This paper analyzes the phenomenon of “intelligence divorced from wisdom” in modern high-entropy civilization from the perspective of scientific philosophical reflection. It argues that the true threat to civilization is not ignorance but highly intelligent individuals lacking wisdom and their cumulative systemic effects. In high-entropy civilizations, competition over technology, institutions, capital, and discourse rewards intelligence rather than wisdom, driving structural fragility, institutional hollowing, and systemic collapse. Through analysis of contemporary social phenomena, historical low-entropy experiments, and behavioral modeling in the film (...) Don’t Look Up, this study elucidates the operational logic of high-entropy civilization, the destructive effects of elite calculation, and the marginalization of wisdom in modern society. The research suggests that civilization can only reduce entropy and achieve sustainable development when intelligence is constrained by wisdom and aligned with natural laws. (shrink)

The question what moral status to ascribe to artificially intelligent entities, such as social robots, is at the forefront of academic debate. The related question as to how social AI affects the moral status we can ascribe to ourselves as human beings, by contrast, has received far less attention. Philosophers who discuss this issue propose a relational turn: human moral status should not be understood to be based on uniquely or typically human traits or capacities but derives from interpersonal interactions (...) and practices through which people come to respect and morally value others. The aim of this article is to set out how developments in the field of social AI pose a problem not only to traits-based accounts of (human) moral status, but also to the relational approach. Our ways of morally relating to others are often mistaken and social AI heightens this risk, as it is purposefully designed to evoke moral responses in humans by displaying traits and mirroring forms of interaction that we would ascribe moral relevance in relations with fellow humans or (non-human) animals. If we cannot take the moral appearance of interactions with social AI at face value, we need further normative grounds to distinguish relations in which moral status is properly ascribed from those where it is not. (shrink)

I argue that a little learning is often dangerous even for ideal reasoners who are operating in extremely simple scenarios and know all the relevant facts about how the evidence is generated. More precisely, I show that, on many plausible ways of assigning value to a credence in a hypothesis H, ideal Bayesians should sometimes expect other ideal Bayesians to end up with a worse credence if they gather additional evidence, even when they agree completely about the likelihoods of (...) the evidence given both H and not-H. This provides a new reason for pessimism about the prospect of disagreeing individuals resolving their disagreement by consulting additional evidence. (shrink)

דמיון מתחולל בחלקו מחוץ לראש באמצעות עזרים טכנולוגיים. עובדה זו כשלעצמה אינה חדשה, אולם ‏טכנולוגיות חדשות משנות את טיבו של הדמיון. מחוללי מדיה סינתטית, כגון דָאלִי, ופריטי מדיה סינתטיים, ‏כגון זיופים עמוקים (‏דיפ-פייקס; תמונות וסרטונים ריאליסטיים שנוצרו באופן אלגוריתמי ושמציגים אנשים ‏מבצעים או אומרים משהו שלא עשו או אמרו) מערערים על אמות המידה האפיסטמיות הבסיסיות שלנו. עם ‏זאת, טבעו של האיום האפיסטמי החדש הנשקף מהם נותר חמקמק, שכן ייצוגים בדיוניים או מעוותים של ‏המציאות הם עתיקים לפחות כמו הצילום עצמו. אפיונים (...) קיימים באפיסטמולוגיה חברתית של האיום הגלום ‏בזיופים עמוקים מתקשים לזהות מה בעצם חדש בו. למאמר זה שתי מטרות: לאפיין את האיום האפיסטמי ‏החדש הנשקף ממדיה סינתטית, ולזהות את התנאים שבהם פריט מדיה סינתטית הוא בעייתי מבחינה ‏אפיסטמית. אנו טוענים שהאיום האפיסטמי הגלום בזיופים עמוקים בפרט, ובמדיה סינתטית בכלל, הוא ‏שלראשונה למשתמשי מחשב רגילים זמינה האפשרות המעשית ליצור בזול וללא מאמץ עולמות בדיוניים שלא ‏ניתן להבחין ביניהם לבין העולם האמיתי ולשתפם בתפוצה רחבה. פריט מדיה סינתטי הוא רעיל מבחינה ‏אפיסטמית בהקשר נתון כאשר אדם בעל הכרה כלשהי של ההקשר עלול לבלבל את העולם הבדיוני המתואר בו ‏עם העולם הממשי או עם ייצוגים מהימנים שלו בנושאים בעלי חשיבות מוסרית או אפיסטמית. ‏ -/- Imagination takes place partly outside the mind, through technological aids. This fact is not new in ‎itself, but new technologies are changing the nature of imagination. Synthetic media generators, ‎such as DALL·E, and synthetic media items, such as deepfakes (realistic images and videos ‎algorithmically generated to depict people doing or saying things they never actually did or said), ‎challenge our fundamental epistemic standards. But the nature of the new epistemic threat they ‎pose remains elusive, since fictional or distorted representations of reality are at least as old as ‎photography itself. Existing characterizations in social epistemology of the threat posed by ‎deepfakes struggle to pinpoint what exactly is novel about it. This paper has two aims: to ‎characterize the new epistemic threat posed by synthetic media, and to identify the conditions ‎under which a synthetic media item is epistemically malignant or toxic. We argue that the ‎epistemic threat posed by deepfakes in particular, and by synthetic media more broadly, lies in the ‎unprecedented practicable possibility afforded to ordinary computer users to cheaply and ‎effortlessly create fictional worlds that are indistinguishable from the real world and share them ‎widely. A synthetic media item is epistemically toxic or malignant in a given context when a person ‎acquainted with the context is liable to confuse the fictional world depicted in it with the real ‎world or with credible representations thereof on matters of moral or epistemic significance.‎. (shrink)

