Comic Relief: A Comprehensive Philosophy of Humor develops an inclusive theory that integrates psychological, aesthetic, and ethical issues relating to humor Offers an enlightening and accessible foray into the serious business of humor Reveals how standard theories of humor fail to explain its true nature and actually support traditional prejudices against humor as being antisocial, irrational, and foolish Argues that humor’s benefits overlap significantly with those of philosophy Includes a foreword by Robert Mankoff, Cartoon Editor of The New (...) Yorker. (shrink)

Dominant views of personal identity in philosophy take some kind of psychological continuity or connectedness over time to be criterial for the identity of a person over time. Such views assign psychological states, particularly those necessary for narrative memory of some kind, special importance in thinking about the nature of persons. The extended mind thesis, which has generated much recent discussion in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, holds that a person’s psychological states can physically extend beyond that person’s (...) body. Since “person” is a term of both metaphysical and moral significance, and discussions of both extended minds and personal identity have often focused on memory, this article explores the relevance of extended cognition for the identity of persons with special attention to neuroethics and memory. (shrink)

The threat to the survival of humankind posed by nuclear weapons has been a frightening and essential focus of public debate for the last four decades and must continue to be so if we are to avoid destroying ourselves and the natural world around us. One unfortunate result of preoccupation with the nuclear threat, however, has been a new kind of "respectability" accorded to conventional war. In this radical and cogent argument for pacifism, Robert Holmes asserts that all war--not (...) just nuclear war--has become morally impermissible in the modern world. Addressing a wide audience of informed and concerned readers, he raises dramatic questions about the concepts of "political realism" and nuclear deterrence, makes a number of persuasive suggestions for nonviolent alternatives to war, and presents a rich panorama of thinking about war from St. Augustine to Reinhold Niebuhr and Herman Kahn. Holmes's positions are compellingly presented and will provoke discussion both among convinced pacifists and among those whom he calls "militarists." "Militarists," we realize after reading this book, include the majority of us who live a friendly and peaceful personal life while supporting a system which, if Holmes is correct, guarantees war and risks eventual human extinction. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This innovative volume presents an insightful philosophical portrait of the life and work of Arthur Schopenhauer. Focuses on the concept of the sublime as it clarifies Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theory, moral theory and asceticism Explores the substantial relationships between Schopenhauer’s philosophy and Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity Defends Schopenhauer’s position that absolute truth can be known and described as a blindly striving, all-permeating, universal “Will” Examines the influence of Asian philosophy on Schopenhauer Describes the relationships between Schopenhauer’s thought and that of Hegel, (...) Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Are materially constituted entities, such as statues and glasses of liquid, something more than their material constituents? The puzzle that frames this paper stems from conflicting answers to this question. At the core of the paper is a distinctive way of thinking about material constitution that posits two concepts of constitution, compositional and ampliative constitution, with the bulk of the discussion devoted to developing distinct analyses for these concepts. Distinguishing these concepts solves our initial puzzle and enriches the space of (...) possibilities for constitution views. (shrink)

Selected by CHOICE as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1995.

Individuals are a prominent part of the biological world. Although biologists and philosophers of biology draw freely on the concept of an individual in articulating both widely accepted and more controversial claims, there has been little explicit work devoted to the biological notion of an individual itself. How should we think about biological individuals? What are the roles that biological individuals play in processes such as natural selection (are genes and groups also units of selection?), speciation (are species individuals?), and (...) organismic development (do genomes code for organisms)? Much of our discussion here will focus on organisms as a central kind of biological individual, and that discussion will raise broader questions about the nature of the biological world, for example, about its complexity, its organization, and its relation to human thought. (shrink)

