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The ability to improvise represents one of the highest levels of musical achievement. An improviser must master a musical language to such a degree as to be able to spontaneously invent stylistically idiomatic compositions on the spot. This feat is one of the pinnacles of human creativity, and yet its cognitive basis is poorly understood. What musical knowledge is required for improvisation? How does a musician learn to improvise? What are the neural correlates of improvised performance? In 'The Improvising Mind' (...) these questions are explored through an interdisciplinary approach that draws on cognitive neuroscience, study of historical pedagogical treatises on improvisation, interviews with improvisers, and musical analysis of improvised performances. Findings from these treatises and interviews are discussed from the perspective of cognitive psychological theories of learning, memory, and expertise. Musical improvisation has often been compared to 'speaking a musical language.' While past research has focussed on comparisons of music and language perception, few have dealt with this comparison in the performance domain. In this book, learning to improvise is compared with language acquisition, and improvised performance is compared with spontaneous speech from both theoretical and neurobiological perspectives. (shrink)

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In the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant attempts to argue a priori from the indefinite divisibility of space to the indefinite metaphysical divisibility of matter. This is one type of argument from the continuity of space—purportedly established by Euclidean geometry—to the continuity of matter. I compare Kant's argument to parallel reasoning in Du Châtelet, whose work he knew. Both philosophers appeal to idealism about matter in their reasoning, yet also face difficulties in explaining why continuity, though not some other (...) properties from geometry, applies to matter. Both also risk inconsistency in adopting potentialist accounts of material parts, while also committing to realism about infinitesimals. An important difference between them is that Du Châtelet deploys at least three definitions of continuity; only one of these, amounting to indefinite divisibility, is shared with Kant. (shrink)

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The counterfactual comparative account of harm and benefit (CCA) has faced a barrage of objections from cases involving preemption, overdetermination, and choice. In this paper I provide a unified diagnosis of CCA’s vulnerability to these objections: CCA is susceptible to them because it evaluates each act by the same criterion. This is a mistake because, in a sense I make precise, situations raise prudential questions, and only some acts—the relevant alternatives—are directly relevant to these questions. To answer the objections, we (...) must revise CCA so that its evaluations foreground the relevant alternatives. The result is a question-centered account of harm and benefit. (shrink)

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Virtue has been rediscovered in the United States as a subject of public debate and of philosophical inquiry. Politicians from both parties, leading intellectuals, and concerned citizens from diverse backgrounds are addressing questions about the content of our character. William Bennett's moral guide for children, A Book of Virtues, was a national bestseller. Yet many continue to associate virtue with a prudish, Victorian morality or with crude attempts by government to legislate morals. PeterBerkowitz clarifies the fundamental issues, arguing (...) that a certain ambivalence toward virtue reflects the liberal spirit at its best. Drawing on recent scholarship as well as classical political philosophy, he makes his case with penetrating analyses of four central figures in the making of modern liberalism: Hobbes, Locke, Kant, and Mill.These thinkers are usually understood to have neglected or disparaged virtue. YetBerkowitz shows that they all believed that government resting on the fundamental premise of liberalism--the natural freedom and equality of all human beings--could not work unless citizens and officeholders possess particular qualities of mind and character. These virtues, which include reflective judgment, sympathetic imagination, self-restraint, the ability to cooperate, and toleration do not arise spontaneously but must be cultivated.Berkowitz explores the various strategies the thinkers employ as they seek to give virtue its due while respecting individual liberty. Liberals, he argues, must combine energy and forbearance, finding public and private ways to support such nongovernmental institutions as the family and voluntary associations. For these institutions, the liberal tradition powerfully suggests, play an indispensable role not only in forming the virtues on which liberal democracy depends but in overcoming the vices that it tends to engender.Clearly written and vigorously argued, this is a provocative work of political theory that speaks directly to complex issues at the heart of contemporary philosophy and public discussion.New Forum Books makes available to general readers outstanding, original, interdisciplinary scholarship with a special focus on the juncture of culture, law, and politics. New Forum Books is guided by the conviction that law and politics not only reflect culture, but help to shape it. Authors include leading political scientists, sociologists, legal scholars, philosophers, theologians, historians, and economists writing for nonspecialist readers and scholars across a range of fields. Looking at questions such as political equality, the concept of rights, the problem of virtue in liberal politics, crime and punishment, population, poverty, economic development, and the international legal and political order, New Forum Books seeks to explain--not explain away--the difficult issues we face today. (shrink)

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Discovering a deep unity in Nietzsche's work by exploring the structure and argumentative movement of a wide range of his books,Berkowitz shows that Nietzsche is a moral and political philosopher in the Socratic sense whose governing question is, "What is the best life?".