A significant strand of the ethical psychology, aesthetics and politics of Plato's Republic revolves around the concept of poikilia, ‘fascinating variety’. Plato uses the concept to caution against harmful appetitive pleasures purveyed by democracy and such artistic or cultural practices as mimetic poetry. His aim, this article shows, is to contest a prominent conceptual connection between poikilia and beauty (kallos, to kalon). Exploiting tensions in the archaic and classical Greek concept, Plato associates poikilia with dangerous pleasures to redirect admiration (...) toward a distinctly philosophical pursuit of the nature of beauty. This is to displace a prominent and problematic cultural sensibility—the aesthetics of poikilia—not to deny that fascinating variety, even in mimetic poetry, may be beautiful. Rather, Plato's cultural critique lays bare an epistemological problem in the ethical psychology of beauty: since they cannot be distinguished from what seems beautiful, how should one respond to fascinating yet dangerous attractions? (shrink)

"Its publication should be a major event for cognitive linguistics and should pose a major challenge for cognitive science. In addition, it should have repercussions in a variety of disciplines, ranging from anthropology and psychology to epistemology and the philosophy of science.... Lakoff asks: What do categories of language and thought reveal about the human mind? Offering both general theory and minute details, Lakoff shows that categories reveal a great deal."—David E. Leary, American Scientist.

Comparisons have been made between the tobacco industry’s historic tactics in defending their products with the responses of some key actors in the sports world to head injuries. Both, it is said, have deployed deceptive marketing and advertising techniques to entice youth to engage with a subjective pleasure-producing product that has undeniable short- and long-term health detriments. Unlike what is called euphemistically, ‘Big Tobacco’, however, the National Football League (NFL) has evaded legal restrictions on the promotion of an inherently (...) class='Hi'>dangerous product that targets youth. By contrast, in 1997, the Federal Trade Commission charged tobacco company R.J. Reynolds with violating federal law by using a cartoon character, Joe Camel, to allure children under age 18. The NFL has partnered with Nickelodeon to produce programs such as NFL Rush Zone and NFL Slimetime that target youth by using cartoon mascots, bright colors, 3D iconography, and other child-friendly symbols. In addition to fostering positive associations between tackle football and cartoons, these broadcasts have explicitly minimized the risks of tackling. For example, one NFL Playoffs on Nickelodeon announcer equated a forceful head collision with a scrape of the knee that a child might experience during school recess. The NFL’s marketing strategies deflect public attention away from the risks of repetitive head collisions, concussions, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), portraying football as an appealing activity. The ongoing connections between the NFL and youth-oriented television programming raise crucial questions about how risk is communicated in a sport with inherent dangers of long-term cognitive damage. As long as tackle football is portrayed alongside beloved cartoon characters such as Spongebob Squarepants, impressionable children are likely to form undilutedly positive perceptions of the NFL and ignore the substantial risks of repeated, full-body collisions when enchanted by brightly-colored slime, animated bubbles, and goofy dance moves. (shrink)

Claims to self-determination are rife in world politics today. They range from Scottish and Catalonian campaigns for independence to calls for the devolution of power to regions and cities. But is self-determination meaningful or desirable in the twenty-first century, or merely a dangerous illusion? In this book, David Miller mounts a powerful defence of political self-determination. He explains why it is valuable and argues that geographic proximity alone is not enough for groups to have the capacity for self-determination: group (...) members must also identify with each other. He explores the different political forms that self-determination can take, and he suggests some realistic constraints on how it can be achieved, concluding that people exercising their collective agency is still both feasible and important. Anyone concerned by the theoretical issues raised by the various secessionist and nationalist movements around the world should read this book. (shrink)

Participants in dangerous nature sports, such as mountain and rock climbing, run the risk of serious injury and even death. To the extent that their risk-taking is self-regarding, respect for their autonomous choices goes a long way toward allaying moral concerns. In reality, though, other people, including rescuers and loved ones, are affected in the event of accidents and tragedies, and we need to weigh these effects against participants’ right to self-determination. The most interesting moral questions raised by (...) class='Hi'>dangerous nature sports pertain to potential violations of duties to oneself. Kant held that suicide and risking our lives is usually a violation of the respect that we owe to ourselves. Kant carved out an exception to his general condemnation of suicide – namely, when it is necessary to fulfill our moral duties. We can extend this exception to justify dangerous nature sport for participants for whom pushing themselves to the limits of their physical and mental resources is a major source of value, so much so that failing to do so would constitute a lack of integrity. However, this does not offer a blanket defense of dangerous nature sport, and particularly reckless instances may still violate our duties to self. (shrink)

