Results for 'Robert H. Wallace'

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  1. A Dilemma for Reductive Compatibilism.Robert H. Wallace - 2023 - Erkenntnis 88 (7):2763–2785.
    A common compatibilist view says that we are free and morally responsible in virtue of the ability to respond aptly to reasons. Many hold a version of this view despite disagreement about whether free will requires the ability to do otherwise. The canonical version of this view is reductive. It reduces the pertinent ability to a set of modal properties that are more obviously compatible with determinism, like dispositions. I argue that this and any reductive view of abilities faces a (...)
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  2. A Puzzle Concerning Gratitude and Accountability.Robert H. Wallace - 2022 - The Journal of Ethics 26 (3):455–480.
    P.F. Strawson’s account of moral responsibility in “Freedom and Resentment” has been widely influential. In both that paper and in the contemporary literature, much attention has been paid to Strawson’s account of blame in terms of reactive attitudes like resentment and indignation. The Strawsonian view of praise in terms of gratitude has received comparatively little attention. Some, however, have noticed something puzzling about gratitude and accountability. We typically understand accountability in terms of moral demands and expectations. Yet gratitude does not (...)
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  3. The Tension in Critical Compatibilism.Robert H. Wallace - 2021 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (1):321-332.
    (Part of a symposium on an OUP collection of Paul Russell's papers on free will and moral responsibility). Paul Russell’s The Limits of Free Will is more than the sum of its parts. Among other things, Limits offers readers a comprehensive look at Russell’s attack on the problematically idealized assumptions of the contemporary free will debate. This idealization, he argues, distorts the reality of our human predicament. Herein I pose a dilemma for Russell’s position, critical compatibilism. The dilemma illuminates the (...)
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  4. Agency: Let's Mind What's Fundamental.Robert H. Wallace - 2023 - Philosophical Issues 33 (1):285–298.
    The standard event-causal theory of action says that an intentional action is caused in the right way by the right mental states. This view requires reductionism about agency. The causal role of the agent must be nothing over and above the causal contribution of the relevant mental event-causal processes. But commonsense finds this reductive solution to the “agent-mind problem”, the problem of explaining the relationship between agents and the mind, incredible. Where did the agent go? This paper suggests that this (...)
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  5. Can I Both Blame and Worship God?Robert H. Wallace - forthcoming - In Aaron Segal & Samuel Lebens (eds.), The Philosophy of Worship: Divine and Human Aspects. Cambridge University Press.
    In a well-known apocryphal story, Theresa of Avila falls off the donkey she was riding, straight into mud, and injures herself. In response, she seems to blame God for her fall. A playful if indignant back and forth ensues. But this is puzzling. Theresa should never think that God is blameworthy. Why? Apparently, one cannot blame what one worships. For to worship something is to show it a kind of reverence, respect, or adoration. To worship is, at least in part, (...)
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  6. Responsibility and the limits of good and evil.Robert H. Wallace - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (10):2705-2727.
    P.F. Strawson’s compatibilism has had considerable influence. However, as Watson has argued in “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil”, his view appears to have a disturbing consequence: extreme evil exempts an agent from moral responsibility. This is a reductio of the view. Moreover, in some cases our emotional reaction to an evildoer’s history clashes with our emotional expressions of blame. Anyone’s actions can be explained by his or her history, however, and thereby can conflict with our present blame. Additionally, we (...)
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  7. Compatibilism as Non-Ideal Theory: A Manifesto.Robert H. Wallace - 2024 - In David Shoemaker, Santiago Amaya & Manuel Vargas (eds.), Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 8: Non-Ideal Agency and Responsibility. Oxford University Press.
    This paper articulates and responds to a challenge to contemporary compatibilist views of free will. Despite the popularity and appeal of compatibilist theories, many are left with lingering doubts about compatibilism. This paper explains this doubt in terms of the absurdity challenge: because a compatibilist accepts that they do not have causal access to all the actual sufficient causal sources of their own agency, the compatibilist can find their own agency absurd. By taking a cue from political philosophy, this paper (...)
