This paper has three aims: to define autonomism clearly and charitably, to offer a positive argument in its favour, and to defend a larger view about what is at stake in the debate between autonomism and its critics. Autonomism is here understood as the claim that a valuer does not make an error in failing to bring her moral and aesthetic judgements together, unless she herself values doing so. The paper goes on to argue that reason does (...) not require the valuer to make coherent her aesthetic and moral evaluations. Finally, the paper shows that the denial of autonomism has realist commitments that autonomism does not have, and concludes that issues of value realism and irrealism are relevant to the debates about autonomism in ways that have not hitherto been recognized. (shrink)

Much contemporary art seems morally out of control. Yet, philosophers seem to have trouble finding the right way to morally evaluate works of art. The debate between autonomists and moralists, I argue, has turned into a stalemate due to two mistaken assumptions. Against these assumptions, I argue that the moral nature of a work's contents does not transfer to the work and that, if we are to morally evaluate works we should try to conceive of them as moral agents. Ethical (...) autonomism holds that art's autonomy consists in its demand that art appreciators take up an artistic attitude. A work's agency then is in how it merits their audiences' attitudinal switch. Ethical autonomism allows for the moral assessment of art works without giving up their autonomy, by viewing artistic merit as a moral category and art-relevant moral evaluation as having the form of art criticism. (shrink)

It is a fact that there is ethical criticism about art. Art critics, the general public and even artists point out moral flaws in artworks while evaluating them. Philosophers, however, have maintained a hot debate on the meaning of such criticism. This debate can be understood as a disagreement about the kind of relation between the artistic value of artworks and their alleged moral value. While some claim that moral value can contribute to artistic value (moralism), others claim that there (...) cannot be such a contribution (autonomism). Since at least some works of architecture are artworks, that debate also concerns architecture. A moderate moralist view claims that some works of architecture have moral flaws/merits that bear on their artistic evaluation. In an apparently promising version, the contention is that some moral flaws/merits are aesthetically relevant. In this paper I argue against such contention and defend an autonomist view. Following some taxonomy remarks I distinguish the views in the debate and present two points in favour of autonomism: its simplicity and not having the burden of proof. Then I discuss Carroll’s merited response argument for moralism and I argue that in its best interpretation either it begs the question against autonomism or it is compatible with it. I conclude with some possible objections that may help further investigations on the subject. (shrink)

This chapter examines autonomism. Autonomism is roughly the view that an artwork’s ethical properties do not bear on its aesthetic or artistic value. The author sketches some of the view’s history before describing various versions of it defended over the last quarter-century. These are divided into ‘radical’, ‘robust’, and ‘moderate’ forms of autonomism. The author considers the strengths and weaknesses of each. The author also devotes some space to the ‘interactionist’ views against which contemporary autonomism is (...) typically opposed. In doing so, he considers the so-called ‘qua problem’ at some length, as well its bearing on these various autonomist positions. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a new argument for moderate autonomism. I call this the ‘critical argument’ to distinguish it from the empirical argument of James C. Anderson and Jeffrey T. Dean, and the no-error argument of James Harold. My strategy is to first employ the criticism of Matthew Arnold and F.R. Leavis to demonstrate the moralist failure to account for the complexity of the relationship between literature and morality, and then offer a more promising alternative. I set out (...) the autonomist, moralist, and immoralist positions in the value interaction debate in §1, and identify problems with classifying the two critics in contemporary terms. In §2 I discuss Arnold’s cultural criticism as both a part of – and a reaction to – the public moralist tradition that dominated Britain in the nineteenth century, drawing attention to his criterion of ‘seriousness’. §3 examines Leavis’ literary criticism, focusing on his conception of the relationship between composition and life, and his criterion of ‘maturity’. Drawing on the similarities between Arnold and Leavis, I demonstrate that their concern with morality differs from that of the contemporary moralists in §4. In §5 I employ John Gibson’s distinction between normative and informative values to complete the argument for moderate autonomism. I test my argument against an extreme case, a hypothetical literary equivalent to The Birth of a Nation, in §6, and conclude that moderate autonomism provides the most compelling solution to the value interaction debate. (shrink)

Advocates of the ethical criticism of art claim that works' ethical defects or merits have an impact on their aesthetic value. Against ethical critics, autonomists claim that moral criteria should not be part of the considerations when evaluating works of art as art. Autonomism refers to the view that an artwork's aesthetic value is independent from its ethical value. The purpose of this paper is to examine how autonomism has been defended in the contemporary discussion in analytic aesthetics. (...) I present three versions of autonomism: Richard Posner's radical autonomism, James C. Anderson and Jeffrey T. Dean, and James Harold's moderate autonomism, and Francisca Pérez Carreño's robust autonomism. I argue that robust autonomism offers a stronger argument against the ethical critic. However, I point to some difficulties for Pérez Carreño's account and conclude by suggesting how further work in autonomism might go around them. (shrink)