According to one of the rivals, “poets do not create from knowledge but on the basis of certain natural talents and guided by divine inspiration, just like seers and the singers of oracles.”1 There is “a form of possession and madness, caused by the muses, that seizes a tender and untouched soul and inspires and stimulates it so that it educates by praising the deeds of ancestors in songs and in every other mode of poetry. Whoever knocks on the door (...) of poetry without the madness of the muses trusting that technique alone will make him a whole poet does not reach his aim; he and his poetry of reason disappear before the poetry of the madman.”2 Even knowledge cannot arise in a purely rational way. In his seventh letter Plato explains how “from a long and dedicated pursuit of the subject and from close companionship, [understanding] suddenly, like fire being kindled by a leaping spark, is born in the soul and straightaway finds nourishment in itself.”3 Thus understanding or building a work of art contains an element that goes beyond skill, technical knowledge, and talent. A new force takes hold of the soul and directs it, toward theoretical insight in one case, toward artistic achievement in the other.The view adumbrated in these quotations is very popular today. Interestingly enough it seems to receive support form the most rigorous and most advanced parts of the sciences. This rigor, it is pointed out, is but a transitory stage in a process which has much in common with what Plato envisaged. Of course, it is necessary to make some changes: Plato’s knowledge was stable while scientific knowledge progresses. Plato assumed that outside forces—madness, divine inspiration—impinge on the soul while the moderns let the appropriate ideas, images, emotions arise from the individual soul itself. But there seem to exist many reasons to recommend a Platonism that has been modified in this way.In the following essay I shall try to show that the reasons that have been given are invalid and that the view itself—the view that culture needs individual creativity—is not only absurd but also dangerous. To make my criticism as concrete as possible I shall concentrate on e specific group of arguments in its favor. And to make it as clear as possible I shall use arguments trying to show the role of individual creativity in the sciences. If these clear and detailed arguments fail, then the rhetoric emerging from more foggy areas will altogether lose its force. 1. Plato, Apology of Socrates 22c. Translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own2. Plato, Phaedrus 245a.3. Plato, Epistles 341c, d. Paul Feyerabend studied singing and opera production in Vienna, history of theater and theatrical production at the Institute for the Methodological Reform of the German Theater in Weimar, and physics, astronomy, and philosophy in Vienna. He has lectured on aesthetics, the history of science, and philosophy in Austria, Germany, England, New Zealand, and the United States. At the moment he holds a joint appointment at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. His books include Against Method , Erkenntnis für freie Menschen , and Philosophical Papers . Forthcoming works are Farewell to Reason and Stereotypes of Reality. (shrink)

Recent years have seen an upsurge of inflammatory speech around the world. Understanding the mechanisms that correlate speech with violence is a necessary step to explore the most effective forms of counterspeech. This paper starts with a review of the features of dangerous speech and ideology, as formulated by Jonathan Maynard and Susan Benesch. It then offers a conceptual framework to analyze some of the underlying linguistic mechanisms at play: derogatory language, code words, figleaves, and meaning perversions. It gives (...) a hypothesis for assessing the moral responsibility of interlocutors in dangerous speech situations. The last section applies this framework to a case of demagogic discourse. The framework offered explains how public discourse has harmed social relations and institutions, and is an obstacle to rational resolutions to the political situation. (shrink)

Clinicians frequently report being overworked. This is a problem that causes burnout and increased expenditures in the form of overtime pay (Char et al. 2026). One source of overwork for clinicians...

In a recent response to Persson & Savulescu’s Unfit for the Future, Nicholas Agar argues that moral bioenhancement is dangerous. His grounds for this are that normal moral judgement should be privileged because it involves a balance of moral subcapacities; moral bioenhancement, Agar argues, involves the enhancement of only particular moral subcapacities, and thus upsets the balance inherent in normal moral judgement. Mistaken moral judgements, he says, are likely to result. I argue that Agar’s argument fails for two reasons. (...) Firstly, having strength in a particular moral subcapacity does not necessarily entail a worsening of moral judgement; it can involve strength in a particular aspect of morality. Secondly, normal moral judgement is not sufficiently likely to be correct to be the standard by which moral judgements are measured. (shrink)

The age-old maxim of scientists whose work has resulted in deadly or dangerous technologies is: scientists are not to blame, but rather technologists and politicians must be morally culpable for the uses of science. As new technologies threaten not just populations but species and biospheres, scientists should reassess their moral culpability when researching fields whose impact may be catastrophic. Looking at real-world examples such as smallpox research and the Australian “mousepox trick”, and considering fictional or future technologies like Kurt (...) Vonnegut’s “ice-nine” from Cat’s Cradle, and the “grey goo” scenario in nanotechnology, this paper suggests how ethical principles developed in biomedicine can be adjusted for science in general. An “extended moral horizon” may require looking not just to the effects of research on individual human subjects, but also to effects on humanity as a whole. Moreover, a crude utilitarian calculus can help scientists make moral decisions about which technologies to pursue and disseminate when catastrophes may result. Finally, institutions should be devised to teach these moral principles to scientists, and require moral education for future funding. (shrink)

Who ought to hold claim to the more dangerous idea—Charles Darwin or C. S. Lewis? Daniel Dennett argued for Darwin in Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Offering careful, able development of Lewis's thought, Victor Reppert now champions C. S. Lewis, demonstrating that Lewis's "argument from reason" can bear up under the weight of the most serious philosophical attacks.

