The first half of this chapter investigates the ways in which the concept of biological parenthood is used in philosophy of parenthood but also in non-academic contexts, noting that ‘genetic parent’ is often – but not always – used interchangeably with ‘biological parent’. I raise the question of whether gestation constitutes biological parenthood in the absence of genetic connection, and I consider two possible explanations for discrepancy in the use of the concept of biological parenthood. I highlight ways in which the interplay between this and other concepts of parenthood means that discrepancy in our use of language has significant consequences and give an argument against geneticist understandings of biological parenthood. The second part of the chapter considers the right to be a biological parent and the right to not be a biological parent. The discussion of these rights-claims is illustrated by reference to current legal and philosophical dilemmas: debates over access to reproductive technologies; the dilemma faced by separated couples who disagree over the use of their frozen embryos; and the philosophical questions raised by the possibility of ectogenesis with regards to abortion. Is the right to end a pregnancy the same as the right not to be a parent?

This overview chapter introduces philosophical tools that can be used to aid managers in making decisions in situations which go beyond simple cost/benefit analyses. Value terms such as right, wrong, fair, justice, beneficence, responsibility, eco-consciousness, and discrimination are discussed and illustrated using real-world examples. Starting with the world’s worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, India and the contemporary aftermath, it examines the complexities such situations present and assesses the usefulness of creating a theoretical framework that can lead to principled and defensible policies and actions. The challenges of exclusive self-interest and ethical relativism are examined, where morality simply echoes personal preference. Immediate profit maximization is compared to a more subtle long-term and more encompassing stakeholder approach. Reliance on the law is shown to be an insufficient ethical guide, while principle-based approaches that can be applied across a wide range of cases are more successful in working out what we should do in novel and difficult situations.

This chapter sets out the broad metaphysical picture that guides the inquiry. I derive a naturalist notion of kinds from the nineteenth-century discussion of classification and kinds initiated by Whewell, Mill, and Venn, rather than the more recent essentialist view of natural kinds suggested by Kripke and Putnam. I go on to defend a “simple causal theory” of cognitive kinds, which conceives of them as “nodes in causal networks” in the cognitive domain. In addition, I argue against the layer-cake picture of scientific domains and put forward some reasons to resist reductionism when it comes to cognitive categories, based on different bases for individuating cognitive and neural categories. Finally, I respond to some concerns that the resulting ontological picture is not a realist one, on the grounds that it countenances the existence of cognitive kinds that are mind-dependent and self-reflexive.

Before proceeding to a detailed account of the powers of the police and the means to justify their exercise, this chapter describes key political features of the police role. Ultimately, the role is to impartially produce a unique form of practical, substantive justice among citizens, one that they are owed by the state as they encounter physical hazards, interpersonal conflicts, or are subject to behaviors that the law empowers the government to regulate. The role is derived here by a form of bootstrapping, in that it takes a broad survey of what we observe the police do when aspiring to its positivist ideals, distills it into categories, and then describes the political nature of each grouping. In doing so, it concludes policing’s practical, substantive justice consists of protection and rescue from physical harm, the collection of people and evidence for presentation to a magistrate in matters of criminal law, and the brokerage and enforcement of the fair terms of social cooperation in public spaces.

Chapter 1 begins to define the concept of social pathology and to assess its usefulness for social philosophy. It distinguishes five conceptions of social illness different from the one employed in this book, which places dysfunction, rather than suffering, at the core of social illness. It argues, further, that while social pathologies must be bad in some way for social members, those individuals are not typically ill themselves. Although there are good reasons for approaching the concept of social pathology with caution – societies differ in important ways from biological organisms, for example – judicious use of the concept can bring to light critique-worthy social phenomena to which theories focused exclusively on justice are blind. The method espoused for diagnosing social illnesses is a form of ethically informed immanent critique that bears some similarities to medical diagnosis but refrains from ascribing moral blame to the individual participants in unhealthy social practices.

What accounts for the fact that some physical events occur while others do not? This is a question of physical modality. Three models in contemporary analytic metaphysics have dominated the investigation of physical modality: the Neo-Humean Model, the Universals Model, and the Powers Model. Each model aims to explain, in ontologically conspicuous ways, the unfolding of possibilities in space and time. This chapter explains the Neo-Humean and Universals Models, then shows that while they explicitly deny a place for powers in their fundamental ontologies, they nonetheless implicate powers. That is, they subtly assume the reality of powers. As a result, the Powers Model is the way to go in explaining physical modality. However, there are different ways of conceiving powers. After describing variations of the Powers Model, the chapter returns to the main question posed in the introductory chapter: What is the nature of powers from the inside? Stricter attention to the internality of powers is necessary to better understand the Powers Model and its metaphysical commitments.

Qualitative consciousness is conscious experience marked by the presence of sensory qualities, like the experienced painfulness of having a piano dropped on your foot or the consciousness of seeing the brilliant reds and oranges of a sunset. Over his career, philosopher David Rosenthal has defended an influential theoretical approach to explaining qualitative consciousness. This approach involves the development of two theories – the higher-order thought theory of mental state consciousness and the quality-space theory of sensory quality. If the problem of explaining qualitative consciousness is divided into two more manageable pieces, the door opens to a satisfying explanation of what is seen by some to be an intractable explanatory puzzle. This interdisciplinary collection develops, criticizes, and expands upon themes inspired by Rosenthal’s work. The result is an exciting collection of new essays by philosophers and scientists, which will be of interest to all those engaged in consciousness studies.

I propose to understand knowledge in the context of action, refocusing epistemology in order to make it more suitable for engaging with actual practices in science and other realms of life. What I call ‘active knowledge’ is a matter of ability; active knowledge is a prerequisite of propositional knowledge, and propositional knowledge contributes to it. I offer an analysis of active knowledge as operative in ‘epistemic activities’ and ‘systems of practice’ carried out by purposive epistemic agents. The quality of active knowledge consists in ‘operational coherence’, which is a matter of doing what makes sense to do in order to achieve our aims. Inspired by Dewey, I see inquiry as an effort to increase operational coherence, a process in which no aspects of our activities are immune from revision. Generally my thinking is inspired by pragmatism, which I take as a relentless kind of empiricism, which insists that the full lived experience of epistemic agents is the only source of any learning, including learning in logic, methodology and metaphysics.

Offers a thorough reading of all texts in which Cassirer and Heidegger explicitly engaged with each other’s thought. I first sketch the philosophical context of the Davos debate, which constitutes only one moment of a dispute that started in 1923 and continued until the publication of Cassirer’s The Myth of the State in 1946 (1.1). Second, I argue that the public debate in Davos hinges on three interrelated topics: the proper interpretation of Kant’s philosophy, the human condition, and the task of philosophy. Concretely, I show that Cassirer and Heidegger’s diverging readings of Kant are motivated by their different views on the human condition, and that these views are in turn motivated by different conceptions of the task of philosophy, which I consider to be the fundamental breaking point between these two thinkers (1.2). Third, I explain that the same issues of contention also structure, in the same order and with the same increasing intensity, the entire, 23-year-long Cassirer‒Heidegger dispute (1.3).