladd in Shane, and Clint Eastwood in The Unforgiven, the Western hero wears a cowboy hat, rides a horse, and carries a gun. His ultimate goal is to save the good folks from the bad guys, and he always succeeds. Brokeback, of course, is not like these films at all. Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar are not engaged in the Westerner’s project of vanquishing evil. In fact, Ang Lee’s film more closely resembles the stories of such star-crossed lovers as Abelard and Heloise, Tristan and Isolde, and Romeo and Juliet. More interestingly, it fits a narrative pattern common in the nineteenth-century operas of Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, and Wagner. In.. (shrink)

Many philosophers endorse the idea that there can be no moral responsibility without a moral community and thus hold that such responsibility is essentially interpersonal. In this paper, various interpretations of this idea are distinguished, and it is argued that no interpretation of it captures a significant truth. The popular view that moral responsibility consists in answerability is discussed and dismissed. The even more popular view that such responsibility consists in susceptibility to the reactive attitudes is also discussed, and it (...) is argued that this view at best supports only an etiolated interpretation of the idea that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. (shrink)

In a rich and thought-provoking paper, Lambros Malafouris argues that taking material culture seriously means to be ‘systematically concerned with figuring out the causal efficacy of materiality in the enactment and constitution of a cognitive system or operation’ (Malafouris 2004, 55). As I understand this view, there are really two intertwined claims to be established. The first is that the things beyond the skin that make up material culture (in other words, the physical objects and artefacts in which cultural networks (...) and systems of human social relations are realized) may be essential to the enactment of, and be partly constitutive of, certain cognitive systems or operations. The consequence of establishing this claim is supposed to be that we have a mandate to recast the boundaries of the mind so as to include, as proper parts of the mind, things located beyond the skin. Thus, in talking about the contribution of the world to cognition, Malafouris (2004, 58) concludes that ‘what we have traditionally construed as an active or passive but always clearly separated external stimulus for setting a cognitive mechanism into motion, may be after all a continuous part of the machinery itself; at least ex hypothesi’. This is the position that, in philosophical circles, is known increasingly as the extended mind hypothesis (Clark & Chalmers 1998; Menary forthcoming). Henceforth I shall refer to this hypothesis as EM. A stock example will help bring the idea into view. Rumelhart et al. (1986) note that most of us solve difficult multiplication problems by using ‘pen and paper’ as an external resource. This environmental prop enables us to transform a difficult cognitive problem into a set of simpler ones, and to temporarily store the results of certain intermediate calculations. For the fan of EM, the distributed combination of this external resource and certain inner psychological processes constitutes a cognitive system in its own right. (shrink)

This book contains an eighteen hour seminar - given over a three day period - presented by Michael Eigen in Seoul, Korea. The seminar traces transformations of madness and faith in psychoanalysis - particularly Freud, Klein, Bion and Winnicott - emphasizing basic rhythms of experience steeped in clinical details, social issues and personal concerns, and takes up problems of madness and faith besetting the world today. It is filled with clinical portrayals and discussions of personal and social issues. Eigen (...) describes ways we live through challenging experiences in therapy relevant for how life is lived. Discussions go back and forth between clinical details and cultural dilemmas, touching the taste of life, how one feels to oneself. This work is at once personal, learned, and down-to-earth. One gets the feeling that a lifetime of dedicated work is being condensed and transmitted, mind to mind, person to person, soul to soul. (shrink)

Michael Cook's classic study, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge, 2001), reflected upon the Islamic injunction to forbid wrongdoing. This book is a short, accessible survey of the same material. Using Islamic history to illustrate his argument, Cook unravels the complexities of the subject by demonstrating how the past informs the present. At the book's core is an important message about the values of Islamic traditions and their relevance in the modern world.

Anthony Ellis argues that institutional punishment occurs automatically in a way analogous to mechanical deterrents, and given that issuing real threats is justified for self-defence, institutional punishment, intended to protect society via deterrence, can be justified without violating the Kantian constraint against using persons as means only. But institutional punishments are not in fact executed automatically: they must be carried out by moral agents. Ellis fails to provide a basis for those agents to justify the performance of their legal duties.