In this paper, the author addresses the persistent question of why, in an age of increased emphasis on athlete health and safety, dangerous sport persists and seems, in many ways, to resist calls for change from broader society. Building on Lev Kreft’s and Sandra Meeuwsen’s applications of Giorgio Agamben’s ‘state of exception’ concept to elite sport, Oldham demonstrates that the state of exception is a far more fundamental element present broadly within sport practice communities at all levels and narrowly (...) within individual sport contests. Drawing on Jon Pike’s theory of ‘essential actions’ and Emily Ryall’s positioning sport actions as the primary ‘risk bearing phenomena’, Oldham proposes that lasting and meaningful change to the practice of sport must account for a rules-norms-values entanglement that sanctions and perpetuates sport actions. Finally, he introduces the concept of ‘slow emergencies’ as a means of articulating the long-duration impact of risk of harm in sport and the ethical responsibility for action that recognition of such emergencies places on sport governing bodies. (shrink)

We are essentially a society of cells that come from a single cell, the fertilised egg. Research in cell biology has made major advances that are relevant to medicine and our understanding of life. Our understanding of the role of genes and proteins is impressive. But is this science dangerous? The whole of Western literature has not been kind to cell scientists and is filled with images of scientists meddling with nature, with disastrous results.1 Just consider Shelley’s Frankenstein, Goethe’s (...) Faust and Huxley’s Brave New World. One will search with very little success for a novel in which scientists come out well—the persistent image is that of scientists as a group unconcerned with ethical issues.There is a fear and distrust of cell science, particularly genetic engineering, leading to genetically modified foods, genetic modification of humans, cloning and stem cells. There is something of a revulsion in humankind’s meddling with nature and a longing for a Rousseauish-like return to golden age of innocence. There is anxiety that scientists lack both wisdom and social responsibility and are so motivated by ambition that they will follow their research anywhere, no matter what the consequences. Scientists are repeatedly referred to as “playing God”. Many of these criticisms coexist with the hope, particularly in medicine, that science will provide cures to all major illnesses, such as cancer, heart disease and genetic disabilities such as cystic fibrosis. But is cell science dangerous and what are the special social responsibilities of scientists? It is worth noting one irony: although scientists are blamed for making us live in a high-risk society, it is only because of science that we know about these risks, such as those related to health.The media must bear much of the responsibility for the misunderstanding of genetics as genetic pornography is, …. (shrink)

This book examines the threat that climate change poses to the projects of poverty eradication, sustainable development, and biodiversity preservation. It offers a careful discussion of the values that support these projects and a critical evaluation of the normative bases of climate change policy. This book regards climate change policy as a public problem that normative philosophy can shed light on. It assumes that the development of policy should be based on values regarding what is important to respect, preserve, and (...) protect. What sort of climate change policy do we owe the poor of the world who are particularly vulnerable to climate change? Why should our generation take on the burden of mitigating climate change that is caused, in no small part, by emissions from people now dead? What value is lost when natural species go extinct, as they may well do en masse because of climate change? This book presents a broad and inclusive discussion of climate change policy, relevant to those with interests in public policy, development studies, environmental studies, political theory, and moral and political philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I take side on externalist incompatibilism. However, I intend to radicalize the position. First, based on my criticism of Burge's anaphoric proposal, I argue that there is no reasoning‐transparency: the reasoner is blind to the reasoning he is performing. Second, assuming a global form of content‐externalism, I argue that “in the head” are only logical and formal abilities. That is what I call “bite the bullet and swallow it too.”.

This paper is partly to get rid of some irritation which I have felt at the quite common tendency of philosophers to elucidate ‘is red’ in terms of ‘looks red’. For a relatively recent example see, for example, Frank Jackson and Robert Pargetter, ‘An Objectivist′s Guide to Subjectivism about Colour’. However rather than try to make a long list of references, I would rather say ‘No names, no pack drill’. I have even been disturbed to find the use of the (...) words ‘looks red’ that I am opposing ascribed to me by Keith Campbell in his useful article ‘David Armstrong and Realism about Colour’. I am not saying that such talk is necessarily wrong. Talk of ‘looks red’ may be a way of harmlessly referring to the behavioural discriminations with respect to colour of a human percipient. Where it is dangerous, at least to those of us who wish to argue for a broadly physicalist account of the mind, is that it may have concealed overtones of reference to epiphenomenal and irreducibly psychic properties of experiences. Moreover even if it does not do so it may be fence sitting on this issue and liable to misinterpretation. (shrink)

As of January 25, 2006, readers have identified the following errors in Darwin's Dangerous Idea. (I have considered other criticisms offered by readers, but decided that they were in error. Further criticisms are, of course, invited.).