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  8. Compassion and Moral Responsibility in Avatar: The Last Airbender: “I was never angry; I was afraid that you had lost your way”.Robert H. Wallace - 2022 - In Helen De Cruz & Johan De Smedt (eds.), Avatar: The Last Airbender and Philosophy: Wisdom From Aang to Zuko. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 197-205..
    This public philosophy piece examines moral responsibility and alternatives to angry blame as exemplified in the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender.
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  9. Agentive Modals and Agentive Modality: A Cautionary Tale.Timothy Kearl & Robert H. Wallace - 2024 - American Philosophical Quarterly 61 (2):139–155.
    In this paper, we consider recent attempts to metaphysically explain agentive modality in terms of conditionals. We suggest that the best recent accounts face counterexamples, and more worryingly, they take some agentive modality for granted. In particular, the ability to perform basic actions features as a primitive in these theories. While it is perfectly acceptable for a semantics of agentive modal claims to take some modality for granted in getting the extension of action claims correct, a metaphysical explanation of agentive (...)
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  10. Moral Diversity and Moral Responsibility.Brian Kogelmann & Robert H. Wallace - 2018 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 4 (3):371-389.
    In large, impersonal moral orders many of us wish to maintain good will toward our fellow citizens only if we are reasonably sure they will maintain good will toward us. The mutual maintaining of good will, then, requires that we somehow communicate our intentions to one another. But how do we actually do this? The current paper argues that when we engage in moral responsibility practices—that is, when we express our reactive attitudes by blaming, praising, and resenting—we communicate a desire (...)
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  11. Review of Daniel Dennett and Gregg D. Caruso Just Deserts: Debating Free Will[REVIEW]Robert H. Wallace - 2023 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 20 (1-2):182-185.
    This is a review of Daniel Dennett and Gregg D. Caruso's Just Deserts: Debating Free Will.
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  12. On Not Blaming and Victim Blaming.Joel Chow Ken Q. & Robert H. Wallace - 2020 - Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 39 (3):95-128.
    In this paper we show that being blameworthy for not blaming and being blameworthy for victim blaming are structurally similar. Each involve the two traditional contours of moral responsibility: a knowledge condition and a control condition. But interestingly, in these cases knowledge and control are importantly interrelated. Being in a relationship with another person affords us varying degrees of knowledge about them. This knowledge in turn affords agents in relationships varying degrees of influence over one another. Cases where an agent (...)
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  13. A Phenomenological Theory of Ecological Responsibility and Its Implications for Moral Agency in Climate Change.Robert H. Scott - 2018 - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 31 (6):645-659.
    In a recent article appearing in this journal, Theresa Scavenius compellingly argues that the traditional “rational-individualistic” conception of responsibility is ill-suited to accounting for the sense in which moral agents share in responsibility for both contributing to the causes and, proactively, working towards solutions for climate change. Lacking an effective moral framework through which to make sense of individual moral responsibility for climate change, many who have good intentions and the means to contribute to solutions for climate change tend to (...)
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  14. Elements of Literature: Essay, Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Film.Robert Scholes, Carl H. Klaus, Nancy R. Comley & Michael Silverman (eds.) - 1991 - Oxford University Press USA.
    Providing the most thorough coverage available in one volume, this comprehensive, broadly based collection offers a wide variety of selections in four major genres, and also includes a section on film. Each of the five sections contains a detailed critical introduction to each form, brief biographies of the authors, and a clear, concise editorial apparatus. Updated and revised throughout, the new Fourth Edition adds essays by Margaret Mead, Russell Baker, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, and Alice Walker; fiction by Nathaniel Hawthorne, (...)
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  15. A Model Of Consciousness.Robert H. Kettell - manuscript
    It has been difficult to define human consciousness because of its many differing qualities and because of various views people have of consciousness. It is proposed that these multiple vantage points be united into a single three-dimensional model utilizing breadth, time and depth. This model could provide a more comprehensive definition of consciousness and encourage an exploration of the interplay of consciousness’ many features. Such a model may also help answer some of the many questions that the concept of consciousness (...)
