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Accidental Intolerance: How We Stigmatize ADHD and How We Can Stop

Susan C. C. Hawthorne

This book examines both standard practice and ongoing controversies in social, medical, scientific, ethical, and philosophical approaches to ADHD. The complex web of concepts, data, needs, and ... More

This book examines both standard practice and ongoing controversies in social, medical, scientific, ethical, and philosophical approaches to ADHD. The complex web of concepts, data, needs, and attitudes is not fully unified. But, overall, the book argues, current approaches to research and care accidentally reinforce intolerance of ADHD-diagnosed people, and simultaneously slow down growth in knowledge. To avoid these outcomes, the wide range of people involved with ADHD—including clinicians, scientists, educators, parents, policy-makers, and diagnosed individuals—need to jointly re-examine and change the attitudes, concepts, and practices typically taken toward ADHD. The book demonstrates how we derived our current medical, scientific, and social concepts of ADHD, shows why the concepts we now use are optional, and explains that we need change for both ethical and epistemic reasons. Ethically, we need new approaches because our current concepts and practices, which center on DSM-defined ADHD, dichotomization of “ADHD” from “non-ADHD,” and intervening on individuals rather than society, embed values that reflect and reinforce intolerance. Epistemically, opposition to alternatives has created a relative stasis in our understanding of ADHD. The book argues that any change will need to recognize the centrality of both facts and values to improved scientific, medical, and social approaches to ADHD. Shared goals of increasing knowledge, providing new options for diagnosed people, and decreasing stigmatization will drive the much-needed change; adopting inclusive, responsive decision making in all areas of practice will foster it.Less

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

Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World

Gerd Gigerenzer

Where do new ideas come from? What is social intelligence? Why do social scientists perform mindless statistical rituals? This vital book is about rethinking rationality as adaptive thinking: to ... More

Where do new ideas come from? What is social intelligence? Why do social scientists perform mindless statistical rituals? This vital book is about rethinking rationality as adaptive thinking: to understand how minds cope with their environments, both ecological and social. The author proposes and illustrates a bold new research program that investigates the psychology of rationality, introducing the concepts of ecological, bounded, and social rationality. His path-breaking collection takes research on thinking, social intelligence, creativity, and decision-making out of an ethereal world where the laws of logic and probability reign, and places it into our real world of human behavior and interaction. This book is accessibly written for general readers with an interest in psychology, cognitive science, economics, sociology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and animal behavior. It also teaches a practical audience, such as physicians, AIDS counselors, and experts in criminal law, how to understand and communicate uncertainties and risks.Less

Advaita: A Contemporary Critique

Srinivasa Rao

The book proposes a contemporary framework for critiquing Advaita and formulating its basic thesis in a more logical and convincing way. Any proper theory in philosophy and science has to follow from ... More

The book proposes a contemporary framework for critiquing Advaita and formulating its basic thesis in a more logical and convincing way. Any proper theory in philosophy and science has to follow from accepted assumptions. Hence the book begins by identifying basic presuppositions required for Advaita and determining the different cognitive possibilities arising out of them. After thus determining what is logically and conceptually possible and impossible in Advaita, the new framework is used to assess whether or not the traditionally held Advaitic concepts and theories are satisfactory and acceptable. This is done in many chapters covering discussions of the notions of not-Self (anātman), cosmic ignorance (māyā), individual ignorance (avidyā), illusoriness (mithyātva), sublation (bādha), entities that are different from the real and the unreal (sadasadvilaksana) and so on. The book argues that all these concepts, as specifically formulated and defended in traditional Advaita for centuries after Śankara, are simply faulty and untenable both individually and as related clusters of concepts. Traditional Advaita has also defended an elaborate ontology of experiences like mistaking a rope-for a snake. It has also heavily defended the metaphysical thesis of the empirical world of our experience being a total illusion. The logical faults and conceptual inadequacies of this ontology and metaphysics are also discussed in great detail, offering absolutely new criticisms of them. Despite this almost totally negative portrayal of traditional Advaita, the book is also quite positive in showing that any belief in non-duality is still very much philosophically possible and also necessary.Less

Aesthetic Essays

Malcolm Budd

The book contains a selection of essays on aesthetics, some of which have been revised or added to. A number of the essays are aimed at the abstract heart of aesthetics, attempting to solve a cluster ... More