This study presents the Accra Confession as a theological response to the ecological crisis from a Reformed perspective while also addressing its critical weakness, namely the problem of universality in both Reformed ecclesiology and global approaches to ecological destruction. Because of a fragile universality, both Reformed churches and global institutions find it difficult to agree on a concrete plan to address climate change. Theologically, this difficulty arrives not primarily from disagreement with the existence or causes of climate change but how (...) Christian theological values translate concretely to acts of justice. This study proposes a way to ground these discussions on the concept of dangerous memory by resourcing the theology of Johann Baptist Metz. Dangerous memories allow stories of the suffering vanquished to be constitutive to the construction of caritas, which in turn serves as a suitable theological foundation for addressing differing approaches to engaging climate issues. Reading the Accra Confession as dangerous memory, then, provides a valuable resource to the Reformed community by allowing the testimonies of those affected adversely by climate change to substantially inform theological discourses on climate justice. (shrink)

Daniel Dennett, in Darwin's Dangerous Idea, argues that natural selection is a universal acid that eats through other theories, because it can explain just about everything, even the structure of the mind. Emanuel (Manny) Schegloff (1987) in ‘Between Micro and Macro: Context and Other Connections’ opposes the importation of ‘macro’ (sociological/sociolinguistic) factors into the ‘micro’ (interaction analysis), suggesting that one might reverse the strategy instead. Like Darwin, he is coy about whether he just wants his own turf, but the (...) idea opens up the possibility of interactional reductionism. I will argue against interactional reductionism on methodological grounds: Don't bite off more than you can chew! Instead I'll support the good old Durkheimian strategy of looking for intermediate variables between systems of different orders. I try and make the case with data from Rossel Island, Papua New Guinea. (shrink)

How to respond justly to the dangers persistent violent offenders present is a vexing moral and legal issue. On the one hand, we wish to reduce predation; on the other, we want to treat predators fairly. The central theme of this paper is that it is difficult to achieve both goals without compromising one of them, and that both are being seriously undermined. I begin by explaining the legal theory, doctrine and practice governing dangerous offenders and demonstrate that the (...) law leaves a gap in the ability to confine them. Next I explore the means by which the law has overtly or covertly sought to fill the gap. Many of these measures, especially the new form of civil commitment for sexual predators, dangerously conflate moral and medical categories. I conclude that pure preventive detention is more common than we usually assume, but that this practice violates fundamental assumptions concerning liberty under the American constitutional regime. (shrink)

Unjustifiably expecting a higher form of regard from others than one deserves is a familiar vice; call it the “vanity-vice.” How serious of a vice is it? Rousseau claims that it is uniquely morally dangerous. I show how Rousseau’s claim is true of only one form of the vanity-vice. I first develop an account of dangerous vices that takes seriously Rousseau’s concern about the anti-egalitarian vices associated with inflamed amour-propre. I then apply two, cross-cutting distinctions in vanity: a (...) distinction in whether one cares about the correctness of one’s expectations of high regard, and a distinction in the kind of high regard one expects. When we do not care about the correctness of our inflated expectations of regard, and when the unduly high regard we expect is authority-recognizing deference, we manifest a form of vanity that is uniquely dangerous, what I call “entitled smugness.”. (shrink)

Trypophobia refers to the extreme negative reaction when viewing clusters of circular objects. Two major evolutionary frameworks have been proposed to account for trypophobic visual discomfort. The skin disease-avoidance (SD) framework proposes that trypophobia is an over-generalised response to stimuli resembling pathogen-related skin diseases. The dangerous animal (DA) framework posits that some dangerous organisms and trypophobic stimuli share similar visual characteristics. Here, we performed the first experimental manipulations which directly compare these two frameworks by superimposing trypophobic imagery onto (...) multiple image categories to evaluate changes in comfort. Participants from two countries (United States and Croatia) were evaluated on several measures, including general trypophobia levels, perceived vulnerability to disease, and generalised anxiety. Several analyses showed stronger changes in comfort in the human skin condition (hand, feet, and chest images) compared to the dangerous animal condition (snake and spider images). Furthermore, participants with higher levels of trypophobia showed significantly stronger changes in comfort in the skin condition than the dangerous animal condition, with comparable effects obtained across nationalities. Several variables entered as covariates failed to significantly account for this effect. The present work is the first to experimentally test both evolutionary frameworks of trypophobia, with results supporting the skin disease-avoidance framework. (shrink)

Miguel A. De La Torre rejects hope as the ethical basis for a politically effective and truly liberative form of solidarity. Kelly Brown Douglas, on the other hand, articulates a critical retrieval of hope emphasizing the interpretive relationship between the cross, the lynching tree, and the resurrection. Reading De La Torre and Douglas’s works through Natalie Carnes’s theological aesthetics suggests that their respective works can be engaged as “iconoclasms of fidelity,” or the salutary breaking of idolatrous images toward recovering faithful (...) ones. Examining #SprayTheirNames murals that were created in response to state violence against Black people in the United States, I argue that Carnes’s aesthetics framework holds the violence of the crucifixion and promise of resurrection in visual tension, thus decrying violent oppression while offering a beautiful and dangerous memory that catalyzes hope-filled movement in defense of Black lives. (shrink)