In this latest book, renowned philosopher and scholar Robert B. Pippin offers the thought-provoking argument that the study of historical figures is not only an interpretation and explication of their views, but can be understood as a form of philosophy itself. In doing so, he reconceives philosophical scholarship as a kind of network of philosophical interanimations, one in which major positions in the history of philosophy, when they are themselves properly understood within their own historical context, form philosophy’s lingua (...) franca. Examining a number of philosophers to explore the nature of this interanimation, he presents an illuminating assortment of especially thoughtful examples of historical commentary that powerfully enact philosophy. After opening up his territory with an initial discussion of contemporary revisionist readings of Kant’s moral theory, Pippin sets his sights on his main objects of interest: Hegel and Nietzsche. Through them, however, he offers what few others could: an astonishing synthesis of an immense and diverse set of thinkers and traditions. Deploying an almost dialogical, conversational approach, he pursues patterns of thought that both shape and, importantly, connect the major traditions: neo-Aristotelian, analytic, continental, and postmodern, bringing the likes of Heidegger, Honneth, MacIntyre, McDowell, Brandom, Strauss, Williams, and Žižek—not to mention Hegel and Nietzsche— into the same philosophical conversation. By means of these case studies, Pippin mounts an impressive argument about a relatively under discussed issue in professional philosophy—the bearing of work in the history of philosophy on philosophy itself—and thereby he argues for the controversial thesis that no strict separation between the domains is defensible. (shrink)

P.F. Strawson’s compatibilism has had considerable influence. However, as Watson has argued in “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil”, his view appears to have a disturbing consequence: extreme evil exempts an agent from moral responsibility. This is a reductio of the view. Moreover, in some cases our emotional reaction to an evildoer’s history clashes with our emotional expressions of blame. Anyone’s actions can be explained by his or her history, however, and thereby can conflict with our present blame. Additionally, we (...) too might have been evil if our history had been like the unlucky evildoer’s. Thus, our emotional responses to the evildoer compromise our standing to blame them. Since Strawson’s view demarcates moral responsibility by moral emotional responses, his view appears to be self-defeating. In this paper, I defend the Strawsonian view from the reductio and self-defeat problems. I argue that two emotions, disgust and elevation, can be moral reactive attitudes in Strawson’s sense. First, moral disgust expresses neither blame nor exemption from responsibility. Instead, moral disgust presupposes blameworthiness but is instead a distinct response to the extreme wrongdoer. Secondly, moral disgust involves self-directed attitudes that explain away our apparent lack of standing to blame the evil agent. The structure of disgust as a reactive attitude is mirrored along the positive dimension by the emotion that Haidt has called “elevation”, a feeling of moral inspiration. I conclude by defending my view from objections about the moral appropriateness of disgust. (shrink)

In this paper, we present an informal introduction to Logical English and illustrate its use to standardise the legal wording of the Automatic Early Termination clauses of International Swaps and Derivatives Association Agreements. LE can be viewed both as an alternative to conventional legal English for expressing legal documents, and as an alternative to conventional computer languages for automating legal documents. LE is a controlled natural language, which is designed both to be computer-executable and to be readable by English speakers (...) without special training. The basic form of LE is syntactic sugar for logic programs, in which all sentences have the same standard form, either as rules of the form conclusion if conditions or as unconditional sentences of the form conclusion. However, LE extends normal logic programming by introducing features that are present in other computer languages and other logics. These features include typed variables signalled by common nouns, and existentially quantified variables in the conclusions of sentences signalled by indefinite articles. Although LE translates naturally into a logic programming language such as Prolog or ASP, it can also serve as a neutral standard, which can be compiled into other lower-level computer languages. (shrink)

This paper investigates the consequences for our understanding of physical theories as a result of the development of the renormalization group. Kadanoff's assessment of these consequences is discussed. What he called the ``extended singularity theorem'' poses serious difficulties for philosophical interpretation of theories. Several responses are discussed. The resolution demands a philosophical rethinking of the role of mathematics in physical theorizing.

