Colin McGinn
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036191
- eISBN:
- 9780262340090
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036191.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This book offers a series of short, sharp chapters that take on philosophical problems ranging from the concept of mind to paradox, altruism, and the relation between God and the Devil. Avoiding the ...
More
This book offers a series of short, sharp chapters that take on philosophical problems ranging from the concept of mind to paradox, altruism, and the relation between God and the Devil. Avoiding the usual scholarly apparatus and embracing a blunt pithiness, the book aims to achieve as much as possible in as short a space as possible while covering as many topics as possible. The author claims that much academic philosophical writing today is long, leaden, citation heavy, dense with qualifications, and painful to read. The chapters in this book are short, direct, and engaging, often challenging philosophical orthodoxy as they consider issues in mind, language, knowledge, metaphysics, biology, ethics, and religion. The book's author is looking for new ways to think about old problems. The book offers provocative invitations to think again.Less
This book offers a series of short, sharp chapters that take on philosophical problems ranging from the concept of mind to paradox, altruism, and the relation between God and the Devil. Avoiding the usual scholarly apparatus and embracing a blunt pithiness, the book aims to achieve as much as possible in as short a space as possible while covering as many topics as possible. The author claims that much academic philosophical writing today is long, leaden, citation heavy, dense with qualifications, and painful to read. The chapters in this book are short, direct, and engaging, often challenging philosophical orthodoxy as they consider issues in mind, language, knowledge, metaphysics, biology, ethics, and religion. The book's author is looking for new ways to think about old problems. The book offers provocative invitations to think again.
Matthew Ratcliffe
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036719
- eISBN:
- 9780262342155
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036719.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
Real Hallucinations is a philosophical study of the structure of human experience, its vulnerability to disruption, and how its integrity depends on interpersonal relations. It focuses on the ...
More
Real Hallucinations is a philosophical study of the structure of human experience, its vulnerability to disruption, and how its integrity depends on interpersonal relations. It focuses on the beguilingly simple question of how we manage to routinely distinguish between our experiences of perceiving, remembering, imagining, and thinking. This question is addressed via a detailed philosophical study of auditory verbal hallucinations (usually defined as hearing a voice in the absence of a speaker) and thought insertion (somehow experiencing one’s own thoughts as someone else’s). The book shows how thought insertion, and also a substantial proportion of auditory verbal hallucinations, consist of disturbances in the structure of experience and –more specifically - in our sense of the various types of intentional state, such as believing, perceiving, remembering, and imagining, as distinct from one another. It is further argued that episodic and seemingly localized experiential disturbances such as these usually occur against a backdrop of less pronounced but much wider-ranging alterations in the structure of intentionality. To do so, the book addresses types of experience associated with trauma, schizophrenia, and profound grief. The outcome of this is a more generally applicable account of how the integrity of human experience, including the most basic sense of self, is inseparable from how we relate to other people and to the social world as a whole. Less
Real Hallucinations is a philosophical study of the structure of human experience, its vulnerability to disruption, and how its integrity depends on interpersonal relations. It focuses on the beguilingly simple question of how we manage to routinely distinguish between our experiences of perceiving, remembering, imagining, and thinking. This question is addressed via a detailed philosophical study of auditory verbal hallucinations (usually defined as hearing a voice in the absence of a speaker) and thought insertion (somehow experiencing one’s own thoughts as someone else’s). The book shows how thought insertion, and also a substantial proportion of auditory verbal hallucinations, consist of disturbances in the structure of experience and –more specifically - in our sense of the various types of intentional state, such as believing, perceiving, remembering, and imagining, as distinct from one another. It is further argued that episodic and seemingly localized experiential disturbances such as these usually occur against a backdrop of less pronounced but much wider-ranging alterations in the structure of intentionality. To do so, the book addresses types of experience associated with trauma, schizophrenia, and profound grief. The outcome of this is a more generally applicable account of how the integrity of human experience, including the most basic sense of self, is inseparable from how we relate to other people and to the social world as a whole.
John Danaher and Neil McArthur (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036689
- eISBN:
- 9780262341981
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036689.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Sexbots are coming. Given the pace of technological advances, it is inevitable that realistic robots specifically designed for people’s sexual gratification will be developed in the not-too-distant ...
More
Sexbots are coming. Given the pace of technological advances, it is inevitable that realistic robots specifically designed for people’s sexual gratification will be developed in the not-too-distant future. Despite popular culture’s fascination with the topic, and the emergence of the much-publicized Campaign Against Sex Robots, there has been little academic research on the social, philosophical, moral, and legal implications of robot sex. This book fills the gap, offering perspectives from philosophy, psychology, religious studies, economics, and law on the possible future of robot-human sexual relationships.