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Genomics research is regularly appropriated in social and political contexts to publicly legitimize unjust and malicious political views, policies, and actions. In recent years, there have been high‐profile cases of mass shooters, public intellectuals, and political insiders using genomics findings to convince audiences that deadly force and coercive policies against racial minorities are warranted. To create a just genomics, geneticists must consider what makes their research so attractive and adaptable for the legitimization of unjust ends and what they can do (...) to counter such appropriations. We offer insights and recommendations drawing from our research into the many ways online white nationalist and far‐right political movements mobilize genetics research to promote their racist, sexist, antisemitic, and homophobic views. First, geneticists should identify and change routine research practices that feed eugenic thinking. Second, geneticists should adopt creative extra‐scholarly communication efforts to counter the use of their field's research that occurs in nonscholarly spaces. Third, we identify permissive epistemological and professional practices within the genetics field that have enabled such unjust appropriations to thrive, and we recommend strategies for institutional reform. (shrink)

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Hannah Arendt's essays about the 1957 crisis over efforts of a group of youth, the “Little Rock Nine,” to desegregate a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, reveal a tension in her vision of the “public.” In this articleAaron Schutz and Marie Sandy look closely at the experiences of the youth desegregating the school, especially those of Elizabeth Eckford, drawing upon them to trace a continuum of forms of public engagement in Arendt's work. This ranges from arenas of (...) “deliberative friendship,” where unique individuals collaborate on common efforts, to a more conflictual “public stage,” where groups act in solidarity to change aspects of the public world. While Arendt famously asserted in her essay “The Crisis in Education” that political capacities should not be taught in schools, it makes more sense to see this argument as focused on what she sometimes called the conflictual “public stage,” reflecting the experience of the Little Rock Nine. In contrast, Schutz and Sandy argue that Arendt's own work implies that “deliberative friendship,” as described in her essay “Philosophy and Politics” and elsewhere, should be part of everyday practices in classrooms and schools. (shrink)

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The analogy between gustatory taste and critical or aesthetic taste plays a recurring role in the history of aesthetics. Our interest in this article is in a particular way in which gustatory judgments are frequently thought to be analogous to critical judgments. It appears obvious to many that to know how a particular object tastes we must have tasted it for ourselves; the proof of the pudding, we are all told, is in the eating. And it has seemed just as (...) obvious to many philosophers that aesthetic judgment requires first-person experience. In this article we argue that, despite its initial appeal, the claim that gustatory and critical judgments are analogous in this way is mistaken. The two sorts of judgments are, as a matter of fact, similar in their epistemology, but earlier theorists have got things entirely backward—neither gustatory judgment nor aesthetic judgment requires first-hand acquaintance with their objects. Our particular focus in this article is on arguing that first-person experience is not required to know how an item of food or drink tastes. In fact, there are a wide variety of ways in which we can acquire this knowledge. (shrink)

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Constitutivist accounts of self-knowledge argue that a noncontingent, conceptual relation holds between our first-order mental states and our introspective awareness of them. I explicate a constitutivist account of our knowledge of our own beliefs and defend it against criticisms recently raised by Christopher Peacocke. According to Peacocke, constitutivism says that our second-order introspective beliefs are groundless. I show that Peacocke’s arguments apply to reliabilism not to constitutivism per se, and that by adopting a functionalist account of direct accessibility a constitutivist (...) can avoid reliabilism. I then argue that the resulting view is preferable to Peacocke’s own account of self-knowledge. (shrink)

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This collection of essays takes as its focus Mitscherling’s comprehensive phenomenological analysis of embodiment, aesthetic experience, the interpretation of texts, moral behavior, and cognition, and exemplifies subsequent work in the field of realist phenomenology being conducted by an international collection of active scholars influenced by Mischerling’s Aesthetic Genesis.