A worldview that does not involve religion or science seems to be incomplete. However, a worldview that includes both religion and science may arouse concern of incompatibility. This paper looks at the particular religion, Christianity, and proceeds to develop a worldview in which Christianity and Science are compatible with each other. The worldview may make use of some ideas of Christianity and may involve some author’s own ideas on Christianity. It is thought that Christianity and Science are in harmony in (...) the sense that science can support beliefs in Christianity and in turn beliefs in Christianity can support science. To avoid future unnecessary conflicts between science and religion, it is suggested that a core faith Christianity worldview should be taken. However, this does not mean that certain parts of scripture are abandoned. (shrink)

Although the influence of Homer on Western literature has long commanded critical attention, little has been written on how various generations of readers have found menaing in his texts. These seven essays explore the ways in which the Illiad and the Odyssey have been read from the time of Homer through the Renaissance. By asking what questions early readers expected the texts to answer and looking at how these expectations changed over time, the authors clarify the position of the Illiad (...) and the Odyssey in the intellectual world of antiqueity while offering historical insight into the nature of reading. The collection surveys the entire field of preserved ancient interpretations of Homer, beginning with the fictional audiences portrayed within the poems themselves, proceedings to readings by Aristotle, the Stoics, and Aristarchus and Crates, and culminating in the spritiualized allegorical reading current among Platonists of the fifth and sixth centuries C.E. The influence of these ancient interpretations is then examined in Byzantium and in the Latin West during the Renaissance. Contributors to this volume are Robert Browning, Anthony Grafton, Robert Lamberton, A.A. Long, James Porter, Nicholas Richardson, and Charles Segal. Robert Lamberton is Assistant Professor of Classics and John J. Keaney is Professor of Classics, both at Princeton University. Originally published in 1992. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Understanding cooperation and punishment in small-scale societies is crucial for explaining the origins of human cooperation. We studied warfare among the Turkana, a politically uncentralized, egalitarian, nomadic pastoral society in East Africa. Based on a representative sample of 88 recent raids, we show that the Turkana sustain costly cooperation in combat at a remarkably large scale, at least in part, through punishment of free-riders. Raiding parties comprised several hundred warriors and participants are not kin or day-to-day interactants. Warriors incur substantial (...) risk of death and produce collective benefits. Cowardice and desertions occur. (shrink)

The way from the path integral to Feynman diagrams is sketched. The emphasis is put on the decrease of complexity in this process, from infinite-dimensional integrals down to the apparent simplicity of child’s play. On the other hand, also the subsequent increase in complexity when using Feynman diagrams to make realistic physical predictions is described, thus illustrating the dialectic between the simplicity and clarity of Feynman diagrams, and the complexity in their practical applications.

This chapter steps back from the important psychological work on collaborative remembering at the heart of the present volume to take up some broader questions about the place of memory in Western cultural thought, both historically and in contemporary society, offering the kind of integrative and reflective perspective for which philosophy is often known. In particular, the text aims to shed some light on the relationship between collaborative memory and the other two topics in this title—group-level cognizing and individuals—beginning with (...) the relationship between collective intentionality and collaborative remembering, and concluding with some brief comments on the politics of collaborative remembering by drawing on recent work that has been undertaken with eugenics survivors in Canada. (shrink)

This short article provides an overview of the series of eugenic family studies that began in the 1870s in the United States and that were influential in establishing eugenics as a 20th-century movement and ideology.

And I find myself knowing the things that I knew Which is all that you can know on this side of the blueIs there such a thing as direct, non-conceptual experience, or is all experience, by its very nature, conceptually mediated? Is some notion of non-conceptual sensory awareness required to account for our ability to represent and negotiate our physical environment, or is it merely an artifact of deep-seated but ultimately misguided Cartesian metaphysical assumptions? Perhaps conscious experience in humans is (...) inextricably tied to the representational or self-reflexive capacities of language; if so, does it necessarily follow that newborn infants and animals are not conscious? Is the very notion of non-conceptual... (shrink)