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    Structures in Real Theory Application: A Study in Feasible Epistemology.Robert H. C. Moir - 2013 - Dissertation, University of Western Ontario
    This thesis considers the following problem: What methods should the epistemology of science use to gain insight into the structure and behaviour of scientific knowledge and method in actual scientific practice? After arguing that the elucidation of epistemological and methodological phenomena in science requires a method that is rooted in formal methods, I consider two alternative methods for epistemology of science. One approach is the classical approaches of the syntactic and semantic views of theories. I show that typical approaches of (...)
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  17. Commentaries on David Hodgson's "a plain person's free will".Graham Cairns-Smith, Thomas W. Clark, Ravi Gomatam, Robert H. Kane, Nicholas Maxwell, J. J. C. Smart, Sean A. Spence & Henry P. Stapp - 2005 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 12 (1):20-75.
    REMARKS ON EVOLUTION AND TIME-SCALES, Graham Cairns-Smith; HODGSON'S BLACK BOX, Thomas Clark; DO HODGSON'S PROPOSITIONS UNIQUELY CHARACTERIZE FREE WILL?, Ravi Gomatam; WHAT SHOULD WE RETAIN FROM A PLAIN PERSON'S CONCEPT OF FREE WILL?, Gilberto Gomes; ISOLATING DISPARATE CHALLENGES TO HODGSON'S ACCOUNT OF FREE WILL, Liberty Jaswal; FREE AGENCY AND LAWS OF NATURE, Robert Kane; SCIENCE VERSUS REALIZATION OF VALUE, NOT DETERMINISM VERSUS CHOICE, Nicholas Maxwell; COMMENTS ON HODGSON, J.J.C. Smart; THE VIEW FROM WITHIN, Sean Spence; COMMENTARY ON HODGSON, Henry (...)
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  18. Is culture a commodity?Robert Layton & Gillian Wallace - 2006 - In Chris Scarre & Geoffrey Scarre (eds.), The Ethics of Archaeology: Philosophical Perspectives on Archaeological Practice. Cambridge University Press. pp. 46--68.
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  19. How Plato and Hegel Integrate the Sciences, the Arts, Religion, and Philosophy.Robert M. Wallace - 2019 - Hegel Jahrbuch 2019 (1):391-402.
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  20. Commanding, Giving, Vulnerable: What is the Normative Standing of the Other in Levinas.James H. P. Lewis & Robert Stern - 2019 - In Michael Fagenblat & Melis Erdur (eds.), Levinas and Analytic Philosophy: Second-Person Normativity and the Moral Life. New York: Routledge.
    At the heart of Levinas’s work is the apparently simple idea that through the encounter with another person, we are forced to give up our self-concern and take heed of the ethical relation between us. But, while simple on the surface, when one tries to characterize it in more detail, it can be hard to fit together the various ways in which Levinas talks about this relation and to identify precisely what he took its normative structure to be, as this (...)
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  21. The Protein Ontology: A structured representation of protein forms and complexes.Darren Natale, Cecilia N. Arighi, Winona C. Barker, Judith A. Blake, Carol J. Bult, Michael Caudy, Harold J. Drabkin, Peter D’Eustachio, Alexei V. Evsikov, Hongzhan Huang, Jules Nchoutmboube, Natalia V. Roberts, Barry Smith, Jian Zhang & Cathy H. Wu - 2011 - Nucleic Acids Research 39 (1):D539-D545.
    The Protein Ontology (PRO) provides a formal, logically-based classification of specific protein classes including structured representations of protein isoforms, variants and modified forms. Initially focused on proteins found in human, mouse and Escherichia coli, PRO now includes representations of protein complexes. The PRO Consortium works in concert with the developers of other biomedical ontologies and protein knowledge bases to provide the ability to formally organize and integrate representations of precise protein forms so as to enhance accessibility to results of protein (...)
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  22. A Strategy for Origins of Life Research. [REVIEW]Caleb Scharf, Nathaniel Virgo, H. James Cleaves Ii, Masashi Aono, Nathanael Aubert-Kato, Arsev Aydinoglu, Ana Barahona, Laura M. Barge, Steven A. Benner, Martin Biehl, Ramon Brasser, Christopher J. Butch, Kuhan Chandru, Leroy Cronin, Sebastian Danielache, Jakob Fischer, John Hernlund, Piet Hut, Takashi Ikegami, Jun Kimura, Kensei Kobayashi, Carlos Mariscal, Shawn McGlynn, Bryce Menard, Norman Packard, Robert Pascal, Juli Pereto, Sudha Rajamani, Lana Sinapayen, Eric Smith, Christopher Switzer, Ken Takai, Feng Tian, Yuichiro Ueno, Mary Voytek, Olaf Witkowski & Hikaru Yabuta - 2015 - Astrobiology 15:1031-1042.