Professor Mele uses the term `autonomy' where other philosophers have spoken of `freedom', `free will' and the like. His well-worked-out paper, which is individual in more than its usage, is not committed to either of the tired doctrines that determinism is inconsistent with autonomy and that it is consistent with it. He is agnostic about which choice to make. Some proponents of the first doctrine, those who believe determinism, draw the conclusion that there is no autonomy. Some proponents of the (...) second doctrine maintain also maintain that indeterminism would in fact deprive us of autonomy. Professor Mele, as he says, is confident that we are somehow autonomous. He develops two ideas of it, incompatibilist autonomy and compatibilist autonomy, but is convinced that more work is needed on all sides. His is not the kind of labour that I myself take to be needed, or anyway desirable. Is it is more respectful of the recent past of the problem than is now a good idea? Well, disrespect is sometimes a bad idea. But we agree that the problem of determinism and freedom, once announced by philosophical undertakers to be dead and buried, even undertakers not employed by either side, has outlived all its undertakers. (shrink)

In the current issue of this journal, Scott Hill critiques some of my work on the “is”-“ought” controversy, the Hume-inspired debate over whether an ethical conclusion can be soundly, or even validly, derived from only non-ethical premises. I’ve argued that it can be; Hill is unconvinced. I reply to Hill’s critique, focusing on four key questions to which he and I give different answers.

Autonomy, as I understand it, is associated with a family of freedom concepts: free will, free choice, free action, and the like. In much of the philosophical literature discussed in this chapter, issues are framed in terms of freedom rather than autonomy, but we are talking about (aspects of) the same thing. Libertarians argue that determinism precludes autonomy by, for example, precluding an agent's being ultimately responsible for anything. Some compatibilist believers in autonomy argue that libertarians rely on indeterminism in (...) a way that deprives us of autonomy-level control over our decisions. Theorists who contend that no human being is autonomous can benefit from arguments on both sides, alleging that libertarians decisively reveal the ordinary person's notion of autonomy, an incompatibilist notion, and that compatibilist critics of libertarianism show that the notion is incoherent or unsatis-fiable. Is there a way to use the resources both of libertarianism and of compatibilism in defending the following thesis: The claim that there are autonomous human beings is more credible than the claim that there are none? -/- I believe that the answer is “yes.” I defended that answer in Autonomous Agents. Part of my strategy was to develop an account of an ideally self-controlled agent (where self-control is understood as the contrary of akrasia [roughly, weakness of will]), to argue that even such an agent may fall short of autonomy, and to ask what may be added to ideal self-control to yield autonomy. I offered two answers, one for compatibilists and another for libertarians. I then argued that a certain disjunctive thesis involving both answers (identified in Section 4 below) is more credible than the thesis that there are no autonomous human beings. (shrink)

Professor Mele uses the term `autonomy' where other philosophers have spoken of `freedom', `free will' and the like. His well-worked-out paper, which is individual in more than its usage, is not committed to either of the tired doctrines that determinism is inconsistent with autonomy and that it is consistent with it. He is agnostic about which choice to make. Some proponents of the first doctrine, those who believe determinism, draw the conclusion that there is no autonomy. Some proponents of the (...) second doctrine maintain also maintain that indeterminism would in fact deprive us of autonomy. Professor Mele, as he says, is confident that we are somehow autonomous. He develops two ideas of it, incompatibilist autonomy and compatibilist autonomy, but is convinced that more work is needed on all sides. His is not the kind of labour that I myself take to be needed, or anyway desirable. Is it is more respectful of the recent past of the problem than is now a good idea? Well, disrespect is sometimes a bad idea. But we agree that the problem of determinism and freedom, once announced by philosophical undertakers to be dead and buried, even undertakers not employed by either side, has outlived all its undertakers. (shrink)

This article focuses on the power of technological mediation from the point of view of autonomist Marxism. The first part of the article discusses the theories developed on technological mediation in postphenomenology and critical theory of technology with regard to their respective power perspectives and ways of coping with relations of power embedded in technical artifacts and systems. Rather than focusing on the clashes between the hermeneutic postphenomenological approach and the dialectics of critical theory, it is argued that in both (...) the category of resistance amidst power-relations is at least similar in one regard: resistance to the power of technology is conceptualized as a reactive force. The second part of the article reads technological mediation through the lens of the antagonistic power-perspective on class struggle developed in autonomist Marxism. The outline of a provisional autonomist philosophy of technology is developed using Foucauldian dispositifs of biopower in contrast to the hermeneutic and dialectical approach. It is thus argued that resistance should here be understood in terms of practice that subverts the technically mediated circuit of production itself. (shrink)

