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Action and Interaction

Shaun Gallagher

Action and Interaction is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the nature of action, starting with questions about action individuation, context, the notion of ?basic action? and the ... More

Action and Interaction is divided into three parts. The first part focuses on the nature of action, starting with questions about action individuation, context, the notion of ?basic action? and the temporal structure of action. The importance of circumstance for understanding action is stressed. These topics lead to questions about intention and the sense of agency and ultimately to the idea that we need to consider action in the social contexts of interaction. The second part looks at the role of interaction in discussions of social cognition, building a contrast between standard theory- of-mind approaches and embodied/enactive accounts. Gallagher defends an enactive-interactionist account drawing on evidence from both phenomenology and empirical studies of development, ecological psychology, and studies of communicative and narrative practices, especially in more complex social practices. The third part transitions from considerations that focus on social-cognitive issues to understanding their implications for concepts that are basic to the development of a critical theory that addresses social and political issues, especially with respect to basic concepts of autonomy, recognition and justice, and the effects of norms and social institutions on our actions and interactionsLess

Affirming Divergence: Deleuze's Reading of Leibniz

Alex Tissandier

Leibniz is a constant, but often overlooked, presence in Deleuze’s philosophy. This book explains three key moments in Deleuze’s philosophical development through the lens of his engagement with ... More

Leibniz is a constant, but often overlooked, presence in Deleuze’s philosophy. This book explains three key moments in Deleuze’s philosophical development through the lens of his engagement with Leibniz. In doing so it hopes to offer a focused framework for understanding some of the most difficult aspects of Deleuze’s philosophy. Part One examines Deleuze’s account of the “anti-Cartesian reaction” of Spinoza and Leibniz which culminates in their two competing theories of expression. It argues that in some key respects Deleuze favours Leibniz’s interpretation of this key concept over Spinoza’s. Part Two looks at Deleuze’s critique of representation and his attempt to create a theory of difference that will underlie, rather than rely upon, conceptual opposition. It examines the crucial role played by the Leibnizian concepts of incompossibility and divergence in Deleuze’s theory of ‘vice-diction’, created in order to offer a sub-representational, or pre-individual, substitute for Hegelian contradiction. Part Three looks in detail at one of Deleuze’s last major works, The Fold. It argues for Leibniz’s central place in this text, and shows how Deleuze uses concepts from across Leibniz’s philosophy and mathematics as a framework to articulate a systematic account of his own mature philosophy.Less

Almost Over: Almost Over: Aging, Dying, Dead

F. M. Kamm

This book is a discussion of philosophical, legal, and medical issues related to aging, dying, and death. It considers different views about whether and why death is bad for the person who dies, and ... More

This book is a discussion of philosophical, legal, and medical issues related to aging, dying, and death. It considers different views about whether and why death is bad for the person who dies, and whether these views bear on why it would be bad if there were no more persons at all. The book looks at how the general public is being asked to think about end-of-life issues by examining some questionnaires and conversation guides that have been developed. It also considers views about the process of dying and whether it might make sense to not resist death, or even to bring about the end of one’s life, given certain views about meaning in life and what things it is worth living on to get and do. Some hold that it is not only serious illness but ordinary aging that may give rise to some of these questions and the book considers various ways in which aging and the distribution of goods and bads in a life could occur. Physician-assisted suicide would be one way to end one’s life and the book examines arguments about its moral permissibility and whether or not it should be legalized as a matter of public policy. This discussion draws on capital punishment debates concerning state action and also on methods of balancing costs and benefits. The book examines the views of such prominent philosophers, doctors, and legal theorists as Shelly Kagan, Susan Wolf, Atul Gawande, Ezekiel Emanuel, Cass Sunstein, Neil Gorsuch, and others.Less

Ancient Relativity: Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, and Sceptics

Matthew Duncombe

Relativity is the phenomenon that things relate to things: parents to their offspring; doubles to halves; larger things to smaller things. This book is about how ancient philosophers, particularly ... More