    Aworkshop was held August 26–28, 2015, by the Earth- Life Science Institute (ELSI) Origins Network (EON, see Appendix I) at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. This meeting gathered a diverse group of around 40 scholars researching the origins of life (OoL) from various perspectives with the intent to find common ground, identify key questions and investigations for progress, and guide EON by suggesting a roadmap of activities. Specific challenges that the attendees were encouraged to address included the following: What key (...)
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  23. Gorazd Andrejč and Daniel H. Weiss (eds) Interpreting Interreligious Relations with Wittgenstein (Leiden: Brill, 2019). Pp. xiv + 243. £100.00 (Hbk). ISBN 9789004397927. [REVIEW]Robert Vinten - 2021 - Religious Studies 57.
    One of the virtues of this edited collection is the diversity contained within it. There is diversity to be found in the uses made of Wittgenstein's writings, reflecting the diversity of ways of understanding religion found in Wittgenstein's work. Andrejč, in his introduction (3), suggests that there are four dominant ways in which Wittgenstein depicts religion: the nonsensicalist, existentialist, grammaticalist and instinctivist conceptions of religion.
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  24. The Knowledge of Good: Critique of Axiological Reason.Robert S. Hartman, Arthur R. Ellis & Rem B. Edwards (eds.) - 2002 - BRILL.
    This book presents Robert S. Hartman’s formal theory of value and critically examines many other twentieth century value theorists in its light, including A.J. Ayer, Kurt Baier, Brand Blanshard, Paul Edwards, Albert Einstein, William K. Frankena, R.M. Hare, Nicolai Hartmann, Martin Heidegger, G.E. Moore, P.H. Nowell-Smith, Jose Ortega y Gasset, Charles Stevenson, Paul W. Taylor, Stephen E. Toulmin, and J.O. Urmson.
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  25. How Berkeley Redefines Substance.Stephen H. Daniel - 2013 - Berkeley Studies 24:40-50.
    In several essays I have argued that Berkeley maintains the same basic notion of spiritual substance throughout his life. Because that notion is not the traditional (Aristotelian, Cartesian, or Lockean) doctrine of substance, critics (e.g., John Roberts, Tom Stoneham, Talia Mae Bettcher, Margaret Atherton, Walter Ott, Marc Hight) claim that on my reading Berkeley either endorses a Humean notion of substance or has no recognizable theory of substance at all. In this essay I point out how my interpretation does not (...)
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  26. Suggestions to Improve the Comprehensibility of Current Definitions of Scientific Authorship for International Authors.Mohammad Hosseini, Luca Consoli, H. A. E. Zwart & Mariette A. Van den Hoven - 2020 - Science and Engineering Ethics 26 (2):597-617.
    Much has been said about the need for improving the current definitions of scientific authorship, but an aspect that is often overlooked is how to formulate and communicate these definitions to ensure that they are comprehensible and useful for researchers, notably researchers active in international research consortia. In light of a rapid increase in international collaborations within natural sciences, this article uses authorship of this branch of sciences as an example and provides suggestions to improve the comprehensibility of the definitions (...)
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  27. Handbook battles, H.J. Rose versus Robert Graves: a lesson in common ground.Terence Rajivan Edward - manuscript
    This paper proposes that there is common ground between H.J. Rose’s A Handbook of Greek Mythology and Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths, in that both seem to think that it is a bad idea to meet a certain demand: to provide a handbook that is reliable, easy to consult, and suitable for students of certain literary tastes.
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  28. The Limits of Free Will: Replies to Bennett, Smith and Wallace.Paul Russell - 2021 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (1):357-373.
