New Books in Philosophy

The basic problem of free will is quite simple to pose: do we ever act freely? One of the traditional “no” answers comes from the idea that we live in a deterministic universe, such that everything that happens had to happen given the initial conditions of the universe and the laws governing its unfolding since then. A contemporary variant goes something like this: we’re predetermined to do what we do because our minds arise from brain activity and brain activity is just a special kind of physical activity. In A Metaphysics for Freedom (Oxford, 2012), Helen Steward attempts to undermine the fundamentals of this mechanistic view with an alternative that she calls Agency Incompatibilism. On Steward’s view, the concept of agency is very close to that of animacy, and includes the concept of being able to settle what happens, when and how with one’s body. Since settling matters implies that they are not determined, agency is incompatible with determinism, and since there are agents, determinism must be false. That is, it is not up to physics to tell us whether determinism is true. Moreover, she denies that the causal efficacy nature of agency should be explicated in terms of events going on inside agents. With this subtly argued book, Steward assumes a leading role in a new non-mechanistic movement in the metaphysics of mind and mental causation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Justice requires that each person gets what he or she deserves. Luck is a matter of good or bad things simply befalling people; hence luck distributes to people things they do not deserve. Justice must then be in the business of morally correcting the impact of luck on individuals’ lives. This is an extremely simplified articulation of a popular–and in certain philosophical circles infamous–conception of justice called luck egalitarianism. As a kind of egalitarianism, luck egalitarianism holds that justice requires something to be distributed equally, and various versions of the doctrine disagree about what this is. The luck in luck egalitarianism holds that justice requires that individuals not be advantaged (or disadvantaged) for features of their lives that have simply befallen them as a matter of good (or bad) luck; rather, social advantage (and disadvantage) should be tied to an individual’s choices. This basic principle of luck egalitarianism seems intuitive. The difficulty lies in building a conception of social justice upon it. Three pressing details confronting the luck egalitarian are the site, ground, and scope of egalitarian justice. These correspond, roughly to the following three questions: (1) to what do egalitarian principles of justice apply?; (2) Why does equality matter?; and (3) To whom are egalitarian duties of justice owed? In his new book, Justice, Institutions, and Luck: The Site, Ground, and Scope of Equality (Oxford University Press, 2012), Kok-Chor Tan articulates and defends an original conception of luck egalitarianism according to which (1) egalitarian principles of justice apply to social institutions rather than to the whole of social life; (2) equality matters because there is a fundamental moral distinction between luck and choice; and (3) duties of justice are not bounded by state borders, but are owed globally. In developing his view, Tan responds to luck egalitarianism’s critics and launches compelling critiques of its competitors. The book hence provides the reader with both a detailed roadmap of the current debates over egalitarianism and a state-of-the-art formulation of a distinctive egalitarian conception of justice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

We often explain actions and beliefs by citing the reasons for which they are done or believed. The reason I took off my hat at the funeral was because I was paying respect to the deceased. The reason I believed that taking off my hat was appropriate was because I believed that the deceased deserved respect. So much is part of what is sometimes called the space of reasons and reason-giving – a space that people occupy but objects like apples don’t. We can explain an apple’s falling because the wind blew strongly, but the explanation doesn’t require us to ascribe any reasons to the apple. Acting for reasons is reserved for creatures with minds. But what is the difference in the “because” when we say that I took off my hat because I was paying my respects and that the apple fell because the wind blew? How is this difference to be explained? Eric Marcus, associate professor of philosophy at Auburn University, takes on this complex question in his book Rational Causation (Harvard University Press, 2012). The orthodox answer assimilates rational causation to the same causal picture we use for apples. Marcus challenges the physicalistic framework in which this answer is embedded, and argues for a position that is neither reductive nor dualistic. On his view, rational causation is a kind of difference-making that involves the exercise of special rational abilities. As a result of these abilities, minds make a robust causal difference to what we do and believe that is independent of the way in which minds depend on brains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

From the time we are children, we are encouraged to see our lives as in large measure aimed at finding a spouse. In popular media, the unmarried adult is seen as suspicious, unhealthy, and pitiable. At the same time, marriage is portrayed as necessary for a healthy and flourishing adult life. And we often see the event of a wedding to have a morally transforming power over the individuals who get married. But with only a little bit of reflection, our popular conception of the meaning and significance of marriage begins to look problematic. Is marriage really so different from other kinds of interpersonal relations that it should be accorded such a central place in our popular views about adulthood? Are those who happen to never fall in love and so never get married really doomed to an inferior or morally impoverished kind of life? And when one considers the significant social and legal benefits, rights, and privileges that accrue to individuals in virtue of their being married the standard picture seems all the more objectionable. These thoughts have led some to conclude that marriage should be disestablished as a civic status. In Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law (Oxford University Press, 2012), Elizabeth Brake criticizes the popular view of marriage as intrinsically dyadic, heterosexual, and focused on romantic love and sexual exclusivity. She also rejects the idea that marriage is a unique kind of moral relation, one that differs in kind from friendships and other kinds of caring relationships. Brake also challenges the current political and legal significance that currently attaches to marriage. Yet she also rejects marriage disestablishment; employing arguments drawing from John Rawls’s later work, Brake opts instead for a conception of minimal marriage in which marriage is conceived as a relation between two or more people for purposes of mutual care. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

