New Books in Philosophy

Many of the longstanding debates in moral philosophy concern the question of where more theorizing should begin. Some hold that moral theories should start with definitions of moral terms like good; others contend instead that we should begin by identifying the conditions under which an action is right; still others maintain that one must start by developing a procedure for deciding what acts to perform. The thought is that once a theory accounts for whatever is properly first, the rest of morality simply falls into place. In Exemplarist Moral Theory (Oxford University Press, 2017), Linda Zagzebski proposes a new starting place for moral theory, and thus a new approach to morality. Her view begins with an analysis of the phenomenon of admiring exemplars. Zagzebski argues that once we understand what it is to admire another and what exemplars are, we can account for the broad range of other moral concepts, including goodness, duty, and right action. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Many environmentalists approach the problem of motivating environmentally friendly behavior from the perspective that nature is good and that we ought to act so as to maximize the good environmental consequences of our actions and minimize the bad ones. An environmental activist turned academic philosopher, Benjamin Hale argues against this dominant consequentialist approach towards environmentalism in favor of a Kantian view. In The Wild and the Wicked: On Nature and Human Nature (MIT Press, 2016), Hale, who is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy at the University of Colorado-Boulder, argues that we ought to act in environmentally friendly ways because it is the right thing to do. On his view, environmentally friendly action is motivated by reflecting on our reasons for acting, guided by a concern that our actions be acceptable to a wide range of parties. In this accessible discussion intended for a wide audience, Hale provides a fresh philosophical grounding for thinking about human action and inaction regarding the environment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Humans engage in a wide variety of collective behaviors, ranging from simple customs like wearing a heavy coat in winter to more complex group actions, as when an audience gives applause at the close of a musical performance. Some of these collective behaviors are cases of imitation, of doing what others do. In other cases, the behavior is driven by individuals’ expectations about what certain people both do and believe others should do. When confronting real-world cases where groups act in ways that are problematic and harmful, it matters a great deal which kind of mechanism underlies the behavior. This is especially the case for those who seek to change the groups’ behavior. In Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure, and Change Social Norms (Oxford University Press, 2017), Cristina Bicchieri (University of Pennsylvania) lays out a nuanced theory of group behavior, establishes means for measuring individuals’ sensitivity to social norms, and explores the ways in which interventions can be designed to change social norms. The book grows out of her collaboration with UNICEF and other NGO’s devoted to initiating social change in the developing world. The details of Bicchieri’s theory of social norms are explored in her Coursera courses on “Social Norms, Social Change I” and “Social Norms, Social Change II.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

The idea that the sciences can’t be unified–that there will never be a single ‘theory of everything’–is the current orthodoxy in philosophy of science and in many sciences as well. But different versions of pluralism present very different views of what exactly they are pluralistic about, why sciences cannot be unified, and what the failure of unification entails about the world and about our knowledge of it. In Scientific Pluralism Reconsidered: A New Approach to the Dis(unity) of Science (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017), Stephanie Ruphy untangles and examines a number of different issues within the pluralist camp. Ruphy, who is professor of philosophy at Universite Grenoble-Alpes, argues for a “foliated pluralism” in ontology and for the relativity of knowledge claims and our representations of the world to historical features and epistemic interests. She also critically examines anti-reductionist arguments in terms of the generality of their conclusions and whether they support the inference from disunity to disorder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

