The first half of this book argues that physicalism cannot account for consciousness, and hence cannot be true. The second half explores and defends Russellian monism, a radical alternative to both physicalism and dualism. The view that emerges combines panpsychism with the view that the universe as a whole is fundamental.

The debate about the credentials of sociobiology has persisted because scholars have failed to distinguish the varieties of sociobiology and because too little attention has been paid to the details of the arguments that are supposed to support the provocative claims about human social behavior. I seek to remedy both deficiencies. After analysis of the relationships among different kinds of sociobiology and contemporary evolutionary theory, I attempt to show how some of the studies of the behavior of nonhuman animals meet (...) the methodological standards appropriate to evolutionary research. I contend that the efforts of E. O. Wilson, Richard Alexander, Charles Lumsden, and others to generate conclusions about human nature are flawed, both because they apply evolutionary ideas in an unrigorous fashion and because they use dubious assumptions to connect their evolutionary analyses with their conclusions. This contention rests on analyses of many of the major sociobiological proposals about human social behavior, including: differences in sex roles, racial hostility, homosexuality, conflict between parents and adolescent offspring, incest avoidance, the avunculate, alliances in combat, female infanticide, and gene–culture coevolution.Vaulting Ambitionthus seeks to identify what is good in sociobiology, to expose the errors of premature speculations about human nature, and to prepare the way for serious study of the evolution of human social behavior. (shrink)

Based on a survey of editors, publishers and staff members of 300 newspapers, this work documents the ethical confusion in the American press in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the Pentagon Papers controversy. It provides an analytical and historical framework to show how the press reached this point and argues for an ethical audit to give publications an independent check on their moral condition.

There has recently been a good deal of interest in the republican tradition, particularly in the political conception of freedom maintained within that tradition. I look here at the characterisation of republican liberty in a recent work of Quentin Skinner1and argue on historical and conceptual grounds for a small amendment—a simplification—that would make it equivalent to the view that freedom in political contexts should be identified with nondomination.

Many philosophers and scientists believe that we need an explanation as to why the laws of physics and the initial conditions of the universe are fine-tuned for life. The standard two options are: theism and the multiverse hypothesis. Both of these theories are extravagant and arguably have false predictions. Drawing on contemporary philosophy of mind, I outline a form of panpsychism that I believe offers a more parsimonious and less problematic explanation of cosmological fine-tuning.

Some disability rights advocates criticise prenatal testing and selective abortion on the grounds that these practices express negative attitudes towards existing persons with disabilities. Disability rights advocates also commonly criticise and oppose physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and euthanasia on the same grounds. Despite the structural and motivational similarity of these two kinds of arguments, there is no literature comparing and contrasting their relative merits and the merits of responses to them with respect to each of these specific medical practices. This paper (...) undertakes such a comparison. My thesis is that a number of potentially significant weaknesses of the expressivist argument against reproductive technologies are avoided when the argument is used against PAS. In particular, I try to show that three common criticisms of the expressivist argument applied to reproductive technologies, whatever merit they have, have even less merit when they are used to reply to the expressivist argument applied to PAS. This is important because the expressivist argument applied to the end of life scenario does not get as much attention as the argument applied to the beginning of life scenario, and yet it has a relatively stronger position. (shrink)

Physicalism dominated Anglo‐American philosophy in the latter half of the twentieth century, and is perhaps still the most popular view among analytic philosophers. Panpsychism is increasingly being seen as a serious option, both for explaining consciousness and for providing a satisfactory theory of the natural world. Perhaps the most popular form of panpsychism at present is constitutive panpsychism. At least some fundamental material entities are conscious; facts about human and animal consciousness are grounded in facts about the consciousness of their (...) fundamental material parts. This chapter equates panpsychism with constitutive panpsychism. In considering responses to the notorious combination problem for panpsychism, the chapter moves onto other forms of panpsychism to examine whether they fare any better against this challenge. It adopts the via negativa definition of physicalism. Panqualityism is the only form of panprotopsychism which offers a clear positive proposal as to what protophenomenal properties are. (shrink)

As an alternative to establishing awareness thresholds, stimulus contexts in which there were either greater conscious or greater unconscious influences were defined on the basis of performance on an exclusion task. Target words were presented for brief durations and each target word was followed immediately by its three-letter stem. Subjects were instructed to complete each stem with any word other than the target word. With this task, failures to exclude target words indicate greater unconscious influences, whereas successful exclusion indicates greater (...) conscious influences. Conscious influences were dominant at long durations , but unconscious influences were dominant at short durations . Performance on the exclusion task successfully predicated both qualitative differences in Stroop priming and qualitative differences in recognition memory previously associated with the different effects of conscious and unconscious influences. Taken together, these results demonstrate that an exclusion task allows both unconscious and conscious influences to be defined in terms of significant deviations from baseline performance. As such, exclusion tasks provide a method for distinguishing conscious from unconscious influences that does not require establishing thresholds for null awareness. (shrink)

