Featured papers by Joshua Rust
Philosophical Psychology, 2024
A typical expository strategy for the predictive processing account begins with perception and th... more A typical expository strategy for the predictive processing account begins with perception and then extends to other cognitive domains, such as action or non-human animal cognition. Because this standard, perception-first expository strategy begins at the end of an evolutionary process, it may introduce both diachronic and synchronic distortions into the overall account. As far as the diachronic distortion is concerned, because the perception-first strategy presupposes a highly decoupled cognitive architecture, it invites us to project this architecture onto the coupled cognitive systems of our evolutionary ancestors and other non-human organisms. Turning to the synchronic distortion, as the perception-first strategy is extended to conative states, it invites a cognitivism that seeks to reconstrue motivational states as a species of belief. In this paper, I explore what a predictive processing account would look like if it began at the beginning, with the highly coupled representations carried by our evolutionary ancestors and other non-human organisms. I conclude by exploring the proposal’s implications for a non-cognitivist, predictive processing account of action.
Anna's AI Anthology. How to live with smart machines? (Editor: Anna Strasser; ISBN: 978-3-942106-90-0), 2024
Standard notions of full-fledged agency are not able to capture all agentive phenomena, motivatin... more Standard notions of full-fledged agency are not able to capture all agentive phenomena, motivating the development of a broader, more minimal conception of agency. Proposing the "precedential account" of minimal agency, I consider the extent to which this account applies, not just to a broad swath of living systems, including single-celled organisms, but to two categories of artificial systems-social institutions and Large Language Models.
Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 2024
In Bernard Suits' The Grasshopper and Return of the Grasshopper, game-play is claimed to be the '... more In Bernard Suits' The Grasshopper and Return of the Grasshopper, game-play is claimed to be the 'ideal of existence' and the only activity that could sustain us through the 'endless and endlessly boring summer' of utopia. Christopher Yorke has challenged these claims by way of a constructive dilemma. If these games are sufficiently akin to the games we play, then they are not adequate to the task of rendering immortality tolerable. If these games are importantly different than the games we play, then, in being 'unknown and unknowable', they would characterize a form of life that is importantly different from our own and, so, would be inappropriate objects of social and political aspiration. Against Yorke's skepticism, I argue that the games that constitute the ideal of existence are intelligible to us because we already play what the Grasshopper calls 'open games'. Steffen Borge concedes that utopian games are intelligible, but argues that such games would fail to 'grab our minds and imagination'. In the second half of the paper, I contend, against Borge, that such open games are adequate to the task of sustaining the interest of an immortal community.
Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2023
An abbreviated history of marriage helps motivate the question of whether ancient Roman marriage ... more An abbreviated history of marriage helps motivate the question of whether ancient Roman marriage and contemporary love marriage could qualify as stages of the same (token) institution despite carrying significantly different functions, deontological powers, and constitutive rules. Having raised the question of institutional identity over time, I proceed to answer the question by appealing to Kurt Lewin's notion of genidentity. Lewin intends the notion of genidentity to track the spatiotemporal unfolding of different physical and biological processes, such as ontogenesis. I extend the notion of genidentity to the institutional sphere by identifying two ‘re-anchoring mechanisms’ that would describe the conditions under which institutions with different characteristics could nevertheless qualify as the same institution across time. First, formal institutions can be re-anchored by way of a self-amending secondary rule. Second, informal institutions can be re-anchored by leveraging the inherent indeterminacy of the exemplars that indexically define them. I then argue ancient Roman marriage and contemporary love marriage are genidentical in virtue of the actions of a (mostly) informal re-anchoring mechanism.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2023
This paper is an investigation into the possibility of institutional agency and proceeds via the ... more This paper is an investigation into the possibility of institutional agency and proceeds via the elaboration of two, nested claims. First, if genuine agency is attributable to certain social institutions, it would not be the full-blown, intentional agency that characterizes human activity, but would rather fall under a minimal modality of agency. Moreover, since enactivists aim to articulate minimal conceptions of agency that are applicable across the sphere of the living, this suggests that such accounts of minimal agency might additionally be brought to bear onto some institutions. The second claim concerns which of two ideally typical enactivist accounts of minimal agency can more promisingly be applied to our institutions. Where some enactivists endorse a Jonasian account of minimal agency, which stresses a protentive, forwardlooking orientation to a self-persistence goal, other enactivists apply a retentive ideal type of minimal agency, the norms of which are founded on a backward-looking responsiveness to precedent. By way of a critical analysis of structural functionalism, I argue that the retentive approach better explains the kind of agency that would be expressed by some institutions. I also claim that some philosophers, including Christian List, Philip Pettit and Ronald Dworkin, have independently come to the conclusion that institutional agency is retentive agency.
