Despite being a prevalent theme in popular cinema, revenge has received little dedicated attention within film studies. The majority of research concerning the concept of revenge is located within moral philosophy, but that body of literature has been overlooked by film studies scholars. Philosophers routinely draw on filmic examples to illustrate their discussions of revenge, but those interpretations are commonly hindered by their authors’ inexperience with film studies’ analytical methods. This article seeks to bridge those gaps. The 2010 remake of (...) I Spit on Your Grave is used as a case study to illustrate the benefits of an interdisciplinary engagement with revenge. Philosophical literature on the topic has routinely posited that revenge is either appealing or appalling, and that impasse has stifled conceptual understanding. The interdisciplinary approach employed here elucidates that revenge is simultaneously appealing and appalling; this dualistic nature is evident in I Spit on Your Grave since it is built into the narrative design. I conclude that an interdisciplinary approach to revenge has the potential to advance understanding of revenge-qua-concept both within films studies and philosophy. (shrink)

In what ways should we include future humanoid robots, and other kinds of artificial agents, in our moral universe? We consider the Organic view, which maintains that artificial humanoid agents, based on current computational technologies, could not count as full-blooded moral agents, nor as appropriate targets of intrinsic moral concern. On this view, artificial humanoids lack certain key properties of biological organisms, which preclude them from having full moral status. Computationally controlled systems, however advanced in their cognitive or informational capacities, (...) are, it is proposed, unlikely to possess sentience and hence will fail to be able to exercise the kind of empathic rationality that is a prerequisite for being a moral agent. The organic view also argues that sentience and teleology require biologically based forms of self-organization and autonomous self-maintenance. The organic view may not be correct, but at least it needs to be taken seriously in the future development of the field of Machine Ethics. (shrink)

William Lynch’s Minority Report is the most comprehensive and fair-minded attempt to give epistemic dissent its due in science that has appeared in recent times. Nevertheless, it remains too beholden to the scientific establishment as its epistemic benchmark. The sophistication of Lynch’s argument lies in the trading of counterfactual intuitions about whether suppressed dissenters would scientifically flourish even given an appropriate level of exposure. Here, he attempts to strike a balance between Lakatos’ instinctive conservatism and Feyerabend’s instinctive radicalism. I argue (...) that Lynch needs to turn the dial more toward Feyerabend, in that science is more authoritarian than he thinks and restricts more than it should. However, the value of Lynch’s book lies in demonstrating that calls for increased openness now are related to its closure to alternatives in the past. In short, if science is authoritarian now, then it has been so before – and the question is for a how long and to what extent. (shrink)

THIS IS AN EARLY DRAFT OF MY PAPER "RESEARCH PROBLEMS" PUBLISHED IN BJPS IN 2021. PLEASE REFER TO THAT PAPER INSTEAD OF THIS ONE. -/- Philosophers increasingly study how scientists conduct actual scientific projects and the goals they pursue. But as of yet, there are few accounts of goals that can be used to identify different kinds, and specific instances, of goals pursued by scientists. I propose that there are at least four distinct kinds of goals pursued by scientists: ameliorating (...) problems, addressing questions, satisfying values, and achieving epistemic aims. I focus on the first two kinds, and I provide tools to help conceptualize, distinguish, and identify the problems and questions pursued by scientists. This paper illustrates the use of those tools with two examples. (shrink)

In distributing the costs associated with climate change, most scholars have focused exclusively upon mitigation burdens. Few consider the distribution of adaptation costs, which concern projects that seek to minimize harm from human-induced climate change.

Although the continental philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Emmanuel Levinas are both inescapably important to an array of debates in contemporary moral theory, they are rarely assessed in relation to each other. Not only are their basic agendas different—whereas Habermas's discourse ethics are framed within a general concern for democratic political theory, Levinas's work is largely indifferent, if not hostile, to political concerns—but their philosophical styles dramatically contrast as well. Steven Hendley's study is based on the conviction that beneath the surface (...) there is in fact a remarkable degree of convergence in the two philosophers' work that is usually overlooked. Hendley discovers and explains the complementarity of Levinas's conception of discourse as relation to the Other to Habermas's theory of communication as the basis for recognition of universal moral norms; and he presents a clear defense and validation of Levinas's position on the construction of political theory. From Communicative Action to the Face of the Other is a unique endeavor that achieves new and important connections in the contemporary scholarship in philosophy and political theory. (shrink)

A rich collection of critical essays, authored by philosophers and practicing artists, examining Deleuze and Guattari's engagement with a broad range of art forms.