It is a priori on many accounts of colour concepts that something is red if and only if it is such that it would look red to normal observers in normal circumstances: it is such that it would look red, as we can say, under normal conditions of observation. And as this sort of formula is widely applied to colour concepts, so similar schemas are commonly defended in relation to a variety of other concepts too. Not only are colour concepts (...) connected in such a fashion with human responses, so by many accounts are secondary quality concepts in general; aesthetic concepts, moral concepts and evaluative concepts of all kinds; modal concepts that serve to pick out the possible and the necessary; and so on. The fashion for resorting to such formulas should not be surprising. Most of us suppose that whether a given, ostensively introduced term has a certain semantic value – whether, for example, it designates a certain property – ought to show up in people’s tending to use it of things, and only of things, that apparently have that property. The obvious way of expressing this expectation is to require that the use of the ostensive term covary with the presence of the property in conditions that are normal in some sense for detecting that property. Thus there is prima facie reason to hold, and hold as an a priori matter, that for any ostensively introduced term, ‘P’, something is P if and only if it is such that it would seem P – people would be disposed to use ‘P’ to ascribe the corresponding property to it – under normal conditions of observation. The schemas invoked under this motivation may vary in many different ways, of course. First, they may not connect the bare or simple reality of being P with a normalised human response, as Philosophical Studies 96: 21–44, 1999. © 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 22. (shrink)

Trusting someone in an intuitive, rich sense of the term involves not just relying on that person, but manifesting reliance on them in the expectation that this manifestation of reliance will increase their reason and motive to prove reliable. Can trust between people be formed on the basis of Internet contact alone? Forming the required expectation in regard to another person, and so trusting them on some matter, may be due to believing that they are trustworthy; to believing that they (...) seek es teem and will be rationally responsive to the good opinion communicated or promised by an act of trust; or to both factors at once. Neither mechanism can rationally command confidence, however, in the case where people are related only via the Internet. On the Internet everyone wears the ring of Gyges; everyone is invisible, in their personal identity, to others. (shrink)

Revelation is roughly the thesis that we have introspective access to the essential nature of our conscious states. This thesis is appealed to in arguments against physicalism. Little attention has been given to the problem that Revelation is a source of pressure in the direction of epiphenomenalism, as introspection does not seem to reveal our conscious states as being essentially causal. I critique Hedda Hassel Mørch’s ‘phenomenal powers view’ response to this difficulty, before defending a form of the ‘consciousness+’ response.

This paper reviews the history of psychological investigations of unconscious perception and summarizes the current status of experimental research in this area of investigation. The research findings described in the paper illustrate how it is possible to distinguish experimentally between conscious and unconscious perception. The most successful experimental strategy has been to show that a stimulus can have qualitatively different consequences on cognitive and affective reactions depending on whether it was consciously or unconsciously perceived. In addition, recent studies of patients (...) undergoing general anaesthesia have shown that the effects of stimuli perceived unconsciously during surgery can last for approximately 24 hours. Taken together, the results of these recent psychological investigations provide empirical support for the importance of unconsciously perceived information in determining cognitive and affective reactions. (shrink)

Zombies are bodies without minds: creatures that are physically identical to actual human beings, but which have no conscious experience. Much of the consciousness literature focuses on considering how threatening philosophical reflection on such creatures is to physicalism. There is not much attention given to the converse possibility, the possibility of minds without bodies, that is, creatures who are conscious but whose nature is exhausted by their being conscious. We can call such a ‘purely conscious’ creature a ghost.

Panentheism is best understood as a philosophical research program. Identifying the core of the research program offers a strong response to the demarcation objection. It also helps focus both objections to and defenses of panentheism — and to show why common objections are not actually criticisms of the position we are defending. The paper also addresses two common criticisms: the alleged inadequacy of panentheism’s double “in” specification of the relationship between God and world, and the “double God” objection. Once the (...) research program framework is in place, topics like these become opportunities for panentheists to engage in the kind of careful constructive work in theology and philosophy — historical, analytic, and systematic — that is required for making long-term, positive contributions to our field. (shrink)

Hilbert's program attempts to show that our mathematical knowledge can be certain because we are able to know for certain the truths of elementary arithmetic. I argue that, in the absence of a theory of mathematical truth, Hilbert does not have a complete theory of our arithmetical knowledge. Further, while his deployment of a Kantian notion of intuition seems to promise an answer to scepticism, there is no way to complete Hilbert's epistemology which would answer to his avowed aims.

