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 paper is a critique of the coercion argument against performance-enhancing drugs . According to this argument, lifting the ban on PEDs would undermine the autonomy of athletes by creating a situation where everyone must either use PEDs or not compete at the highest levels of sport. Four problems are raised for this argument and it is concluded that the argument fails. A variation on the coercion argument is also considered and rejected.

Humans are fundamentally social and tend to create emergent organizations when interacting with each other; from dyads to families, small groups, large groups, societies and civilizations. The study of the neuronal substrate of human social behavior is currently gaining momentum in the young field of social neuroscience. Hyperscanning is a neuroimaging technique by which we can study two or more brain simultaneously while participants interact with each other. The aim of this article is to discuss several factors that we deem (...) important in designing hyperscanning experiments. We first review hyperscanning studies performed by means of electroencephalography (EEG) that have been relying on a continuous interaction paradigm. Then, we provide arguments for favoring ecological paradigms, for studying the emotional component of social interactions and for performing longitudinal studies, the last two aspects being largely neglected so far in the hyperscanning literature despite their paramount importance in social sciences. Based on these premises we argue that music performance is a suitable experimental setting for hyperscanning and that for such studies EEG is an appropriate choice as neuroimaging modality. (shrink)

Some carnivores defend the position that the opportunistic consumption of meat is morally permissible even under the assumption that it is morally wrong to act in ways that ause unnecessary suffering to sentient beings. Ordering and consuming chicken once a week, they argue, will not increase the numbers of chickens suffering or slaughtered, since the system of purchasing and farming chickens is not sufficiently fine‐tuned to register differences at margin. We argue that, insensitivity of the market notwithstanding, consistent consequentialists are (...) morally prohibited from each additional purchase and consumption of meat. (shrink)

In Wyoming Revisited, Michael A. Amundson uses the power of rephotography to show how landscapes across the state have endured over the last century. Three sets of photographs—the original black-and-white photographs taken by famed Wyoming photographer Joseph E. Stimson more than a century ago, repeat black-and-white images taken by Amundson in the 1980s, and a third view in color taken by the author in 2007–2008—are accompanied by captions explaining the history and importance of each site as well as information (...) on the process of repeat photographic fieldwork. The 117 locations feature street views of Wyoming towns and cities, as well as views from the state's famous natural landmarks like Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Devil's Tower National Monument, Hot Springs State Park, and Big Horn and Shoshone National Forests. In addition, Amundson provides six in-depth essays that explore the life of Joseph E. Stimson, the rephotographic process and how it has evolved, and how repeat photography can be used to understand history, landscape, historic preservation, and globalization. Wyoming Revisited highlights the historic evolution of the American West over the past century and showcases the significant changes that have occurred over the past twenty-five years. This book will appeal to photographers, historians of the American West, and anyone interested in Wyoming's history or landscape. The publication of this book is supported in part by the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund. (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.

One of the central characteristics of public health disasters is the rapid overlapping of different needs and priorities that require making critical choices that inevitably elicit conflicti...

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._.

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)

The result of a seven-and-a-half-year undertaking to document Iowa's barns and all they represent, Harker's Barns: Visions of an American Icon featured seventy-five stunning black-and-white photographs by Michael Harker. An impressive and well-received collection, the book helped preserve the glory of one of rural America's most elemental icons. Still Standing, a postcard book of thirty of Harker's barn photographs---some from Harker's Barns, some previously unseen---continues that mission of preservation. Printed on heavy card stock and perforated for easy removal, the (...) cards showcase midwestern barns-from square to round, wood to brick, Dutch to Swedish, occupied or abandoned, all symbolizing a passing way of life that was once the lifeblood of Iowa and the Midwest. As barns continue to disappear, these images will endure. “Barns Again! Celebrating an American Icon,” an exhibit of Harker's barn photos sponsored by Humanities Iowa and organized by the Smithsonian Institution's Traveling Exhibition Service and the National Building Museum, with assistance from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is currently touring Iowa. (shrink)

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)