Relativity is the phenomenon that things relate to things: parents to their offspring; doubles to halves; larger things to smaller things. This book is about how ancient philosophers, particularly Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and Sextus Empiricus, understood this phenomenon and how their theories of relativity affected, and were affected by, their broader philosophical outlooks. Many scholars have thought that ancient thinkers were either fundamentally confused about the phenomenon of relativity, or held a view that is a trivial variation on a modern view. This book argues that neither is the case. In fact, ancient philosophers shared a close-knit family of views, referred to as ‘constitutive relativity’: a relative is not simply linked by a relation, but is constituted by it. The book shows that this view is present in Plato, and is exploited by him in some key arguments concerning the Forms and the partition of the soul. Aristotle adopts the constitutive view in his discussions of relativity in Categories 7 and the Topics, and retains the constitutive view in his later discussion in Metaphysics 5.15. The Relatives Argument of Aristotle’s lost work On Ideas also involves constitutive relativity. The book moves on to examine a complex report of Stoic relativity and the role relativity played in Stoic philosophy. Finally, the book discusses Sextus Empiricus’ way of thinking about relativity, which does not appeal to the nature of relatives, but rather to how we conceive of things as correlative.Less

Animal Writing: Storytelling, Selfhood and the Limits of Empathy

Danielle Sands

Reading contemporary fiction and philosophy alongside each other, Animal Writingproposes a thinking of and with animals which brings together critical and affective approaches. Aspiring to a critical ... More

Reading contemporary fiction and philosophy alongside each other, Animal Writingproposes a thinking of and with animals which brings together critical and affective approaches. Aspiring to a critical distancing from the sometimes claustrophobic proximity of empathy – currently the prevailing mode in Animal Studies – this book interrogates the claims made of empathy without exchanging it for the kind of abstract, disembodied reason which has long disavowed the ethical status of nonhuman life. This book is particularly interested in the stories that we tell, and are told, by beings at the edges of animal life, insects, and the possibility that the indifference, even disgust, that these creatures evoke might form the basis for an ethics which is not bounded by empathy. Across five interdisciplinary chapters, it asks: is it possible to read, write and think non-anthropocentrically? How might we develop approaches to nonhuman life which are affectively and critically informed? It contends that reframing the human in relation to the elements of itself which it denounces as inhuman can inform a renewed attentiveness to nonhuman life.Less

Anton Wilhelm Amo's Philosophical Dissertations on Mind and Body

Anton Wilhelm Amo (c. 1703–after 1752) is the first modern African philosopher to study and teach in a European university and write in the European philosophical tradition. This book provides an ... More

Anton Wilhelm Amo (c. 1703–after 1752) is the first modern African philosopher to study and teach in a European university and write in the European philosophical tradition. This book provides an extensive historical and philosophical introduction to Amo’s life and work, and provides Latin texts, with facing translations and explanatory notes, of Amo’s two philosophical dissertations, On the Impassivity of the Human Mind and the Philosophical Disputation containing a Distinct Idea of those Things that Pertain either to the Mind or to our Living and Organic Body, both published in 1734. The Impassivity is an extended argument that the mind cannot be acted on, that sensation is a being-acted-on by the sensed object, and therefore that sensation does not belong to the mind, and must belong instead to the body. The Distinct Idea works out the implications for the mind’s actions, and tries to show how the mind understands, wills, and effects things through the body by ‘intentions’ which direct motions in our body intentionally toward external things. Both dissertations try to show how far each type of human act belongs to the mind, how far to the body, and expose and resolve earlier philosophers’ self-contradictions on these questions.Less

Architectural Materialisms: Nonhuman Creativity

Maria Voyatzaki (ed.)