The book contains a selection of essays on aesthetics, some of which have been revised or added to. A number of the essays are aimed at the abstract heart of aesthetics, attempting to solve a cluster of the most important issues in aesthetics which are not specific to particular art forms. These include the nature and proper scope of the aesthetic, the intersubjective validity of aesthetic judgements, the correct understanding of aesthetic judgements expressed through metaphors, aesthetic realism versus anti-realism, the character of aesthetic pleasure and aesthetic value, the aim of art, and the artistic expression of emotion. Others are focussed on central issues in the aesthetics of particular art forms: two engage with the most fundamental issue in the aesthetics of music, the question of the correct conception of the phenomenology of the experience of listening to music with understanding; and two consider the nature of pictorial representation, one examining the well-known views of Ernst Gombich, Richard Wollheim, and Kendall Walton, the other articulating an alternative conception of seeing a picture as a depiction of a certain state of affairs. The final essay in the book is a comprehensive reconstruction and critical examination of Wittgenstein's aesthetics, both early and late.Less

The Aesthetics of Design

Jane Forsey

This book offers the first full treatment of design in the field of philosophical aesthetics. Aesthetic theory has traditionally occupied itself with fine art in all its forms, sometimes with craft, ... More

This book offers the first full treatment of design in the field of philosophical aesthetics. Aesthetic theory has traditionally occupied itself with fine art in all its forms, sometimes with craft, and often with notions of beauty and sublimity in art and nature. In so doing, it has largely ignored the quotidian and familiar objects and experiences that make up our daily lives. Yet how we interact with design involves aesthetic choices and judgements as well as practical, cognitive and moral considerations. This work challenges the discipline to broaden its scope to include design, and illustrates how aesthetics helps define our human concerns. Subjecting design to as rigorous a treatment as any other aesthetic object exposes it to three main challenges that form the core of this book. First, design must be distinguished from art and craft as a unique kind of object meriting separate philosophical attention, and is here defined in part by its functional qualities. Second, the experience of design must be defended as having a particularly aesthetic nature. Here Forsey adapts the Kantian notion of dependent beauty to provide a model for our appreciation of design as different from our judgments of art, craft and natural beauty. Finally, design is important for aesthetics and philosophy as a whole in that it is implicated in broader human concerns. Forsey situates her theory of design as a constructive contribution to the recent movement of Everyday Aesthetics, which seeks to re-enfranchise philosophical aesthetics as an important part of philosophy at large.Less

After Marriage: Rethinking Marital Relationships

Elizabeth Brake (ed.)

The chapters of this book, which are by liberal and feminist philosophers, address whether marriage reform ought to stop with same-sex marriage. Some philosophers have recently argued that marriage ... More

The chapters of this book, which are by liberal and feminist philosophers, address whether marriage reform ought to stop with same-sex marriage. Some philosophers have recently argued that marriage is illiberal and should be abolished or radically reformed to include groups and friendships. In response, Chapter 1 argues that marriage law can be justified without illiberal appeal to an ideal relationship type, and Chapter 2 argues that the liberal values justifying same-sex marriage do not justify further extension. Other chapters argue for new legal forms for intimate relationships. Chapter 3 argues that piecemeal directives rather than relationship contracts should replace marriage, and Chapter 4 argues for separating marriage and parenting, with parenting rather than marriage becoming the family’s foundation. The fifth chapter argues for a non-hierarchical friendship model for marriage. The next one argues that polygamy should be decriminalized but that the liberal state need not recognize it, while Chapter 7 argues that polygamy could be legally structured to protect privacy and equality. The eighth chapter argues for temporary marriage as a legal option, while the chapter that follows argues that marital commitments are problematic instruments for securing romantic love. These essays challenge contemporary understandings of marriage and the state’s role in it.Less

Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy

P. F. Strawson

All developed human beings possess a practical mastery of a vast range of concepts, including such basic structural notions as those of identity, truth, existence, material objects, mental states, ... More

All developed human beings possess a practical mastery of a vast range of concepts, including such basic structural notions as those of identity, truth, existence, material objects, mental states, space, and time; but a practical mastery does not entail theoretical understanding. It is that understanding which philosophy seeks to achieve. This book sets out to explain and illustrate a certain conception of the nature of analytical philosophy. The author draws on his many years of teaching at Oxford University, during which he refined and developed his route to understanding the fundamental structure of human thinking. Among the distinctive features of his exposition are the displacement of an older, reductive conception of philosophical method (the ideal of ‘analysing’ complex ideas into simpler elements) in favour of elucidating the interconnections between the complex but irreducible notions which form the basic structure of our thinking; and the demonstration that the three traditionally distinguished departments of metaphysics (ontology), epistemology, and logic are but three aspects of one unified enquiry.Less