Contributors discuss what a sex robot is, if they exist, why we should take the issue seriously, and what it means to “have sex” with a robot. They make the case for developing sex robots, arguing for their beneficial nature, and the case against it, on religious and moral grounds; they consider the subject from the robot’s perspective, addressing such issues as consent and agency; and they ask whether it is possible for a human to form a mutually satisfying, loving relationship with a robot. Finally, they speculate about the future of human-robot sexual interaction, considering the social acceptability of sex robots and the possible effect on society.
Contributors include: Marina Adshade, Thomas Arnold, Julie Carpenter, John Danaher, Brian Earp, Lily Eva Frank, Joshua Goldstein, Michael Hauskeller, Noreen Herzfeld, Neil McArthur, Mark Migotti, Sven Nyholm, Ezio di Nucci, Steve Petersen, Anders Sandberg, Matthias Scheutz, Litska Strikwerda, Nicole WyattLess
Sexbots are coming. Given the pace of technological advances, it is inevitable that realistic robots specifically designed for people’s sexual gratification will be developed in the not-too-distant future. Despite popular culture’s fascination with the topic, and the emergence of the much-publicized Campaign Against Sex Robots, there has been little academic research on the social, philosophical, moral, and legal implications of robot sex. This book fills the gap, offering perspectives from philosophy, psychology, religious studies, economics, and law on the possible future of robot-human sexual relationships.
Contributors discuss what a sex robot is, if they exist, why we should take the issue seriously, and what it means to “have sex” with a robot. They make the case for developing sex robots, arguing for their beneficial nature, and the case against it, on religious and moral grounds; they consider the subject from the robot’s perspective, addressing such issues as consent and agency; and they ask whether it is possible for a human to form a mutually satisfying, loving relationship with a robot. Finally, they speculate about the future of human-robot sexual interaction, considering the social acceptability of sex robots and the possible effect on society.
Contributors include: Marina Adshade, Thomas Arnold, Julie Carpenter, John Danaher, Brian Earp, Lily Eva Frank, Joshua Goldstein, Michael Hauskeller, Noreen Herzfeld, Neil McArthur, Mark Migotti, Sven Nyholm, Ezio di Nucci, Steve Petersen, Anders Sandberg, Matthias Scheutz, Litska Strikwerda, Nicole Wyatt
Catherine Z. Elgin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036535
- eISBN:
- 9780262341370
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036535.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Epistemology standardly holds that there can be no epistemically good reason to accept a known falsehood or to accept a mode of justification that is not truth-conducive. Such a stance cannot ...
More
Epistemology standardly holds that there can be no epistemically good reason to accept a known falsehood or to accept a mode of justification that is not truth-conducive. Such a stance cannot accommodate science, for science unabashedly relies on models, idealizations, and thought experiments which are known not to be true. We ought not assume that the inaccuracy of such devices is a sign of their inadequacy. When effective, they are felicitous falsehoods that exemplify features they share with the phenomena they bear on. Inasmuch as works of art also deploy felicitous falsehoods, they too advance understanding. True Enough develops a holistic epistemology that focuses on the understanding of broad ranges of phenomena rather than on knowledge of individual facts. Epistemic acceptability on this account is not a matter of truth or truth-conduciveness, but of what would be reflectively endorsed by members of an idealized epistemic community – a quasi-Kantian realm of epistemic ends.Less
Epistemology standardly holds that there can be no epistemically good reason to accept a known falsehood or to accept a mode of justification that is not truth-conducive. Such a stance cannot accommodate science, for science unabashedly relies on models, idealizations, and thought experiments which are known not to be true. We ought not assume that the inaccuracy of such devices is a sign of their inadequacy. When effective, they are felicitous falsehoods that exemplify features they share with the phenomena they bear on. Inasmuch as works of art also deploy felicitous falsehoods, they too advance understanding. True Enough develops a holistic epistemology that focuses on the understanding of broad ranges of phenomena rather than on knowledge of individual facts. Epistemic acceptability on this account is not a matter of truth or truth-conduciveness, but of what would be reflectively endorsed by members of an idealized epistemic community – a quasi-Kantian realm of epistemic ends.
Action, Ethics, and Responsibility
Addiction and Responsibility
Against Facts
Against Moral Responsibility
The Architecture of Cognition
Austere Realism
Carving Nature at Its Joints
The Case for Qualia
Causing Human Actions
