Reacting against the turn to transcendence that heavily characterized the medieval worldview, the modern worldview is fundamentally exemplified by a threefold turn to immanence, consisting of a subjective turn, a linguistic turn and an experiential turn. Language plays a pivotal role here since it mediates between the subjective and the experiential. Ricoeur’s treatment of metaphor, significantly laid out in his The Rule of Metaphor, is crucial in bringing about this linguistic turn that mediates the subject and its experience of the (...) world. Through an analysis of “seeing as” as a poietic reconfiguration of reality in the subject’s experience, language transforms and founds the world as a “being as.” What is disclosed in this interpretative transformation of reality is not simply an hermeneutical ontology but possibly—also through language—an hermeneutical axiology. (shrink)

The novel begins as follows:"Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason. The absent Paul, haunting her with letters and telephone bells and imagined footsteps on the stairs had begun to be the greater torment. Dora suffered from guilt, and with guilt came fear. She decided at last that the persecution of his presence was to be preferred to the persecution of his absence."Murdoch's novel (...) The Bell is about Imber Court. It is a small Anglican religious community of lay people whose lives were transformed, not just by the arrival of a couple of dissimilar visitors, not just by the arrival of a new bell to be installed at Imber Abbey located beyond the lake, but more significantly by the discovery of a centuries-old bell the story of which is engulfed in a terrible legend. (shrink)

For one to simply think, philosophy as a rational investigation of truths and principles of knowledge, being, and conduct, that is, philosophy as a "science," is not required. For thinking, what requisite is a reason, a human endowment constitutive of one's intelligence. One only needs a mind to be able to think. But something more is exigent for one to think twice, is to think again, to reconsider and see something from a different perspective. To think things twice, one needs (...) a conscious apprehension of the notion of truth, a deliberate and critical engagement with principles, and a learned competency of habits of thinking that discloses the eternal freshness of reality. These are the elements that constitute philosophy not simply as a way of life, but as an academic discipline with methods and theories. Here lies philosophy's vocational relevance. Thinking things twice is not the mental disorder of indecisiveness or the unfortunate product of capriciousness. To think things twice is the stubborn instinct of human intelligence which remains restless in entrenched patterns of thought. The apprehension of the possibility of thinking things twice is the initial promise of liberation, the first step towards unshackling the mind and its powers from mental scripts that do not give birth to creativity. This explains why it is said that in the domain of philosophical discourses, questions always outlive their answers. Indeed, though philosophy, in its many faces and guises, has offered opinions, beliefs and sometimes divergent truths to the fundamental questions of life. The more important are the questions asked than the answers proffered. The convoluted transformations and shifting grounds in the history of ideas show to us how, philosophically considered, answers have no finality. (shrink)

The article recovers the earlier meaning of event as found in Alfred North Whitehead’s works, Principles of Natural Knowledge and Concept of Nature. In the early Whitehead, the event is considered as the metaphysical ultimate; such that events are the metaphysical building blocks in order to account for the temporal and spatial extensiveness of reality. The recuperation of the pre-PR concept of event is expressive of a dynamic of extending over, or passing into, of one event to another. This dynamic (...) is explicitly absent in the actual occasion of Process and Reality, after Whitehead’s “turn to atomism.”. (shrink)

The peculiarity of any social teaching, Catholic, Protestant or otherwise, is that it is an unsteady marriage between the dogmatically permanent beliefs and the perennially changing historical contexts. Any authentic and relevant social teaching needs to mirror a two-fold fidelity: Faithfulness to the universal truths to which the social teaching is a reflection, and loyalty to the historical contexts to which the social teaching is inextricably embedded. The merit of Cartagenas’s book Unlocking the church’s best kept secret is that it (...) epitomizes the wobbly balancing act that takes cognizance of this two-fold fidelity. (shrink)

Goethe once wisely remarked, in conversation with J.P. Eckermann (1825), “[a] great deal may be done by severity, more by love, but most by clear discernment and impartial justice.” Grayling’s new contribution to the popularization of philosophy, in this respect with regard to ethics, has achieved much by way of lowering to the rank and file, the wisdom of philosophical reflections in this moving, straightforward and lucidly argumentative book. However, much space in the severity and passion of the text leaves (...) ample room for improvement, better yet, enhancement, not so much by approaching his subjects with love as by treating the topics with impartiality. (shrink)

For Whitehead and Nishitani, a rethinking of religion necessitates a rethinking of the metaphysics that underlie one’s concept of religion. The dynamism of religion is unveiled only within the metaphysical grounding of an ontology that accommodates the philosophical preference of “becoming” as an ultimate category of reality. The novelty of Whitehead’s theory of religion lies in the process metaphysics that it presupposes. For him, religion, like the whole of reality, is inherently developing and evolving. What Nishitani offers is a rethinking (...) of Western understanding of religion by way of an Asian speculative approach grounded in Zen Buddhism. He argues that Western religion, particularly Christianity and Judaism, has succumbed to the modern predicament of nihilism, or relative nothingness. He radicalizes this same nihility towards absolute nothingness (śūnyatā). For both Whitehead and Nishitani, despite the distortion of religion by religious fundamentalists, genuine religion consolidates and points a society towards its real destiny. However, the realization of religion’s role necessitates reflexivity on its own inherent dynamism. (shrink)

Faced with the choice between creating a risk of harm and taking a precaution against that risk, should I take the precaution? Does the proper analysis of this trade-off require a maximizing, utilitarian approach? If not, how does one properly analyze the trade-off? These questions are important, for we often are uncertain about the effects of our actions. Accordingly, we often must consider whether our actions create an unreasonable risk of injury — that is, whether our actions are negligent.

Book Review of Kenneth Westphal's Kant’s Critical Epistemology: Why Epistemology Must Consider Judgment First.

Abstract: There has recently been controversy over the existence of 'multiple realization' in addition to some confusion between different conceptions of its nature. To resolve these problems, we focus on concrete examples from the sciences to provide precise accounts of the scientific concepts of 'realization' and 'multiple realization' that have played key roles in recent debates in the philosophy of science and philosophy of psychology. We illustrate the advantages of our view over a prominent rival account ( Shapiro, 2000 and (...) 2004 ) and use our work to rebut recent objections to the long-standing claim that psychological properties are multiply realized. For we use scientific evidence, in combination with our more precise theoretical framework, to show that we have strong reason to believe that psychological properties are indeed multiply realized both at the biochemical and neuronal levels. (shrink)

While social epistemologists have recently begun addressing questions about whether groups can possess beliefs or knowledge, little has yet been said about whether groups can properly be said to possess understanding. Here I want to make some progress on this question by considering two possible accounts of group understanding, modeled on accounts of group belief and knowledge: a deflationary account, according to which a group understands just in case most or all of its members understand, and an inflationary account, according (...) to which a group’s understanding does not depend solely on whether its members understand. I argue that both accounts face problems. The deflationary account has two such problems: aggregation problems that are familiar from discussions of group belief, and the problem of different bases, wherein members possess understanding for different but consistent reasons. The inflationary account faces what I call the problem of distributed grasping: while it is widely accepted that understanding requires a kind of “grasping”, it is hard to make sense of how this requirement could be met at the group level while not necessarily being met by any individual member. Despite its problems, I make a case for the inflationary account. This will require addressing the problem of distributed grasping: to do this, I propose a different way of thinking about the grasping relation at the group level, such that it is constituted by a dependency relationship between members. (shrink)

Biologists seems to hold two fundamental beliefs: Organisms are organized into levels and the individuals at these levels differ in their properties. Together these suggest that there will be massive multiple realization, i.e. that many human psychological properties are multiply realized at many neurobiological levels. This paper provides some documentation in support of this suggestion.

Among the many ideas that go by the name of “enactivism” there is the idea that by “cognition” we should understand what is more commonly taken to be behavior. For clarity, label such forms of enactivism “enactivismb.” This terminology requires some care in evaluating enactivistb claims. There is a genuine risk of enactivist and non-enactivist cognitive scientists talking past one another. So, for example, when enactivistsb write that “cognition does not require representations” they are not necessarily denying what cognitivists claim (...) when they write that “cognition requires representations.” This paper will draw attention to instances of some of these unnecessary confusions. (shrink)

Emergence is typically discussed in the context of mental properties or the properties of the natural sciences, and accounts of emergence within these contexts tend to look a certain way. The emergent property is taken to emerge instantaneously out of, or to be proximately caused by, complex interaction of colocated entities. Here, however, I focus on the properties instantiated by the elements of certain systems discussed in social ontology, such as being a five-dollar bill or a pawn-movement, and I suggest (...) that these properties emerge in a distinctive way. They emerge in part because of a system that is far beyond and typically before the object that instantiates them. I characterize how emergence occurs in these cases, juxtaposing it with how emergence is typically discussed. I then consider whether their emergence is best framed as weak or strong as these notions are characterized in the literature, and I reveal what debates are central to answering this question. Though I will not resolve these debates, I do show a collection of views that would vindicate these properties as strongly emergent and downwardly causing. (shrink)

Groups behave in a variety of ways. To show that this behavior amounts to action, it would be best to fit it into a general account of action. However, nearly every account from the philosophy of action requires the agent to have mental states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. Unfortunately, theorists are divided over whether groups can instantiate these states—typically depending on whether or not they are willing to accept functionalism about the mind. But we can avoid this debate. (...) I show how a more general view of action captures what is central to action without mentioning mental states, and I argue that a group’s members can fulfill the role in group action that mental states play in our actions. Group behavior is explicable in terms of reasons, regardless of whether the group itself cognizes those reasons. After discussing the kind of reasons at issue and arguing that groups can act in light of them without minds, I assess how this account bears on the question of group responsibility. (shrink)

Kenneth Arrow presents Rawls as making a controversial assumption, which he terms “asset egalitarianism”: that all the assets of society, including personal skills, are available for distribution. I distinguish two versions of the assumption and draw attention to difficulties in determining what Arrow’s concern over the assumption is.

This paper has a two-fold aim. First, it reinforces a version of the "syntactic argument" given in Aizawa (1994). This argument shows that connectionist networks do not provide a means of implementing representations without rules. Horgan and Tlenson have responded to the syntactic argument in their book and in another paper (Horgan & Tlenson, 1993), but their responses do not meet the challenge posed by my formulation of the syntactic argument. My second aim is to describe a kind of cognitive (...) architecture. This architecture might be called a computational architecture, but it is not a rules and representations architecture nor the representations without rules architecture that Horgan and Tlenson wish to endorse. (shrink)

This paper argues for confirmational holism about facts and values. This position is similar to one defended by (among others) Hilary Putnam, but the argument is importantly different. Whereas Putnam et al. rely on examples of the putative entanglement of facts and values – a strategy which I suggest is vulnerable to parrying – my argument proceeds at a more general level. I argue that the explanation of action can not be separated from our practical reasoning, and for this reason, (...) the ‘webs’ of value and fact judgments are joined in the same way that Quine holds the judgments of mathematics and natural science to be. (shrink)

I argue that a crucial point has been overlooked in the debate over the “numbers problem.” The initial arrangement of parties in the problem can be thought of as chancy, and whatever considerations of fairness recommend the reliance on something like a coin toss in approaching this problem equally recommend treating the initial distribution as a kind of lottery. This fact, I suggest, undermines one of the principal arguments against saving the greater number.

There is widespread consensus that present patterns of consumption could lead to the permanent impossibility of maintaining those patterns and, perhaps, the existence of the human race. While many patterns of consumption qualify as ‘sustainable’ there is one in particular that deserves greater attention: virtual consumption. We argue that virtual consumption — the experience of authentic consumptive experiences replicated by alternative means — has the potential to reduce the deleterious consequences of real consumption by redirecting some consumptive behavior from shifting (...) material states to shifting information states. (shrink)

This paper investigates the differences in perceptions between business students and service-sector managers regarding the role that ethics and social responsibility serve in determining organizational effectiveness. An organizational effectiveness instrument containing business ethics and social responsibility items served as a questionnaire for a sample of 151 senior business undergraduates and 53 service-sector managers. The results indicated that while students acting as managers rate some social responsibility issues as more important than do managers, they also rate ethical conduct and a few (...) dimensions of social responsibility lower than do managers. The findings have direct implications for both business practitioners and educators. (shrink)

This Open Access book provides both a broad perspective and a focused examination of cow care as a subject of widespread ethical concern in India, and increasingly in other parts of the world. In the face of what has persisted as a highly charged political issue over cow protection in India, intellectual space must be made to bring the wealth of Indian traditional ethical discourse to bear on the realities of current human-animal relationships, particularly those of humans with cows. Dharma, (...) yoga, and bhakti paradigms serve as starting points for bringing Hindu--particularly Vaishnava Hindu--animal ethics into conversation with contemporary Western animal ethics. The author argues that a culture of bhakti--the inclusive, empathetic practice of spirituality centered in Krishna as the beloved cowherd of Vraja--can complement recently developed ethics-of-care thinking to create a solid basis for sustaining all kinds of cow care communities. (shrink)

This chapter develops and defends an account of reason: to reason is to scrutinize one’s attitudes by consulting the perspectives of other persons. The principal attraction of this account is its ability to vindicate the unique of authority of reason. The chapter argues that this conception entails that reasoning is a robustly social endeavor—that it is, in the first instance, something we do with other people. It is further argued that such social endeavors presuppose mutual respect on the part of (...) those participating in them. The account therefore yields a form of Kantian constructivism: we have an unconditional duty of respect for persons because such a duty is implicit in the very nature of reasoning. -/- . (shrink)

Constitutivists believe that we can derive universally and unconditionally authoritative norms from the conditions of agency. Thus if c is a condition of agency, then you ought to live in conformity with c no matter what your particular ends, projects, or station. Much has been said about the validity of the inference, but that’s not my topic here. I want to assume it is valid and talk about what I take to be the highest ambition of constitutivism: the prospect of (...) grounding moral requirements in the conditions of agency. If this can be done, then we can show that everyone is bound by the demands of morality, and we can do so without the customary entanglements—queer normative entities, an implausibly powerful moral sense, or divine lawgivers. (shrink)

The Causal Exclusion Problem is raised in many domains, including in the metaphysics of macroscopic objects. If there is a complete explanation of macroscopic effects in terms of the microscopic entities that compose macroscopic objects, then the efficacy of the macroscopic will be threatened with exclusion. I argue that we can avoid the problem if we accept that macroscopic objects are ontically vague. Then, it is indeterminate which collection of microscopic entities compose them, and so information about microscopic entities is (...) insufficient to provide a complete explanation of certain properties of macroscopic objects. After outlining this solution, I consider several objections. (shrink)

An increasing number of writers (for example, Kim ((1992), (1999)), Bechtel and Mundale (1999), Keeley (2000), Bickle (2003), Polger (2004), and Shapiro ((2000), (2004))) have attacked the existence of multiple realization and wider views of the special sciences built upon it. We examine the two most important arguments against multiple realization and show that neither is successful. Furthermore, we also defend an alternative, positive view of the ontology, and methodology, of the special science. In contrast to the claims of recent (...) critics, we show that methodological connections between the neurosciences and psychology are plausibly often the result of multiple realization. (shrink)

While it is widely acknowledged that knowledge can be acquired via testimony, it has been argued that understanding cannot. While there is no consensus about what the epistemic relationship of understanding consists in, I argue here that regardless of how understanding is conceived there are kinds of understanding that can be acquired through testimony: easy understanding and easy-s understanding. I address a number of aspects of understanding that might stand in the way of being able to acquire understanding through testimony, (...) focusing on understanding ’s paradigmatic form and what it means to say that in order to understand something you need to “grasp” some information or the relationship between bits of information. I argue that in cases of both easy and easy-s understanding, no aspect of understanding stands in the way of it being able to acquire it through testimony. As a result, while not all understanding be acquired through testimony in all instances and for all subjects, this failure of acquisition is only a product of the complexity of the relevant information or one’s unfamiliarity with it, and not a product of the epistemic relationship of understanding. (shrink)

In his recent critical notice of The Bounds of Cognition in this journal, Justin Fisher advances a set of concerns that favor the hypothesis that, under certain circumstances, cognitive processes span the brain, body, and world. One is that it is too much to require that representations in cognitive process must have non-derived content. A second is that it is possible that extended objects bear non-derived content. A third is that extended cognition might advocate the extension of certain general categories (...) of cognition. A fourth is that Bounds misapplies Andy Clark and David Chalmers’ so-called “parity principle.” The purpose of this rejoinder is to show how Fisher’s concerns can be, or have already been, addressed. (shrink)

Berkeley's main aim in his well-known early works was to identify and refute "the grounds of Scepticism, Atheism, and irreligion." This appears to place Berkeley within a well-established tradition of religious critics of Locke's epistemology, including, most famously, Stillingfleet. I argue that these appearances are deceiving. Berkeley is, in fact, in important respects an opponent of this tradition. According to Berkeley, Locke's earlier critics, including Stillingfleet, had misidentified the grounds of irreligion in Locke's philosophy while all the while endorsing the (...) true grounds of irreligion themselves. Locke's epistemology is innocent; matter and abstraction are to blame. (shrink)

This is a critique of Lloyd's theory which appeared in his book, Simple Minds.

George Berkeley's linguistic account of sense perception is one of the most central tenets of his philosophy. It is intended as a solution to a wide range of critical issues in both metaphysics and theology. However, it is not clear from Berkeley's writings just how this ‘universal language of the Author of Nature’ is to be interpreted. This paper discusses the nature of the theory of sense perception as language, together with its metaphysical and theological motivations, then proceeds to develop (...) an account of the semantics of the perceptual language, using Berkeley's theory of reference for human language as a guide. (shrink)

Whereas many philosophers take backwards causation to be impossible, the few who maintain its possibility either take it to be absent from the actual world or else confined to theoretical physics. Here, however, I argue that backwards causation is not only actual, but common, though occurring in the context of our social institutions. After juxtaposing my cases with a few others in the literature and arguing that we should take seriously the reality of causal cases in these contexts, I consider (...) several objections. These objections involve whether the cases should be reinterpreted, whether they are properly within the institution, whether they involve necessitation or else Cambridge changes, whether and how they involve changing the past, and whether this should call us to question institutional reality. I end by suggesting that it is a virtue of our institutions that they allow backwards causation, that this is a kind of technology that they are often built to incorporate. (shrink)

This chapter presents arguments for two slightly different versions of the thesis that the value of persons is incomparable. Both arguments allege an incompatibility between the demands of a certain kind of practical reasoning and the presuppositions of value comparisons. The significance of these claims is assessed in the context of the “Numbers problem”—the question of whether one morally ought to benefit one group of potential aid recipients rather than another simply because they are greater in number. It is argued (...) that many of the popular approaches to this problem—even ones that avoid the aggregation of personal value—are imperiled by the incomparability theses. -/- . (shrink)

Kant says that there is a close affinity between the sublime and moral feelings of respect. This suggests a relatively unexplored way that aesthetic experience could be morally improving. We could come to respect persons by experiencing them as sublime. Unfortunately, this is not at all our ordinary experience of people, and it’s not clear how one would come to it. In this paper I argue that this possibility is realized in the portraits of Thomas Eakins. Through a handful of (...) specific techniques, Eakins suggests an incomparable psychological depth to the subjects of his portraits, a suggestion that causes the viewer to experience that subject as sublime in a way not unlike their experience of a vast ocean or endless abyss. -/- . (shrink)

This essay provides an overview of the crime/tort distinction. It first investigates some of the fundamental differences between criminal law and tort law in doctrine and legal structure. It then explores some important similarities and differences in normative perspectives between the two doctrinal fields. This typology should prove analytically useful for examining some of the specific issues at the borderline of crime and torts—such as the proper scope of punitive damage liability and the question whether criminal law as well as (...) tort law should vary legal sanctions simply because of the fortuitous occurrence of harm. (shrink)

I argue that there is methodological space for a functional explanation of the nature of law that does not commit the theorist to a view about the value of that function for society, nor whether law is the best means of accomplishing it. A functional explanation will nonetheless provide a conceptual framework for a better understanding of the nature of law. First I examine the proper role for function in a theory of law and then argue for the possibility of (...) a neutral functional theory, addressing issues raised by Leslie Green, Stephen Perry, Michael Moore and John Finnis. (shrink)

Recently, there has been growing concern that increased partisanship in news sources, as well as new ways in which people acquire information, has led to a proliferation of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers: in the former, one tends to acquire information from a limited range of sources, ones that generally support the kinds of beliefs that one already has, while the latter function in the same way, but possess the additional characteristic that certain beliefs are actively reinforced. Here I argue, (...) first, that we should conceive of epistemic bubbles and echo chambers as types of epistemically pernicious groups, and second, that while analyses of such groups have typically focused on relationships between individual members, at least part of what such groups epistemically pernicious pertains to the way that members rely on the groups themselves as sources of information. I argue that member reliance on groups results in groups being attributed a degree of credibility that outruns their warrant, a process I call groupstrapping. I argue that by recognizing the groupstrapping as an illicit method of forming and updating beliefs we can make progress on some of the open questions concerning epistemically pernicious groups. (shrink)

I argue that law is not best considered an essentially contested concept. After first explaining the notion of essential contestability and disaggregating the concept of law into several related concepts, I show that the most basic and general concept of law does not fit within the criteria generally offered for essential contestation. I then buttress this claim with the additional explanation that essential contestation is itself a framework for understanding complex concepts and therefore should only be applied when it is (...) useful to gain a greater understanding of uses of the concept to which it is applied (adducing criteria for making such judgments of usefulness). With that in mind, I then show that applying the appellation of essential contestation to the concept of law does not helpfully illuminate the most general concept of law (usually of most interest to legal philosophers) and therefore it should not be used, while allowing that it might be more useful for the related concept of the rule of law. (shrink)

One prominent argument for pragmatic encroachment (PE) is that PE is entailed by a combination of a principle that states that knowledge warrants proper practical reasoning, and judgments that it is more difficult to reason well when the stakes go up. I argue here that this argument is unsuccessful. One problem is that empirical tests concerning knowledge judgments in high-stakes situations only sometimes exhibit the result predicted by PE. I argue here that those judgments that appear to support PE are (...) better interpreted not as judgments that the epistemic demands for knowing increase as one’s practical situation becomes more demanding, but instead as judgments reflecting a different kind of normative epistemic evaluation, namely whether one is acting in an epistemically responsible way. The general idea is that when someone treats a proposition as a reason for acting we can evaluate them epistemically both in terms of whether they know that proposition, as well as in terms of whether they are acting on their knowledge in the right kind of way. My charge against the PE proponent, then, is that she is interpreting judgments that are indicative of whether we are adhering to certain normative epistemic requirements generally as being indicative of whether we have knowledge specifically. There are, however, normative epistemic requirements that make demands of us that are indicative of something other than our possession of knowledge. (shrink)

ABSTRACTConventional wisdom holds that there is no lucky knowledge: if it is a matter of luck, in some relevant sense, that one's belief that p is true, then one does not know that p. Here I will argue that there is similarly no lucky understanding, at least in the case of one type of luck, namely environmental luck. This argument has three parts. First, we need to determine how we evaluate whether one has understanding, which requires determining what I will (...) call understanding's evaluative object. I argue that as the evaluative object of knowledge is a belief in a proposition, the evaluative object of understanding is a mental representation of a relational structure. Next, I show that arguments that environmental luck is incompatible with understanding miss the mark by considering cases in which one has a belief in a proposition is lucky to be true, instead of ones in which one's mental representation of a relational structure is lucky to obtain. I agree, then, with those who argue that one can have understanding when one's beliefs are environmentally lucky to be true, but that this compatibility is not relevant when considering the question of whether one can have environmentally lucky understanding. I then present what I take to be a properly constructed case which shows the incompatibility of environmental luck with understanding. (shrink)

This paper examines Pierre Hadot’s philosophy as a way of life in the context of race. I argue that a “way of life” approach to philosophy renders intelligible how anti-racist confrontation of racist ideas and institutionalized white complicity is a properly philosophical way of life requiring regulated reflection on habits – particularly, habits of whiteness. I first rehearse some of Hadot’s analysis of the “way of life” orientation in philosophy, in which philosophical wisdom is understood as cultivated by actions which (...) result in the creation of wise habits. I analyze a phenomenological claim about the nature of habit implied by the “way of life” approach, namely, that habits can be both the cause and the effect of action. This point is central to the “way of life” philosophy, I claim, in that it makes possible the intelligent redirection of habits, in which wise habits are more the effect than simply the cause of action. Lastly, I illustrate the “way of life” approach in the context of anti-racism by turning to Linda Martín Alcoff’s whiteness anti-eliminativism, which outlines a morally defensible transformation of the habits of whiteness. I argue that anti-racism provides an intelligible context for modern day forms of what Hadot calls “spiritual exercises” insofar as the “way of life” philosophy is embodied in the practice of whites seeing themselves seeing as white and seeing themselves being seen as white. (shrink)

A perennial problem in social epistemology is the problem of expert testimony, specifically expert testimony regarding scientific issues: for example, while it is important for me to know information pertaining to anthropogenic climate change, vaccine safety, Covid-19, etc., I may lack the scientific background required to determine whether the information I come across is, in fact, true. Without being able to evaluate the science itself, then, I need to find trustworthy expert testifiers to listen to. A major project in social (...) epistemology has thus become determining what the markers of trustworthiness are that laypersons can appeal to in order to identify and acquire information from expert testifiers. At the same time, the ways in which we acquire scientific information has changed significantly, with much of it nowadays being acquired in online environments. While much has been said about the potential pitfalls of seeking information online, little has been said about how the nature of seeking information online should make us think about the problem of expert testimony. Indeed, it seems to be an underlying assumption that good markers of trustworthiness apply equally well when seeking information from expert testifiers in online and offline environments alike, and that the new challenges and opportunities presented by online environments merely affects the methods by which we can acquire evidence of said trustworthiness. Here I argue that in making this assumption one risks failing to account for how unique features of the ways in which we acquire information online affect how we evaluate the trustworthiness of experts. Specifically, I argue for two main claims: first, that the nature of information-seeking online is such that the extent to which information is susceptible to manipulation is a dominant marker of trustworthiness; second, as a result, one will be more likely to seek out a particular kind of expert testifier in online environments, what I call a cooperative as opposed to preemptive expert. The result is that criteria for expert trustworthiness may look significantly different when acquiring information online as opposed to offline. (shrink)

There have been many discussions recently from philosophers, cognitive scientists, and psychologists about group polarization, with online and social media environments in particular receiving a lot of attention, both because of people's increasing reliance on such environments for receiving and exchanging information and because such environments often allow individuals to selectively interact with those who are like-minded. My goal here is to argue that the group epistemologist can facilitate understanding the kinds of factors that drive group polarization in a way (...) that has been overlooked by the existing research. Specifically, I argue that polarization can occur in part because of the ways that members of a group treat the group itself (as opposed to an individual member within that group) as a source of information, and in doing so makes their own position, as well as that of the group, more extreme. I refer to this as a structural factor in driving polarization, and argue that such factors can contribute to explanations of polarization that occurs specifically in an important subset of groups, namely online and social media groups in which little is known about other members within the group, what I refer to as anonymous, semi-anonymous and pseudonymous (ASAP) groups. (shrink)

That about sums up what is wrong with Clark's view.

I offer a critique of Melissa Zinkin’s reading of Kant’s analysis of aesthetic judgment. She argues that in judgments of taste the imagination is freed from its determinate relation with the understanding because the form of intuition in which beauty is apprehended is different from the form of intuition employed in determinate judgment. By distinguishing between an extensive and intensive form of intuition, this interpretation is able to explain why the apprehension of beauty cannot be subsumed under a concept. But (...) I contest Zinkin’s identification of the sensus communis with this intensive form of intuition. I then substantiate two interrelated claims: that we can account for the genesis of the sensus communis by distinguishing between an intensive and an extensive form of time, and that we can avoid making the sensus communis atemporal by showing that it resides within an intensive form of time as a condition for its possibility, thereby structuring Kant’s account of the sensus communis securely within the critical framework. (shrink)

According to Thomas Reid, an agent cannot be free unless she has the power to do otherwise. This claim is usually interpreted as a version of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities. Against this interpretation, I argue that Reid is committed to the seemingly paradoxical position that an agent may have the power to do otherwise despite the fact that it is impossible that she do otherwise. Reid's claim about the power to do otherwise does not, therefore, entail the Principle of (...) Alternate Possibilities. When it is an agent's character that deprives her of alternate possibilities, she is not thereby deprived of either power or freedom, and this is true even if the agent was not free or active in the formation of her character. (shrink)

There is ample justification for having analogical material in standardized tests for graduate school admission, perhaps especially for law school. We think that formal-analogy questions should compare different scenarios whose structure is the same in terms of the number of objects and the formal properties of their relations. The paper deals with this narrower question of how legitimately to have formal analogy test items, and the broader question of what constitutes a formal analogy in general.