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 2021
Key elements of John Searle's articulation of the Standard Model of Social Ontology can be found ... more Key elements of John Searle's articulation of the Standard Model of Social Ontology can be found within Max Weber's ideal type of legal-rational authority. However, the fact that, for Weber, legal-rational authority is just one of three types of legitimate authority, along with traditional and charismatic authority, suggests limitations to the Standard Model's scope of applicability. Where Searle takes himself to have provided an account of "the structure of human civilization," Weber's taxonomy suggests that Searle has only given us an account of a way of being a civilization. This understanding of traditional authority also reveals why the Standard Model misconstrues the structure of ordinary, informal statuses, such as friendship.
Max Weber Studies, 2018
Two standard interpretations of traditional action are rejected. Traditional action is not subjec... more Two standard interpretations of traditional action are rejected. Traditional action is not subjectively meaningful in the sense of having what Talcott Parsons calls a 'normative orientation'. But nor is traditional action a matter of blind habit. I contend, instead, that traditional action is subjectively meaningful insofar as the actor's seemingly aberrant behavior can be rendered intelligible by appeal to shared exemplars. I provide further evidence for the proposed interpretation of traditional action by showing how it illuminates Weber's account of traditional authority. The traditions that legitimize a traditional master consist, not just in rules or decisions, but in exemplars and precedents as found in the 'documents of tradition'. I conclude with a discussion of how the proposed account of traditional action and authority illuminates charismatic authority and Weber's notion of the irrational.
Books by Joshua Rust
Social Ontology - Papers by Joshua Rust
The Ontology of Music Groups, 2024
It is common practice to refer to music-making collectives as music groups, and no one will quest... more It is common practice to refer to music-making collectives as music groups, and no one will question the existence of music groups. It seems to be an uncontroversial feature that members of music groups collectively produce music - they act jointly. However, not every joint action resulting in music constitutes a music group, and music groups do not continuously perform joint actions. From the perspective of social ontology, one can describe music groups as social or institutional entities. In this chapter, we will focus on factors that make a music group stable as a group, that is, ensure its survival, so to speak. To this end, we investigate the interplay of various factors that can account for the survival or persistence of a music group. This involves, for example, questions concerning how it is possible for music groups to survive the addition, loss, and replacement of members. In other words, how can we describe the relationship between group members and their group? Aiming to analyse the varieties of music groups, we discuss the conditions necessary for a music group to emerge and guarantee a group's continued existence.
Globalisation, Cultural Diversity and Schooling, 2024
It is argued that political realists have framed internationalized relations by way of an implici... more It is argued that political realists have framed internationalized relations by way of an implicit appeal to what is called the 'agent-exclusion principle.' The agent-exclusion principle holds that in cases where agency is nested, agency at one level precludes or displaces agency at another level. This paper interrogates the truth of the agent-exclusion principle by reformulating it as an agent-exclusion problem: when agency is nested, is it the case that agency at one level necessarily excludes agency at another? Or is multi-level agential co-presence possible? By problematizing the agent-exclusion principle in this way, I can leverage the considerable effort that has been put into understanding and resolving the agent-exclusion problem in other domains to better understand its expression in the context of globalized relations. In particular, a critical evaluation of the agent-exclusion principle motivates, against the political realist, the rejection of state-centric realism but also points to the impossibility of a cosmopolitan world state. I conclude with a reflection on the significance of these findings for scholarship globally in higher education. Keywords Agent-exclusion principle • Globalization • Higher education reforms • Ideology • The state 1 A subdiscipline of philosophy concerned with the nature and properties of the social world (Epstein, 2021).