    This is a contribution to a Book symposium on The Limits of Free Will: Selected Essays by Paul Russell. Russell provides replies to three critics of The Limits of Free Will. The first reply is to Robert Wallace and focuses on the question of whether there is a conflict between the core compatibilist and pessimist components of the "critical compatibilist" position that Russell has advanced. The second reply is to Angela Smith's discussion of the "narrow" interpretation of moral (...)
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  29. God and nature in the thought of Robert Boyle.Timothy Shanahan - 1988 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 (4):547-569.
    THERE IS WIDESPREAD AGREEMENT among historians that the writings of Robert Boyle (1697-1691) constitute a valuable archive for understanding the concerns of seventeenth-century British natural philosophers. His writings have often been seen as representing, in one fashion or another, all of the leading intellectual currents of his day. ~ There is somewhat less consensus, however, on the proper historiographic method for interpreting these writings, as well as on the specific details of the beliefs expressed in them. Studies seeking to (...)
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  30. Non-Positivism and Encountering a Weakened Necessity of the Separation between Law and Morality – Reflections on the Debate between Robert Alexy and Joseph Raz.Wei Feng - 2019 - Archiv Für Rechts- Und Sozialphilosophie, Beiheft 158:305-334.
    Nearly thirty years ago, Robert Alexy in his book The Concept and Validity of Law as well as in other early articles raised non-positivistic arguments in the Continental European tradition against legal positivism in general, which was assumed to be held by, among others, John Austin, Hans Kelsen and H.L.A. Hart. The core thesis of legal positivism that was being discussed among contemporary German jurists, just as with their Anglo- American counterparts, is the claim that there is no necessary (...)
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  31. Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare's Two-Level Utilitarianism, by Gary E. Varner * The Philosophy of Animal Minds, edited by Robert W. Lurz.K. Andrews - 2014 - Mind 123 (491):959-966.
    A review of Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare’s Two-Level Utilitarianism, by Gary E. Varner. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. xv + 336. H/b £40.23. and The Philosophy of Animal Minds, edited by Robert W. Lurz. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 320. P/b £20.21.
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  32. Kimball on Whitehead and Perception.David L. Hildebrand - 1993 - Process Studies 22 (1):13-20.
    In "The Incoherence of Whitehead’s Theory of Perception" (PS 9:94-104), Robert H. Kimball tries to show how Alfred North Whitehead’s account of perception is a failed attempt to reconcile two traditional theories of perception: phenomenological (or sense-data) theory and causal (or physiological) theory. Whitehead fails, Kimball argues, in two main ways. First because his notion of symbolic reference requires the simultaneous enjoyment of perceptions in the mode of presentational immediacy and causal efficacy. Kimball believes this experience is, in principle, (...)
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  33. Best Laid Plans: Idealization and the Rationality–Accuracy Bridge.Brett Topey - forthcoming - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
    Hilary Greaves and David Wallace argue that conditionalization maximizes expected accuracy and so is a rational requirement, but their argument presupposes a particular picture of the bridge between rationality and accuracy: the Best-Plan-to-Follow picture. And theorists such as Miriam Schoenfield and Robert Steel argue that it's possible to motivate an alternative picture—the Best-Plan-to-Make picture—that does not vindicate conditionalization. I show that these theorists are mistaken: it turns out that, if an update procedure maximizes expected accuracy on the Best-Plan-to-Follow (...)
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  34. Chreods, homeorhesis and biofields: Finding the right path for science.Arran Gare - 2017 - Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 131:61-91.
    C.H. Waddington’s concepts of ‘chreods’ (canalized paths of development) and ‘homeorhesis’ (the tendency to return to a path), each associated with ‘morphogenetic fields’, were conceived by him as a contribution to complexity theory. Subsequent developments in complexity theory have largely ignored Waddington’s work and efforts to advance it. Waddington explained the development of the concept of chreod as the influence on his work of Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, notably, the concept of concrescence as a self-causing process. Processes were recognized (...)