The idea that a political order derives its authority, legitimacy, and justification from some kind of initial agreement or contract, whether hypothetical or tacit, has been a mainstay of political philosophy, at least since Hobbes. Today, the leading approach to theorizing justice–John Rawls’ conception of “justice as fairness”– employs a contract doctrine, albeit of a somewhat modified kind. There, too, the idea is that an initial agreement, struck under special conditions of fairness, settles the principles of justice that will govern a society. The fundamental thought driving social contract theories is undeniably intuitive: What else could justify social rules and principles but the agreement of those who are to live under them? But, of course, there are fairly obvious problems with the very idea of a hypothetical prosocial fair agreement that results in principles and rules to govern actual societies. In Social Contract Theory for a Diverse World: Beyond Tolerance (Routledge, 2017), Ryan Muldoon (SUNY Buffalo) launches an original kind of criticism of social contract theory, both in its classical and current formulations. According to Muldoon, extant social contract theories do not take sufficient account of diversity. Muldoon then proposes a revised version of social contract theory, and also a reorientation in political philosophy itself. In Muldoon’s hands, social contract theory is not aimed primarily at the production and justification of principles of justice; rather, the social contract is a tool of discovery in an ongoing social experiment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Are complex phenomena “nothing but the sum of their parts”, or are they “more than the sum of their parts”? Physicists, chemists, and biologists as well as philosophers have long argued on both sides of this debate between the idea of reduction and that of emergence. At this point, argues Carl Gillett, the sides have reached a stalemate, where it is difficult to know in what ways the sides fundamentally disagree about the nature of the relation between a composite whole and its parts. In Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Gillett aims to break the stalemate by providing needed clarification about what divides contemporary reductionists from contemporary emergentists, and lays out the strongest positions on each side. Gillett, who is professor of philosophy at Northern Illinois University, uses his framework to provide a platform for future philosophical and scientific inquiry, helping reorient the debate towards fruitful empirical tests that might provide evidence for one view over the other, and point the way towards new issues regarding the nature of collectives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

The philosopher (and 1972 presidential candidate) John Hospers once wrote, “justice is getting what one deserves. What could be simpler?” As it turns out, this seemingly simple idea is in the opinion of many contemporary political philosophers complicated enough to be implausible. According to many these theorists, the question of what one deserves is no less vexed than the question of what justice requires. Some even hold that the question of what one deserves can be answered only by reference to a conception of justice. Accordingly, it seems as if a defense of Hospers’ simple idea requires a lot of effort. In Distributive Justice: Getting What We Deserve from Our Country (Oxford University Press, 2016), Fred Feldman provides an original version of desertism, the view according to which justice prevails in a society when all of its members get what they deserve from whatever entity has the job of enacting justice. He forcefully argues that, once it is articulated with the requisite nuance and precision, desertism is an attractive conception of distributive justice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Psychological and philosophical theories of the emotions tend to take the adult emotional repertoire as the paradigm case for understanding the emotions. From this standpoint, the emotions are usually distinguished into two categories: the basic emotions, like fear or happiness, and the higher cognitive emotions, like shame or pride. In her new book, Becoming Human: The Ontogenesis, Metaphysics, and Expression of Human Emotionality (MIT Press, 2016), Jennifer Greenwood challenges this standard division and related distinctions, such as which emotions are innate or learned. Greenwood, who is academic tutor in philosophy, education, and nursing at the University of Queensland, argues that there is just one natural kind, emotions, that develop from common precursor states by means of deeply interactive relations between the assistance-soliciting infant or child and the assistance-providing caregiver. This deep functional interaction justifies her claim that the emotions are a case of extended cognition, as well as the view that language mediates emotional ontogenesis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

We are all familiar with the idea that some persons are disabled. But what is disability? What makes it such that a condition–physical, cognitive, psychological–is a disability, rather than, say, a disease or illness? Is disability always and intrinsically bad? Are disabilities things to be cured? Might disabilities be merely ways of being different? And what role should the testimony and experiences of disabled persons play in addressing these questions? In The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability (Oxford University Press, 2016) Elizabeth Barnes argues that, at least for a range of physical conditions characterized as disabilities, disabilities are merely ways in which bodies can be different, not ways of their being intrinsically badly off. She argues that this view of disability as mere difference has important implications for broader moral and social issues concerning disabled persons; she also argues that her view is better able to respect the experiences and testimony of disabled persons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Andy Clark, author of 'Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and Embodied Mind', discusses the predictive processing hypothesis and its relation to embodied cognition, attention modulation, and perceptual experience. They explore the role of top-down models, traditional debates in philosophy, and the relevance of the Cartesian evil demon in embodied cognition. They also delve into the cognitive penetrability of perception, implicit biases, and the importance of good information in minimizing prediction error.