A May 2023 article in The New York Times reported the alarm of industry insiders that the continued advancement of GenAI technologies has the unintended consequence of “releasing something dangerous into the wild.” This ecological analogy is our point of departure. Our chapter approaches the GenAI-Academic Integrity nexus from a media ecological standpoint. Nested in critical communication studies, this perspective assumes complementarities between communication technologies and societal change. In the context of this book, to what extent does GenAI problematize (...) academic gate-keeping, and what do the societal changes attendant to the existence of GenAI mean for academic citizenship? We draw from our observations teaching communication studies in a small university in Atlantic Canada which has situated the GenAI-Academic Integrity question within the context of academic citizenship, and is evolving policies and best practices to address GenAI use within the academy. (shrink)

In Dangerous Minds, Ronald Beiner traces the deeper philosophical roots of such far-right ideologues as Richard Spencer, Aleksandr Dugin, and Steve Bannon, to the writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger—and specifically to the aspects of their thought that express revulsion for the liberal-democratic view of life.

This article analyzes gun carry licensing as a disciplinary mechanism that places African American men in a liminal zone where they are legally armed but presumed dangerous, even as African Americans now experience broadened access to concealed pistol licenses (CPLs) amid contemporary U.S. gun laws. Using observational data from now-defunct public gun boards in Metropolitan Detroit, this article systematically explores how CPLs are mobilized by administrators to reflect and reinforce racial/gender hierarchies. This article broadens scholarly understandings of how tropes (...) of criminality shape racialized men’s encounters with the state beyond nonvoluntary, coercive settings and unpacks how race and gender interlock to shape these encounters. I extend insights from intersectionality scholarship to examine gun board meetings as degradation ceremonies whereby African American men are held accountable to controlling images of Black masculinity in exchange for a CPL. This article sharpens the conceptual apparatus that accounts for marginalized men’s subordination vis-à-vis the state by focusing on the provision of legitimate violence and revealing the persistent, if paradoxical, mobilization of legitimate violence in the reproduction of racial/gender hierarchies. (shrink)

Tell us what you think This essay was first posted at Edge (www.edge.org) and is reprinted with permission. It is the Preface to the book 'What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable,' published by HarperCollins. Write to [email protected]..

This paper examines how euphemisms for terrorism have pervaded the media and the English language for the past few decades. On the whole, a euphemism refers to an agreeable expression that has replaced a more unpleasant one, even though the latter is more accurate and truthful. This analysis attempts to answer the following question: do euphemisms for terrorism help the international community? A major conclusion is that euphemisms are dangerous because they constitute language manipulation and separate the message from (...) the meaning. By calling terrorists ‘radicals’, ‘insurgents’, or ‘rebels’, Western media and governments operate on the principle of semantic deviance and deflect attention away from reality. This could cause citizens to lower their guard in times where they should feel in danger. (shrink)