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Recent philosophical discussions of self-knowledge have focused on basic cases: our knowledge of our own thoughts, beliefs, sensations, experiences, preferences, and intentions. Empiricists argue that we acquire this sort of self-knowledge through inner perception; rationalists assign basic self-knowledge an even more secure source in reason and conceptual understanding. I try to split the difference. Although our knowledge of our own beliefs and thoughts is conceptually insured, our knowledge of our experiences is relevantly like our perceptual knowledge of the external world.

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Many philosophers hold that we never owe others gratitude in return for their treating us in ways that we are owed. Instead, we owe others gratitude only for treating us in ways that go above and beyond the demands of morality. In this paper, I argue that this view is mistaken: we sometimes owe others gratitude for treating us in ways that we are owed. In particular, I argue that some moral duties require us to act in ways that express (...) good will to one another, and when we act in accordance with these duties, we trigger duties of gratitude on the part of others. (shrink)

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Jordi Fernandez has recently offered an interesting account of introspective justification according to which the very states that (subjectively) justify one's first-order belief that p justify one's second order belief that one believes that p. I provide two objections to Fernandez's account.

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This article defends the claim that diversions, which are actions that cause distraction, are a unique way to modify someone’s behavior and that they are morally salient. While the focus of this article is dedicated to understanding the moral features of attention and diversion, it is crucial to keep in mind that the moral evaluation of these concepts is most pressing within a technological society deeply intertwined with an attention economy. We are inundated with distraction technologies, which are technologies whose (...) function partly or wholly depends on capturing the attention of its targets. Distraction technologies are widely used to capture the attention of billions of people. Once we come to treat diversions as unique moral actions, it will be clear that the most serious violations to our right to attention can be committed by those who control these technologies. (shrink)

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David Shatz is the Ronald P. Stanton University Professor of Philosophy, Ethics, and Religious Thought at Yeshiva University and the editor of the _Torah u-Madda Journal._.

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This volume features the thought and writings of Jonathan Sacks, one of today's leading Jewish public thinkers. It brings together an intellectual portrait, four of his most original and influential philosophical essays, and an interview with him. This volume showcases the work of Sacks, a philosopher who seeks to confront and offer solutions to the numerous problems besetting Judaism and its confrontation with modernity. In addition, the reader will also encounter an important social philosopher and proponent of interfaith dialogue, who (...) articulates how it is possible to cultivate a culture of civility based on the twin notions of the dignity of difference and the ethic of responsibility. Jonathan Sacks has been Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from September 1991 to September 2013 and a member of the House of Lords since 2009. (shrink)

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Michael L. Morgan is Emeritus Chancellor Professor at Indiana University and the Grafstein Visiting Chair in Jewish Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He has written extensively on ancient Greek philosophy, modern Jewish philosophy, and post-Holocaust theology and ethics.

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Tamar Ross, Professor of Jewish Philosophy at Bar-Ilan University, is a constructive theologian who has made original and important contributions to feminist Orthodoxy.

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Hume devised a third way between Hobbes and Locke that bolstered the former’s defense of stability and the latter’s defense of rebellion. This feat remains underappreciated. Hume’s third way rests on the idea of the public conscience, which, like Hobbes’s idea of the public conscience, derives from communication and consensus. The public conscience orients us toward the public interest, which, in Hume’s theory, is the authoritative standard by which individuals and government alike must abide. In this paper, I elaborate on (...) the moral psychological principles that underlie Hume’s concept of the public conscience, which is liable to both conservative liberal and progressive liberal interpretations. And I argue that Hume’s third way provides valuable insight into the logic of public political discourse in liberal societies. (shrink)

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This chapter focuses on the ethical theories of the early modern philosophers Thomas Hobbes, Justus Lipsius, Descartes, Spinoza, Benjamin Whichcote, Lord Shaftesbury, and Samuel Clarke. The discussions include aspects of Hobbes' moral philosophy that posed a challenge for many philosophers of the second half of the seventeenth century who were committed to philosophy as a form of self-help; Lipsius and Descartes' appropriation of ancient and Hellenistic moral philosophy in connection with changing ideas about control of the passions and the happiest (...) and best life; and the maxim or epigram – a literary form used by moralists to counsel readers on how to best know and govern themselves. (shrink)