Some of the systems used in natural language generation (NLG), a branch of applied computational linguistics, have the capacity to create or assemble somewhat original messages adapted to new contexts. In this paper, taking Bernard Williams’ account of assertion by machines as a starting point, I argue that NLG systems meet the criteria for being speech actants to a substantial degree. They are capable of authoring original messages, and can even simulate illocutionary force and speaker meaning. Background intelligence embedded in (...) their datasets enhances these speech capacities. Although there is an open question about who is ultimately responsible for their speech, if anybody, we can settle this question by using the notion of proxy speech, in which responsibility for artificial speech acts is assigned legally or conventionally to an entity separate from the speech actant. (shrink)

Delusions are explanations of anomalous experiences. A theory of delusion requires an explanation of both the anomalous experience _and _the apparently irrational explanation generated by the delusional subject. Hence, we require a model of rational belief formation against which the belief formation of delusional subjects can be evaluated. _Method. _I first describe such a model, distinguishing procedural from pragmatic rationality. Procedural rationality is the use of rules or procedures, deductive or inductive, that produce an inferentially coherent set of propositions. Pragmatic (...) rationality is the use of procedural rationality _in context_. I then apply the distinction to the explanation of the Capgras and the Cotard delusions. I then argue that delusions are failures of pragmatic rationality. I examine the nature of these failures employing the distinction between performance and competence familiar from Chomskian linguistics. _Results. _This approach to the irrationality of delusions reconciles accounts in which the explanation of the anomalous experience exhausts the explanation of delusion, accounts that appeal to further deficits within the reasoning processes of delusional subjects, and accounts that argue that delusions are not beliefs at all. (Respectively, one-stage, two-stage, and expressive accounts.) _Conclusion. _In paradigm cases that concern cognitive neuropsychiatry the irrationality of delusional subjects should be thought of as a performance deficit in pragmatic rationality. (shrink)

For many years a debate has raged over what constitutes futile medical care, if patients have a right to demand what doctors label as futile, and whether physicians should be obliged to provide treatments that they think are inappropriate. More recently, the argument has shifted away from the difficult project of definitions, to outlining institutional policies and procedures that take a measured and patient-by-patient approach to deciding if an existing or desired intervention is futile. The prototype is the Texas Advance (...) Directives Act, but similar procedures have been widely implemented both with and without the protection of the law. While this method has much to recommend it, there are inherent moral flaws that have not received as much discussion as warranted. Because these strategies adopt a semblance of procedural justice, it is assumed that the outcomes of such proceedings will be both correct and fair. In this paper, I argue that there are three main irremediable defects in the policy approach: there is the potential for arbitrary decision-making about futility in specific cases; there are structural, pre-ordained consequences for ethnic minorities who would be disproportionately affected by the use of these procedures; and the use of rationing justifications to support the use of these policies. These flaws detract so much from any benefit that could be derived that they make such strategies more harmful than helpful. (shrink)

Periodic and unexpected shortages of drugs, biologics, and even medical devices have become commonplace in the United States. When shortages occur, hospitals and clinics need to decide how to ration their available stock. When such situations arise, institutions can choose from several different allocation schemes, such as first-come, first-served, a lottery, or a more rational and calculated approach. While the first two approaches sound reasonable at first glance, there are a number of problems associated with them, including the inability to (...) make fine, individual patient-centered decisions. They also do not discriminate between what kinds of patients and what types of uses may be more deserving or reasonable than others. In this article I outline an ethically acceptable procedure for rationing drugs during a shortage in which demand outstrips supply. (shrink)

This essay presents a theory of the role of technology in the distribution and exercise of social power. The paper studies how technical artefacts and systems are used to construct, maintain or strengthen power relations between agents, whether individuals or groups, and how their introduction and use in society differentially empowers and disempowers agents. The theory is developed in three steps. First, a definition of power is proposed, based on a careful discussion of opposing definitions of power, and it is (...) argued that a theory of power should have two components: a theory of power relations and a theory of empowerment. Second, an analysis of power relations is presented, in which five basic types of power relations between agents are distinguished, and this analysis is applied to technology, resulting in an account of the possible roles of technical artefacts in power relations. Third, I analyse how technology can lead to or contribute to empowerment and disempowerment, and what resistance strategies are possible against disempowerment through technological means. The theory of technology and power presented in this paper is claimed to be an essential ingredient of a critical theory of technology, which is a theory that analyses and critiques the role of technology in the distribution and exercise of power in society. In the final section of this paper, it is argued that the theoretical analysis of power and technology presented in this paper provides an adequate basis for the further development of such a critical theory of technology. I study how it may, specifically, be used to develop strategies for the democratization of technology. (shrink)