This book gathers 14 voices from a diverse group of architects, designers, performing artists, film makers, media theorists, philosophers, mathematicians and programmers. By transversally crossing ... More

This book gathers 14 voices from a diverse group of architects, designers, performing artists, film makers, media theorists, philosophers, mathematicians and programmers. By transversally crossing disciplinary boundaries, new and profound insights into contemporary thinking and creating architecture emerge. The book is at the forefront of the current contemplation on matter and its significance for and within architecture. The premise is that matter in posthuman times has to be rethought in the rich and multifaceted context of contemporary computational architecture, and in the systemic and ecological context of pervasive computer simulations. Combining the dynamism of materiality and the capacities of nonhuman machines towards prototyping spatiotemporal designs and constructs, leads to alternative conceptions of the human, of ethics, aesthetics and politics in this world yet-to-come. The reader, through the various approaches presented by the authors’ perspectives, will appreciate that creativity can come from allowing matter to take the lead in the feedback loop of the creative process towards a relevant outcome evaluated as such by a matter of concern actualised within the ecological milieu of design. The focus is on the authors’ speculative dimension in their multifaceted role of discussing materiality by recognising that a transdisciplinary mode is first and foremost a speculative praxis in our effort to trace materiality and its affects in creativity. The book is not interested in discussing technicalities and unidirectional approaches to materiality, and retreats from a historical linear timeline of enquiry whilst establishing a sectional mapping of materiality’s importance in the emergent future of architecture.Less

Aristotle on the Matter of Form: A Feminist Metaphysics of Generation

Adriel M. Trott

This book argues that nature even in generation in Aristotle should be understood on an emergent model that sees a unity in the four causes. The model of artifice divides form from matter, where ... More

This book argues that nature even in generation in Aristotle should be understood on an emergent model that sees a unity in the four causes. The model of artifice divides form from matter, where material only appears as already informed because it is itself natural, but functions in artifice as the stuff for form. Natural generation, and thus nature, appears to follow this model insofar as form in the figure of semen appears to impose itself on matter as menses, making form the superior and positive power that is the contrary to matter, which lacks and seeks after form. This book affirms the internal source of movement view by arguing that form in generation is working in and through matter and that matter has a character of its own, suggesting the Möbius strip as a model for the relationship. Semen does the work of form through the material that makes it semen; semen’s matter has its own power to contribute to form, not reducible to its relationship to form. The book presents arguments against the existence of species form and prime matter in Aristotle and canvasses ancient Greek depictions of the feminine in order to situate the specifics of Aristotle’s account of material in the composition and working of semen and menses in generation and sex differentiation. It concludes by canvassing the places Aristotle uses the analogy to craft to show how they work in specific contexts.Less

Art Scents: Exploring the Aesthetics of Smell and the Olfactory Arts

Larry Shiner

This book offers an overview of the aesthetic and ethical issues raised by the contemporary olfactory arts, which range from gallery and museum sculptures and installations, through the enhancement ... More

This book offers an overview of the aesthetic and ethical issues raised by the contemporary olfactory arts, which range from gallery and museum sculptures and installations, through the enhancement of theater, film, and music with scents, to the ambient scenting of stores and avant-garde chefs’ use of scents in cuisine. Special attention is given to the aesthetics of perfume and incense and the question of their art status, as well as to the role of scent in the appreciation of nature and gardens. Ethical issues are discussed regarding ambient scenting, perfume wearing, and the use of smells in fast-food marketing. Because of the traditional neglect and denigration of the sense of smell and its aesthetic potential by philosophers from Kant and Hegel to the present, and by Darwin’s and Freud’s view of the human sense of smell as a nearly useless evolutionary vestige, the first parts of the book counter that tradition with both philosophical arguments and evidence from current evolutionary theory, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, history, linguistics, and literature. Although the focus is on Western olfactory arts, the book draws on non-Western examples throughout. The book is aimed at both philosophers and general readers interested in the arts, and develops positions that should stimulate further discussion.Less

Articulating a Thought

Eli Alshanetsky

The book examines how we make our thoughts clear to ourselves in the process of putting them into words. As philosophers and cognitive scientists have emphasized, articulating a thought can be ... More