People sometimes think they have reasons for action. On a certain naive view, what makes them true is a connection between the action and the agent’s good life. In a recent article, David Velleman argues for replacing this view with a more Kantian line, on which reasons are reasons in virtue of their connection with autonomy. The aim in what follows is to defend the naive view. I shall first raise some problems for Velleman's proposal and then fend off the (...) objection that serves as his rationale for braving the depths of Kantianism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Aesthetic autonomism is standardly defined as the view that the aesthetic value of an artwork in no way depends on its moral value, and hence that considerations about the latter are irrelevant to aesthetic evaluation. However, it has recently been argued that definitions along these lines involve certain flaws and that autonomism should be characterized instead as the view that it is rationally permissible not to adjust one’s initial aesthetic judgment about a work in light of how (...) one evaluates it morally. This paper argues that this proposal is seriously misguided in three central respects: its focus on evaluative adjustments is objectionably narrow and ignores other forms of evaluative conduct; its appeal to rationality misconstrues the core commitments of non-autonomists; and its permissivist character results in a distortion of what is at stake in the debate about the autonomy of the aesthetic. (shrink)

Type-B materialists (to use David Chalmers's jargon) claim that though zombies are conceivable, they are not metaphysically possible. This article calls this position regarding the relation between metaphysical and epistemic modality “modal autonomism,” as opposed to the “modal rationalism” endorsed by David Chalmers and Frank Jackson, who insist on a deep link between the two forms of modality. This article argues that the defense of modal rationalism presented in Chalmers and Jackson (2001) begs the question against the type-B materialist/modal (...) autonomist. The argument proceeds as follows. Modal rationalists claim that for all nonphenomenal macro properties, the appropriate supervenience conditional is both necessary and a priori. Hence, type-B materialists must engage in special pleading when they claim that the relevant supervenience conditional for phenomenal properties, expressing the supervenience of the phenomenal on the physical, is necessary but not a priori. However, what Chalmers and Jackson demonstrate, if anything, is that the conditional that includes all the microphysical plus the phenomenal in the antecedent, and nonphenomenal macro facts (such as facts about water and other natural kinds, among other things) in the consequent, is a priori. The question arises why, since facts about water and the like do not metaphysically supervene on the phenomenal facts, is it appropriate to include the phenomenal facts in the antecedent of the relevant supervenience conditional. This article argues for the following claims: First, that it's crucial to the general semantic framework Chalmers and Jackson defend that they do include the phenomenal facts in the supervenience conditional; without them, the conditional would not be a priori. Second, that the only way to argue from the a priori character of these conditionals to the applicability of modal rationalism to the nonphenomenal cases is to rely either on modal rationalism itself or on the denial of type-B materialism. Obviously, in the context of this argument, either way would beg the question. (shrink)

With Empire, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri reinvigorated debates in political theory and radical philosophy about the cultivation of revolutionary subjectivity. Their theorization of Empire and multitude has also significantly affected the tenor of critical approaches to educational theory during the past two decades. In this article, we discuss Hardt and Negri’s contribution to what we call the biopolitical turn in educational theory, emphasizing the influence of autonomist Marxism on their work. Even more specifically, we discuss the impact of the (...) autonomist tradition on their formulation of the nature of the relationship between the multitude and Empire: that the multitude is the generative force of the social world, whereas Empire is merely an apparatus of capture. This autonomist approach reveals a set of questions regarding subjectivity, materialism, and social ontology, which we argue are ripe for engagement by educational theorists, and indicate the enduring relevance of Empire as a valuable text for educational theorists interested in matters of biopolitical production, collective opposition, and revolutionary subjectivity. (shrink)

This article presents a broad analysis of the political economy and dynamics of social change during the first year of the Evo Morales government in Bolivia. It situates this analysis in the wider historical context of left-indigenous insurrection between 2000 and 2005, the changing character of contemporary capitalism imperialism, and the resurgence of anti-neoliberalism and anti-imperialism elsewhere in Latin America. It considers at a general level the overarching dilemmas of revolution and reform. Part III examines the complexities of the politics (...) of indigenous liberation and the political economy of the Movimiento al Socialismo government between January 2006 and January 2007. It pays special attention to the limits of reform in the hydrocarbons sector. Also explained in Part III is the formation of an autonomist right-wing movement in the eastern lowlands, and how the new Right has intervened in the process of the Constituent Assembly. The article shows how the actual Constituent Assembly set into motion by the Morales administration in 2006 differs in fundamental terms from the revolutionary assembly envisioned by leading left-indigenous forces during the cycle of revolt in the first five years of this century. (shrink)

This chapter explores the interaction between the moral value and aesthetic value of food, in part by connecting it to existing discussions of the interaction between moral and aesthetic values of art. Along the way, this chapter considers food as art, the aesthetic value of food, and the role of expertise in uncovering aesthetic value. Ultimately this chapter argues against both food autonomism (the view that food's moral value is unconnected to its aesthetic value) and Carolyn Korsmeyer's food moralism (...) (the view that moral flaws can only make food aesthetically worse). Instead, it argues for the position of food immoralism: sometimes a moral flaw can make an item of food aesthetically better. This chapter concludes by drawing out broader implications of this position for discussions on the ethics of food and discussions on the interaction between the moral and aesthetic values of art. (shrink)

In this essay Noël Carroll explores the question of whether a moral defect in a work of architectural art can ever also count as an aesthetic /artistic defect. Adopting the stance of a moderate moralist and mobilizing what has been called the “uptake argument,” he argues against the moderate autonomist that sometimes a moral defect in an architectural artwork can also be an aesthetic/artistic defect.