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  35. O Pensamento Social dos Estados Unidos: uma abordagem histórica.Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva - manuscript
    HISTÓRIA DA SOCIOLOGIA: O DESENVOLVIMENTO DA SOCIOLOGIA I -/- A SOCIOLOGIA NOS ESTADOS UNIDOS -/- -/- HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY: THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY I -/- SOCIOLOGY IN UNITED STATES -/- -/- Emanuel Isaque Cordeiro da Silva – IFPE-BJ, CAP-UFPE e UFRPE. E-mails: [email protected] e [email protected] WhatsApp: (82)9.8143-8399. -/- -/- PREMISSA -/- A Sociologia nos Estados Unidos desenvolveu-se no contexto de dois grandes eventos que marcaram profundamente a história do país. -/- O primeiro foi a Guerra de Secessão (também conhecida como (...)
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  36. Challenges to the hypothesis of extended cognition.Robert D. Rupert - 2004 - Journal of Philosophy 101 (8):389-428.
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  37. Tempered pragmatism.Ian Rumfitt - 2016 - In Cheryl Misak & Huw Price (eds.), The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oup/Ba.
    This paper assesses the prospects of a pragmatist theory of content. I begin by criticising the theory presented in D.H. Mellor’s essay ‘Successful Semantics’. I then identify problems and lacunae in the pragmatist theory of meaning sketched in Chapter 13 of Dummett’s The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. The prospects are brighter, I contend, for a tempered pragmatism, in which the theory of content is permitted to draw upon irreducible notions of truth and falsity. I sketch the shape of such a (...)
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  38. Representation and mental representation.Robert D. Rupert - 2018 - Philosophical Explorations 21 (2):204-225.
    This paper engages critically with anti-representationalist arguments pressed by prominent enactivists and their allies. The arguments in question are meant to show that the “as-such” and “job-description” problems constitute insurmountable challenges to causal-informational theories of mental content. In response to these challenges, a positive account of what makes a physical or computational structure a mental representation is proposed; the positive account is inspired partly by Dretske’s views about content and partly by the role of mental representations in contemporary cognitive scientific (...)
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  39. Memory, Natural Kinds, and Cognitive Extension; or, Martians Don’t Remember, and Cognitive Science Is Not about Cognition.Robert D. Rupert - 2013 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 4 (1):25-47.
    This paper evaluates the Natural-Kinds Argument for cognitive extension, which purports to show that the kinds presupposed by our best cognitive science have instances external to human organism. Various interpretations of the argument are articulated and evaluated, using the overarching categories of memory and cognition as test cases. Particular emphasis is placed on criteria for the scientific legitimacy of generic kinds, that is, kinds characterized in very broad terms rather than in terms of their fine-grained causal roles. Given the current (...)
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  40. Embodiment, Consciousness, and the Massively Representational Mind.Robert D. Rupert - 2011 - Philosophical Topics 39 (1):99-120.
    In this paper, I claim that extant empirical data do not support a radically embodied understanding of the mind but, instead, suggest (along with a variety of other results) a massively representational view. According to this massively representational view, the brain is rife with representations that possess overlapping and redundant content, and many of these represent other mental representations or derive their content from them. Moreover, many behavioral phenomena associated with attention and consciousness are best explained by the coordinated activity (...)
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  41. Functionalism, mental causation, and the problem of metaphysically necessary effects.Robert D. Rupert - 2006 - Noûs 40 (2):256-83.
    The recent literature on mental causation has not been kind to nonreductive, materialist functionalism (‘functionalism’, hereafter, except where that term is otherwise qualified). The exclusion problem2 has done much of the damage, but the epiphenomenalist threat has taken other forms. Functionalism also faces what I will call the ‘problem of metaphysically necessary effects’ (Block, 1990, pp. 157-60, Antony and Levine, 1997, pp. 91-92, Pereboom, 2002, p. 515, Millikan, 1999, p. 47, Jackson, 1998, pp. 660-61). Functionalist mental properties are individuated partly (...)
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  42. The Self in the Age of Cognitive Science: Decoupling the Self from the Personal Level.Robert D. Rupert - 2018 - Philosophic Exchange 2018.
    Philosophers of mind commonly draw a distinction between the personal level – the distinctive realm of conscious experience and reasoned deliberation – and the subpersonal level, the domain of mindless mechanism and brute cause and effect. Moreover, they tend to view cognitive science through the lens of this distinction. Facts about the personal level are given a priori, by introspection, or by common sense; the job of cognitive science is merely to investigate the mechanistic basis of these facts. I argue (...)