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From the bestselling author of Assholes: A Theory, a book that--in the tradition of Shopclass as Soulcraft, Barbarian Days and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance--uses the experience and the ethos of surfing to explore key concepts in philosophy. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once declared "the ideal limit of aquatic sports...is waterskiing." The avid surfer and lavishly credentialed academic philosopherAaron James vigorously disagrees, and in Surfing with Sartre he intends to expound the thinking surfer's view of (...) the matter, in the process elucidating such philosophical categories as freedom, being, phenomenology, morality, epistemology, and even the emerging values of what he terms "leisure capitalism." In developing his unique surfer-philosophical worldview, he draws from his own experience of surfing and from surf culture and lingo, and includes many relevant details from the lives of the philosophers, from Aristotle to Wittgenstein, with whose thought he engages. In the process, he'll speak to readers in search of personal and social meaning in our current anxious moment, by way of doing real, authentic philosophy. (shrink)

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With his third book on Peirce in fewer than eight years, Richard Atkins has quickly established himself as a scholar who contributes high-quality, focused, and detailed accounts of diverse areas of Peirce's thought. His first book on Peirce, Peirce and the Conduct of Life (2016), focuses on ethics and religion, while the focus of his second, Charles S. Peirce's Phenomenology (2018), is evident from the title. Now, Peirce on Inference: Validity, Strength, and the Community of Inquirers (2023) is a detailed (...) analysis of key parts of Peirce's logic—mainly the part of logic he called Critic, "which classifies arguments and determines the validity and degree of force of each kind" (EP 2:260). Perhaps what is remarkable... Read More. (shrink)

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Given the close relationship between the modern arms industry and the military, engineers and other professionals who work in the arms industry should be held accountable to the principles of just war theory. While they do not deploy weapons on the battlefield and are not in the military chain of command, technical professionals nonetheless have a moral duty to abide by principles of jus ad bellum and jus in bello. They are morally responsible both for choosing the companies that employ (...) them (and to whom these companies sell arms) and a well as what types of arms they develop. (shrink)

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Jordi Fernández has recently responded to my objection that his 'extrospectionist' account of self-knowledge posits necessary and sufficient conditions for introspective justification which are neither necessary nor sufficient. I show that my criticisms survive his response unscathed.

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Humean Supervenience is the view that (a) there are a plurality of fundamental beings, (b) there are no inexplicable constraints on modal space, and hence the fundamental nature of each such being is independent of those of all the rest and of the fundamental relations in which it stands to the rest, (c) the fundamental beings stand in no fundamental causal or nomic relations, and hence (d) the distribution of any causal or nomic relations in which they do stand globally (...) supervenes on their fundamental natures and the non‐nomic, non‐causal fundamental relations in which they stand. If Humean Supervenience is true, then as A.J. Ayer put it, it's just one damn thing after another. Radical Pluralism is the view that Humean Supervenience is true, and, moreover, that none of the fundamental beings stands in any fundamental relations at all. If Radical Pluralism is true, then, as William James puts it, the world's pieces are held together by nothing more than conjunction: it's just one damn thing and another. I argue that Radical Pluralism is very likely true, conditional upon Humean Supervenience. Any philosopher pluralist enough to be Humean ought to be radically pluralistic. (shrink)

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Humans have now amassed a sizable knowledge of widespread, nonconscious cognitive biases which affect our behavior, especially in social and economic contexts. I contend that a democratic government is uniquely justified in using knowledge of cognitive biases to promote pro-democratic behavior, conditionally justified in using it to accomplish ends traditionally within the scope of government authority, and unjustified in using it for any other purpose. I also contend that the government ought to redesign institutional infrastructure to avoid triggering cognitive biases (...) where it is not permitted intentionally to manipulate such biases and to optimize the effects of such biases where permissible. I shall use the United States of America as an example throughout, but my conclusions apply equally to any democracy which values the political autonomy of its populace. (shrink)

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This volume examines some of the most contentious social justice issues present in the corpus of Augustine's writings. Whether one is concerned with human trafficking and the contemporary slave trade, the global economy, or endless wars, these essays further the conversation on social justice as informed by the writings of Augustine of Hippo.

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The third and fourth parts sketch aspects and difficulties of such a philosophy. Part III is concerned with the overcoming of the metaphysical negativity inherent in the conception of phenomena as appearances. Nietzsche's use of the Dionysian "mask" in his later thought is examined with respect to precisely such an overcoming. The affirmative relation of mask and masked and the problem of philosophical unmasking as affirmation arise as elements unique to the latest phase of Nietzsche's thought and are discussed in (...) analyses of several of the Dionysus Dithyrambs as well as texts from Beyond Good and Evil and Twilight of the Idols. Part IV explores the philosophical affirmation contained within the exhibition of the mask as mask through unmasking. ;The appendices contain extended discussions of particular textual problems as well as translations of selected fragments--hitherto untranslated or only partially translated--from Nietzsche's notebooks in the last productive decade of his life. ;The following study is an attempt to arrive at an understanding of Nietzsche's thought in terms that are internal to that thought itself. The concept of "affirmation" was chosen as an appropriate one because of its central place in Nietzsche's description of his own thought in opposition to the nihilistic movement of previous philosophy. ;The first part of the dissertation is a detailed discussion of Schopenhauer's philosophy, a philosophy which culminates in the question of the "affirmation or negation of the will to life." In our exposition we are able to see not merely the connection of Schopenhauerian pessimism and philosophical nihilism, as understood by Nietzsche, but, as significantly, the way in which the philosophical tradition is positively present in this philosophy. The constructive nature of knowledge, the negative source of activity, the "identity" of art all lead to the final truth of the "nothing." The relation of Schopenhauer's apparently willful and arbitrary conceptions to the history of philosophy is emphasized throughout this first part which, despite this historical interest, attempts to arrive at an immanent understanding of this philosophy. ;The second part concerns itself with the Birth of Tragedy, but is as much an elaboration, extension and application of certain aspects of this book to other elements of Nietzsche's thought as it is an analysis of the book. The Birth of Tragedy's ambiguous connection with Schopenhauer is first discussed, particularly as concerns the central theme of "tragic affirmation" as affirmation of the totality. The ontological obscurities of the divine pair Apollo-Dionysus are discussed, and the "spirit of music" that generates tragedy, the Dionysian spirit of affirmation, is contrasted with the Platonic daimon of Eros. The problem of Dionysos mousikos as Dionysos philosophos emerges in this part. (shrink)

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Jewish Philosophy for the Twenty-First Century showcases living Jewish thinkers who produce innovative ideas taking into consideration theology, hermeneutics, politics, ethics, science and technology, law, gender, and ecology.

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Norbert M. Samuelson is Harold and Jean Grossman Chair of Jewish Studies at Arizona State University. Trained in analytic philosophy, he has contributed to the professionalization of Jewish philosophy in America and to the field of religion and science.

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While the idea of a cosmopolitan order embracing all humankind is ancient, after the Cold War it was widely believed to be an emerging future. As global interdependence and interaction through new technologies increased, literature of cosmopolitan globalization argued that these changes were setting the stage for a structural transformation of world politics. Yet, a revolt against globalism and increasingly divisive and unstable international order has dramatically contradicted this idea. This presents a puzzle for International Relations theory: Why have attempts (...) to construct cosmopolitan order struggled to emerge in the modern global world? Cosmopolitan Imaginaries and International Disorder argues that advocacy for cosmopolitan order reform in the modern world has struggled to recognize the political identities of states and populations and to legitimize its proposed political hierarchies. As a result, these efforts have been overwhelmed by states shoring up their power and remobilizing exclusionary nationalist identities, especially when struggles are intensified in contexts of international instability and economic turmoil. In developing a theory to explain these patterns of cosmopolitan politics, this book offers insight into the limits and role of cosmopolitanism in a dividing international order after liberal globalism. (shrink)

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Heidegger's Being and Time is widely regarded as his most important work and it has profoundly influenced twentieth-century philosophy. This Critical Guide examines Being and Time through the lens of phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, metaphysics, epistemology, and feminist philosophy.

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