In general, existential threats are those that may potentially result in the extinction of the entire human species, if not significantly endanger its living population. Among the said threats include, but not limited to, pandemics and the impacts of a technological singularity. As regards pandemics, significant work has already been done on how to mitigate, if not prevent, the aftereffects of this type of disaster. For one, certain problem areas on how to properly manage pandemic responses have already been identified, (...) like the following: (a) not being able to learn from previous experiences, (b) the inability to act on warning signals, and (c) the failure to reach a global consensus on a problem (i.e., in a timely manner). In terms of a singularity, however, it may be said that further research is still needed, specifically on how to aptly respond to its projected negative outcomes. In this paper, by treating the three problem areas noted above as preliminary assessment measures of a country’s capacity to coordinate a national response to large-scale disasters, we examine the readiness of the Philippines in preparing for an intelligence explosion. By citing certain instances of how the said country, specifically its national government, faced the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, it puts forward the idea that the likely Philippine disaster response towards a singularity needs to be worked on, appealing for a more comprehensive assessment of such for a more informed response plan. (shrink)

The first five chapters of the second book of Aristotle's Politics contain a series of criticisms levelled against Plato's Republic. Despite the abundance of studies that have been done on Aristotle's Politics, these chapters have for the most part been neglected; there has been no book-length study of them this century. In this important new book, Robert Mayhew fills this unfortunate gap in Aristotelian scholarship, analyzing these chapters in order to discover what they tell us about Aristotle's political philosophy. (...) Mayhew demonstrates that in Politics II 1-5, Aristotle is presenting his views on an extremely fundamental issue: the unity of the city. Indeed, he states, almost all of Aristotle's criticisms of the Republic center on this important subject in one way or another. Only by understanding Aristotle's views on the proper unity of the city, Mayhew explains, can we adequately discover his views on the proper relationship between the individual and the city. Students and scholars of classical political philosophy will be greatly interested in this innovative book. (shrink)

I argue that fictionalism about grounding is unmotivated, focusing on Naomi Thompson’s (2022) recent proposal on which the utility of the grounding fiction lies in its facilitating communication about what metaphysically explains what. I show that, despite its apparent dialectical kinship with other metaphysical debates in which fictionalism has a healthy tradition, the grounding debate is different in two key respects. Firstly, grounding talk is not indispensable, nor even particularly convenient as a means of communicating about metaphysical explanation. This undermines (...) the revolutionary proposal. Secondly, talk of grounding primarily occurs within metaphysics, which means the usual options for motivating a non-literal interpretation are ineffective. This undermines the hermeneutic proposal. (shrink)

As AI technologies increase in capability and ubiquity, AI accidents are becoming more common. Based on normal accident theory, high reliability theory, and open systems theory, we create a framework for understanding the risks associated with AI applications. This framework is designed to direct attention to pertinent system properties without requiring unwieldy amounts of accuracy. In addition, we also use AI safety principles to quantify the unique risks of increased intelligence and human-like qualities in AI. Together, these two fields give (...) a more complete picture of the risks of contemporary AI. By focusing on system properties near accidents instead of seeking a root cause of accidents, we identify where attention should be paid to safety for current generation AI systems. (shrink)

Impact, Volume 2020, Issue 26, Page 2-41, June 2020.

Phenomenologists usually insist that their approach involves going “back” to and “starting” with technoscientific experience—that is, returning to the actual existing or living through of technoscientific life—after centuries of privileging the analysis of how things are “objectively” known and denigrating accounts of how they are “subjectively” lived with. But then who says this and how is this understood? “Who” is really a phenomenologist, when so many diverse thinkers claim the title? This paper considers some of the reasons why this is (...) such a difficult question and argues that it is wrong to look for The Answer to it. (shrink)

Social judgement theory is particularly well suited to the study of medical judgements. Medical judgements characteristically involve decision making under uncertainty with inevitable error and an abundance of fallible cues. In medicine, as in other areas, SJT research has found wide variation among decision makers in their judgements and in the weighting of clinical information. Strategies inferred from case vignettes differ from physicians' self-described strategies and from the weights suggested by experts. These observations parallel recent findings of unexplained variation in (...) diagnosis and management in clinical practice that have been the source of concern in the medical community. The lens model provides one of the few methods for quantitatively analysing physicians' judgements. Contrary to what one might expect from the variation in strategies on paper cases, several studies suggest that, in practice, physicians' diagnostic judgements are highly accurate. Cognitive feedback has been less successful as a practical teaching tool than originally hoped, but some aspects of this methodology show promise, particularly in conjunction with the increasing emphasis on statistical decision support. All things considered, SJT has provided insight into physicians' decisions and gives the medical research community important tools for studying judgements in actual practice. (shrink)