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  43. What Is a Cognitive System? In Defense of the Conditional Probability of Co-contribution Account.Robert D. Rupert - 2019 - Cognitive Semantics 5 (2):175-200.
    A theory of cognitive systems individuation is presented and defended. The approach has some affinity with Leonard Talmy's Overlapping Systems Model of Cognitive Organization, and the paper's first section explores aspects of Talmy's view that are shared by the view developed herein. According to the view on offer -- the conditional probability of co-contribution account (CPC) -- a cognitive system is a collection of mechanisms that contribute, in overlapping subsets, to a wide variety of forms of intelligent behavior. Central to (...)
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  44. Contextual quantum realism and other interpretations of quantum mechanics.Francois-Igor Pris - 2023 - Moscow: Lenand.
    It is proposed a critique of existing interpretations of quantum mechanics, both anti-realistic and realistic, and, in particular, the Copenhagen interpretation, the interpretations with hidden variables, the metaphysical interpretation of H. Everett’s interpretation, the many-worlds interpretation by D. Wallace, QBism by C. Fuchs, D. Mermin and R. Schack, the relational interpretation by C. Rovelli, neo-Kantian and phenomenological interpretations by M. Bitbol, the informational interpretation by A. Zeilinger, the Nobel Prize Winner in Physics 2022, and others. As is known compared (...)
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  45. Mixed-grain Property Collaboration: Reconstructing Multiple Realization after the Elimination of Levels.Robert D. Rupert - manuscript
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  46. Ceteris paribus laws, component forces, and the nature of special-science properties.Robert D. Rupert - 2008 - Noûs 42 (3):349-380.
    Laws of nature seem to take two forms. Fundamental physics discovers laws that hold without exception, ‘strict laws’, as they are sometimes called; even if some laws of fundamental physics are irreducibly probabilistic, the probabilistic relation is thought not to waver. In the nonfundamental, or special, sciences, matters differ. Laws of such sciences as psychology and economics hold only ceteris paribus – that is, when other things are equal. Sometimes events accord with these ceteris paribus laws (c.p. laws, hereafter), but (...)
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  47. Embodied Knowledge, Conceptual Change, and the A Priori; or, Justification, Revision, and the Ways Life Could Go.Robert D. Rupert - 2016 - American Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2):169-192.
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  48. Cognitive Systems, Predictive Processing, and the Self.Robert D. Rupert - 2021 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 13 (4):947-972.
    This essay presents the conditional probability of co-contribution account of the individuation of cognitive systems (CPC) and argues that CPC provides an attractive basis for a theory of the cognitive self. The argument proceeds in a largely indirect way, by emphasizing empirical challenges faced by an approach that relies entirely on predictive processing (PP) mechanisms to ground a theory of the cognitive self. Given the challenges faced by PP-based approaches, we should prefer a theory of the cognitive self of the (...)
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  49. Embodiment, Consciousness, and Neurophenomenology: Embodied Cognitive Science Puts the (First) Person in Its Place.Robert D. Rupert - 2015 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 22 (3-4):148-180.
    This paper asks about the ways in which embodimentoriented cognitive science contributes to our understanding of phenomenal consciousness. It is first argued that central work in the field of embodied cognitive science does not solve the hard problem of consciousness head on. It is then argued that an embodied turn toward neurophenomenology makes no distinctive headway on the puzzle of consciousness; for neurophenomenology either concedes dualism in the face of the hard problem or represents only a slight methodological variation on (...)
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  50. Naturalism Meets the Personal Level: How Mixed Modelling Flattens the Mind.Robert D. Rupert - manuscript
    In this essay, it is argued that naturalism of an even moderate sort speaks strongly against a certain widely held thesis about the human mental (and cognitive) architecture: that it is divided into two distinct levels, the personal and the subpersonal, about the former of which we gain knowledge in a manner that effectively insulates such knowledge from the results of scientific research. -/- An empirically motivated alternative is proposed, according to which the architecture is, so to speak, flattened from (...)
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