On 10 February 1947, A.C. Buehler, the president of the Victor Adding Machine Company presented Norden Bombsight #4120 to the Smithsonian Institute. This sight was in service on board the Enola Gay when it dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Through this public presentation, Buehler forever linked his company to the Norden Bombsight, the Enola Gay, and to history. Buehler’s ultimate goal, however, was the sale of adding machines, and while significant, the presentation to the Smithsonian was essentially the (...) final step in a long running advertising campaign designed to sell adding machines. During the War, Victor was the Army’s main contractor for the production of Norden Bombsights. This work is an investigation into the dysfunctional relationship that existed between Victor Adding Machine Company, the Army, the Navy Bureau of Ordinance (BuOrd). Wartime shortages demanded that pre-war arrangements between the Army and BuOrd be reconsidered and it was agreed that the Army be allowed to build its own units. Within a year of production Victor sights were scrutinized for their inaccuracies, and ultimately Victor’s contract was cancelled ending the Army’s short sojourn into bombsight production. (shrink)

_Makes Schelling’s dialogue Bruno readily accessible to the English-language reader, with valuable commentary on the work itself, which details Schelling’s account of his differences from Fichte._.

Michael Cholbi on the ways in which paternalism shows disrespect.

As scholars have commonly observed, a central difference between epistemic and practical normativity is the fact that the reasons of the former kind balance prohibitively, while reasons of the latter kind do so permissively. To explain the prohibition to believe or disbelieve in the face of tied evidence, several scholars have appealed to normative reasons in favour of a third doxastic option, the suspension of judgement. However, the question remains as to what happens if these latter reasons are defeated. In (...) such cases, one seems to be stuck in an impasse: either one is forced into an epistemic dilemma– where neither of one’s doxastic options seems permissible– or one must relax the prohibitive balancing principle– where there might be, after all, situations in which believing in the face of tied evidence is rationally permissible. In this paper, I discuss different ways to derive this puzzle of defeated suspension, as well as the most common strategy in responding to it. I argue that an appeal to undefeated reasons to suspend judgement comes with significant downsides and, thus, one should seek a different response: in extreme forms of the puzzle of defeated suspension, a form of higher-order suspension becomes rational. If one treats higher-order suspension as an additional doxastic option, one can avoid the puzzle in its entirety. Furthermore, an analogue puzzle of higher-order doubt merits the same treatment. (shrink)

The celebrated free-will defence was designed to show that the ideal-world thesis presents no challenge to theism. The ideal-world thesis states that, in any world in which God exists, He can actualize a world containing moral good and no moral evil. I consider an intriguing two-stage argument that Michael Bergmann advances for the free-will defence, and show that the argument provides atheologians with no reason to abandon the ideal-world thesis. I show next that the existence of worlds in which (...) every essence is transworld untrustworthy provides atheologians with no better reason to abandon the ideal-world thesis. I conclude that neither the free-will defence nor Bergmann's revised free-will defence is a convincing response to the atheological challenge. (Published Online February 17 2004). (shrink)

Handeln ist ein alltägliches Phänomen und zugleich ein komplexes Problem der Philosophie. Ausgehend von Alltagsbeispielen erläutert Michael Quante die Grundlagen und Begriffe der Handlungstheorie. Leserinnen und Leser erfahren auf verständliche Weise, was Handlungen, Ereignisse sowie Handlungsgründe sind und welche weiterführenden philosophischen Fragen sich aus ihnen ableiten lassen.

