New Journal - Neuroethics

The journal Neuroethics - of which I am the editor - is now accepting submissions. I define 'neuroethics' very broadly. As well as covering issues in applied ethics arising from interventions into the mind (brain privacy, neuroenhancement, and so on), the journal will also publish work on the ways in which all the sciences of the mind illuminate traditional issues in philosophy. So understood, some of the work of frequent contributors to this blog counts as neuroethics: survey work on causation and harm, on the intuitiveness of compatibilism, and of course work on social psychology and free will.

For more on how broadly I construe neuroethics, have a look at my new book.

Under Construction

Just a heads-up -- the blog will be under construction over the next week or so as I try to spruce things up a bit and make it more easy to navigate.  Posting and commenting shouldn't be interrupted, but it may look weird when you visit, so don't be alarmed.

Follow-up on Prepunishment

This cartoon is a great postscript to our earlier discussion.  Enjoy!

INPC 2008

CALL FOR PAPERS: 11th Annual Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference

CARVING NATURE AT ITS JOINTS

The Inland Northwest Philosophy Conference is a topic-focused,
interdisciplinary conference co-sponsored by the Philosophy
Departments at the University of Idaho and Washington State University.

DATES

15-­17 March 2008 (the conference ends shortly before the 2008 Pacific
APA)

LOCATION

Moscow, Idaho & Pullman, Washington

COMMITTED PARTICIPANTS

Peter Godfrey-Smith (Harvard), Keynote Speaker
Alexander Bird (Bristol)
Michael Devitt (CUNY)
Ned Hall (Harvard)
Marc Lange (UNC Chapel Hill)
Karen Neander (Duke)
L.A. Paul (Arizona)
Roy Sorensen (Dartmouth)
Achille Varzi (Columbia)
Kadri Vihvelin (USC)
Neil Williams (Buffalo)

SUBMISSIONS

Essays of 5-­6,000 words (30-­40 minutes reading time) will be accepted
until January 2nd, 2008. Papers from any area that address
philosophical issues related to the metaphysics and/or epistemology
of classification are requested. Graduate students and individuals in
other disciplines are welcome to submit essays.

Send your essay in PDF format and prepared for blind review as an
email attachment to <matthew.slater@uidaho.edu>. Please mention the
title of your essay in the body of the email.

NOTIFICATION

Individuals will be notified of decisions regarding submissions in
early February. Accepted papers will be eligible for publication in
volume eight of Topics in Contemporary Philosophy, an edited volume
to be published by MIT Press, pending editorial review.

CHAIRS & COMMENTATORS

If you would like to act as a session chair or a commentator, please
contact <josephc@wsu.edu> with your areas of competence.

CONTACTS

Joseph Keim Campbell, Washington State University <josephc@wsu.edu>
Matthew H. Slater, University of Idaho <matthew.slater@uidaho.edu>
INPC co-directors

Additional information can be found here and a flyer for the conference can be found here.

New Political Philosophy Blog

. . . called "Public Reason" is here. Organized by Simon Cabulea May, the contributors roster looks impressive. Good luck to 'em.

Neural glitches and agency

A paper in Neuron reports that spontaneous fluctuations in neural activity seems to affect intentional action.  The activity is pretty low-level - pushing a button at a signal - and the effect of spontaneous fluctuation was small (no effect on reaction time; the effect was limited to the force of the button press). Nevertheless, this might be sufficient by itself to make the difference between success and failure at performing a task.

It is common for philosophers to use examples in which agents succeed or fail at a task due to random neural glitches. This is experimental evidence for the existence of such glitches.

Start your engines . . .

I'm told that if you are clever, you can find a way to see JFP 175 on the APA website, even though there isn't an official link to it. Good luck to those Gardeners who are job marketeering.

And consider this an invitation to start working on your entry to the annual Angsty-ist Job Market Post  at the Garden!!!! Although, maybe the sheen of the glorious award is gone, now that there is a whole blog dedicated to documenting the misery of the job market.

At any rate, may those of you looking for jobs be showered with offers in places you'd love to be, at salaries that are embarrassingly generous with teaching loads that are unexpectedly reasonable.

This week's popular press article on free will

is here.

<http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/3893/>

Compatibilism and Prepunishment

I would be very interested to see some Garden discussion of Saul Smilansky's very interesting recent article, "Determinism and prepunishment: The radical nature of compatibilism", which is in the most recent issue of Analysis.  It's a quick read, so you should really read the original piece, but here's the basics:

Suppose compatibilism is true.  Now consider a deterministic world where agents are free and responsible.  In principle, we could come to know that someone is going to commit a crime, even before the person commits the crime.  But there seems to be no relevant moral difference betweeen knowing that someone has committed a crime and knowing that someone will commit a crime.  So compatibilists cannot in principle object to prepunishment (punishing someone for a crime that he has not yet, but will, commit) on moral grounds.

I wonder in particular what responses compatibilists might give to this line of reasoning.  A first thought is that a compatibilist might draw the distinction between moral responsibility, on the one hand, and whether blame and punishment are justified, on the other.  Strictly speaking all the compatibilist is committed to is the compatibility of determinism and morally responsible agency, and perhaps something else is needed in order to justify blame and punishment, something else which would entail that prepunishment is unacceptable.  Other ideas? 

The Philosophy of the X-Files

No, this is not a book about experimental philosophy (note the 'F' instead of a 'Ph'), but rather a book about the TV show in the series called "The Philosophy of Popular Culture" put out by the University Press of Kentucky.  (You can find the website here.)  I mention it here only because our own Alan White contributed a chapter on free will entitled, "Freedom and World-Views in The X-Files".  I encourage you all to check it out.