The book examines how we make our thoughts clear to ourselves in the process of putting them into words. As philosophers and cognitive scientists have emphasized, articulating a thought can be astoundingly easy. We generally have no trouble expressing complex ideas that we have never considered before. But not always: a far less noted fact is that articulating a thought can sometimes be extremely hard. Our difficulties in articulating thoughts pervade many aspects of philosophical inquiry as well as many ordinary situations. We may face them in articulating an objection in a seminar, an insight into a movie, or a sudden realization about a friend. An important feature of these thoughts is that we often articulate them in order to find out what they are. In many cases, we would not bother articulating our thoughts if we already had this knowledge. Yet, when we find the right words, we can often immediately tell that they express our thought. So how do we manage to recognize the formulations of our thoughts, in the absence of prior knowledge of what we are thinking? And why is it that producing a public language formulation contributes in any way to the private undertaking of getting clear on our own thoughts?Less

Artistic Creation and Ethical Criticism

Ted Nannicelli

Artistic Creation and Ethical Criticism advances a new, production-oriented approach to the ethical criticism of art. Its overarching arguments are these: (1) Judgments of an artwork’s ethical value ... More

Artistic Creation and Ethical Criticism advances a new, production-oriented approach to the ethical criticism of art. Its overarching arguments are these: (1) Judgments of an artwork’s ethical value are often made in terms of how it was created, and, furthermore, this is in part because some art forms more readily lend themselves to this form of ethical appraisal. (2) Among the ways in which art is ethically criticized, this production-oriented approach more often leads to practical consequences (censure, dismissal, prosecution, shifts in policy, legislation) because its claim to objectivity is less contested than that of other sorts of ethical criticism. (3) Together, (1) and (2) constitute an approach to the ethical criticism of art that is not only tacit in many art appreciative practices, but which is rationally warranted and defensible. In short, there are many cases in which one should ethically critique artworks in terms of how they are created because this approach encompasses cases that other approaches cannot and results in plausible judgments about the works’ ethical merits and flaws.Less

Artmaking in the Age of Global Capitalism: Visual Practices, Philosophy, Politics

Jan Bryant

What strategies are visual artists and filmmakers using to criticise the social and economic conditions shaping our particular historical moment? This question is answered by considering the methods ... More

What strategies are visual artists and filmmakers using to criticise the social and economic conditions shaping our particular historical moment? This question is answered by considering the methods and political implications of artists or filmmakers working in a contemporary western art context today. Leading into extended analyses of works by Frances Barrett, Claire Denis, Angela Brennan, and Alex Monteith, the book considers two forces that have informed contemporary artmaking: the economic conditions that began changing social realities from the 1970s forward; and the current tendency of the political aesthetic to move away from direct political content or didacticism to a concern for the sensate effects of materials. This is framed by Jacques Rancière’s ‘distribution of the sensible’ and Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism. As historical ground for understanding the contemporary condition, Artmaking in the Age of Global Economics pays particular attention to the divisions that opened up between progressive writers, theorists and artists in the late 20th century. Suggesting an alternative approach to understanding art’s historical antecedents, it avoids received art-historical narratives or canonical figures, refuting both the autonomy of art as well as the separation of artist from the work they produce. It locates, instead, contemporary art in a worldly context of responsibility that opens up to an ethics of practice. [211]Less

Being Me Being You: Adam Smith and Empathy

Samuel Fleischacker

Many people today hold up empathy as crucial to caring about all humanity and bridging divides between hostile groups. Others accuse it of reinforcing xenophobic tribalism, and of directing people to ... More