Journal of Social Ontology, 2019
For some sufficiently long-standing institutions, such as the English Crown, there is no single t... more For some sufficiently long-standing institutions, such as the English Crown, there is no single thread, whether specified in terms of constitutive rules or assigned functions, that would connect the stages of that institution. Elizabeth II and Egbert are not connected by an unbroken chain of primogeniture and they have importantly different powers and functions. Derek Parfit famously sought to illuminate his account of personal identity by comparing a person to a club. If Parfit could use our intuitions about clubs to help motivate his neo-Lockean account of personal identity over time, which resists the idea that personal identity requires a common psychological thread, then I argue that an adapted version of his account of identity might, in turn, be reapplied to clubs and other institutions, such as the Crown.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2017
Technical artifacts do not seem particularly continuous with institutional statuses. If statuses ... more Technical artifacts do not seem particularly continuous with institutional statuses. If statuses are defined in terms of their constitutive rules, as Searle maintains, then disassociation is always possible – someone or something can satisfy those rules without being able to realize the functional effects that are associated with that status. The gap between technical artifacts and Searlean statuses suggests the possibility of an additional social kind, which I call, following Muhammad Ali Khalidi, a ‘real social kind’. However, the placement of real social kinds between technical artifacts and statuses recommends a reconfiguration of Khalidi’s most abstract characterization of the notion. This reconfiguration also lends support to his surprising claim that money is a real social kind.
Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, 2020
After reviewing three conceptions of Weberian clarity, as found in Social Epistemology’s special ... more After reviewing three conceptions of Weberian clarity, as found in Social Epistemology’s special issue on Weber’s “Science as a Vocation,” we articulate an additional conception of clarity that better enables us to understand the unique vocation of the scientist, as described by Weber. We argue that a scientist is a disenchanted Odyssean polytropos (ðïëuôñïðïí), insofar as she can traverse political Weltanschauungen —a polytheism of values—without endorsing them. While this conception of clarity enables us to distinguish the scientist from the political demagogue within the context of a polytheism of values, we also argue that all conceptions of Weberian clarity, including our own, fails for a different reason: it rests on an unargued ontological commitment that life will forever be a conflict of exclusive values. Still, this failure is instructive as it enables us to better appreciate the “external conditions” of the university a hundred years after Weber’s lecture.
Analysis, Jan 1, 2011
I begin by considering various leadership aetiologies, wherein someone comes to obtain the variou... more I begin by considering various leadership aetiologies, wherein someone comes to obtain the various rights and obligations associated with the status function of a leader. Searle imagines two possibilities. First, someone comes to be a leader by way of established (e.g. democratic) constitutive rules or procedures. Second, someone might simply be declared a leader if they already wield sufficient coercive, non-deontological power. The deontological power associated with the status function of a leader is different from the antecedently existing coercive power in that the former works, not under the force of threat, but by way of the imposition of rights and obligations. I consider a third leadership aetiology based on charismatic power. The possibility of charismatic power, in turn, recommends a normative, aesthetic source that cannot be reduced to either deontological power or coercive power. I begin by looking, in Sections 1 and 2, at examples which gesture towards the plausibility of aesthetic norms as a constituent of some status functions. Using a largely Humean account of the aesthetic (Section 3) in Sections 4 and 5, I argue that aesthetic evaluations have the right formal properties to underlie a status function. In particular, they are suitably epistemically objective, and they can provide desire-independent reasons for action. Finally, in Section 6, I argue aesthetic norms that are necessarily unprincipled, decisively account for a class of status functions which resist articulation in terms of explicitly codified rights and obligations.
UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive c... more UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. Learn more... ProQuest, John Searle's ideal type: Max Weber and the construction of social reality. by Rust, Joshua ...
Philosophy of Biology / Cog Sci by Joshua Rust
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2022
While developments of a shared intellectual tradition, the enactivist approach and the organizati... more While developments of a shared intellectual tradition, the enactivist approach and the organizational account proffer importantly different accounts of organismic normativity. Where enactivists tend to follow Hans Jonas, Andres Weber, and Francisco Varela in grounding intrinsic affordance norms in existential concern, organizational theorists such as Alvaro Moreno, Matteo Mossio, and Leonardo Bich seek a more deflationary account of these normative phenomena. Critiques directed at both of these accounts of organismic normativity motivate the introduction of the precedential account of organismic normativity, which I nevertheless locate within the enactivist approach, broadly construed. After detailing empirical evidence that would seem to vindicate the precedential account, I explore some of its implications.
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2022
Against the neo-Darwinian assumption that genetic factors are the principal source of variation u... more Against the neo-Darwinian assumption that genetic factors are the principal source of variation upon which natural selection operates, a phenotype-first hypothesis strikes us as revolutionary because development would seem to constitute an independent source of variability. Richard Watson and his co-authors have argued that developmental memory constitutes one such variety of phenotypic variability. While this version of the phenotype-first hypothesis is especially well-suited for the late metazoan context, where animals have a sufficient history of selection from which to draw, appeals to developmental memory seem less plausible in the evolutionary context of the early metazoans. I provide an interpretation of Stuart Newman's account of deep metazoan phylogenesis that suggests that spandrels are, in addition to developmental memory, an important reservoir of phenotypic variability. I conclude by arguing that Gerd Müller's "side-effect hypothesis" is an illuminating generalization of the proposed non-Watsonian version of the phenotype-first hypothesis.
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2021
This paper aims to uncover the explanatory profile of an idealized version of Karl Ernst von Baer... more This paper aims to uncover the explanatory profile of an idealized version of Karl Ernst von Baer's notion of individuation, wherein the special develops from the general. First, because such sequences can only be exemplified by a multiplicity of causally-related events, they should be seen as the topics of historical why-questions, rather than initial condition why-questions. Second, because historical why-questions concern the diachronic unity or genidentity of the events under consideration, I argue that the von Baerian pattern elicits a distinctive response to such questions, wherein we are inclined to simultaneously affirm and reject the temporal unity of these events. I buttress this claim by considering non-biological expressions of the von Baerian principle, drawn from institutional history and literature. In the second half of the paper, I consider the implications of my findings for ontogenetic and phylogenetic sequences. I argue that the explanatory profile of von Baer's principle neatly describes the distinctive speciation events that characterize deep metazoan phylogeny, as described by Stuart Newman. I also argue that parallel considerations should move us to accept a sense in which ontogenetic stages are not diachronically unified.
Experimental Philosophy - Papers by Joshua Rust
Mind, Jan 1, 2009
If philosophical moral reflection tends to improve moral behaviour, one might expect that profess... more If philosophical moral reflection tends to improve moral behaviour, one might expect that professional ethicists will, on average, behave morally better than non-ethicists. One potential source of insight into the moral behaviour of ethicists is philosophers' opinions about ethicists' behaviour. At the 2007 Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, we used chocolate to entice 277 passers-by to complete anonymous questionnaires without their knowing the topic of those questionnaires in advance. Version I of the questionnaire asked respondents to compare, in general, the moral behaviour of ethicists to that of philosophers not specializing in ethics and to non-academics of similar social background. Version II asked respondents similar questions about the moral behaviour of the ethics specialist in their department whose name comes next in alphabetical order after their own. Both versions asked control questions about specialists in metaphysics and epistemology. The majority of respondents expressed the view that ethicists do not, on average, behave better than non-ethicists. Whereas ethicists tended to avoid saying that ethicists behave worse than non-ethicists, non-ethicists expressed that pessimistic view about as often as they expressed the view that ethicists behave better.