This work is a step toward the development of a logic for types and computation that includes not only the usual spaces of mathematics and constructions, but also spaces from logic and domain theory. Using realizability, we investigate a configuration of three toposes that we regard as describing a notion of relative computability. Attention is focussed on a certain local map of toposes, which we first study axiomatically, and then by deriving a modal calculus as its internal logic. The resulting (...) framework is intended as a setting for the logical and categorical study of relative computability. (shrink)

A survey of 345 undergraduate business students from a medium-sized southeastern regional university and 164 undergraduates from a medium-sized university in the United Arab Emirates found that 71 % of all respondents admitted to academic misconduct in a recent 1-year period, a percentage similar to McCabe’s (2005) finding that an average of 70 % of undergraduate students admitted to recent academic misconduct. Business students from the Middle East were significantly less likely to perceive various academic misconduct behaviors as forms of (...) serious cheating compared to business students from the US. Hofstede’s (2001) cultural dimension of individualism/collectivism and Ajzen’s (Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50, 179–211, 1991) theory of planned behavior are discussed as likely explanations of reported academic misconduct differences between the two countries. (shrink)

We prove a number of results about countable Borel equivalence relations with forcing constructions and arguments. These results reveal hidden regularity properties of Borel complete sections on certain orbits. As consequences they imply the nonexistence of Borel complete sections with certain features.

From Socrates and the Sophists to Kant, from Augustine to Aquinas and the Reformers, Colin Brown traces the turbulent, often tension-filled, always fascinating story of the thinkers, ideas and movements that have shaped our intellectual landscape. Is philosophy the "handmaiden of faith" or "the doctrine of demons"? Does it clarify the faith or undermine the very heart of Christian belief?Brown writes, "This book is about the changes in preconceptions, world views and paradigms that have affected the ways in which people (...) have thought about religion in general and Christianity in particular in the Western world.... It is a historical sketch, written to help students--and anyone else who might be interested--to get a better grasp of the love-hate relationship between philosophy and faith that has gone on for close to two thousand years."Students, pastors and thoughtful Christians will benefit from this rich resource. The first in a proposed three-volume work, Brown's easy-to-read, hard-to-put-down introduction to Christianity and Western thought focuses on developments from the ancient world to the Age of Enlightenment. (shrink)

We apply linear algebra to the study of the inconsistent figure known as the Crazy Crate. Disambiguation by means of occlusions leads to a class of sixteen such figures: consistent, complete, both and neither. Necessary and sufficient conditions for inconsistency are obtained.

Significant numbers of people believe that victims of violent crime are blameworthy in so far as they imprudently place themselves in dangerous situations. This belief is maintained and fuelled by ongoing social commentary. In this paper I describe a recent violent criminal case, as a foil against which I attempt to extract and refine the argument based on prudence that seems to support this belief. I then offer a moral critique of what goes wrong when this argument, continually repeated as (...) social commentary, is left unchallenged. The effect of failing to challenge this repeated argument is the view, held by many, that the vulnerable are imprudent; indeed, they are believed negatively responsible (partly or wholly) for the violence wrought upon their person. My central claim is that public declarations of blame are morally problematic partly because they focus responsibility away from perpetrators, and partly because they harm vulnerable citizens who, as a result of internalising such public blame, suffer unnecessary constraints on their liberty. (shrink)

Why are U.S. academics, even after tenure and promotion, so timid in their exercise of academic freedom? Part of the problem is institutional – academics are subject to a long probationary period under tight collegial control – but part of the problem is ideological. A hybrid of seventeenth-century British and nineteenth-century German ideals, U.S. academia – and the nation more generally – remains ambivalent toward the value of academic freedom, ultimately inhibiting an unequivocal endorsement. (Published Online February 8 2007).

Van de Vliert puts forward a model of how climate and economics interact to shape human needs, stresses, and freedoms. Although we applaud the construction of this model, we suggest that more needs to be done. Specifically, by adopting a multi-level and experimental approach, we can develop an integrated, causal, and psychological model of climato-economics.