What is disintermediation? In wider terms, it indicates the absence of a median entity between two subjects. As is known, it was a term born in the economic-financial sector, which then spread to different areas of social life. This variety of uses has made it ambiguous, an ambiguity that can develop on two levels. The first is almost inevitable because it is the consequence of its varied use. By disintermediation we can mean, for example, the absence of mediators during an (...) economic negotiation, the possibility of buying a plane ticket without travel agency costs, or the dynamic that is created between society and institutions with the use of Internet in the political arena. From this point of view, the word is ambiguous because it is overly generic. The second level of ambiguity relates to the relationship between disintermediation and democracy because, on the one hand, it allows us to accept the requests of citizens who want a more direct and transparent relationship with the political elites, and, on the other, it risks making some elements of representative government even more brittle, especially by undermining their legitimacy. As the title suggests, this book explores this second level of disintermediation ambiguity, offering a series of contributions that, using different approaches, highlight also the more dangerous aspects that risk even undermining some keystones of liberal-representative democracy"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Consenting for Novel and Dangerous Surgical Procedures with Minimal Supporting EvidenceMichelle J. ClarkeFrank1 was a 19–year–old man referred to me after a workup for back pain led to the discovery of a large, aggressive tumor in his sacrum. The tumor wrapped around the nerves controlling bowel, bladder, and leg function. We performed a needle biopsy and learned that the tumor was an angiosarcoma, an extremely aggressive and usually (...) deadly form of cancer. However, the tumor was unique in that it theoretically could be cured if removed in one piece. But, to do so would necessitate sacrificing the nerves, leaving the patient irreversibly incontinent, lacking sexual function, and confined to a wheelchair.Once we knew the diagnosis, Frank came to the office with his family to discuss treatment options. He appeared terrified and was almost silent through the appointment, deferring most questions to his parents. Due to the speed of tumor growth, we discussed palliative therapy, conventional treatment, and the one–piece or “en bloc” surgery, which was new and unproven for his disease. Based on the remarkable tumor growth we noted during the work–up, with palliative treatment the patient would likely survive for less than six months. Conventional treatment, in which surgery is done to remove part of the tumor while sparing the nerves to bowel and bladder function, was known to have a high rate of recurrence and death. Further, this tumor didn’t respond well to radiation and chemotherapy, so chance of survival was limited, although his life might have been extended for a short period. Thus our conversation turned to the novel “en bloc” procedure.The en bloc procedure offered a hope of long–term survival unlike the other options. However, this came with an enormous cost. The surgery itself would be planned to occur over three days with five separate surgical teams and a very real chance of major complications or death. Nerves to bowel and bladder would be cut, irreversibly leaving the patient without sexual function, and completely incontinent with a urinary catheter and colostomy. Walking was expected to be disrupted or potentially impossible due to the nerve resection. We went to great lengths over the course of many visits to describe the impact of the surgery on the patient’s function, and the impact on his quality of life. To make matters more challenging, as this procedure was so new and the tumor so rare, research did not yet exist to quantify his likelihood of long–term survival.Personally I was very uncomfortable with the situation. From a medical standpoint, the surgery offered was the best distillation of research and professional experience. En bloc surgery offered the best—if not the only—chance for survival in [End Page 5] this young man. Additionally, having treated many spine–injured patients I was aware that many patients with similar deficits led happy and productive lives following an emotional and physical adjustment period. However the surgery was also extreme. I worried that we would not be able to accomplish the goal of a one–piece resection and would accidentally spill some of the tumor, creating all of the deficits but no survival benefit. Frankly, I thought there was a 25% chance that would happen, which was explained to the family preoperatively. Were we overreaching our abilities and making a dying patient’s life worse by proceeding?Second, I was uneasy about the social situation. The patient’s family was very supportive, traveling with him to all appointments and assisting with his care. The patient himself usually deferred all scheduling to his mother, which wasn’t entirely unusual for such a young man. However it was difficult to grasp how much the patient understood of his disease or supported the plan. We attempted to delve more deeply into his thoughts, including without his parents present, but got only short answers, which revealed little. While the family appeared to have accepted the diagnosis and wanted to get to the business of treatment, the patient seemed to me to still carry the shock of his recent cancer diagnosis. Pushed by the rapid tumor growth, we were limited in how long we could wait for... (shrink)

Driven by the desire to fill newspaper pages with sensational images, press photographers shot everything, day and night: automobile accidents, fires, murders, all the cop news that fought for a hot spot on the Front Page. And they covered uncounted numbers of social affairs -- pictures called 'grip-and-grins' in the trade: school events, sports, celebrities, oddities both of nature and humanity. Veteran journalist and mystery writer Larry Millett has unearthed over 200 of the best photos from the archives of the (...) St Paul Pioneer Press and the St Paul Dispatch for 'Strange Days, Dangerous Nights'. Included are the sensational stories behind the photos and biographies of some of the top press photographers of the day. An evocative look at another time, this is a visual history like no other, a feast for fans of photography and photojournalism, crime buffs, and urban historians -- and a testament to the craft of those photographers who documented their era one shot at a time. (shrink)

An entertaining, enlightening, and humorous graphic narrative of the dangerous thinkers who laid the foundation of modern thought This entertaining and enlightening graphic narrative tells the exciting story of the seventeenth-century thinkers who challenged authority—sometimes risking excommunication, prison, and even death—to lay the foundations of modern philosophy and science and help usher in a new world. With masterful storytelling and color illustrations, Heretics! offers a unique introduction to the birth of modern thought in comics form—smart, charming, and often funny. (...) These contentious and controversial philosophers—from Galileo and Descartes to Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Newton—fundamentally changed the way we look at the world, society, and ourselves, overturning everything from the idea that the Earth is the center of the cosmos to the notion that kings have a divine right to rule. More devoted to reason than to faith, these thinkers defended scandalous new views of nature, religion, politics, knowledge, and the human mind. Heretics! tells the story of their ideas, lives, and times in a vivid new way. Crisscrossing Europe as it follows them in their travels and exiles, the narrative describes their meetings and clashes with each other—as well as their confrontations with religious and royal authority. It recounts key moments in the history of modern philosophy, including the burning of Giordano Bruno for heresy, Galileo's house arrest for defending Copernicanism, Descartes's proclaiming cogito ergo sum, Hobbes's vision of the "nasty and brutish" state of nature, and Spinoza's shocking Theological-Political Treatise. A brilliant account of one of the most brilliant periods in philosophy, Heretics! is the story of how a group of brave thinkers used reason and evidence to triumph over the authority of religion, royalty, and antiquity. (shrink)

When it comes to questions about alternative visions for philosophical engagement, Heidegger’s work makes for an interesting case study, especially if we focus on his texts from the turbulent 1930s. As a shortcut into this contested territory, it is instructive to examine Heidegger’s anti-journalistic gestures, centered on the question whether this animosity is bound to drive a wedge between, or rather prompt a re-approximation of, philosophy and public scholarship. To render this programmatic concern more specific, the present essay aims to (...) reassess Heidegger’s profile by considering his account of language as the “most dangerous of goods” bestowed on humans. This theme can serve as an expedient starting point for scrutinizing philosophers’ self-understanding as daring explorers in pursuit of profound insights into the human condition, and their (in)ability to balance excitement and sobriety. (shrink)

Some collective irrationalities, like epistemically and pragmatically reckless Covid skepticism, are especially dangerous. While we normally have incentives to avoid dangerous beliefs, there are cases in which the danger of a belief is valuable. This is not captured by most accounts of motivated reasoning. I argue that Covid skepticism can function as a costly signal (handicap) so as to more effectively communicate social identity and commitment.