In this article, I reconsider Gandhi's relationship to liberal democracy. I argue that a properly Gandhian approach to this relationship should emphasize the role of the satyagrahi facilitating conflict resolutions and progress in truth. Above all, this approach calls upon courageous, exemplary individuals to pass over and join the viewpoints of 'unreasonables' marginalized by the liberal state. However, I also argue that contemporary Gandhians should explore cultural adaptations of the satyagrahi-role appropriate to highly materialistic, multicultural liberal-democracies. In these societies, the (...) traditional figure of the ascetic or saint may lack popular cultural resonance. Moreover, moral learning and spiritual insight often derives from popular culture and entertainment as much as religious traditions, or devotional practices. Contemporary Gandhi’s scholars should thus consider the prospects for 'alternative satyagrahis' embracing some materialist values and cultural motifs, as appropriate sources spiritual growth and soul-force. (shrink)

Gandhi scholars agree that he was a critic of capitalism, if not capital or capitalists. Nevertheless, they disagree about his relationship to socialism. Some emphasize Gandhi’s claim that the modern Western canon of socialism is incompatible with the philosophy of nonviolence. Others emphasize his occasional affirmation that he is a socialist, regarding socialism as a beautiful ideal of equality. Gandhi moves back and forth between conditional endorsements of capitalists and socialism’s beautiful ideal. In this article, I ask why Gandhi never (...) specifies any clear economic preference for the philosophy of nonviolence. Is he confused and incapable of reaching practical judgments about what nonviolence demands in terms of economics? I answer this question in two ways. First, I argue that passing back and forth over the partial and fallible viewpoints of capitalists and socialists of various stripes is consistent with Gandhi’s method of experiments in truth. The passing-over method extends from experiments in devotion to constructive experiments in economics, laying the foundation for integrating distinctively human life goals or puruṣārthas. Second, and perhaps more surprisingly, I consider the background to Gandhi’s use of this method as applied to economics in Kauṭilya’s classical Arthaśāstra. Scholars often characterize Kauṭilya as both a socialist and a realist. While establishing the world’s first welfare state, his Arthaśāstra is also tied deeply into the material-spiritual concerns of the puruṣārthas, combining economics with duty, earthly pleasure, and transcendence. In this latter respect, however, Kauṭilya’s realism concedes too much to the contextual realities of his time concerning imperial conquest and caste. Gandhi emerges from this inquiry as another kind of realist in his constructive experiments with diverse economic perspectives, equally attuned to the contextual realities of his age. Gandhi succeeded—where Kauṭilya failed—to integrate economics with the spiritual goals of the puruṣārthas. I contend that Gandhi’s back and forth method in economics provides contemporary Gandhians with a way to address new contextual realities of the digital or “gig” economy through techno-satyagraha. (shrink)

Embodied Cognition is growing up, and How the Body Shapes the Mind is both a sign of, and substantive contributor to this ongoing development. Born in or about 1991, EC is only now emerging from a tumultuous but exciting childhood marked in particular by the size and breadth of the extended family hoping to have some impact on its early education and upbringing. As family members include computer science, phenomenology, developmental and cognitive psychology, analytic philosophy of mind, linguistics, neuroscience, and (...) eastern mysticism, just to name a few, EC has both benefited and suffered from a wealth of different and often incompatible ideas about who and what it is, what it should do with its life, even what language it should speak. Gallagher brings some cohesion and consistency to this situation, not by surveying and synthesizing these competing approaches, but by focusing on some fundamental issues, and carefully marshalling the evidence and developing the vocabulary to thoroughly consider them. (shrink)

Part of understanding the functional organization of the brain is understanding how it evolved. This talk presents evidence suggesting that while the brain may have originally emerged as an organ with functionally dedicated regions, the creative re-use of these regions has played a significant role in its evolutionary development. This would parallel the evolution of other capabilities wherein existing structures, evolved for other purposes, are re-used and built upon in the course of continuing evolutionary development (“exaptation”: Gould & Vrba 1982). (...) There is psychological support for exaptation in cognition (e.g. Cosmides 1989), theoretical reason to expect it (Anderson 2003; in press-a; in press-b) and neuroanatomic evidence that the brain evolved by preserving, extending, and combining existing network components, rather than by generating complex structures de novo (Sporns & Kötter 2004). However, there has been little evidence that integrates these perspectives, bringing such an account of the evolution of cognitive function into the realm of cognitive neuroscience (although see, e.g., Barsalou 1999). (shrink)