Aureli advances a fresh, spirited and combative account of the idea of ‘autonomy’, connecting Italian architectural debates from the 1960s with the politics of class-autonomy that was being developed and advanced by workerist theorists such as Raniero Panzieri, Mario Tronti and Toni Negri. Aureli’s account focuses on Aldo Rossi’s architectural ideas and the project of the No-Stop City proposed by the young avant-garde group Archizoom. The Project of Autonomy is not simply envisaged as an historical exploration of the 1960s; primarily, (...) it is conceived as an intervention in current architectural theory, drawing on the author’s interest in Tronti’s politics to challenge the contemporary popularity of a broadly post-Negrian ‘autonomism’. This review questions aspects of Aureli’s reading of Rossi and Manfredo Tafuri. Furthermore, although Aureli’s discussion of Red Vienna opens up onto vital questions of strategies for social change, which remain pertinent to contemporary arguments over ‘enclaves’ or ‘zones’ of resistance, his antagonism towards Tafuri prevents his argument from either exploring or advancing the debate which he has initiated. (shrink)

Ethical issues of architecture arise relative to its processes of creation, its reception and use, and its maintenance and life cycle—all as a function of architecture’s aesthetic or artistic character and values, though not exclusively so. While autonomism and moralism in architecture are much debated, the focus is generally on architecture as art, to the neglect of architectural aesthetics beyond architecture as art. Moreover, as an artform deeply integrated with other, nonart pursuits and domains, architecture generates more complex ethical (...) issues than do artforms that solely count as art. Harder ethical questions, then, include how—in light of such complexities—one may identify morally warranted conditions for architectural works and for gauging their propriety or relevant preferences and, as conceptually prior, what the nature is of moral agency, objects, actions, obligations, properties, virtues, and values in architecture. (shrink)

The flip side of radical autonomism is known as radical moralism. Splitting the difference between radical autonomism and radical moralism is the view known as moderate moralism, endorsed by contemporary aesthetician Noël Carrol. Radical moralism traces its roots back to Plato, who was all too aware of art's power to sway the hearts of its audience. The joke slightly depowers the powerful person, by transferring that power to the audience who laughs. John Belushi's Samurai Futaba sketches are more (...) cringy than funny to modern sensibilities, because the butt of the joke is Belushi's fictitious Futaba – a stand‐in for a stereotypical 1970s American understanding of a Japanese person. The butt of an impressionist's joke is usually, pretty straightforwardly, whoever they are doing an impression of. So, the butt of a typical Chase‐as‐Ford pratfall is Gerald Ford, and the butt of Carvey's famous “read my lips” antics is George H.W. Bush. (shrink)

Marxism was central to the understanding of South Africa’s struggle for freedom. This article provides a critical analysis of Marxist literature on South Africa since the 1970s, drawing out its relevance for contemporary analyses of the post-apartheid state and for radical politics today. It suggests that while the literature offered important insights into the character of the apartheid state, it failed to provide a critical appraisal of the state per se. Moreover, the capturing of state power by the liberation movement (...) was not grounded in an understanding of the oppressive character of the state-form. The undermining of mainstream Marxism under neo-liberalizing conditions in post-apartheid South Africa has opened up the prospects for anti-statist radical libertarian thinking (including autonomist Marxism), and this thinking is consistent with the practices of certain autonomist popular politics currently emerging. Social theorizing on South Africa has had a complex relationship with Marxism. This article is interested in drawing on this experience in an effort to understand its implications for the ‘new’ South Africa where, 20 years after apartheid’s formal ending, social transformation remains caught in the logic not of Marxism but neo-liberalizing capitalism. (shrink)

Autonomist accounts of cognitive science suggest that cognitive model building and theory construction (can or should) proceed independently of findings in neuroscience. Common functionalist justifications of autonomy rely on there being relatively few constraints between neural structure and cognitive function (e.g., Weiskopf, 2011). In contrast, an integrative mechanistic perspective stresses the mutual constraining of structure and function (e.g., Piccinini & Craver, 2011; Povich, 2015). In this paper, I show how model-based cognitive neuroscience (MBCN) epitomizes the integrative mechanistic perspective and concentrates (...) the most revolutionary elements of the cognitive neuroscience revolution (Boone & Piccinini, 2016). I also show how the prominent subset account of functional realization supports the integrative mechanistic perspective I take on MBCN and use it to clarify the intralevel and interlevel components of integration. (shrink)

