New Books in Philosophy

At the heart of our moral thinking lies trouble with our selves.  The self lies at morality’s core; selves are intimately connected to the proper objects of moral evaluation.  But a common theme of moral theory is that the self, and concern with the self, is the source of much that is immoral: selfishness, greed, vanity, arrogance, envy, and so on.  Many moral views that otherwise are opposed to each other seem to agree that being good requires some kind of dissociation with the self.  And the transcending of the self is a central theme of our most popular religious traditions. Yet selves are not going away.  Indeed, culturally the self is increasingly dominant.  We now use the first-personal pronouns as a prefixes: we use iPods to listen to iTunes, and use our iPhones to take “selfies.” And all of this self-assertion seems connected to social ills stemming from lack of concern with other selves.  The question, then, is how to discern the proper degree of self-regard. In Mirror, Mirror: The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love (Princeton University Press, 2014), Simon Blackburn explores the complex phenomena surrounding selves and self-regard, offering deep insights into notions like pride, ambition, vanity, authenticity, and much else. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

The prediction error minimization hypothesis is the first grand unified empirical theory about how the brain implements the mind. The hypothesis, which is as bold as it is controversial, proposes to explain the mind via one core mechanism: a process of comparing predicted sensory input with actual input, updating our hypotheses in light of the difference, and generating new predictions. In The Predictive Mind (Oxford University Press), Jakob Hohwy introduces this theory to a wider audience, develops the theory’s explanation of perception, and explores its potential for explaining consciousness, attention, representation, and mental illness. In this interview, Hohwy, who is associate professor of philosophy at Monash University, considers how the theory turns the traditional view of perception on its head and addresses its implications for the relation between cognition and perception and the possibility of knowledge of the external world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

According to a longstanding tradition in ethical theory, the primary subject of moral evaluation is the person, or, more specifically, the person’s character.  Aristotle stands at the head of this tradition, and he held that moral theory must take as its center a theory of the good man; he hence devised an elaborate conception of the virtues–those dispositions and traits constitutive of the good life for human beings.  Virtue ethics thrives to this day.  In fact, virtue theorizing has been applied to other normative domains, including especially epistemology. In Character as Moral Fiction (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Mark Alfano investigates the ways in which virtue ethics and epistemology are affected by recent results from behavioral sciences that call into question the idea that humans sustain stable and robust character traits.  Drawing on a range of empirical data, Alfano suggests a reinterpretation of the virtues.  Rather than seeing them as steady and fixed dispositions to act across a broad range of situations, Alfano argues that virtue attributions be seen more as self-fulfilling prophecies: when we properly attribute courage to a person, we heighten her tendency to behave in courageous ways.  Alfano then extends this account to the intellectual virtues discussed by virtue epistemologists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Philosophy of science has come a very long way from its historically rooted focus on theories, explanations, and evidential relations in physics elaborated in terms of a rather mythical “theory T”. But even in philosophy of biology, attention has largely been on the concepts and abstract mathematics of evolutionary biology, not the in-the-trenches work of cell biology. Melinda B. Fagan, associate professor of philosophy at Rice University, stakes out new ground in Philosophy of Stem Cell Biology: Knowledge in Flesh and Blood (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), which was recently selected as an outstanding academic title by Choice magazine. Fagan examines the interplay of experimental manipulation of cells and tissues with the mathematical modeling of cells and their developmental landscapes, and the interaction between the methods and goals of scientific knowledge production with the practical therapeutic goals of clinical medicine. She discusses the basic concepts of stem cell biology, its experimental and collaborative methods, and its models, and considers how these features alter our thinking about evidence, explanation, causality, unification, and the role of values in science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Many of our goals and aspirations in life depend upon our epistemological capabilities.  Our attempts to do the right thing or live a good life can be greatly hampered if we are unable to form true beliefs and resist false ones.  Consequently, we have good reason to seek to be epistemologically healthy. Yet we know that as fallible creatures we are prone to a wide variety of systematic errors and pitfalls.  So we should seek to improve ourselves epistemically.  However, we also know that our reasoning is vulnerable to dysfunctions that we find hard to detect in ourselves. And even if they are detected, these dysfunctions are difficult to correct.  What should we do? In Epistemic Paternalism: A Defence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij makes the case that we cannot rely on ourselves for epistemic improvement, but must endorse a general policy of epistemic paternalism.  Epistemic paternalism, he says, is the policy of interfering with an agent’s inquiry, for the epistemic good of the agent, without need of the agent’s consent.  This is an engaging and rigorously argued book.  Let’s turn to the interview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