Argument and Persuasion in Descartes’ Meditations

David Cunning

Descartes’ Meditations is a search after truth in the sense that it contains arguments for a view about the ultimate nature of reality, but it is also a search after truth in that it captures the ... More

Descartes’ Meditations is a search after truth in the sense that it contains arguments for a view about the ultimate nature of reality, but it is also a search after truth in that it captures the difficult and error-ridden struggle of a thinker (the meditator) who is moving from an extremely confused representation of reality to a view that is accurate but unexpected. Every single claim of the Meditations is advanced from the first-person point of view of Descartes’ struggling meditator, and so most of the Meditations is confused. At the start of inquiry, and as inquiry unfolds, the meditator will put forward claims that he takes to be true, but in most cases these claims do not have anything going for them but their longevity, and they are to be rejected. For example, the meditator will put forward claims about what is possible, but without having arrived at clear and obvious axioms (the primary notions of metaphysics) that entail that God is the author of what is possible, and without having considered which possibilities God has or has not authored. The meditator will get clear about some of these axioms as inquiry unfolds, and as a result he will recognize many of the claims that he put forward initially as confused and provincial, though he will continue to assert any confusions that are not emended. The Meditations does not draw out all of the implications of the primary notions of metaphysics; at the end of the Meditations the meditator is not a full-blown Cartesian, and a number of Cartesian theses (e.g., necessitarianism) are generated only with further reflection. Finally, the Meditations is written for reception by a variety of minds, so that readers from a number of backgrounds and confusions would be able to start from their first-person epistemic position and move in the direction of truth. Descartes is of course interested in locating ideas that are an accurate representation of reality, but he is also interested in pedagogy and the rhetoric of inquiry, or else communication would be for nought. He employs the analytic method to help his readers to move from and beyond a faulty paradigm.Less

Aristotle on Practical Truth

Christiana Olfert

Aristotle’s theories of truth, practical reasoning, and action are some of the most influential theories in the history of philosophy. It is surprising, then, that so little attention has been given ... More

Aristotle’s theories of truth, practical reasoning, and action are some of the most influential theories in the history of philosophy. It is surprising, then, that so little attention has been given to his notion of practical truth. In Aristotle on Practical Truth, C. M. M. Olfert gives the first book-length treatment of this notion and the role of truth in our practical lives overall. She offers a novel account of practical truth: it is the truth, in the technical Aristotelian sense of “truth,” about what is good simpliciter (haplôs) for a particular person in her particular situation. Olfert argues that, understood in this way, Aristotle’s notion of practical truth is an attractive idea that illuminates the core of his practical philosophy. But it is also an idea that challenges a common view that in practical reasoning, we aim at action or acting well as our primary goals, not at truth and knowledge. Contrary to this common view, Olfert shows that in dialogues such as Charmides, Protagoras, and Republic, Plato describes practical reasoning as being concerned equally with grasping the truth and with acting well. She argues that Aristotle develops this Platonic picture with the notion of practical truth and with a technical notion of rational action as fitting ourselves to the world. Using key texts from the Nicomachean and Eudemian Ethics, as well as De Anima, Metaphysics, De Interpretatione, and Categories, Olfert demonstrates that practical truth deserves to be treated as a central and plausible Aristotelian idea.Less

Art, Self and Knowledge

Keith Lehrer

Art changes the totality of human experience as Dewey emphasized. Goodman and Heidegger propose that art reveals a special contribution to the world-making experience of the artist and the receivers ... More

Art changes the totality of human experience as Dewey emphasized. Goodman and Heidegger propose that art reveals a special contribution to the world-making experience of the artist and the receivers of the artwork. Art is often representational. It may, as Bell and Fry affirmed, contain significant form giving rise to a special emotion, it may be expressive of human feelings, as Croce and Collingwood averred. It may deconstruct previous artworks, removing them from their frames to assemble something new, as Derrida suggests. Some art does each, and I seek to explain how. But not all art does these things, and not only art does them. So what is the special contribution that art makes to experience that changes human life? Art uses sensory consciousness as the focus of attention to create new form and content out of exemplars of experience. The exemplars mark a new distinction in conceptual space. I call this exemplarization. We value art because of the new content it offers us in our lives. We are provoked by art to ask ourselves whether to transfer the content of the artwork to our world and ourselves beyond the artwork. Our answer reveals to us what we are like as we exercise our freedom and autonomy in how we represent our world. Art is that part of experience that uses experience to change the content of experience. Exemplar representation, exemplarization, unifies the aesthetic, creating a new understanding of our selves and our world.Less

Artha: Meaning

Jonardon Ganeri

This book covers śakti and artha, and specifically relates them to the significance of testimony and the epistemology of meaning in the Indian discussion. It pays attention to thinkers in the various ... More

This book covers śakti and artha, and specifically relates them to the significance of testimony and the epistemology of meaning in the Indian discussion. It pays attention to thinkers in the various grammatical and philosophical schools, primarily emphasizing on the school of Nyāya, whose authors entered into an extraordinary, rich and diverse discussion of the problem of meaning over a period of some fifteen centuries. It argues that their ideas speak strongly to contemporary concerns in the philosophy of language. The sections of the book correspond to schools roughly as follows: Grammarian theories of meaning; Mīmāṃsaka theories of meaning; Buddhist theories of meaning; early Naiyāyika theories of meaning; Navya-Naiyāyika theories of meaning; and Vedāntin theories of meaning.Less

Articulating the Moral Community: Toward a Constructive Ethical Pragmatism

Henry Richardson

As this highly original work explains, morality is not fixed objectively, independently of all human judgment, nor is it something that we “invent.” Rather, working within zones of objective ... More

As this highly original work explains, morality is not fixed objectively, independently of all human judgment, nor is it something that we “invent.” Rather, working within zones of objective indeterminacy, the moral community—the community of all persons—has the authority to introduce new moral norms. These further specify the preexisting moral norms, making an objective difference to individuals’ moral rights and duties. The moral community, so-called, could not exercise authority unless it had some structure whereby it could act. Unlike political communities, which are centralized, noninclusive, and backed by coercion, the moral community is decentralized and inclusive. Its structure depends upon dyadic duties—ones that one individual owes to another. Such duties, the book argues, empower efforts by individuals to work out intelligently with one another how to respond to morally important concerns. The innovative moral input that these efforts can provide is initially authoritative only over the parties involved. Yet when such innovations gain sufficient uptake and have been reflectively accepted by the moral community, they become new moral norms. This account of the moral community’s moral authority is motivated by, and supports, a type of normative ethical theory, constructive ethical pragmatism (CEP), which rejects the consequentialist claim that rightness is to be defined as a function of goodness and the deontological claim that principles of right are fixed independently of the good. Rather, it holds instead that what we ought to do is fixed by our continuing efforts to specify the right and the good in light of each other.Less

Aspects of Agency: Decisions, Abilities, Explanations, and Free Will

Alfred R. Mele

Libertarianism about free will is the conjunction of a negative thesis and a positive thesis. The negative thesis is that free will is incompatible with determinism. The positive thesis is that there ... More

Libertarianism about free will is the conjunction of a negative thesis and a positive thesis. The negative thesis is that free will is incompatible with determinism. The positive thesis is that there are actions that are or involve exercises of free will—free actions, for short. While remaining neutral of the negative thesis, this book develops a detailed version of the positive thesis that represents paradigmatically free actions as indeterministically caused by their proximal causes and pays special attention to decisions caused in this way. The bulk of the book is a defense of this thesis against popular objections to theses of its kind. This defense includes solutions to problems about luck and control that are widely discussed in the literature on free will and moral responsibility. Various key concepts are clarified, including complete control, direct control, and its being up to an agent what is decided; and it is argued that free will may be accommodated without invoking agent-causation. The seven chapters on free will are preceded by an introductory chapter and three chapters on central issues in the philosophy of action that bear on standard treatments of free will—deciding to act, agents’ abilities, and commitments of a causal theory of action explanation.Less

Aspects of Reason

Paul Grice

Richard Warner (ed.)

This book, based on Grice's 1979 Locke Lectures at Oxford and published posthumously, elaborates the notions of reasons, reasoning, and rationality, with particular emphasis on the unity of practical ... More

This book, based on Grice's 1979 Locke Lectures at Oxford and published posthumously, elaborates the notions of reasons, reasoning, and rationality, with particular emphasis on the unity of practical and non‐practical (‘alethic’) reasoning. It begins with a look at the nature of ordinary reasoning and distinguishes between ‘flat rationality’, the formal capacity to apply inferential rules, and ‘variable rationality’, the excellence or competence of good reasoning (Ch. 1). Grice then proposes an ‘Equivocality Thesis’, arguing that a structural representation can be given for justificatory (normative) reasons that allows for modals (ought, must, etc.) to be used univocally across the alethic/practical divide in terms of general acceptability statements (Chs. 2–3). In addition, he shows that valid inferences can be drawn from alethic to practical acceptability statements (Ch. 4). Finally, Grice provides a characterization of happiness as it features in practical thinking, and suggests it to be an ‘inclusive end’, consisting of the realization of other ends that are desirable for their own sake as well as for the sake of happiness (Ch. 5). An extensive introduction by Richard Warner provides a helpful summary and explanation of key aspects of the book.Less

Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming

Agnes Callard

Becoming someone is a learning process; and what we learn are the new values around which, if we succeed, our lives will come to turn. Agents transform themselves in the process of, e.g., becoming ... More

Becoming someone is a learning process; and what we learn are the new values around which, if we succeed, our lives will come to turn. Agents transform themselves in the process of, e.g., becoming parents, embarking on careers, or acquiring a passion for music or politics. How can such activity be rational if the reason for engaging in the relevant pursuit is available only to the person one will become? How is it psychologically possible to feel the attraction of a form of concern that is not yet one’s own? How can the work done to arrive at the finish line be ascribed to one who doesn’t (really) know what she is doing or why she is doing it? These questions belong to the theory of aspiration. Aspirants are motivated by proleptic reasons, reasons they acknowledge to be defective versions of the reasons they expect to eventually grasp. The psychology of such a transformation is marked by intrinsic conflict between aspirants’ old point of view on value and the one they are trying to acquire. They cannot adjudicate this conflict by deliberating or choosing or deciding—rather, they resolve it by working to see the world in a new way. This work has a teleological structure: by modeling herself on the person she is trying to be, the aspirant brings that person into being. Because it is open to us to engage in an activity of self-creation, we are responsible for having become the kinds of people we are.Less

Assisted Death in Europe and America: Four Regimes and Their Lessons

Guenter Lewy

This book provides a detailed account of four regimes of assisted death for which there is a substantial body of data as well as observational research: The Netherlands and Belgium have legalized ... More

This book provides a detailed account of four regimes of assisted death for which there is a substantial body of data as well as observational research: The Netherlands and Belgium have legalized both voluntary euthanasia as well as physician-assisted suicide; the state of Oregon allows physician-assisted suicide; and in Switzerland assisted suicide can be provided by non-physicians. For each regime the book describes the unique cultural, political, and legal context in which the legalization of assisted death has taken place. It analyzes problem areas that have developed, such as the issue of assisted death for patients with mental suffering or the termination of life in pediatric cases, and the effectiveness of each system of regulation is assessed. While accurate factual information cannot settle the moral debate over assisted death, it nevertheless is a precondition of any well-founded argument. The conclusion discusses the lessons that can be learned from the experience of these four regimes, and analyzes a model statute for physician-assisted suicide that has been proposed for the United States.Less

Attempts: In the Philosophy of Action and the Criminal Law

Gideon Yaffe

A large number of people are serving sentences not for completing crimes, but for trying to. The law governing attempted crimes, then, is of practical importance, but the questions that arise in the ... More

A large number of people are serving sentences not for completing crimes, but for trying to. The law governing attempted crimes, then, is of practical importance, but the questions that arise in the adjudication of attempts also intersect with questions addressed by the philosophy of action, such as what intention a person must have, if any, and what a person must do, if anything, in order to be trying to do something. This book offers solutions to a variety of difficult problems that courts face in the adjudication of attempted crimes through application of the philosophy of action. The book argues that the problems that courts face admit of principled solution through reflection on either (i) what it is to try to do something, (ii) what evidence is required for someone to be shown to have tried to do something, or (iii) what sentence for an attempt is fair, given the close relation between attempts and completions. The book proposes an account of the nature of trying to act, called “The Guiding Commitment View”, and uses that account to make progress on problems courts face. Under this account, to try to do something is to be committed by one's intention to each of the components of success, and to be guided by those commitments. It is argued that when the implications of this simple and intuitively plausible position are appreciated, we are able to recognize principled grounds on which the courts ought to distinguish between defendants charged with attempted crimes.Less

Attention Is Cognitive Unison: An Essay in Philosophical Psychology

Christopher Mole

This book presents a theory of attention. According to this theory the relationship between attention and the processes executed in the brain is analogous to the relationship between unison and the ... More

This book presents a theory of attention. According to this theory the relationship between attention and the processes executed in the brain is analogous to the relationship between unison and the processes executed by individual members of an orchestra: Just as no subset of the players in an orchestra can be identified as the ones responsible for unison, so there are no particular processes in the brain that are the implementers of attention. If this is right then attention belongs in the metaphysical category of ‘adverbial phenomena’, and so is not the sort of thing that can be explained by identifying the processes that constitute it. The book therefore provides a case study of the ways in which metaphysical questions and questions about psychological explanation can interact. It also explores the prospects of using the theory of attention to cast explanatory light on consciousness and on the contentfulness of thought.Less