_The Uprising_ is an Autonomist manifesto for today's precarious times, and a rallying cry in the face of the catastrophic and irreversible crisis that neoliberalism and the financial sphere have established over the globe. In his newest book, Franco "Bifo" Berardi argues that the notion of economic recovery is complete mythology. The coming years will inevitably see new surges of protest and violence, but the old models of resistance no longer apply. Society can either stick with the prescriptions and "rescues" (...) that the economic and financial sectors have demanded at the expense of social happiness, culture, and the public good; or it can formulate an alternative. For Berardi, this alternative lies in understanding the current crisis as something more fundamental than an economic crisis: it is a crisis of the social imagination, and demands a new language by which to address it. This is a manifesto against the idea of growth, and against the concept of debt, the financial sector's two primary linguistic means of manipulating society. It is a call for exhaustion, and for resistance to the cult of energy on which today's economic free-floating market depends. To this end, Berardi introduces an unexpected linguistic political weapon--poetry: poetry as the insolvency of language, as the sensuous birth of meaning and desire, as that which cannot be reduced to information and exchanged like currency. If the protests now stirring about the world are to take shape and direction, then the revolution will be neither peaceful nor violent--it will be linguistic, or will not be at all. (shrink)

The Exclusion Argument has afflicted non-reductionists for decades. In this article, I attempt to show that emergentism—the view that mental entities can downwardly cause physical entities in a non-overdetermining way—is the most plausible approach to solving the exclusion problem. The emergentist approach is largely absent in contemporary philosophy of mind, because emergentism rejects the Causal Closure of Physics, a doctrine embraced by almost all physicalists. This article, however, challenges the consensus on causal closure and defends a physicalist version of emergentism. (...) On closer examination, I find that neither physical evidence nor physicalist considerations can satisfactorily support causal closure. Moreover, I argue that two competing approaches that accept causal closure, compatibilism and autonomism, involve ad hoc postulations of mental causation. Therefore, all things considered, emergentism is the best option available to non-reductive physicalists. (shrink)

This book provides a comprehensive guide to the conceptual methodological, and epistemological problems of biology, and treats in depth the major developments in molecular biology and evolutionary theory that have transformed both biology and its philosophy in recent decades. At the same time the work is a sustained argument for a particular philosophy of biology that unifies disparate issues and offers a framework for expectations about the future directions of the life sciences. The argument explores differences between autonomist and anti-autonomist (...) views of biology. The result is a vindication of reductionism, but one that is unexpectedly hollow. For it leaves the exponents of the autonomy of biology from physical science with as much as their view of biology really requires - and rather more than the reductionist might comfortably concede. Professor Rosenberg shows how the problems of the philosophy of biology are interconnected and how their solutions are interdependent, However, this book focuses more on the direct concerns of biologists, rather than the traditional agenda of philosophers' problems about biology. This departure from earlier books on the subject results both in greater understanding and relevance of the philosophy of science to biology as a whole. (shrink)

The Darwinian concept of natural selection was conceived within a set of Newtonian background assumptions about systems dynamics. Mendelian genetics at first did not sit well with the gradualist assumptions of the Darwinian theory. Eventually, however, Mendelism and Darwinism were fused by reformulating natural selection in statistical terms. This reflected a shift to a more probabilistic set of background assumptions based upon Boltzmannian systems dynamics. Recent developments in molecular genetics and paleontology have put pressure on Darwinism once again. Current work (...) on self-organizing systems may provide a stimulus not only for increased problem solving within the Darwinian tradition, especially with respect to origins of life, developmental genetics, phylogenetic pattern, and energy-flow ecology, but for deeper understanding of the very phenomenon of natural selection itself. Since self-organizational phenomena depend deeply on stochastic processes, self-organizational systems dynamics advance the probability revolution. In our view, natural selection is an emergent phenomenon of physical and chemical selection. These developments suggest that natural selection may be grounded in physical law more deeply than is allowed by advocates of the autonomy of biology, while still making it possible to deny, with autonomists, that evolutionary explanations can be modeled in terms of a deductive relationship between laws and cases. We explore the relationship between, chance, self-organization, and selection as sources of order in biological systems in order to make these points. (shrink)

The long debate -- Aesthetics and ethics : basic concepts -- A conceptual map -- Autonomism -- Artistic and critical practices -- Questions of character -- The cognitive argument : the epistemic claim -- The cognitive argument : the aesthetic claim -- Emotion and imagination -- The merited response argument.

Can artworks be morally good or bad? Many philosophers have thought so. Does this moral goodness or badness bear on how good or bad a work isas art?This is very much a live debate.Autonomistsargue that moral value is not relevant to artistic value;interactionistsargue that it is. In this paper, I argue that the debate between interactionists and autonomists has been conducted unfairly: all parties to the debate have tacitly accepted a set of constraints which prejudices the issue against the interactionist. (...) I identify two demands which are routinely placed on arguments seeking to establish interaction and argue that they are, in fact, mutually conflicting.There are two upshots. First, in light of this, it is unsurprising that arguments for interaction have failed to meet with everybody’s satisfaction. The constraints are such that no argument can meet them. Second, recognizing this helps us uncover a new, promising, but hitherto overlooked strategy for establishing artistic-ethical interaction. (shrink)

