Précis of Knowledge and its Limits1

A creature that is not aware of anything does not lead a genuinely intelligent life. Its activity is unintelligent because unguided by (conscious or unconscious) awareness. Although intelligent life does not consist solely of awareness, it is intelligent only where it is intimately related to awareness. Awareness of anything involves some awareness of how things are in some respect. Even awareness merely of how things appear to be is awareness of how they are in respect of appearance. Awareness of how things are is awareness, concerning some way, that they are that way. But awareness that they are that way is knowledge that they are that way. Thus all intelligent life involves an intimate relation to knowledge. The mental states of a creature are the states that make its life intelligent. Consequently, the state of knowing is a mental state; it is central to mentality.     

Précis of Justice,Luck, and Knowledge*

Justice, Luck, and Knowledge (JLK) contributes to recent developments in two areas, moral responsibility and distributive justice. Prominent luck‐neutralizing approaches to distributive justice, exemplified in work by Cohen and by Roemer, argue that justice requires equal distribution of goods for which people aren't responsible. Such views of justice haven't focused attention on responsibility itself. Meanwhile, responsibility has been illuminat‐ingly articulated in work including, and influenced by, Frankfurt's seminal essays. My book brings these separate lines of work, on justice and on responsibility, into contact, examining how the new articulation of responsibility constrains the roles responsibility can play in distributive justice. Part I focuses on responsibility and its inverse correlate, luck; Part II assesses responsibility‐based approaches to justice in light of preceding arguments about responsibility. (See JLK, 4–5 on responsibility, reactive attitudes, and accountability.)     

Précis of The Situated Self

The riddle posed by the double nature of the ego certainly lies beyond [the limits of science]. On the one hand, I am a real individual man, born by a mother and destined to carrying out real and psychical acts (far too many, I may think, if boarding a subway during an hour). On the other hand, I am “vision” open to reason, a self‐penetrating light, immanent sense‐giving consciousness, or how ever you may call it, and as such unique. (Weyl, Address, 3)