Jerks, Zombie Robots, and Other Philosophical Misadventures [working title]

MIT Press, 2019

This book consists of a few dozen popular articles and blog posts, on philosophy, psychology, culture, and technology, updated and revised, selected from over a thousand pieces I published from 2006 through 2018.

There will be one more chance to make revisions, after I receive the copyedited manuscript.  Feedback is definitely still welcome! 

By following either of the links below, you are requesting a copy of the DRAFT book for personal use only, in accord with "fair use" laws.

Click here to view this document as a PDF file: The Splintered Mind book (pdf, November 30, 2018). 

Or here to view this document as an HTM file: The Splintered Mind book (html, November 30, 2018).

Or here to view this document as a DOCX file: The Splintered Mind book (docx, November 30, 2018).

For the published version, see MIT's website

Or email eschwitz at domain: ucr.edu for a copy of this manuscript.

Contents:

Part One: Jerks and Excuses 1. A Theory of Jerks 2. Forgetting as an Unwitting Confession of Your Values 3. The Happy Coincidence Defense and The-Most-You-Can-Do Sweet Spot 4. Cheeseburger Ethics (or How Often Do Ethicists Call Their Mothers?) 5. On Not Seeking Pleasure Much 6. How Much Should You Care about How You Feel in Your Dreams? 7. Imagining Yourself in Another's Shoes vs. Extending Your Love 8. Is It Perfectly Fine to Aim for Moral Mediocrity? 9. A Theory of Hypocrisy 10. On Not Distinguishing Too Finely Among Your Motivations 11. The Mush of Normativity 12. A Moral Dunning-Kruger Effect? 13. The Moral Compass and the Liberal Ideal in Moral Education

Part Two: Cute AI and Zombie Robots 14. Should Your Driverless Car Kill You So Others May Live? 15. Cute AI and the ASIMO Problem 16. My Daughter's Rented Eyes 17. Someday, Your Employer Will Technologically Control Your Moods 18. Cheerfully Suicidal AI Slaves 19. We Would Have Greater Moral Obligations to Conscious Robots Than to Otherwise Similar Humans 20. How Robots and Monsters Might Destroy Human Moral Systems 21. Our Possible Imminent Divinity 22. Skepticism, Godzilla, and the Artificial Computerized Many-Branching You 23. How to Accidentally Become a Zombie Robot

Part Three: Regrets and Birthday Cake 24. Dreidel: A Seemingly Foolish Game That Contains the Moral World in Miniature 25. Does It Matter If the Passover Story Is Literally True? 26. Memories of My Father 27. Flying Free of the Deathbed, with Technological Help 28. Thoughts on Conjugal Love 29. Knowing What You Love 30. The Epistemic Status of Deathbed Regrets 31. Competing Perspectives on One's Final, Dying Thought 32. Profanity Inflation, Profanity Migration, and the Paradox of Prohibition (or I Love You, "Fuck") 33. The Legend of the Leaning Behaviorist 34. What Happens to Democracy When the Experts Can't Be Both Factual and Balanced? 35. On the Morality of Hypotenuse Walking 36. Birthday Cake and a Chapel

Part Four: Cosmic Freaks 37. Possible Psychology of a Matrioshka Brain 38. A Two-Seater Homunculus 39. Is the United States Literally Conscious? 40. Might You Be a Cosmic Freak? 41. Choosing to Be That Fellow Back Then: Voluntarism about Personal Identity 42. How Everything You Do Might Have Huge Cosmic Significance 43. Penelope's Guide to Defeating Time, Space, and Causation 44. Goldfish-Pool Immortality 45. Are Garden Snails Conscious? Yes, No, or *Gong*

Part Five: Kant vs. the Philosopher of Hair 46. Truth, Dare, and Wonder 47. Trusting Your Sense of Fun 48. What's in People's Stream of Experience During Philosophy Talks? 49. Why Metaphysics Is Always Bizarre 50. The Philosopher of Hair 51. Obfuscatory Philosophy as Intellectual Authoritarianism and Cowardice 52. Kant on Killing Bastards, Masturbation, Organ Donation, Homosexuality, Tyrants, Wives, and Servants 53. Nazi Philosophers, World War I, and the Grand Wisdom Hypothesis 54. Against Charity in the History of Philosophy 55. Invisible Revisions 56. On Being Good at Seeming Smart 57. Blogging and Philosophical Cognition 58. Will Future Generations Find Us Morally Loathsome?

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