We provide three innovations to recent debates about whether topological or “network” explanations are a species of mechanistic explanation. First, we more precisely characterize the requirement that all topological explanations are mechanistic explanations and show scientific practice to belie such a requirement. Second, we provide an account that unifies mechanistic and non-mechanistic topological explanations, thereby enriching both the mechanist and autonomist programs by highlighting when and where topological explanations are mechanistic. Third, we defend this view against some powerful mechanist objections. (...) We conclude from this that topological explanations are autonomous from their mechanistic counterparts. (shrink)

Embodied cognition and enactive approaches have criticized the associationist, also called mechanistic, view of habits. Motivated by the enactive account of habits and research on the field of Motor Control, I argue that Ryle was both wrong and right about habits and their relation to intelligent behavior. Ryle was wrong in claiming that habits fall short of intelligent behavior. But Ryle was also right, he correctly puts habits in a continuity that goes from dispositions in general to what he considers (...) bonafide intelligent behavior or knowing-how. After some background, the Rylean distinction between habits and intelligent behavior is explored. I then move to Ryle’s mistake and its roots, tacitly endorsing the idea of instinct as innate behavior. In doing so, he neglected that variability and modifiability are the rules and not the exceptions in behavior. Research on the phenomena of motor redundancy of animal behavior, the enactive account of habits, and a dynamic account of intelligence are mobilized to correct his mistake. My proposed account explains Ryle’s mistake, why it is a mistake, and why it is an understandable mistake coming from someone with his perspective. The last section of the paper re-articulates the continuum between simple dispositions, habits, and highly skilled behavior. I reconceived the continuum of intelligence as including not only our habits, but all animal behavior. (shrink)

The traditional thesis of the autonomy of psychology from neuroscience is grounded in a metaphysical thesis; the irreducibility thesis. Anti-reductionism is still dominant nowadays, and, as a consequence, autonomists arguably stand on firmer grounds. Still, an anti-autonomist might have the intuition that even if psychology is not reducible to neuroscience, there is a sense, not metaphysically grounded, but epistemologically grounded, in which psychology clearly is not autonomous from neuroscience. The challenge is then to offer a concept of autonomy which allows (...) for the articulation of a new and significant autonomy thesis, and to show that the thesis is false. The thesis that psychologists need not consider neuroscientific explanations when putting forward psychological explanations is such a thesis. I take it that both this characterization of autonomy and an antiautonomist argument in this sense can already be found in a paper co-authored by Gualtiero Piccinini and CarlCraver. Piccinini and Craver’s attack on this thesis is grounded on the claim that psychologists should support their functional analyses by means ofmechanistic explanations for the former to be justified at all. I also take it that, as Lawrence Shapiro has shown, their argument ultimately fails. But this was a very valuable attempt, and, in this paper, I intend to build on it with the aim of offering a new and hopefully effective anti-autonomist argument. I contend that psychologists do need to consider neuroscientific explanations when putting forward psychological explanations, and this stems from the fact that they provide the same type of explanations of the same kind of phenomena as neuroscientist, or so I argue. (shrink)

Max Stirner was one of the most important and seminal thinkers of the mid-nineteenth century. In the shadows of Hegel, Stirner developed possibly the most radical and devastating critique ever of the discourses of modernity, incurring the ire of Marx, prefiguring Nietzsche, and having a major (though often unacknowledged) impact on diverse streams of thought, from existentialism to anarchism and autonomism, literary and artistic avant-gardes, and postmodern theory. This edited volume investigates Stirner's impact on critical thinking and social and (...) political thought, exploring his radical and contemporary importance as a political theorist. In unmasking the religiosity lurking behind discourses of humanism and rationalism, and the domination of the individual immanent within liberal modes of politics, Stirner demolished the ontological foundations and universal grand narratives of our modernity. His thought has implications for contemporary questions of ideology, power, subjectivity, ethics and action, and opens the way for entirely new forms of politics. (shrink)

The prediction error minimization framework denotes a family of views that aim at providing a unified theory of perception, cognition, and action. In this paper, I discuss some of the theoretical limitations of PEM. It appears that PEM cannot provide a satisfactory explanation of motivated reasoning, as instantiated in phenomena such as self-deception, because its cognitive ontology does not have a separate category for motivational states such as desires. However, it might be thought that this objection confuses levels of explanation. (...) Self-deception is a personal level phenomenon, while PEM offers subpersonal explanations of psychological abilities. Thus, the paper examines how subpersonal explanations couched in the PEM framework can be thought of as related to personal level explanations underlying self-deception. In this regard, three views on the relation between personal and subpersonal explanations are investigated: the autonomist, the functionalist, and the co-evolutionary perspective. I argue that, depending on which view of the relation between the personal and subpersonal is adopted, the PEM paradigm faces a dilemma: either its explanatory ambitions should be reduced to the subpersonal domain, or it cannot provide a satisfactory account of motivated reasoning as instantiated in self-deception. (shrink)

What makes a subject''s motivationrational is its originating in her practicalreasoning. I explain the appeal of this thesisabout rational motivation, and explore itsrelation to recent discussions of internalismabout reasons for action. I do so in theservice of clarifying an important meta-ethicaldebate between Humean motivational skeptics andtheir Kantian opponents. This debate is oneover whether, as this skeptic contends andKantians deny, considerations about ourmotivational capacities, together withinternalism, restrict genuine reasons foraction to merely instrumental ones. I arguethat properly adjudicating this debate requiresidentifying one (...) particular way in which thethesis about rational motivation has beendeveloped – namely, as a part of what I term``the traditional conception'''' of themotivational efficacy of practical reason. Onthis conception, rational motivation consistsin choosing some course of conduct out of one''scognitive appreciation of the way its relationto one''s practicable good gives one reason todo so. And I side with Kantians against theHumean motivational skeptic in part on groundsthat Kant himself – though not all Kantians –would find congenial: namely, that we shouldaccept the traditional conception. (shrink)

The debate concerning the role of intuitions in philosophy has been characterized by a fundamental disagreement between two main camps. The first, the autonomists, hold that, due to the use in philosophical investigation of appeals to intuition, most of the central questions of philosophy can in principle be answered by philosophical investigation and argument without relying on the sciences. The second, the naturalists, deny the possibility of a priori knowledge and are skeptical of the role of intuition in providing evidence (...) in philosophical inquiry. In spite of the seemingly stark and deep disagreement between the autonomist and the naturalist, in this paper I will attempt to suggest that there is a way to mount a partial defense of intuition-based philosophical practice on naturalist grounds. As will be seen, doing so will require a number of concessions that will satisfy few autonomists while simultaneously disappointing those naturalists who might have thought that all notions of the a priori had been successfully laid to rest. However, I will argue that the account proposed here will preserve those features of traditional philosophical practice that matter most and better explain the history of successes and failures of that practice, thus answering the worries of the autonomist, and that the rejection of the No A Priori Thesis attendant with the account presented here is indeed demanded by the current theories of our best scientific understanding of the mind, thus pacifying the rabid naturalistic critic of any version of apriorism. (shrink)

Background The principle of respect for autonomy (PRA) is a central tenet of bioethics. In the quest for a global bioethics, it is pertinent to ask whether this principle can be applied as it is to cultures and societies that are devoid of the Western sociopolitical historical pressures that led to its emergence. Relational autonomists have argued for a more inclusive approach to patient autonomy which takes into account factors such as interdependency and social relations. However, at the outset of (...) any relational approach, it is necessary to identify underlying factors that influence patient autonomy in non-Western cultures. Objective To conduct a review of the literature to uncover the mechanisms through which social, cultural, and religious factors influence and impact the application of the PRA in healthcare decision-making in non-Western cultures and societies. Methods We conducted a systematic review through a comprehensive search of three major electronic databases of biomedical sciences. Returned citations were imported to Covidence, full texts were assessed for eligibility, included articles were thoroughly reviewed and data was synthesized. PRISMA guidelines were followed. Results Our search retrieved 590 non-duplicate results, 50 of which were included after screening and full-text eligibility checks. The included studies were predominantly qualitative in nature, with few quantitative, mixed-methods, and review studies included. Our synthesis of data identified nine key factors that influenced patients’ autonomous decision-making through cultural, social, religious, or intersectional pathways. Conclusion Two main conclusions emerge from this review. Firstly, there is a notable dearth of bioethical research examining the influence of diverse factors on patients’ inclination towards different conceptions of autonomy. Secondly, the analysis of prevalent collectivist cultures and deference of autonomy adds value to the solution-oriented relational autonomy debate. This raises questions regarding how decision-making can be truly autonomous in the presence of such large-scale factors, warranting further attention. (shrink)

Art, Emotion, and Ethics is a brilliant book with many important, useful, insightful, and even profound things to say about a range of topics including the relation of the imagination to art, understanding, and ethics, and the paradox of fiction, as well as sensitive and in-depth interpretations of masterpieces by the likes of Rembrandt and Nabokov. It is very convincing in its jousts with autonomists for people like me who favor the view that sometimes ethical blemishes are aesthetic blemishes and (...) sometimes ethical merits count as aesthetic merits. But that is because I am not an autonomist or even a moderate autonomist. (shrink)

We can reach every point in the world but, more importantly, we can be reached from any point in the world. Privacy and its possibilities are abolished. Attention is under siege everywhere. Not silence but uninterrupted noise, not the red desert, but a cognitive space overcharged with nervous incentives to act: this is the alienation of our times....--from The Soul at WorkCapital has managed to overcome the dualism of body and soul by establishing a workforce in which everything we mean (...) by the Soul--language, creativity, affects--is mobilized for its own benefit. Industrial production put to work bodies, muscles, and arms. Now, in the sphere of digital technology and cyberculture, exploitation involves the mind, language, and emotions in order to generate value--while our bodies disappear in front of our computer screens.In this, his newest book, Franco "Bifo" Berardi--key member of the Italian Autonomist movement and a close associate of Félix Guattari--addresses these new forms of estrangement. In the philosophical landscape of the 1960s and 1970s, the Hegelian concept of alienation was used to define the harnessing of subjectivity. The estrangement of workers from their labor, the feeling of alienation they experienced, and their refusal to submit to it became the bases for a human community that remained autonomous from capital. But today a new condition of alienation has taken root in which workers commonly and voluntarily work overtime, the population is tethered to cell phones and Blackberries, debt has become a postmodern form of slavery, and antidepressants are commonly used to meet the unending pressure of production. As a result, the conditions for community have run aground and new philosophical categories are needed. The Soul at Work is a clarion call for a new collective effort to reclaim happiness.The Soul at Work is Bifo's long overdue introduction to English-speaking readers. This Semiotext edition is also the book's first appearance in any language. (shrink)

An examination of new forms of alienation in our never-off, plugged-in culture—and a clarion call for a “conspiracy of estranged people.” We can reach every point in the world but, more importantly, we can be reached from any point in the world. Privacy and its possibilities are abolished. Attention is under siege everywhere. Not silence but uninterrupted noise, not the red desert, but a cognitive space overcharged with nervous incentives to act: this is the alienation of our times... —from The (...) Soul at Work Capital has managed to overcome the dualism of body and soul by establishing a workforce in which everything we mean by the Soul—language, creativity, affects—is mobilized for its own benefit. Industrial production put to work bodies, muscles, and arms. Now, in the sphere of digital technology and cyberculture, exploitation involves the mind, language, and emotions in order to generate value—while our bodies disappear in front of our computer screens. In this, his newest book, Franco “Bifo” Berardi—key member of the Italian Autonomist movement and a close associate of Félix Guattari—addresses these new forms of estrangement. In the philosophical landscape of the 1960s and 1970s, the Hegelian concept of alienation was used to define the harnessing of subjectivity. The estrangement of workers from their labor, the feeling of alienation they experienced, and their refusal to submit to it became the bases for a human community that remained autonomous from capital. But today a new condition of alienation has taken root in which workers commonly and voluntarily work overtime, the population is tethered to cell phones and Blackberries, debt has become a postmodern form of slavery, and antidepressants are commonly used to meet the unending pressure of production. As a result, the conditions for community have run aground and new philosophical categories are needed. The Soul at Work is a clarion call for a new collective effort to reclaim happiness. The Soul at Work is Bifo's long overdue introduction to English-speaking readers. This Semiotext edition is also the book's first appearance in any language. (shrink)

One of the key concepts in autonomist Marxism is the ‘general intellect’. As capitalism develops, labour and its products become increasingly ‘immaterial’, inasmuch as the physical side of production is taken over by automated systems. The result is that all aspects of the collective worker's affective, desiring and cognitive capabilities are now brought to bear on production itself. This problematises capitalistic notions of proprietary control, because it raises the possibility that the mass ‘cognitive worker’, and the inherently co-operative principles it (...) embodies, can detach itself from neoliberal mechanisms of subsumption and valorisation and lay the foundation for a new communalistic ethos. What is intriguing is that several autonomists evoke the work of Mikhail Bakhtin vis-à-vis the ‘general intellect’. Bakhtin did maintain that dialogism is an irreducibly collective phenomenon, and that we all contribute to the continuous making and remaking of language. We do not ‘own’ the words we use; as such, meaning is necessarily plural and heterogeneous, the product of the interaction of many texts and voices that can only be pragmatically and contingently unified. The present article seeks to explore the connection between Bakhtin and autonomism, focusing on the insight that communication is always ‘more than myself’, and hence integral to the ‘social brain’ that is a shared legacy, our ‘commonwealth’. It also raises the possibility of a more ‘troublesome’ Bakhtin than is generally countenanced by the liberal academy, and a concomitantly ‘dangerous’ dialogism that haunts a digitalised and networked world marked in equal measure by tremendous emancipatory promise and catastrophic threat. (shrink)

This article seeks to trace the origins of contemporary ‘post-workerism’ in the formulation of concepts of political subjectivity, antagonism and insurrection in Tronti and Negri. In particular, it tries to excavate the seemingly paradoxical position which postulates the increasing immanence of struggles, as based on the Marxian thesis of real subsumption, together with the intensification of the political autonomy or separation of the working class. In order to grasp the political and theoretical proposals of Italian workerism and autonomism, Toscano (...) concentrates on the thesis of a historical transformation of capitalism into an increasingly parasitical and politically violent social relation, a thesis which is grounded in an interpretation of Marx’s notion of ‘tendency’ and which serves as the background to the exploration, especially in Negri, of increasingly uncompromising forms of antagonism. The article focuses especially on Tronti’s so-called ‘Copernican revolution’—giving workers’ struggles primacy in the understanding of capitalism—and critically inquires into the effect of this workerist axiom on Negri’s writings on proletarian sabotage and insurrection in the 1970s. By way of a conclusion, it notes the difficulties in prolonging the workerist gambit in light of capital’s continued effort, as Tronti would put it, to emancipate itself from the working class. (shrink)