In this pathbreaking book one of America’s most distinguished philosophers brilliantly explores the status and authority of law and the nature of political allegiance through close readings of three classic Hollywood Westerns: Howard Hawks’ _Red River_ and John Ford’s _The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance_ and _The Searchers._ Robert Pippin treats these films as sophisticated mythic accounts of a key moment in American history: its “second founding,” or the western expansion. His central question concerns how these films explore classical (...) problems in political psychology, especially how the virtues of a commercial republic gained some hold on individuals at a time when the heroic and martial virtues were so important. Westerns, Pippin shows, raise central questions about the difference between private violence and revenge and the state’s claim to a legitimate monopoly on violence, and they show how these claims come to be experienced and accepted or rejected. Pippin’s account of the best Hollywood Westerns brings this genre into the center of the tradition of political thought, and his readings raise questions about political psychology and the political passions that have been neglected in contemporary political thought in favor of a limited concern with the question of legitimacy. (shrink)

Simone Weil is one of the most challenging and yet beguiling thinkers of the twentieth century. There is a highly charged mystical current that runs through her life and works that seems almost timeless. And yet Weil was a keen observer of the modern condition, coming of age as she did during the 1930s. Amid the recurrent indignities and inhumanities of modern life, she wondered what is to become of the precious space we have for grace, for friendship, and for (...) truth? One of our most astute historians of existentialism, Robert Zaretsky shifts his attention to the utterly original Simone Weil with this new book. Taking up the central elements of her philosophy-affliction, attention, resistance, roots, and spirituality-he explores how they animated her life, and how they might animate ours. (shrink)

Aristotle does not explain why ordinary citizens who lack the virtue of justice nevertheless praise justice and the law. Indignation, defined as pain at the undeserved gains of others, is a promising candidate in the list of means regarding virtues and passions in Book 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics. However, as many scholars have noted, Aristotle’s description of indignation as a mean is flawed. Moreover, indignation is the only characteristic in the list that disappears from the inquiry thereafter. I argue (...) that Aristotle obliquely criticizes indignation for aligning envy, a base passion, with conventional justice. Aristotle’s subtle critique reveals that envy motivates ‘the many’ to support justice, an unsavory conclusion which he does not highlight. (shrink)

THE fifteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica is another of the projects undertaken by philosophers Robert M. Hutchins and Mortimer Adler. Hutchins chaired the Board of Editors, while Adler served as director of planning. This latest edition has the distinction of being the largest single private publishing venture in history, involving a thirty-two million dollar investment, over fifteen years of effort, and many thousands of consultants and contributors. This essay will attempt to assess philosophy’s share in so massive an (...) undertaking. (shrink)

"Among the foremost Catholic philosophers of his generation. He has utilized the fullness of the Catholic intellectual tradition to brilliantly take the measure of modern philosophical thought... This volume is an expression of Robert Wood's singular philosophical outlook." -Jude Dougherty, dean emeritus, school of philosophy, The Catholic University of America.