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Featured papers by Joshua Rust
Books by Joshua Rust
Social Ontology - Papers by Joshua Rust
Philosophy of Biology / Cog Sci by Joshua Rust
Experimental Philosophy - Papers by Joshua Rust
According to the Rational Tail view (which comes in different degrees of strength), emotion or intuition drives moral opinion and moral behavior, and explicit forms of intellectual cognition function mainly post hoc, to justify and socially communicate conclusions that flow from emotion or intuition. Haidt argues that our empirical results favor his view (2012, p. 89). After all, if intellectual styles of moral reasoning don't detectably improve the behavior even of professional ethicists who build their careers on expertise in such reasoning, how much hope could there be for the rest of us to improve by such means? While we agree with Haidt that our results support the Rational Tail view over some rationalistic rivals, we believe that other models of moral psychology are also consistent with our findings, and some of these models give explicit intellectual reasoning a central, powerful role in shaping the reasoner's behavior and attitudes. Part 1 summarizes our empirical findings. Part 2 explores five different theoretical models, including the Rational Tail, that are more or less consistent with those findings.
Two related questions thus invite empirical treatment: Is philosophical moral ref1ection of the sort practiced by professional ethicists in fact morally improving? And how do professional ethicists' explicitly espoused moral principles relate to their practical moral behavior? Individual ethicists' lives are sometimes examined with these questions in mind, especially the life of Martin Heidegger, notorious for his endorsement of Nazism (e.g., Sluga 1993; Young 1997; Faye 2005/2009): and general claims about the behavior of ethicists are sometimes made based on personal experience or broad plausibility considerations (e.g., Posner 1999; Knobe and Leiter 2007; Moeller 2009). However, until recently, systematic, quantitative research on these issues has been entirely lacking. To date, all published quantitative studies of the issue have been led by Eric Schwitzgebel and Joshua Rust, the two authors of this chapter, mostly in collaboration with each other. Our general finding is this: On average, professional ethicists' behavior is indistinguishable from the behavior of comparison groups of professors in other fields. Also, in one multivariable study, we find ethicists neither more nor less likely than other professors to act in accord with their expressed moral attitudes.
A genuine slaveholding society did not—and could not—arise in a vacuum, but took root in a society which happened to have slaves. In the 1700s, while the plantation economy did not require slavery, it did depend on nearly free labor made possible by a system of indentured servitude. And various factors, from the scarcity of land and the increasing price of tobacco to pre-existing pockets of slavery and racial animus, transformed the South from a system of servitude to a totalizing system of race-based slavery.
We argue that an analogous transformation takes place over the seven books of the Harry Potter series. Prior to his final confrontation with Harry, Voldemort hardens a relatively fluid order of magical and non-magical creatures into the false universalism of a hierarchical society which privileges one group (European/white/magical/etc.) by rendering others deviant and invisible. But just as the slaveholding society of the antebellum South was built from a society with slaves, pre-existing institutions within Hogwarts and the Wizarding World set the stage for Voldemort’s totalizing pure-blood utopia. Just as slavery would not have been possible without, for example, the institution of indentured servitude, we contend that the pre-existing subjugation of the house-elves and, less obviously, Hogwarts’ house system prefigures and makes possible Voldemort’s coup. While it is not clear that the defeat of Voldemort entails the elimination of either of these institutions, we suggest that Rowling nevertheless sees friendship as the ultimate means by which the Wizarding World avoids becoming a genuine slaveholding society. And perhaps, more radically, friendship could also eliminate the institutional soil in which Voldemort took root. True friendship that sees difference as a cause for celebration, as opposed to domination, would be a means toward a more truly egalitarian vision—where not only house-elf slavery is abolished, but also where the rigid house system is replaced with a more socially fluid network of learners. Moreover, friendship could be the vehicle by which the boundary between the Wizarding and Muggle Worlds is eliminated.