Abstract:The concept of social progress I hope to rehabilitate will be local, far from locally complete, and permit only modest extensions; it will be pragmatic rather than teleological. In this way, it will hope to avoid treating the multiplicity of goods as if there were always the possibility of comparing them on a single scale, to abandon the idea of a final state toward which history is tending or should tend, and to substitute piecemeal accomplishments for utopian ends. Its emphasis (...) on local comparisons will allow it to forgo sweeping historical comparisons, those juxtaposing the “enlightened” with “lesser breeds without the law,” or the “ancients” with the “moderns.” A restrained pragmatic concept of social progress honors the insights of critics of the notion of social progress, seeing them as questioning alleged presuppositions that can be given up. (shrink)

The case of pain asymbolia is a case study that provides evidence of the mechanisms underlying the relationship between bodily experience, affective experience, and self-awareness. On one account pain asymbolia is the result of an affective deficit. Sensory signals of bodily damage are not associated with characteristic negative affect. Cochrane endorses this account as part of his version of a “conceptual act” theory of affective experience. In contrast, I propose an active inference account of affect in general and pain asymbolia (...) in particular. In the active inference framework the self is inferred as the endogenous cause of bodily and affective experience in the process of organismic regulation. This preserves Cochranes ambition to ground affect in bodily regulation but avoids the problem for affective deficit accounts of asymbolia that cannot do justice to the neural correlates. (shrink)

Andrew Kania has attempted to argue for nihilistic fictionalism about musical works. This view combines an error theory about musical work discourse with the proposal that musical work discourse has a non-alethic value which warrants continued participation in it. In this paper, I argue that Kania fails to establish either component of nihilistic fictionalism. First, I elaborate and reject Kania’s attempt to establish fictionalism on the basis of a methodological proposal he calls ‘descriptivism’. I argue that the methodology is unpopular, (...) unappealing and that the interest in its implications is unclear. What is worse descriptivism does not support fictionalism. I then elaborate and reject Kania’s attempt to establish fictionalism as the best theory compatible with nominalism. I argue that, even by Kania’s standards, eliminativist nominalism, materialist nominalism and materialist fictionalism are preferable to nihilistic fictionalism. (shrink)

Trust should be able to explain cooperation, and its failure should help explain the emergence of cooperation-enabling institutions. This proposed methodological constraint on theorizing about trust, when satisfied, can then be used to differentiate theories of trust with some being able to explain cooperation more generally and effectively than others. Unrestricted views of trust, which take trust to be no more than the disposition to rely on others, fare well compared to restrictive views, which require the trusting person to have (...) some further attitude in addition to this disposition. The same methodological constraint also favours some restrictive views over others. (shrink)

A recent strand in the philosophical literature on addiction emphasizes problems with diachronic self-control. Hanna Pickard, for example, argues that an important aspect of addiction consists in inability to identify with a non-addicted future self. This literature sits alongside another that treats addiction as the product of neural changes that “hijack” mechanisms of reward prediction, habit formation decision making and cognitive control. This hijacking literature originates in accounts that treat the neural changes characteristic of addiction as a brain disease. This (...) paper provides a framework based on predictive processing accounts of self-awareness that integrates the hijacking and diachronic accounts. I discuss a hijacking account proposed to explain disruption of addiction following lesion to the anterior insula cortex. I show how insula activity contributes to the type of identification implicated in diachronic accounts and how deactivation of the anterior insula can disrupt addiction by alienating the subject from her addictive tendencies. This is consistent with neural evidence but also incorporates the personal level features of addiction that are opaque to neural level explanation. (shrink)

In this paper I consider a theory developed within cognitive neuropsychiatry to explain two delusions of misidentification, the Capgras and the Cotard delusions. These delusions are classified together with others in which the subject misidentifies persons, places or objects, including parts of her own body. Strictly speaking, the Cotard may not, at the level of content, be a delusion of misidentification, but I have described it as such because the theory I discuss treats it as sharing a causal and a (...) conceptual structure with the Capgras delusion. That theory, associated particularly with the work of Andy Young, raises a Wittgensteinian echo in its claim that, at the subpersonal, information-processing, level, perceptual recognition of familiar faces and scenes is laden with affect. Where affect is absent or distorted as a result of neurological damage the subject “feels” strange in the presence of familiar scenes or people. Thus Young and Leafhead in their discussion of the Cotard delusion: “What the patients often give as evidence of their nonexistence or death is that they don’t have proper feeling.”. (shrink)