I. the view that reasons cannot be causes. II. the view that the explanatory relevance of psychological states such as beliefs and intentions derives from their content, their explanatory role is not causal and we thus have no good reason to ascribe causal power to them. III. the idea that if the mental supervenes on the physical, then what really explains our actions is the physical properties determining our propositional attitudes, and not those attitudes themselves. IV. the thesis that since (...) there are no laws linking (intentional) mental states to actions, those states cannot be genuine causes of action. (shrink)

For a half - century, I have been developing a view of free will that is incompatible with determinism and, in the process, attempting to answer the Intelligibility Question about such a free will: Can one make sense of an incompatibilist or libertarian free will without reducing it to mere chance, or mystery, and can such a free will be reconciled with modern views of the cosmos and human beings? In this paper, I discuss recent refinements to my earlier writings (...) on such a view, refinements developed in recent years in response to the large critical literature on my views in the past several decades. My view has usually been designated an event-causal view of libertarian free will and distinguished from non-causal and agent-causal libertarian views. But I was never happy with this designation of my view as “event-causal” and did not use it myself in earlier writings. In this paper, I explain why I now reject it altogether. I have come to believe that to avoid numerous misunderstandings in current debates about free will, we must distinguish four different kinds of libertarian theories, not merely three: in addition to non-causal, agent-causal, and event-causal theories, we need to add a fourth kind, which might be called an agent-causal/event-causal theory. My view has always been of this fourth kind. It represents what I call in the title of this paper the “fourth way forward” for making sense of an incompatibilist free will. (shrink)

Bender, Robert Review of: The other side of Israel: My journey across the Jewish-Arab divide, by Susan Nathan, 2005 Harper Collins, 300 pages.

This chapter contains section titled: I universal subjectivity II the world as will III the Two‐Tiered objectication of the will: Platonic ideas and Spatio‐Temporalindividuals Notes Further Reading.

Divers (2014) argues that a Lewisian theory of modality which includes both counterpart theory and modal realism cannot account for the truth of certain intuitively true modal sentences involving cross-world comparatives. The main purpose of this paper is to defend the Lewisian theory against Divers’s challenge by developing a response strategy based on a degree-theoretic treatment of comparatives and by showing that this treatment is compatible with the theory.

In this article, we look at the hard problem of consciousness from the perspective of process metaphysics. We thereby identify three problematic premises of the problem that pertain to the constitution of consciousness and its causal relation to the world. We argue for the necessity of re-thinking the corresponding phenomena in terms of internally-structured processes. The hard problem would then cease to be an insurmountable obstacle to a science of consciousness. Furthermore, this line of reasoning is shown to be continuous (...) with philosophical projects from the early 20th century that preceded the contemporary philosophy of mind. Specifically, we investigate the relationship of parts and wholes, and translate metaphysical problems of consciousness into mereological language. Despite this being a philosophical project, we frequently note and discuss links to the empirical sciences, in particular those of quantum mechanics, systems theory and the embodied cognition framework. (shrink)

following list of abbreviations : Ethics — Lectures on Ethics GMM — Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals KrV — Critique of Pure Reason KU — Critique of ...

An invited collection of prominent scholars examining normative issues raised by the role of coaching, the ethics of competition, coaching youth sports, and coaching relating to the law.

Les quatorze articles traduits dans ce volume constituent la premiere presentation d'ensemble d'une oeuvre importante dans le domaine de l'histoire de la philosophie ancienne. Ils s'etendent sur plus de vingt ans et portent tous sur ce que l'on pourrait appeler, au sens le plus large du terme, l' epistemologie aristotelicienne, en prenant epistemologie en son sens francais et non au sens que ce terme a dans le monde universitaire anglophone. Les textes ont ete ranges dans un ordre a la fois (...) systematique et pedagogique, et non dans un ordre chronologique, parce que, malgre d'inevitables changements de details, les positions adoptees par Robert Bolton sont restees fondamentalement les memes. Il est remarquable que, alors que Bolton semblait isole dans les annees 1970-1980, ses theses soient aujourd'hui au moins mieux comprises et meme, sans doute, plus largement partagees. Le merite le plus immediat de l'approche boltonienne d'Aristote, c'est de definir exactement la place de l'epistemologie aristotelicienne. Ce qui fournit un element important pour en cerner la nature. Ce faisant Bolton applique a l'Aristotelisme lui-meme l'un des traits qu'il cru deceler dans la methode d'Aristote: d'abord saisir un element de l'essence de la chose que l'on veut connaitre, comme premier pas vers la saisie de cette essence. (shrink)