The semantic paradoxes are often associated with self-reference or referential circularity. Yablo (Analysis 53(4):251–252, 1993), however, has shown that there are infinitary versions of the paradoxes that do not involve this form of circularity. It remains an open question what relations of reference between collections of sentences afford the structure necessary for paradoxicality. In this essay, we lay the groundwork for a general investigation into the nature of reference structures that support the semantic paradoxes and the semantic hypodoxes. We develop (...) a functionally complete infinitary propositional language endowed with a denotation assignment and extract the reference structural information in terms of graph-theoretic properties. We introduce the new concepts of dangerous and precarious reference graphs, which allows us to rigorously define the task: classify the dangerous and precarious directed graphs purely in terms of their graph-theoretic properties. Ungroundedness will be shown to fully characterize the precarious reference graphs and fully characterize the dangerous finite graphs. We prove that an undirected graph has a dangerous orientation if and only if it contains a cycle, providing some support for the traditional idea that cyclic structure is required for paradoxicality. This leaves the task of classifying danger for infinite acyclic reference graphs. We provide some compactness results, which give further necessary conditions on danger in infinite graphs, which in conjunction with a notion of self-containment allows us to prove that dangerous acyclic graphs must have infinitely many vertices with infinite out-degree. But a full characterization of danger remains an open question. In the appendices we relate our results to the results given in Cook (J Symb Log 69(3):767–774, 2004) and Yablo (2006) with respect to more restricted sentences systems, which we call $\mathcal{F}$ -systems. (shrink)

A key question in contemporary metaphilosophy of thought experiments is the “wheat from chaff” problem: How can we separate the good and trustworthy thought experiments from the untrustworthy ones? This article examines this problem by viewing thought experimentation as a form of mental simulation. It argues that we should approach the limitations of thought experiments in light of the general shortcomings of our capacity to run mental simulations. Furthermore, the article proposes an answer to the wheat from chaff problem by (...) presenting three danger signals for untrustworthy thought experiments. These are (1) high counterfactuality of the imagined scenario, (2) complexity of the imagined scenario, and (3) a large psychological distance to the imagined scenario. (shrink)

This 1997 work is a book-length treatment of the unique nature and development of Nietzsche's post-Zarathustran political philosophy. This later political philosophy is set in the context of the critique of modernity that Nietzsche advances in the years 1885–1888, in such texts as Beyond Good and Evil, On the Genealogy of Morals, Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, The Case of Wagner, and Ecce Homo. In this light Nietzsche's own diagnosis of the ills of modernity is subject to the same (...) criticism that he himself levelled against previous philosophies; that it is an involuntary symptom of the age it represents. Nietzsche is seen to be aware of his own decadence and of his complicity with the very tendencies that he dissects and deplores. By relating the political philosophy, the critique of modernity and the theory of decadence Daniel Conway has written a powerful book about Nietzsche's own appreciation of the limitations of both his writing style and of his famous prophetic 'stance'. (shrink)

In contrast to the opinion of numerous authors (e.g. R. Rudner, P. Kitcher, L. R. Graham, M. Dummett, N. Chomsky, R. Lewontin, etc.) it is argued here that the formation of opinion in science should be greatly insulated from political considerations. Special attention is devoted to the view that methodological standards for evaluation of scientific theories ought to vary according to the envisaged political uses of these theories.

This chapter contains sections titled: A Philosophical Gaze into the Writings of the Zodiac Killer Who is the Zodiac Killer? Peek‐A‐Boo: You Are Doomed! This is the Zodiac Speaking Conclusion.

_Dangerous Liaisons_ grounds a rich conception of sexual ethics in intimacy, intrinsic valuation and integration of self. Intimacy is the context for self-integration and intrinsic valuation provides its impetus. The intimacy that is the concomitant of sex with someone we care about involves fully sharing our personality as well as our bodies. Consequently, the elements of our personality – desire, emotion, and thought – are themselves integrated and harmonized with our bodies when we focus on our lover. We focus on (...) our lover because the sexual interaction is part of a relationship that we value intrinsically. _Dangerous Liaisons_ implies this ideal conception by contrasting Valmont’s manipulative sex with his caring, intimate sexual relationship with Madame de Tourvel. After articulating the salutary view of sexuality, I examine the film’s depiction of what happens to people who habitually value sex instrumentally, treating it as possessing only market value. (shrink)