Why is human history a catalogue of one war after another? Physicalist and sociobiological explanations of war seem to be lacking, especially when we consider archaeological and ethnographic evidence for the absence of war amongst hunter-gatherer societies and during the early to middle Neolithic period of history. James DeMeo's book Saharasia suggests that the 'age of war' only began at around 4000 BCE, amongst particular human groups who inhabited areas of Central Asia and the Middle East. He sees it as (...) the result of an environmental disaster which occurred at this time: the dessication of the 'Saharasia' region. I summarize DeMeo's findings, but disagree with his Reichian analysis. I propose that the real factor was the intensified ego-consciousness which these groups developed at this time. I suggest how and why this 'sharpened sense of ego' arose, and at how it gave rise to -- and still gives rise to -- war. (shrink)

This article argues that a transcendental materialist conception of subjectivity can move us beyond the orthodox idealist theories that dominate progressive thought in advanced consumer-capitalism. This position can shed new light on current forms of subjectivity that seem to prefer life in consumer culture's surrogate social world rather than active participation in cultural and political resistance and transformation, which requires far more than simply 'transcending the norm'. The rebirth of creative political subjectivity is impossible unless the subject is prepared to (...) risk a traumatic encounter with the Real, the fundamental indeterminacy that exists not in the ideal-symbolic but the material realm, and prepared to reject liberal-postmodernist identity politics to participate in the construction of a coherent alternative ideology. (shrink)

Steve Coutinho explores in detail the fundamental concepts of Daoist thought as represented in three early texts: the _Laozi_, the _Zhuangzi_, and the _Liezi_. Readers interested in philosophy yet unfamiliar with Daoism will gain a comprehensive understanding of these works from this analysis, and readers fascinated by ancient China who also wish to grasp its philosophical foundations will appreciate the clarity and depth of Coutinho's explanations. Coutinho writes a volume for all readers, whether or not they have a background (...) in philosophy or Chinese studies. A work of comparative philosophy, this volume also integrates the concepts and methods of contemporary philosophical discourse into a discussion of early Chinese thought. The resulting dialogue relates ancient Chinese thought to contemporary philosophical issues and uses modern Western ideas and approaches to throw new interpretive light on classical texts. Rather than function as historical curiosities, these works act as living philosophies in conversation with contemporary thought and experience. Coutinho respects the multiplicity of Daoist philosophies while also revealing a distinctive philosophical sensibility, and he provides clear explanations of these complex texts without resorting to oversimplification. (shrink)

The authors of a much discussed recent book A Lot of People are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum argue that ‘a new conspiracism’ has emerged recently. Their examples include Donald Trump’s allegations that elections have been rigged, ‘Birther’ accusations about Barack Obama, ‘QAnon’ and ‘Pizzagate’. They characterize these as ‘conspiracism without the theory’. They argue that the new conspiracism is validated by repetition, disregards experts, and is satisfied with the conclusion (...) that allegations are ‘true enough’. Here I argue that there is no new conspiracism. Muirhead and Rosenblum have misconstrued their chief examples of new conspiracism and mischaracterized classic conspiracism. The non-existence of a new conspiracism matters. If those studying contemporary conspiracism suppose that many of the objects of their study are theory-free then they are liable to fail to examine the theories that actually are driving contemporary conspiracism. Also, if they suppose that they are confronting an entirely new phenomenon then they are in danger of failing to learn lessons from the rich history of conspiracy theorizing. (shrink)

An exploration of the production, transmission, and mutation of affective tonality—when sound helps produce a bad vibe.

Excerpt: In the lecture What Pragmatism Means, William James gives us what became one of the most famous examples of strengths of the pragmatic method. Instead of beginning with an argument, he provides a story. In this story, James and several of his friends are on a camping trip when a “ferocious metaphysical dispute” arises concerning the movements of a squirrelii. A squirrel, the story goes, clings the one side of a tree-trunk, and on the other side a man tries (...) to catch a glimpse of it, by rapidly chasing it around the tree. However, the squirrel moves just as fast as the man does, always keeping the tree between itself and his pursuer – and the man never sees the squirrel. So, why does James call it a “ferocious metaphysical dispute”? The campers ask: while we can concede that the man has circled completely around the tree, has he gone around the squirrel? Some of the campers say yes, others no, and an argument ensues over who is correct. (shrink)