Many people today hold up empathy as crucial to caring about all humanity and bridging divides between hostile groups. Others accuse it of reinforcing xenophobic tribalism, and of directing people to help only individuals they see or whose stories they know. Who is right? Is empathy essential to cosmopolitanism, and a valuable moral instrument, or does it blur the differences among people, reinforce ethnocentrism, and distract us from fair and effective moral action? Being Me Being You argues that the answer to that question depends on the conception of empathy one is working with. It recommends the “projective” conception of empathy, introduced by the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith, as against the “contagious” conception of empathy to be found in the writings of his contemporary and friend David Hume. (Both men are among the first theorists of empathy, but they called it “sympathy.”) Smith developed a conception of empathy by which it is not merely an instrument for moral action, but a key component of what it is to be human. For Smith, however, empathy is also crucial to our having distinctive perspectives—to what we call “difference” today; empathy enables our common humanity and our distinctiveness to come together. Relatedly, Smith showed how it could help us combine our cosmopolitan aspirations with our local loyalties, and how it could make for public policies that are sensitive to each person’s different needs and aspirations. In all these ways, Smith’s empathy-centered humanism remains invaluable today.Less

Being Rational and Being Right

Juan Comesaña

This book defends a cluster of theses related to the rationality of action and belief. The starting point is that rational action requires rational belief but tolerates false belief. From there, it ... More

This book defends a cluster of theses related to the rationality of action and belief. The starting point is that rational action requires rational belief but tolerates false belief. From there, it argues for a novel account of empirical evidence according to which said evidence consists of the content of undefeated experiences. This view, “Experientialism,” differs from the two main views of empirical evidence on offer nowadays: Factualism, according to which our evidence is what we know, and Psychologism, according to which our experiences themselves are evidence. The book argues that Experientialism fares better than these rival views in explaining different features of rational belief and action. The discussion is embedded in a Bayesian framework, and the book also examines the problem of normative requirements, the easy knowledge problem, and how Experientialism compares to Evidentialism, Reliabilism, and Comesaña’s own (now superseded) Evidentialist Reliabilism.Less

Being Sure of Each Other: An Essay on Social Rights and Freedoms

Kimberley Brownlee

To survive, let alone flourish, we need to be sure of—securely tied to—at least one other person. We also need to be sure of our general acceptance within the wider social world. This book explores ... More

To survive, let alone flourish, we need to be sure of—securely tied to—at least one other person. We also need to be sure of our general acceptance within the wider social world. This book explores the normative implications of taking our social needs seriously. Chapter 1 sketches out what our core social needs are, and Chapter 2 shows that they ground a fundamental, but largely neglected human right against social deprivation. Chapter 3 then argues that this human right includes a right to sustain the people we care about, and that often, when we are denied the resources to sustain others, we endure social contribution injustice. Chapters 4–6 explore the tension between our needs for social inclusion and our needs for interactional and associational freedom, showing that social inclusion must take priority. While Chapters 5 and 6 defend a narrow account of freedom of association, Chapter 7 shows that the moral ballgame changes once we have made morally messy associative decisions. Sometimes we have rights to remain in associations that we had no right to form. Finally, Chapter 8 exposes the distinct social injustices that we do to people whom we deem to be socially threatening. Overall, the book identifies ways to change our social and political practices, and our personal perspectives, to better honour the fact that we are fundamentally social beings.Less

The Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Mechanics

Jeffrey A. Barrett

The book starts with a description of classical mechanics then discusses the quantum phenomena that require us to give up our commonsense classical intuitions. We consider the physical and conceptual ... More

The book starts with a description of classical mechanics then discusses the quantum phenomena that require us to give up our commonsense classical intuitions. We consider the physical and conceptual arguments that led to the standard von Neumann-Dirac formulation of quantum mechanics and how the standard theory explains quantum phenomena. This includes a discussion of how the theory’s two dynamical laws work with the standard interpretation of states to explain determinate measurement records, quantum statistics, interference effects, entanglement, decoherence, and quantum nonlocality. A careful understanding of how the standard theory works ultimately leads to the quantum measurement problem. We consider how the measurement problem threatens the logical consistency of the standard theory then turn to a discussion of the main proposals for resolving it. This includes collapse formulations of quantum mechanics like Wigner’s extension of the standard theory and the GRW approach and no-collapse formulations like pure wave mechanics, the various many-worlds theories, and Bohmian mechanics. In discussing alternative formulations of quantum mechanics we pay particular attention to the explanatory role played by each theory’s empirical ontology and associated metaphysical commitments and the conceptual trade-offs between theoretical options.Less