We’ve all heard about scientific revolutions, such as the change from the Ptolemaic geocentric universe to the Copernican heliocentric one. Such drastic changes are the meat-and-potatoes of historians of science and philosophers of science. But another perspective on them is from the point of view of cognition. For example, how do scientists come up with breakthroughs? What happens when a scientist confronts a new theory that conflicts with an established one? In what ways does her belief system change, and what factors can impede her acceptance of the new theory? In his latest book, The Cognitive Science of Science (MIT Press, 2012), Paul Thagard considers the nature of science from this cognitive scientific perspective. Thagard, who is a professor of philosophy at the University of Waterloo, presents a comprehensive view of such aspects of scientific thinking as the process of discovery and creativity, the nature of change in scientific beliefs, and the role of emotions and values in these processes. He defends an explanatory coherence model of belief revision, proposes a model for explaining resistance to new scientific ideas, and even suggests why so much creative thinking goes on in the shower. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Modern society seems in awe of the advances of science and technology. We commonly praise innovations that enable us to live longer and more comfortable lives, we look forward to the release of new gadgets, we seek out new ways to employ technology in our everyday lives. These developments depend upon a set of intellectual practices that are commonly associated with the methods of the natural sciences. We are able to invent and create precisely because we are able to gather evidence and reason competently. But this fascination with technology and science is accompanied by various forms of skepticism about reason itself. Some hold that reason is a kind of Promethean hubris. Others claim that what passes for reason is really just rationalization or power. Still others contend that reason is at best of limited value, and that other, non-rational, sources of cognitive guidance are more authoritative than reason. Michael Lynch‘s new book, In Praise of Reason (The MIT Press, 2012), launches a compelling and deeply engaging defense of the idea that our cognitive lives are properly managed when they are aimed at believing in accordance with reason. In making his case for reason, Lynch emphasizes the importance of reason for the maintenance of a democratic society. In Praise of Reason resides at the intersection of political philosophy and epistemology, and for this reason will be of interest to a wide range of philosophers and non-philosophers alike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Is your gender essential to who you are? If you were a man instead of a woman, or vice versa, would you be a different person? In her new bookThe Metaphysics of Gender (Oxford University Press, 2011), Charlotte Witt found that most people answered that obviously they’d be different if their gender differed – even though many feminist philosopher friends considered gender essentialism to be false. Thus a philosophical inquiry was born: what is gender essentialism, why might it be true, if it is true, and what consequences does this answer have for ourselves and societies? In this engaging volume, Witt – who is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of New Hampshire – argues that a certain form of gender essentialism is true. Gender is the social role that unifies us as social individuals, an ontological category distinct from both human organisms and persons. By distinguishing social individuals from persons, Witt hopes to promote the idea that the point of feminism is not giving women more choices, but about reconfiguring social roles so that they no longer oppress and exploit women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

We rarely stop to notice that our everyday social interactions are governed by a highly complex system of rules. Though often only implicit, there are rules governing how to board an elevator, how close one may stand to another when in conversation, when to bring a gift to a party, and how to maintain one’s privacy. These rules are simply taken for granted, and when we regard them at all, we typically see them merely as instruments for social coordination, ways of keeping out of each other’s way. Yet when others flout the rules–say, when someone cuts a long line that we have been waiting in at the coffee shop–we we feel not only that cooperation has broken down; we also tend to feel that in cutting the line, the cutter wronged us in some way. And so it goes for many of the rules pertaining to etiquette and manners, they have moral content. In On Manners (Routledge, 2011), Karen Stohr examines the morally complex world of etiquette. She maintains that rules of etiquette and manners are expressions of deeper moral principles. Considering a broad range of kinds of social contexts, Stohr develops a compelling account of the nature and philosophical significance of having good manners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

It’s standard in philosophy of mind to distinguish between two basic kinds of mental phenomena: intentional states, which are about or represent other items or themselves, such as beliefs about your mother’s new hairdo, and phenomenal states, such as feelings of pain or visual experiences of seeing red. It’s also hotly debated how to explain how both kinds of mental phenomena are part of a purely physical world. The dominant approach in recent decades is to explain the phenomenal in terms of the intentional and the intentional in terms of the physical causal – that is, to explain conscious experience in terms of intentionality and to explain intentionality in terms of causal relations between thinkers and what they are thinking about. In his new book, The Sources of Intentionality (Oxford University Press), Uriah Kriegel, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona, argues for a reversal of this order of explanation. On his view, conscious experience is basic to the explanation of all mental phenomena. In this erudite, stylish and provocative volume, Kriegel weighs the relative virtues of higher-order tracking and adverbial theories of experiential intentionality, and defends an interpretivist account of non-experiential intentionality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Popular culture is replete with warnings about the dangers of technology. One finds in recent films, literature, and music cautions about the myriad ways in which technology threatens our very humanity; most frequently, the lesson is that the attempt to harness technology for the betterment of the world always backfires. It’s no wonder, then, that when it comes to biomedical technologies that promise to enhance human physical and cognitive capacities, many people tend to express deep unease or opposition. But once one recognizes that technological enhancement, including biomedical enhancement, is ubiquitous throughout human history (from the technologies involved with cooking and storing food, to medicine and therapy, to even literacy itself), one wonders whether the common concerns are warranted. In Better than Human: The Promise and Perils of Enhancing Ourselves (Oxford University Press, 2011), Allen Buchanan surveys the contemporary enhancement debate, offers a diagnosis of what drives some of the views that he finds untenable, and proposes a nuanced view that fully recognizes the moral risks inherent in the enhancement enterprise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy