Results for 'Neil Sinclair'

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  1. The Evolutionary Debunking of Quasi-Realism.Neil Sinclair & James Chamberlain - 2023 - In Diego E. Machuca (ed.), Evolutionary Debunking Arguments: Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Mathematics, Metaphysics, and Epistemology. New York: Routledge. pp. 33-55.
    In “The Evolutionary Debunking of Quasi-Realism,” Neil Sinclair and James Chamberlain present a novel answer that quasi-realists can pro-vide to a version of the reliability challenge in ethics—which asks for an explanation of why our moral beliefs are generally true—and in so doing, they examine whether evolutionary arguments can debunk quasi-realism. Although reliability challenges differ from EDAs in several respects, there may well be a connection between them. For the explanatory premise of an EDA may state that a (...)
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  2. Propositional clothing and belief.Neil Sinclair - 2007 - Philosophical Quarterly 57 (228):342-362.
    Moral discourse is propositionally clothed, that is, it exhibits those features – such as the ability of its sentences to intelligibly embed in conditionals and other unasserted contexts – that have been taken by some philosophers to be constitutive of discourses that express propositions. If there is nothing more to a mental state being a belief than it being characteristically expressed by sentences that are propositionally clothed then the version of expressivism which accepts that moral discourse is propositionally clothed (‘quasi-realism’) (...)
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  3. Metaethics and the Nature of Properties.Neil Sinclair - 2024 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 98 (1):133-152.
    This paper explores connections between theories of morality and theories of properties. It argues that (1) moral realism is in tension with predicate, class and mereological nominalism; (2) moral non-naturalism is incompatible with standard versions of resemblance nominalism, immanent realism and trope theory; and (3) the standard semantic arguments for property realism do not support moral realism. I also raise doubts about trope-theoretic explanations of moral supervenience and argue against one version of the principle that we should accept theories that (...)
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  4. The moral belief problem.Neil Sinclair - 2006 - Ratio 19 (2):249–260.
    The moral belief problem is that of reconciling expressivism in ethics with both minimalism in the philosophy of language and the syntactic discipline of moral sentences. It is argued that the problem can be solved by distinguishing minimal and robust senses of belief, where a minimal belief is any state of mind expressed by sincere assertoric use of a syntactically disciplined sentence and a robust belief is a minimal belief with some additional property R. Two attempts to specify R are (...)
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  5. Reasons, inescapability and persuasion.Neil Sinclair - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (10):2823-2844.
    This paper outlines a new metasemantic theory of moral reason statements, focused on explaining how the reasons thus stated can be inescapable. The motivation for the theory is in part that it can explain this and other phenomena concerning moral reasons. The account also suggests a general recipe for explanations of conceptual features of moral reason statements. (Published with Open Access.).
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  6. Speculative Aesthetic Expressivism.Neil Sinclair & Jon Robson - 2022 - British Journal of Aesthetics (2):181-197.
    In this paper we sketch a new version of aesthetic expressivism. We argue that one advantage of this view is that it explains various putative norms on the formation and revision of aesthetic judgement. We begin by setting out our proposed explananda and a sense in which they can be understood as governing the correct response to putative higher-order evidence in aesthetics. We then summarise some existing discussions of expressivist attempts to explain these norms, and objections raised to them. This (...)
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  7. Expressivism and the practicality of moral convictions.Neil Sinclair - 2007 - Journal of Value Inquiry 41 (2-4):201-220.
    Many expressivists have employed a claim about the practicality of morality in support of their view that moral convictions are not purely descriptive mental states. In this paper I argue that all extant arguments of this form fail. I distinguish several versions of such arguments and argue that in each case either the sense of practicality the argument employs is too weak, in which case there is no reason to think that descriptive states cannot be practical or the sense of (...)
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  8. Expressivist Explanations.Neil Sinclair - 2012 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 9 (2):147-177.
    In this paper I argue that the common practice of employing moral predicates as explaining phrases can be accommodated on an expressivist account of moral practice. This account does not treat moral explanations as in any way second-rate or derivative, since it subsumes moral explanations under the general theory of program explanations (as defended by Jackson and Pettit). It follows that the phenomenon of moral explanations cannot be used to adjudicate the debate between expressivism and its rivals.
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  9. On standing one's ground.Neil Sinclair - 2014 - Analysis 74 (3):422-431.
    I provide a positive expressivist account of the permissibility of ‘standing one’s ground’ in some cases of moral conflict, based in part on an illustrative analogy with political disputes. This account suffices to undermine Enoch’s recent argument against expressivism.
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  10. Conceptual Role Semantics and the Reference of Moral Concepts.Neil Sinclair - 2018 - European Journal of Philosophy 26 (1):95-121.
    This paper examines the prospects for a conceptual or functional role theory of moral concepts. It is argued that such an account is well-placed to explain both the irreducibility and practicality of moral concepts. Several versions of conceptual role semantics for moral concepts are distinguished, depending on whether the concept-constitutive conceptual roles are wide or narrow normative or non-normative and purely doxastic or conative. It is argued that the most plausible version of conceptual role semantics for moral concepts involves only (...)
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  11. On the Connection between Normative Reasons and the Possibility of Acting for those Reasons.Neil Sinclair - 2016 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (5):1211-1223.
    According to Bernard Williams, if it is true that A has a normative reason to Φ then it must be possible that A should Φ for that reason. This claim is important both because it restricts the range of reasons which agents can have and because it has been used as a premise in an argument for so-called ‘internalist’ theories of reasons. In this paper I rebut an apparent counterexamples to Williams’ claim: Schroeder’s example of Nate. I argue that this (...)
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  12. Two kinds of naturalism in ethics.Neil Sinclair - 2006 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9 (4):417 - 439.
    What are the conditions on a successful naturalistic account of moral properties? In this paper I discuss one such condition: the possibility of moral concepts playing a role in good empirical theories on a par with those of the natural and social sciences. I argue that Peter Railton’s influential account of moral rightness fails to meet this condition, and thus is only viable in the hands of a naturalist who doesn’t insist on it. This conclusion generalises to all versions of (...)
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  13. Reasons Internalism and the Function of Normative Reasons.Neil Sinclair - 2017 - Dialectica 71 (2):209-229.
    What is the connection between reasons and motives? According to Reasons Internalism there is a non-trivial conceptual connection between normative reasons and the possibility of rationally accessing relevant motivation. Reasons Internalism is attractive insofar as it captures the thought that reasons are for reasoning with and repulsive insofar as it fails to generate sufficient critical distance between reasons and motives. Rather than directly adjudicate this dispute, I extract from it two generally accepted desiderata on theories of normative reasons and argue (...)
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  14. Metaethics, teleosemantics and the function of moral judgements.Neil Sinclair - 2012 - Biology and Philosophy 27 (5):639-662.
    This paper applies the theory of teleosemantics to the issue of moral content. Two versions of teleosemantics are distinguished: input-based and output-based. It is argued that applying either to the case of moral judgements generates the conclusion that such judgements have both descriptive (belief-like) and directive (desire-like) content, intimately entwined. This conclusion directly validates neither descriptivism nor expressivism, but the application of teleosemantics to moral content does leave the descriptivist with explanatory challenges which the expressivist does not face. Since teleosemantics (...)
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  15. Moral realism, face-values and presumptions.Neil Sinclair - 2012 - Analytic Philosophy 53 (2):158-179.
    Many philosophers argue that the face-value of moral practice provides presumptive support to moral realism. This paper analyses such arguments into three steps. (1) Moral practice has a certain face-value, (2) only realism can vindicate this face value, and (3) the face-value needs vindicating. Two potential problems with such arguments are discussed. The first is taking the relevant face-value to involve explicitly realist commitments; the second is underestimating the power of non-realist strategies to vindicate that face-value. Case studies of each (...)
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  16. Moral expressivism and sentential negation.Neil Sinclair - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 152 (3):385-411.
    This paper advances three necessary conditions on a successful account of sentential negation. First, the ability to explain the constancy of sentential meaning across negated and unnegated contexts (the Fregean Condition). Second, the ability to explain why sentences and their negations are inconsistent, and inconsistent in virtue of the meaning of negation (the Semantic Condition). Third, the ability of the account to generalize regardless of the topic of the negated sentence (the Generality Condition). The paper discusses three accounts of negation (...)
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  17. Expressivism and the Value of Truth.Neil Sinclair - 2012 - Philosophia 40 (4):877-883.
    This paper is a reply to Michael Lynch's "Truth, Value and Epistemic Expressivism" in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research for 2009. It argues that Lynch's argument against expressivism fails because of an ambiguity in the employed notion of an 'epistemically disengaged standpoint'.
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  18. Recent work in expressivism.Neil Sinclair - 2009 - Analysis 69 (1):136-147.
    This paper is a concise survey of recent expressivist theories of discourse, focusing on the ethical case. For each topic discussed recent trends are summarised and suggestions for further reading provided. Issues covered include: the nature of the moral attitude; ‘hybrid’ views according to which moral judgements express both beliefs and attitudes; the quasi-realist programmes of Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard; the problem of creeping minimalism; the nature of the ‘expression’ relation; the Frege-Geach problem; the problem of wishful thinking; the (...)
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  19. The explanationist argument for moral realism.Neil Sinclair - 2011 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 41 (1):1-24.
    In this paper I argue that the explanationist argument in favour of moral realism fails. According to this argument, the ability of putative moral properties to feature in good explanations provides strong evidence for, or entails, the metaphysical claims of moral realism. Some have rejected this argument by denying that moral explanations are ever good explanations. My criticism is different. I argue that even if we accept that moral explanations are (sometimes) good explanations the metaphysical claims of realism do not (...)
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  20. Free Thinking for Expressivists.Neil Sinclair - 2008 - Philosophical Papers 37 (2):263-287.
    This paper elaborates and defends an expressivist account of the claims of mind-independence embedded in ordinary moral thought. In response to objections from Zangwill and Jenkins it is argued that the expressivist 'internal reading' of such claims is compatible with their conceptual status and that the only 'external reading' available doesn't commit expressivisists to any sort of subjectivism. In the process a 'commitment-theoretic' account of the semantics of conditionals and negations is defended.
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  21. Promotionalism, Motivationalism and Reasons to Perform Physically Impossible Actions.Neil Sinclair - 2012 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 15 (5):647-659.
    In this paper I grant the Humean premise that some reasons for action are grounded in the desires of the agents whose reasons they are. I then consider the question of the relation between the reasons and the desires that ground them. According to promotionalism , a desire that p grounds a reason to φ insofar as A’s φing helps promote p . According to motivationalism a desire that p grounds a reason to φ insofar as it explains why, in (...)
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  22. (1 other version)Review: Kinds of Reasons – Maria Alvarez. [REVIEW]Neil Sinclair - 2011 - Philosophical Quarterly 61 (245):873-875.
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  23. Review: Reasons from Within: Desires and Values – Alan H. Goldman. [REVIEW]Neil Sinclair - 2011 - Philosophical Quarterly 61 (243):427-429.
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  24. Moral Testimony as Higher Order Evidence.Marcus Lee, Jon Robson & Neil Sinclair - 2019 - In Michael Klenk (ed.), Higher Order Evidence and Moral Epistemology. New York: Routledge.
    Are the circumstances in which moral testimony serves as evidence that our judgement-forming processes are unreliable the same circumstances in which mundane testimony serves as evidence that our mundane judgement-forming processes are unreliable? In answering this question, we distinguish two possible roles for testimony: (i) providing a legitimate basis for a judgement, (ii) providing (‘higher-order’) evidence that a judgement-forming process is unreliable. We explore the possibilities for a view according to which moral testimony does not, in contrast to mundane testimony (...)
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  25. Evolution and the Missing Link (in Debunking Arguments).Uri D. Leibowitz & Neil Sinclair - 2017 - In Michael Ruse & Robert J. Richards (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
    What are the consequences, for human moral practice, of an evolutionary understanding of that practice? By ‘moral practice’ we mean the way in which human beings think, talk and debate in moral terms. We suggest that the proper upshot of such considerations is moderate support for anti-realism in ethics.
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  26. Defending Moral Mind-Independence: The Expressivist’s Precarious Turn.Lisa Warenski - 2014 - Philosophia 42 (3):861-69.
    A central feature of ordinary moral thought is that moral judgment is mind-independent in the following sense: judging something to be morally wrong does not thereby make it morally wrong. To deny this would be to accept a form of subjectivism. Neil Sinclair (2008) makes a novel attempt to show how expressivism is simultaneously committed to (1) an understanding of moral judgments as expressions of attitudes and (2) the rejection of subjectivism. In this paper, I discuss Sinclair’s (...)
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  27. We're All Folk: An Interview with Neil Levy about Experimental Philosophy and Conceptual Analysis.Neil Levy & Yasuko Kitano - 2011 - Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 19:87-98.
    The following is a transcript of the interview I (Yasuko Kitano) conducted with Neil Levy (The Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, CAPPE) on the 23rd in July 2009, while he was in Tokyo to give a series of lectures on neuroethics at The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy. I edited his words for publication with his approval.
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  28. The "No Interest" Argument Against the Rights of Nature.Neil W. Williams - forthcoming - Philosophers' Imprint.
    Awarding rights to rivers, forests, and other environmental entities (EEs) is a new and increasingly popular approach to environmental protection. The distinctive feature of such rights of nature (RoN) legislation is that direct duties are owed to the EEs. This paper presents a novel rebuttal of the strongest argument against RoN: the no interest argument. The crux of this argument is that because EEs are not sentient, they cannot possess the kinds of interests necessary to ground direct duties. Therefore, they (...)
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  29. Moral significance of phenomenal consciousness.Neil Levy & Julian Savulescu - 2009 - Progress in Brain Research.
    Recent work in neuroimaging suggests that some patients diagnosed as being in the persistent vegetative state are actually conscious. In this paper, we critically examine this new evidence. We argue that though it remains open to alternative interpretations, it strongly suggests the presence of consciousness in some patients. However, we argue that its ethical significance is less than many people seem to think. There are several different kinds of consciousness, and though all kinds of consciousness have some ethical significance, different (...)
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  30. Heidegger's Argument for Fascism.Neil Sinhababu - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
    Heidegger’s ontological views, his observations about liberalism and fascism, and his evaluative commitments are three premises of an argument for fascism. The ontological premise is that integrated wholes and objects of a creator or user’s will are ontologically superior, as Being and Time suggests in discussing Being-a-whole, creating art, and using equipment. The social premise is that fascist societies are wholes integrated by dictatorial will, while liberal societies are looser aggregates of free individuals, as Heidegger describes in his 1930s seminars. (...)
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  31. A will of one's own: Consciousness, control, and character.Neil Levy & Tim Bayne - 2004 - International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 27 (5):459-470.
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  32. Are You Morally Modified?: The Moral Effects of Widely Used Pharmaceuticals.Neil Levy, Thomas Douglas, Guy Kahane, Sylvia Terbeck, Philip J. Cowen, Miles Hewstone & Julian Savulescu - 2014 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 21 (2):111-125.
    A number of concerns have been raised about the possible future use of pharmaceuticals designed to enhance cognitive, affective, and motivational processes, particularly where the aim is to produce morally better decisions or behavior. In this article, we draw attention to what is arguably a more worrying possibility: that pharmaceuticals currently in widespread therapeutic use are already having unintended effects on these processes, and thus on moral decision making and morally significant behavior. We review current evidence on the moral effects (...)
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  33. How the Dualist View Can Combat Extremism.Alistair J. Sinclair - 2015 - Journal of Philosophical Investigations at University of Tabriz 9 (17):23-52.
    his paper argues that we will never get rid of the extremist mentality unless the dualist view prevails and is taught as part of the educational system. The dualist view takes account of both sides of an argument whereas the extremist view promotes one side unequivocally without considering the merits of the opposing view. The merits of the dualist view can be taught in schools so that everyone learns to recognise that mentality when it is evident not only in other (...)
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  34. A Distinction between Science and Philosophy.Nathan Sinclair - 2011 - Essays in Philosophy 12 (2):241-252.
    Ever since Kant published his Critique of Pure Reason, most philosophers have taken the distinction between science and philosophy to depend upon the existence of a class of truths especially amenable to philosophical investigation. In recent times, Quine’s arguments against the analytic-synthetic distinction have cast doubt over the existence of such a class of special philosophical truths and consequently many now doubt that there is a sharp distinction between science and philosophy. In this paper, I present a perfectly sharp distinction (...)
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  35. Effective Altruism and Requiring Reasons to Help Others.Thomas Sinclair - 2024 - Public Affairs Quarterly 38 (1):62-77.
    Theron Pummer's impressive new book The Rules of Rescue seeks to defend effective altruism without taking on the controversial moral theoretical commitments. Through an exploration of the framework of requiring reasons and permitting reasons that is the backbone of his argument, this article raises some doubts about how successful Pummer's strategy of avoidance can be.
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  36. The Powers that bind : doxastic voluntarism and epistemic obligation.Neil Levy & Eric Mandelbaum - 2014 - In Rico Vitz & Jonathan Matheson (eds.), The Ethics of Belief: Individual and Social. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 12-33.
    In this chapter, we argue for three theses: (1) we lack the power to form beliefs at will (i.e., directly); at very least, we lack the power to form at will beliefs of the kind that proponents of doxastic voluntarism have in mind; but (2) we possess a propensity to form beliefs for non-epistemic reasons; and (3) these propensities—once we come to know we have them—entail that we have obligations similar to those we would have were doxastic voluntarism true. Specifically, (...)
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  37. Scalar consequentialism the right way.Neil Sinhababu - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (12):3131-3144.
    The rightness and wrongness of actions fits on a continuous scale. This fits the way we evaluate actions chosen among a diverse range of options, even though English speakers don’t use the words “righter” and “wronger”. I outline and defend a version of scalar consequentialism, according to which rightness is a matter of degree, determined by how good the consequences are. Linguistic resources are available to let us truly describe actions simply as right. Some deontological theories face problems in accounting (...)
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  38. Varieties of Class-Theoretic Potentialism.Neil Barton & Kameryn J. Williams - 2024 - Review of Symbolic Logic 17 (1):272-304.
    We explain and explore class-theoretic potentialism—the view that one can always individuate more classes over a set-theoretic universe. We examine some motivations for class-theoretic potentialism, before proving some results concerning the relevant potentialist systems (in particular exhibiting failures of the $\mathsf {.2}$ and $\mathsf {.3}$ axioms). We then discuss the significance of these results for the different kinds of class-theoretic potentialists.
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  39.  69
    The Fetishization of Sport: Exploring the Effects of Fetishistic Disavowal in Sportswashing.Jack Black, Colm Kearns & Gary Sinclair - 2024 - Journal of Sport and Social Issues (xx):xx.
    Is it possible to remain a sports fan when prominent sports teams and events are utilized to “sportswash” human rights abuses and other controversies? Indeed, while there is an abundance of analyses critiquing different instances of sportswashing, the exploration of the role of sportswashing and its connection to the “sports fan” presents an essential and necessary area of investigation and theoretical inquiry. To unpick this dilemma, this article proposes the concept of “fetishistic disavowal” to help theorize the impact of sportswashing, (...)
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  40. On Representations of Intended Structures in Foundational Theories.Neil Barton, Moritz Müller & Mihai Prunescu - 2022 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 51 (2):283-296.
    Often philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians employ a notion of intended structure when talking about a branch of mathematics. In addition, we know that there are foundational mathematical theories that can find representatives for the objects of informal mathematics. In this paper, we examine how faithfully foundational theories can represent intended structures, and show that this question is closely linked to the decidability of the theory of the intended structure. We argue that this sheds light on the trade-off between expressive power (...)
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  41. Distinguishing Belief and Imagination.Neil Sinhababu - 2013 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 94 (2):152-165.
    Some philosophers (including Urmson, Humberstone, Shah, and Velleman) hold that believing that p distinctively involves applying a norm according to which the truth of p is a criterion for the success or correctness of the attitude. On this view, imagining and assuming differ from believing in that no such norm is applied. I argue against this view with counterexamples showing that applying the norm of truth is neither necessary nor sufficient for distinguishing believing from imagining and assuming. Then I argue (...)
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  42. Qualia share their correlates’ locations.Neil Sinhababu - 2023 - Synthese 202 (2):1-14.
    This paper argues that qualia share their physical correlates' locations. The first premise comes from the theory of relativity: If something shares a time with a physical event in all reference frames, it shares that physical event’s location. The second premise is that qualia share times with their correlates in all reference frames. Having qualia and correlates share locations makes relations between them easier to explain, improving both physicalist and dualist theories.
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  43. The Middle Way versus Extremism.Alistair J. Sinclair - manuscript
    Extremism is a perennial problem in our civilisation. It has constantly impeded our progress by leading to unnecessary wars, conflicts, enmity and hatred. Understanding the middle way between these two extremes helps us to clarify what extremism is and how it arises. Such an understanding can be made part of the education system so that children are taught from an early age to detect extremist tendencies in their own thinking and to control them for their own good and the good (...)
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  44. Imagination and Belief.Neil Sinhababu - 2016 - In Amy Kind (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Imagination. New York: Routledge. pp. 111-123.
    This chapter considers the nature of imagination and belief, exploring how deeply these two states of mind differ. It first addresses a range of cognitive and motivational differences between imagination and belief which suggest that they're fundamentally different states of mind. Then it addresses imaginative immersion, delusions, and the different norms we apply to the two mental states, which some theorists regard as providing support for a more unified picture of imagination and belief.
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  45. Forcing and the Universe of Sets: Must We Lose Insight?Neil Barton - 2020 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 49 (4):575-612.
    A central area of current philosophical debate in the foundations of mathematics concerns whether or not there is a single, maximal, universe of set theory. Universists maintain that there is such a universe, while Multiversists argue that there are many universes, no one of which is ontologically privileged. Often forcing constructions that add subsets to models are cited as evidence in favour of the latter. This paper informs this debate by analysing ways the Universist might interpret this discourse that seems (...)
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  46. The Humean Theory of Motivation Reformulated and Defended.Neil Sinhababu - 2009 - Philosophical Review 118 (4):465-500.
    This essay defends a strong version of the Humean theory of motivation on which desire is necessary both for motivation and for reasoning that changes our desires. Those who hold that moral judgments are beliefs with intrinsic motivational force need to oppose this view, and many of them have proposed counterexamples to it. Using a novel account of desire, this essay handles the proposed counterexamples in a way that shows the superiority of the Humean theory. The essay addresses the classic (...)
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  47. In Defense of Partisanship.Neil Sinhababu - 2016 - In Emily Crookston, David Killoren & Jonathan Trerise (eds.), Ethics in Politics: The Rights and Obligations of Individual Political Agents. New York: Routledge. pp. 75-90.
    This essay explains why partisanship is justified in contemporary America and environments with similar voting systems and coalition structures. It explains how political parties operate, how helping a party succeed can be a goal of genuine ethical significance, and how trusting one party while mistrusting another can be a reliable route to true belief about important political issues.
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  48. Doing without Deliberation: Automatism, Automaticity, and Moral Accountability,.Neil Levy & Tim Bayne - 2004 - International Review of Psychiatry 16 (4):209-15.
    Actions performed in a state of automatism are not subject to moral evaluation, while automatic actions often are. Is the asymmetry between automatistic and automatic agency justified? In order to answer this question we need a model or moral accountability that does justice to our intuitions about a range of modes of agency, both pathological and non-pathological. Our aim in this paper is to lay the foundations for such an account.
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  49. Advantages of Propositionalism.Neil Sinhababu - 2015 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (1):165-180.
    Propositionalism is the view that the contents of intentional attitudes have a propositional structure. Objectualism opposes propositionalism in allowing the contents of these attitudes to be ordinary objects or properties. Philosophers including Talbot Brewer, Paul Thagard, Michelle Montague, and Alex Grzankowski attack propositionalism about such attitudes as desire, liking, and fearing. This article defends propositionalism, mainly on grounds that it better supports psychological explanations.
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  50. Causal exclusion and the limits of proportionality.Neil McDonnell - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (6):1459-1474.
    Causal exclusion arguments are taken to threaten the autonomy of the special sciences, and the causal efficacy of mental properties. A recent line of response to these arguments has appealed to “independently plausible” and “well grounded” theories of causation to rebut key premises. In this paper I consider two papers which proceed in this vein and show that they share a common feature: they both require causes to be proportional to their effects. I argue that this feature is a bug, (...)
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