Conscience in Reproductive Health Care: Prioritizing Patient Interests

Carolyn McLeod

There is a growing trend worldwide of health care professionals conscientiously refusing to provide abortions and similar reproductive health services in countries where these services are legal and ... More

There is a growing trend worldwide of health care professionals conscientiously refusing to provide abortions and similar reproductive health services in countries where these services are legal and professionally accepted. Carolyn McLeod responds to this problem by arguing that conscientious objectors in health care should have to prioritize the interests of patients in receiving care over their own interest in acting on their conscience. She defends this “prioritizing approach” to conscientious objection over the more popular “compromise approach” in bioethics. All the while, she is careful not to downplay the importance of health care professionals having a conscience or the moral complexity of their conscientious refusals. McLeod first describes what is at stake for the main parties to the conflicts generated by conscientious refusals in reproductive health care: the objector and the patient. She then defends the prioritizing approach to these refusals. Her central argument is that health care professionals who are charged with gatekeeping access to services like abortions are normatively fiduciaries for both their patients and the public they are licensed to serve. As such, they have a duty of loyalty to these beneficiaries and must give primacy to their interests in gaining access to care. The insights contained in the book extend beyond the ethics of conscientious refusals to other topics in ethics including the value of conscience and the fundamental moral nature of the relationships health care professionals have with current and prospective patients.Less

Contours of Dignity

Suzy Killmister

Contours of Dignity develops a theory geared towards explaining the complex and varied role dignity plays in our moral lives. This includes the relationship between dignity and respect; the ways in ... More

Contours of Dignity develops a theory geared towards explaining the complex and varied role dignity plays in our moral lives. This includes the relationship between dignity and respect; the ways in which shame and humiliation can constitute dignity violations; and the relationship between dignity and human rights. Dignity, according to this theory, comes in three strands: personal dignity, social dignity, and status dignity. Each strand involves a specific form of respect. On the one hand, personal dignity involves self-respect while social and status dignity involve the respect of others. On the other hand, personal and social dignity both involve appraisal respect, while status dignity involves recognition respect. With these distinctions in hand, Contours of Dignity then explores the moral significance of dignity, offering a novel explanation of the source and scope of individuals’ claims to have their dignity respected. The book concludes with a discussion of the relationship between dignity and human rights, arguing that we should understand human dignity as a social construct, but one that nonetheless vindicates the human rights project.Less

Debating Targeted Killing: Counter-Terrorism or Extrajudicial Execution?

Tamar Meisels and Jeremy Waldron

In this “for and against” book, Jeremy Waldron and Tamar Meisels defend competing positions on the legitimacy of targeted killing. The volume begins with a joint introduction, briefly setting out the ... More

In this “for and against” book, Jeremy Waldron and Tamar Meisels defend competing positions on the legitimacy of targeted killing. The volume begins with a joint introduction, briefly setting out the terms of discussion, and presenting a short historical overview of the practice—i.e. what is targeted killing, and how has it been used in which conflicts and by whom. The debate opens with Meisels’ defense of targeted killing as a legitimate and desirable defensive anti-terrorism strategy, in keeping with both just war theory and international law. Meisels unreservedly defends the named killing of irregular combatants, most notably terrorists, during armed conflict. Additionally, she offers a possible moral justification for rare instances of assassination outside that framework, specifically with reference to recent cases of nuclear scientists developing weapons of mass destruction for the Iranian and Syrian governments. The debate continues with Waldron’s arguments focusing on the dangers and the inherent wrongness of governments’ having the right to maintain death lists—lists of named individuals who are to be hunted down and killed. Waldron notes the many differences between individualized targeting and ordinary combat, and he resists the attempt to assimilate targeted killing to killings in combat. Waldron also cautions us to consider carefully what a world of targeted killings will be like, the many abuses it is liable to, and why we should be very cautious, morally and strategically, in our thinking about it.Less