From political campaigns to sports stadiums and hospital rooms, the concept of hope is pervasive. And the story we tend to tell ourselves about hope is that it is intrinsically a good thing — in many ways we still tend to think of hope as a kind of virtue. Hence we talk about hopes being dashed or crushed; and we speak as if losing hope is an unmitigated bad. We also talk about false hope, which is a kind of misfortune rather than a blemish on hope’s moral ledger. Hope is deeply bound up with our moral lives. But, perhaps surprisingly, there has been little sustained philosophical attention paid to hope as a moral phenomenon. In How We Hope: A Moral Psychology (Princeton University Press, 2013), Adrienne Martin presents a distinctive and compelling philosophical analysis of hope. Hoping, she argues, involves the taking of one’s attraction for an outcome that one judges unlikely to eventuate to supply reasons for acting in various ways. Her “incorporation” view of hope enables Martin to establish fascinating philosophical connections between hope, imagination, practical reason, and even “secular” faith. This is a little book that advances a lot of big ideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

The medieval Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides’ most famous work, The Guide of the Perplexed, has been interpreted variously as an attempt to reconcile reason and religion, as a guide to philosophers on ruling the community while concealing the truth, or as an exegesis of rabbinical texts. In The Matter and Form of Maimonides’ Guide (Harvard University Press, 2013), Josef Stern provides an entirely distinct reading of this singular work. Stern, William H. Colvin Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago and Director of the Chicago Center for Jewish Studies, argues that for Maimonides, reason and religion are just one domain, not two that need to be reconciled; that biblical parable is a literary device used to articulate our incomplete understanding of truths about general welfare and individual happiness; and that Maimonides is primarily motivated by the question of what the best attainable human life can be given our embodied nature. The Guide is in effect a primer that trains the reader to tease apart the multiple meanings of biblical texts – even though these exercises will not yield knowledge of metaphysics and cosmology, including knowledge of God. Stern combines deep familiarity with Maimonides, his works, and his intellectual environment with expertise in contemporary philosophy of language in this major contribution to historical-philosophical scholarship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

The trolley problem is a staple of contemporary moral philosophy.  It centers around two scenarios involving a runaway trolley.  In the first, a trolley is barreling down a track without any brakes; off in the distance five people are tied to the track.  If you do nothing, they will be killed by the trolley.  But you can flip a switch, thereby turning the trolley onto a spur, where there is only one person tied.  In this case, most people claim that one should indeed save the five by turning the trolley, even though this means that the one will be killed. But consider the second case, which is like the first but for this difference: there is no spur onto which one could turn the trolley, but one could push a fat man onto the track whose size is sufficient to stop the trolley from killing the five.  Again: Should you push the fat man, thereby saving five lives at the expense of one? Here, most people’s intuition flips: You may not push the fat man.  But why not?  What is the difference between the first and second cases?  This is the question at the core of trolleyology.  And philosophers have explored the complexities of these (and many, many other) trolley scenarios for several decades running. In his new book, Would You Kill the Fat Man? (Princeton University Press, 2014), David Edmonds tells the story of trolleyology, bringing into focus all of the crucial philosophical distinctions that must be made if we are to understand it and canvassing the related empirical literature about real-time moral decision-making.  This book is a work of rigorous philosophy that is also widely accessible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Neoplatonists, including the 11th century Jewish philosopher-poet Solomon Ibn Gabirol, are often saddled with a cosmology considered either as outdated science or a kind of “invisible floating Kansas” in which spatiotemporal talk isn’t really about space or time. Sarah Pessin, Associate Professor of Philosophy and the Emil and Eva Hecht Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Denver, is committed to upending these traditional readings. In Ibn Gabirol’s Theology of Desire: Matter and Method in Jewish Medieval Neoplatonism (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Pessin begins her reappraisal from the ground up, interpreting neoplatonist cosmo-ontology as a response to the Paradox of Divine Unity: of how God can be both complete yet also give way to that which is other than Himself. Pessin argues that Ibn Gabirol saw being and beings as emanating from God via a process of divine desire – a kind of pre-cognitive, essential yearning to share His goodness forward. This desire infuses the initial Grounding Element, a positive conception of matter that (contrary to standard views) is prior to and superior to soul and intellect and utterly distinct from Aristotle’s notion of Prime Matter. Pessin’s provocative book is full of surprising insights that reveal the richness of the ideas of a “completely mischaracterized” figure and period. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

It is commonly assumed that states have a right to broad discretionary control over immigration, and that they may decide almost in any way they choose, who may stay within the territory and who must leave.  But even supposing that there is such a right, we may ask the decidedly moral question about how it may be exercised.  And this query calls us to try to bring our views about the ethics of immigration into equilibrium with our other moral convictions about citizenship, liberty, and equality.   Can our common views and practices concerning immigration be rendered consistent with these deeper commitments? In The Ethics of Immigration (Oxford University Press, 2013), Joseph Carens argues that our common commitment to democratic principles requires us to revise much of our thinking about immigration.  Beginning with the uncontroversial practice of granting citizenship immediately to those born within a country’s territory, Carens argues that claims to social membership and thus to citizenship strengthen as individuals stay in a state; consequently, there is a point at which not extending citizenship to those living within a state’s borders is grossly immoral, even for those who have settled without the state’s permission.  Carens’ arguments about the moral constraints on the state’s rights to exclude eventuate in an argument in favor of open borders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy