In this paper, I put forward an argument for the view that emotional responses of esteem to perceived demonstrations of good character represent the perceived character traits as valuable, and hence, as virtues. These esteeming experiences are analogous to perceptual representations in other modalities in their epistemic role as causing, providing content for and justifying beliefs regarding the value of the traits they represent. I also discuss the role that the perceiver’s own character plays in their ability to recognize and (...) respond appropriately to virtue in others, showing that moral virtues are also epistemic virtues when it comes to facilitating knowledge about the character of people we encounter. (shrink)

Encyclopedia entry on color synesthesia with cognitive/neurscientific focus.

Betrayal trauma theory suggests that psychogenic amnesia is an adaptive response to childhood abuse. When a parent or other powerful figure violates a fundamental ethic of human relationships, victims may need to remain unaware of the trauma not to reduce suffering but rather to promote survival. Amnesia enables the child to maintain an attachment with a figure vital to survival, development, and thriving. Analysis of evolutionary pressures, mental modules, social cognitions, and developmental needs suggests that the degree to which the (...) most fundamental human ethics are violated can influence the nature, form, and processes of trauma and responses to trauma. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView. Despite the acknowledgement of the moral significance of consent there is still much work to be done in determining which specific sexual encounters count as unproblematically consensual. This paper focuses on the impact of deception. It takes up the specific case of deception about one's self. It may seem obvious that one ought not to lie to a sexual partner about who one is, but determining which features of oneself are most relevant, as well as (...) the lies which it follows would be impermissible to tell, is complicated. It is argued here that deception about one's morally valenced character traits, those we think of as virtues and vices, are particularly problematic. This is true regardless of whether knowing the truth about those traits would have made a difference to one's partner's consent. Attention is then drawn to a range of types of lies that one ought not to tell. (shrink)

Studies show that people we judge to have good character we also evaluate to be more attractive. I argue that in these cases, evaluative perceptual experiences represent morally admirable people as having positive (often intrinsic) value. Learning about a person's positive moral attributes often leads us to feel positive esteem for them. These feelings of positive esteem can come to partly constitute perceptual experiences. Such perceptual experiences evaluate the subject in an aesthetic way and seem to attribute aesthetic qualities like (...) 'beauty' to the object of perception. Moreover, these aesthetic qualities like 'beauty' represent the perceived to have various kinds of value. (shrink)

Problematic perceptions about race damage our society. These attitudes can seem impossible to overcome, but philosophers Dr Jennifer Mensch, at Western Sydney University in Australia, and Dr Michael Olson, at Marquette University in the US, beg to differ. They are compiling a collection of 18th-century philosophical and scientific texts that helped shape the way people saw race across the Western world, and were used to justify colonisation. They believe that by exposing these historical roots of racism, opportunities to improve (...) societal attitudes to race will become easier to identify. -/- This article was produced by Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEM), and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE). (shrink)

It has often been suggested that people’s ordinary folk understanding of morality involves a rejection of moral relativism and a belief in objective moral truths. The results of six studies call this claim into question. Participants did offer apparently objectivist intuitions when confronted with questions about individuals from their own culture, but they offered increasingly relativist intuitions as they were confronted with questions about individuals from increasingly different cultures or ways of life. In light of these data, the authors hypothesize (...) that people do not have a fixed commitment to moral objectivism but instead tend to adopt different views depending on the degree to which they consider radically different perspectives on moral questions. [NOTE: This is a reprint of Sarkissian et al 2011]. (shrink)

Contemporary arguments about private paramilitary organizations often focus on the threat of physical violence that they pose to the state: if such organizations garner enough physical power, then they can overtake the state via violent coup. Inspired by the legalist scholar Han Feizi’s position, we contend that such organizations also represent a sociopolitical, existential threat to the state. Specifically, their tendency for ideological expansion and subsequent gathering of political influence undermines state institutions, even without the use of overt physical force. (...) Consequently, the sociopolitical enterprise of having a unified, stable state is incompatible with the existence of, and public political support for, private paramilitary organizations, regardless of their actual or potential physical power. This argument succeeds regardless of the moral status of such paramilitary groups. Such groups, when they match the essential components of the description Han Feizi provides, are practically and politically antithetical to the integrity of the state. (shrink)

The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic expressivity to (...) existing databases, building data entry forms, and enabling interoperability between knowledge resources. OBI covers all phases of the investigation process, such as planning, execution and reporting. It represents information and material entities that participate in these processes, as well as roles and functions. Prior to OBI, it was not possible to use a single internally consistent resource that could be applied to multiple types of experiments for these applications. OBI has made this possible by creating terms for entities involved in biological and medical investigations and by importing parts of other biomedical ontologies such as GO, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) and Phenotype Attribute and Trait Ontology (PATO) without altering their meaning. OBI is being used in a wide range of projects covering genomics, multi-omics, immunology, and catalogs of services. OBI has also spawned other ontologies (Information Artifact Ontology) and methods for importing parts of ontologies (Minimum information to reference an external ontology term (MIREOT)). The OBI project is an open cross-disciplinary collaborative effort, encompassing multiple research communities from around the globe. To date, OBI has created 2366 classes and 40 relations along with textual and formal definitions. The OBI Consortium maintains a web resource providing details on the people, policies, and issues being addressed in association with OBI. (shrink)

Background: Subgenual cingulate cortex (SCC) responses to self-blaming emotion-evoking stimuli were previously found in individuals prone to self-blame with and without a history of major depressive disorder (MDD). This suggested SCC activation reflects self-blaming emotions such as guilt, which are central to models of MDD vulnerability. -/- Method: Here, we re-examined these hypotheses in an independent larger sample. A total of 109 medication-free participants (70 with remitted MDD and 39 healthy controls) underwent fMRI whilst judging self- and other-blaming emotion-evoking statements. (...) They also completed validated questionnaires of proneness to self-blaming emotions including those related to internal (autonomy) and external (sociotropy) evaluation, which were subjected to factor analysis. -/- Results: An interaction between group (remitted MDD v. Control) and condition (self- v. other-blame) was observed in the right SCC (BA24). This was due to higher SCC signal for self-blame in remitted MDD and higher other-blame-selective activation in Control participants. Across the whole sample, extracted SCC activation cluster averages for self- v. other-blame were predicted by a regression model which included the reliable components derived from our factor analysis of measures of proneness to self-blaming emotions. Interestingly, this prediction was solely driven by autonomy/self-criticism, and adaptive guilt factors, with no effect of sociotropy/dependency. -/- Conclusions: Despite confirming the prediction of SCC activation in self-blame-prone individuals and those vulnerable to MDD, our results suggest that SCC activation reflects blame irrespective of where it is directed rather than selective for self. We speculate that self-critical individuals have more extended SCC representations for blame in the context of self-agency. (shrink)

Co-authored letter to the APA to take a lead role in the recognition of teaching in the classroom, based on the participation in an interdisciplinary Conference on the Role of Advocacy in the Classroom back in 1995. At the time of this writing, the late Myles Brand was the President of Indiana University and a member of the IU Department of Philosophy.

Background: -/- One influential view is that vulnerability to major depressive disorder (MDD) is associated with a proneness to experience negative emotions in general. In contrast, blame attribution theories emphasise the importance of blaming oneself rather than others for negative events. Our previous exploratory study provided support for the attributional hypothesis that patients with remitted MDD show no overall bias towards negative emotions, but a selective bias towards emotions entailing self-blame relative to emotions that entail blaming others. More specifically, we (...) found a decreased proneness for contempt/disgust towards others relative to oneself (i.e. self-contempt bias). Here, we report a definitive test of the competing general negative versus specific attributional bias theories of MDD. Methods: -/- We compared a medication-free remitted MDD (n = 101) and a control group (n = 70) with no family or personal history of MDD on a previously validated experimental test of moral emotions. The task measures proneness to specific emotions associated with different types of self-blame (guilt, shame, self-contempt/disgust, self-indignation/anger) and blame of others (other-indignation/anger, other-contempt/disgust) whilst controlling for the intensity of unpleasantness. Results: -/- We confirmed the hypothesis that patients with MDD exhibit an increased self-contempt bias with a reduction in contempt/disgust towards others. Furthermore, they also showed a decreased proneness for indignation/anger towards others. Conclusions: -/- This corroborates the prediction that vulnerability to MDD is associated with an imbalance of specific self- and other-blaming emotions rather than a general increase in negative emotions. This has important implications for neurocognitive models and calls for novel focussed interventions to rebalance blame in MDD. (shrink)

Importance: Patients with remitted major depressive disorder (MDD) were previously found to display abnormal functional magnetic resonance imaging connectivity (fMRI) between the right superior anterior temporal lobe (RSATL) and the subgenual cingulate cortex and adjacent septal region (SCSR) when experiencing self-blaming emotions relative to emotions related to blaming others (eg, "indignation or anger toward others"). This finding provided the first neural signature of biases toward overgeneralized self-blaming emotions (eg, "feeling guilty for everything"), known to have a key role in cognitive (...) vulnerability to MDD. It is unknown whether this neural signature predicts risk of recurrence, a crucial step in establishing its potential as a prognostic biomarker, which is urgently needed for stratification into pathophysiologically more homogeneous subgroups and for novel treatments. -/- Objective: To use fMRI in remitted MDD at baseline to test the hypothesis that RSATL-SCSR connectivity for self-blaming relative to other-blaming emotions predicts subsequent recurrence of depressive episodes. -/- Design, setting, and participants: A prospective cohort study from June 16, 2011, to October 10, 2014, in a clinical research facility completed by 75 psychotropic medication-free patients with remitted MDD and no relevant comorbidity. In total, 31 remained in stable remission, and 25 developed a recurring episode over the 14 months of clinical follow-up and were included in the primary analysis. Thirty-nine control participants with no personal or family history of MDD were recruited for further comparison. -/- Main outcomes and measures: Between-group difference (recurring vs stable MDD) in RSATL connectivity, with an a priori SCSR region of interest for self-blaming vs other-blaming emotions. -/- Results: We corroborated our hypothesis that during the experience of self-blaming vs other-blaming emotions, RSATL-SCSR connectivity predicted risk of subsequent recurrence. The recurring MDD group showed higher connectivity than the stable MDD group (familywise error-corrected P < .05 over the a priori SCSR region of interest) and the control group. In addition, the recurring MDD group also exhibited RSATL hyperconnectivity with the right ventral putamen and claustrum and the temporoparietal junction. Together, these regions predicted recurrence with 75% accuracy. -/- Conclusions and relevance: To our knowledge, this study is the first to provide a robust demonstration of an fMRI signature of recurrence risk in remitted MDD. Additional studies are needed for its further optimization and validation as a prognostic biomarker. (shrink)

Jennifer Lackey’s case “Creationist Teacher,” in which students acquire knowledge of evolutionary theory from a teacher who does not herself believe the theory, has been discussed widely as a counterexample to so-called transmission theories of testimonial knowledge and justification. The case purports to show that a speaker need not herself have knowledge or justification in order to enable listeners to acquire knowledge or justification from her assertion. The original case has been criticized on the ground that it does not (...) really refute the transmission theory, because there is still somebody in a chain of testifiers—the person from whom the creationist teacher acquired what she testifies—who knows the truth of the testified statements. In this paper, we provide a kind of pattern for generating counterexample cases, one that avoids objections discussed by Peter Graham and others in relation to such cases. (shrink)

Epistemic defeat is standardly understood in either evidentialist or responsibilist terms. The seminal treatment of defeat is an evidentialist one, due to John Pollock, who famously distinguishes between undercutting and rebutting defeaters. More recently, an orthogonal distinction due to Jennifer Lackey has become widely endorsed, between so-called doxastic (or psychological) and normative defeaters. We think that neither doxastic nor normative defeaters, as Lackey understands them, exist. Both of Lackey’s categories of defeat derive from implausible assumptions about epistemic responsibility. Although (...) Pollock’s evidentialist view is superior, the evidentialism per se can be purged from it, leaving a general structure of defeat that can be incorporated in a reliabilist theory that is neither evidentialist nor responsibilist in any way. (shrink)

Jennifer Lackey ('Testimonial Knowledge and Transmission' The Philosophical Quarterly 1999) and Peter Graham ('Conveying Information, Synthese 2000, 'Transferring Knowledge' Nous 2000) offered counterexamples to show that a hearer can acquire knowledge that P from a speaker who asserts that P, but the speaker does not know that P. These examples suggest testimony can generate knowledge. The showpiece of Lackey's examples is the Schoolteacher case. This paper shows that Lackey's case does not undermine the orthodox view that testimony cannot generate (...) knowledge. This paper explains why Lackey's arguments to the contrary are ineffective for they misunderstand the intuitive rationale for the view that testimony cannot generate knowledge. This paper then elaborates on a version of the case from Graham's paper 'Conveying Information' (the Fossil case) that effectively shows that testimony can generate knowledge. This paper then provides a deeper informative explanation for how it is that testimony transfers knowledge, and why there should be cases where testimony generates knowledge. (shrink)

Here are three (rough) theories of testimonial knowledge. (1) Speaker's knowledge: a hearer acquires the knowledge that P though testimony because of the speaker's knowledge that P--testimony "transfers" knowledge. This is the popular view, defended by Elizabeth Fricker and Paul Faulkner, among others. (2) Speaker's assertion: a hearer acquires the knowledge that P through testimony because the speaker's assertion that P is reliable that P in the right way (safe or sensitive). That's Jennifer Lackey's view. (3) Speaker's comprehension state: (...) a hearer acquired the knowledge that P through comprehending as of a speaker's assertion that P where the comprehension state is reliable in the right way (safe). That's my view. Lackey would reject such a view for it allows cases of testimonial knowledge that P from a speaker who did not assert that P. But Faulkner might reject Lackey's view on the grounds that it allows cases of testimonial knowledge that P from a speaker who did not know that P. Lackey replies that her account is better unified. But for the same reason, my account is even better unified. This paper runs through a series of cases and shows that my account--the Unified Account--is superior to the others. (shrink)

It is a remarkable thing to find oneself suddenly surprised by an author after having spent years analysing, interpreting, and teaching their works. And yet, that is precisely the experience of many Kant specialists in recent times, as greater attention than ever has been placed on Kant’s discussions of gender and race. Part of the disorientation for Kantians surely comes from the way in which these investigations—oriented as they are by questions of empire as opposed to say, metaphysics—are able to (...) make a body of work that has been long-familiar seem strange and new. It is in this vein that I want to use my discussion here as an opportunity to reconsider one of Kant’s most familiar texts, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in order to focus on the case of moral failure presented by the person who has chosen an easy path in life: one who has ‘seine Talente verrosten ließ’ (4:423; let their talents rust, 75), to use Kant’s phrase.1 With this in focus, I will identify four subsequent counter examples offered up by Kant, each meant to offer specific cases of non-Europeans in a manner that can provide further moral instruction on this point. What this approach should reveal is not only Kant’s unsurprising consistency regarding the need for self-improvement, but also the compatibility he evidently saw between engaging his readers in moral guidance, on the one hand, and identifying non-European others as counterexamples of a morally worthless existence, on the other. (shrink)

Intuitively, there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief. Contemporary philosophical work on the nature of this difference has focused on scenarios known as “Gettier cases.” Designed as counterexamples to the classical theory that knowledge is justified true belief, these cases feature agents who arrive at true beliefs in ways which seem reasonable or justified, while nevertheless seeming to lack knowledge. Prior empirical investigation of these cases has raised questions about whether lay people generally share philosophers’ intuitions about these (...) cases, or whether lay intuitions vary depending on individual factors (e.g. ethnicity) or factors related to specific types of Gettier cases (e.g. cases that include apparent evidence). We report an experiment on lay attributions of knowledge and justification for a wide range of Gettier Cases and for a related class of controversial cases known as Skeptical Pressure cases, which are also thought by philosophers to elicit intuitive denials of knowledge. Although participants rated true beliefs in Gettier and Skeptical Pressure cases as being justified, they were significantly less likely to attribute knowledge for these cases than for matched true belief cases. This pattern of response was consistent across different variations of Gettier cases and did not vary by ethnicity or gender, although attributions of justification were found to be positively related to measures of empathy. These findings therefore suggest that across demographic groups, laypeople share similar epistemic concepts with philosophers, recognizing a difference between knowledge and justified true belief. (shrink)

Once symbolized by a burning armchair, experimental philosophy has in recent years shifted away from its original hostility to traditional methods. Starting with a brief historical review of the experimentalist challenge to traditional philosophical practice, this chapter looks at research undercutting that challenge, and at ways in which experimental work has evolved to complement and strengthen traditional approaches to philosophical questions.

This essay explores the speech act of dogwhistling (sometimes referred to as ‘using coded language’). Dogwhistles may be overt or covert, and within each of these categories may be intentional or unintentional. Dogwhistles are a powerful form of political speech, allowing people to be manipulated in ways they would resist if the manipulation was carried outmore openly—often drawing on racist attitudes that are consciously rejected. If philosophers focus only on content expressed or otherwise consciously conveyed they may miss what is (...) most powerful and pernicious in the speech of political culture. This essay is a call to start paying attention to these more covert speech acts, and a first attempt at beginning to theorize them. It argues that dogwhistles present a complex and interesting case for the philosopher of language, and explores their implications for democratic politics. (shrink)

Do epistemic intuitions tell us anything about knowledge? Stich has argued that we respond to cases according to our contingent cultural programming, and not in a manner that tends to reveal anything significant about knowledge itself. I’ve argued that a cross-culturally universal capacity for mindreading produces the intuitive sense that the subject of a case has or lacks knowledge. This paper responds to Stich’s charge that mindreading is cross-culturally varied in a way that will strip epistemic intuitions of their evidential (...) value. I argue that existing work on cross-cultural variation in mindreading favors my position over Stich’s. (shrink)

To what extent should we trust our natural instincts about knowledge? The question has special urgency for epistemologists who want to draw evidential support for their theories from certain intuitive epistemic assessments while discounting others as misleading. This paper focuses on the viability of endorsing the legitimacy of Gettier intuitions while resisting the intuitive pull of skepticism – a combination of moves that most mainstream epistemologists find appealing. Awkwardly enough, the “good” Gettier intuitions and the “bad” skeptical intuitions seem to (...) be equally strong. This chapter argues that it is not a coincidence that these two types of intuition register with equal force: they are generated by a common mechanism. However, the input to this mechanism is interestingly different in the two types of case, and different in a way that can support the mainstream view that Gettier cases tell us something about knowledge where skeptical intuitions involve systematic error. (shrink)

In this article I explore various facets of Nozick’s famous thought experiment involving the experience machine. Nozick’s original target is hedonism—the view that the only intrinsic prudential value is pleasure. But the argument, if successful, undermines any experientialist theory, i.e. any theory that limits intrinsic prudential value to mental states. I first highlight problems arising from the way Nozick sets up the thought experiment. He asks us to imagine choosing whether or not to enter the machine and uses our choice (...) (or rather the choice he assumes most people will have) as evidence against experientialist theories. But for this strategy to succeed it must be possible to distinguish between self-interested and non-self-interested reasons for declining to enter the machine, and there is no obvious way to do this without begging the question against the hedonist. In successive sections I then (a) consider a common misconception of Nozick’s conclusion (that he thinks machine life is the worst life), (b) consider different intuitions about what is important to well-being but missing from machine life, and finally (c) explain what “the experience requirement” is, and describe its relationship to debates about experientialist theories. (shrink)

This paper provide the first extended discussion in the philosophical literature of the epistemic significance of the phenomenon of “being known” and the relationship it has to reparations that are distinctively epistemic. Drawing on a framework provided by the United Nations of the “right to know,” it is argued that victims of gross violations and injustices not only have the right to know what happened, but also the right to be known—to be a giver of knowledge to others about their (...) own experiences. It is shown that such victims can suffer epistemic wrongs by being rendered invisible, vilified or demonized, or systematically distorted, and that these ways of not being known demand epistemic reparations. While there are traditional reparations that are epistemic in nature, such as memorialization and education, it is argued that there is a prior and arguably more important epistemic reparation—knowing victims of gross violations and injustices in the sense of bearing witness. The paper concludes with a sketch of an epistemological picture to underwrite this notion of epistemic reparations, one that significantly expands the traditional picture by including epistemic duties that are imperfect in nature and concern actions in addition to beliefs. (shrink)

This chapter explores radical personal change and its relationship to well-being, welfare, or prudential value. Many theorists of welfare are committed to what is here called the future-based reasons view (FBR), which holds (1) that the best prudential choice in a situation is determined by which possible future has the greatest net welfare value for the subject and (2) what determines facts about future welfare are facts about the subject and the world at that future time. Although some cases of (...) radical change are intuitively prudentially good, many cases of really radical change are not. Yet FBR has trouble explaining this. Many people instinctively reach for the notion of identity to solve this problem—arguing that really radical change cannot be good because it alters who someone is. Yet, as the chapter argues, there are reasons to doubt that appeals to identity are appropriate. The chapter ends with the suggestion that prudential facts may explain why and when retaining identity matters, rather than the other way around, and points to a possible way forward for a theorist of welfare committed to FBR. (shrink)

In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke insists that all knowledge consists in perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas. However, he also insists that knowledge extends to outer reality, claiming that perception yields ‘sensitive knowledge’ of the existence of outer objects. Some scholars have argued that Locke did not really mean to restrict knowledge to perceptions of relations within the realm of ideas; others have argued that sensitive knowledge is not strictly speaking a form of knowledge for Locke. (...) This chapter argues that Locke’s conception of sensitive knowledge is in fact compatible with his official definition of knowledge, and discusses his treatment of the problem of skepticism, both in the Essay and in the correspondence with Stillingfleet. (shrink)

Michael Bergmann’s important new book on scepticism is attractively systematic and thorough. He places familiar ideas under an exceptionally bright spotlight, e.

Because knowledge entails true belief, it is can be hard to explain why a given action is naturally seen as driven by one of these states as opposed to the other. A simpler and more radical characterization of knowledge helps to solve this problem while also shedding some light on what is special about social learning.

Curiosity is evident in humans of all sorts from early infancy, and it has also been said to appear in a wide range of other animals, including monkeys, birds, rats, and octopuses. The classical definition of curiosity as an intrinsic desire for knowledge may seem inapplicable to animal curiosity: one might wonder how and indeed whether a rat could have such a fancy desire. Even if rats must learn many things to survive, one might expect their learning must be driven (...) by simpler incentives, such as hunger. One might also wonder what proximal signals could guide animals towards knowledge itself, or how something as abstract as knowledge could ever be a motivational target for an unreflective animal. Taking a cue from recent work in reinforcement learning, I argue that surprise functions as a reward signal for the curious animal, and then show how this amounts to a desire for knowledge gain, where knowledge is conceived of as a cognitive adaptation to reality. This adaptation results in a mental state whose existence depends essentially on the truth of its contents, a factive mental state. Curious creatures benefit from an interaction between the prediction-error correction processes of basic learning and the active surprise-seeking force of their curiosity. This internally adversarial interaction accelerates knowledge gain in ways that are very helpful for agents with the restrictions of biological creatures, in environments with the complexity of our natural world. (shrink)

Beauty is evil, a surreptitious diversion of earthly delights planted by the devil, according to the third century theologian-philosopher Tertullian. Beauty is a manifestation of the divine on earth, according to another third century philosopher, Plotinus. Could these two really be talking about the same thing? That beauty evokes an experience of pleasure is probably the only point on which all participants in the continuing debate on beauty agree. But what kinds of pleasure one considers relevant to an experience of (...) beauty, is the crux of the problem of beauty. In ancient, medieval and eighteenth century philosophy, the problem of beauty was framed by the larger concern of what constituted a good life. The question regarding the nature of beauty was answered with a view to its role in achieving the good life for those who cultivated its apprehension. In the twentieth century, philosophers framed the problem of beauty as a problem for conceptual analysis. The questions asked were: Is beauty subjective or objective? Are there properties in the object that count towards beauty in all cases; that are sufficient or necessary for an object to be judged beautiful? What kind of pleasure is the pleasure we experience of beauty? I will examine how these questions can be seen to have been answered by earlier philosophical traditions and then I will use these questions as a guide to developing an explanatory theory of beauty based on contemporary theories of perception. (shrink)

After a fatal police shooting in the United States, it is typical for city and police officials to view the family of the deceased through the lens of the law. If the family files a lawsuit, the city and police department consider it their legal right to defend themselves and to treat the plaintiffs as adversaries. However, reparations and the concept of “reparative justice” allow authorities to frame police killings in moral rather than legal terms. When a police officer kills (...) a person who was not liable to this outcome, officials should offer monetary reparations, an apology, and other redress measures to the victim’s family. To make this argument, the article presents a philosophical account of non-liability hailing from self-defense theory, centering the distinction between reasonableness and liability. Reparations provide a non-adversarial alternative to civil litigation after a non-liable person has been killed by a police officer. In cases where the officer nevertheless acted reasonably, “institutional agent-regret” rather than moral responsibility grounds the argument for reparations. Throughout the article, it is argued that there are distinct racial wrongs both when police kill a non-liable black person and when family members of a black victim are treated poorly by officials in the civil litigation process. (shrink)

When I began to think about a book on Kant and the life sciences, the idea that Kant would ever have been influenced by the ideas coming out of this field seemed impossible to believe. In fact, I spent an entire Summer determined to prove that my thesis was wrong. The problem was, I kept finding evidence in support of it (fully one third of Kant’s Organicism is devoted to a glut of historical research filling up the endnotes, research stemming, (...) for the most part, from an initial disbelief in my own hypothesis). Most of the scholars who had considered this connection before me had had their training in the history of science. My situation was different, I had been trained in philosophy. I knew my Descartes but I had never read Harvey; I had written on Locke but I had never heard of Ray…. (shrink)

In this essay I lay out the textual materials surrounding the birth of physical anthropology as a racial science in the eighteenth century with a special focus on the development of Kant's own contributions to the new field. Kant’s contributions to natural history demonstrated his commitment to a physical, mental, and moral hierarchy among the races and I spend some time describing both the advantages he drew from this hierarchy for making sense of the social and political history of inequality (...) between peoples, and the obviously problematic relationship that such views would entail for Kant’s universalism as he began to formulate his ethical program in the 1780s. While there is continued scholarly debate regarding a purported moral “turn” made by Kant once he dropped his commitment to a racial hierarchy in the 1790s, what the narrative as a whole reveals is not only the manner by which questions of racial difference defined physical anthropology from its outset, but the easy and uncomplicated manner by which whole member groups of the population could be excluded from lofty pronouncements regarding the “rights of man”—a fact that was as true for Kant in Königsberg, as it was for Jefferson and Hamilton in Philadelphia. (shrink)

Aims and objectives. Participant narratives from a feminist and queer phe- nomenological study aim to broaden current understandings of trauma. Examin- ing structural marginalisation within perinatal care relationships provides insights into the impact of dominant models of care on queer birthing women. More specifically, validation of queer experience as a key finding from the study offers trauma-informed strategies that reconstruct formerly disempowering perinatal relationships. Background. Heteronormativity governs birthing spaces and presents considerable challenges for queer birthing women who may also have (...) an increased risk of trauma due to structurally marginalising processes that create and maintain socially constructed differences. Design. Analysis of the qualitative data was guided by feminist and queer phe- nomenology. This was well suited to understanding queer women’s storied narra- tives of trauma, including disempowering processes of structural marginalisation. Methods. Semistructured and conversational interviews were conducted with a purposeful sample of thirteen queer-identified women who had experiences of birthing in rural Nova Scotia, Canada. Results. Validation was identified as meaningful for queer women in the context of perinatal care in rural Nova Scotia. Offering new perspectives on traditional models of assessment provide strategies to create a context of care that recon- structs the birthing space insofar as women at risk do not have to come out as queer in opposition to the expectation of heterosexuality. Conclusions. Normative practices were found to further the effects of structural marginalisation suggesting that perinatal care providers, including nurses, can challenge dominant models of care and reconstruct the relationality between queer women and formerly disempowering expectations of heteronormativity that govern birthing spaces. Relevance to clinical practice. New trauma-informed assessment strategies recon- struct the relationality within historically disempowering perinatal relationships through potentiating difference which avoids retraumatising women with re- experiencing the process of coming out as queer in opposition to the expectation of heterosexuality. (shrink)

Focusing on Immanuel Kant's lectures on anthropology, the essay endeavors to address long-standing concerns regarding both the relationship between these empirical investigations and Kant's better known universalism, and more pressingly, between Kant's own racism on display in the lectures, and his simultaneous promotion of a universal moral theory that would unhesitatingly condemn such attitudes. -/- Reprinted in: 'Philosophies of Difference: Nature, Racism, and Sexuate Difference' edited by R. Gustafsson, R. Hill, and H. Ngo (Routledge, 2019), pp. 125-144.

In the philosophical literature on mental states, the paradigmatic examples of mental states are beliefs, desires, intentions, and phenomenal states such as being in pain. The corresponding list in the psychological literature on mental state attribution includes one further member: the state of knowledge. This article examines the reasons why developmental, comparative and social psychologists have classified knowledge as a mental state, while most recent philosophers--with the notable exception of Timothy Williamson-- have not. The disagreement is traced back to a (...) difference in how each side understands the relationship between the concepts of knowledge and belief, concepts which are understood in both disciplines to be closely linked. Psychologists and philosophers other than Williamson have generally have disagreed about which of the pair is prior and which is derivative. The rival claims of priority are examined both in the light of philosophical arguments by Williamson and others, and in the light of empirical work on mental state attribution. (shrink)

Many epistemologists use intuitive responses to particular cases as evidence for their theories. Recently, experimental philosophers have challenged the evidential value of intuitions, suggesting that our responses to particular cases are unstable, inconsistent with the responses of the untrained, and swayed by factors such as ethnicity and gender. This paper presents evidence that neither gender nor ethnicity influence epistemic intuitions, and that the standard responses to Gettier cases and the like are widely shared. It argues that epistemic intuitions are produced (...) by the natural ‘mindreading’ capacity that underpins ordinary attributions of belief and knowledge in everyday social interaction. Although this capacity is fallible, its weaknesses are similar to the weaknesses of natural capacities such as sensory perception. Experimentalists who do not wish to be skeptical about ordinary empirical methods have no good reason to be skeptical about epistemic intuitions. (shrink)

A fundamental entity is an entity that is ‘ontologically independent’; it does not depend on anything else for its existence or essence. It seems to follow that a fundamental entity is ‘modally free’ in some sense. This assumption, that fundamentality entails modal freedom (or ‘FEMF’ as I shall label the thesis), is used in the service of other arguments in metaphysics. But as I will argue, the road from fundamentality to modal freedom is not so straightforward. The defender of FEMF (...) should provide positive reasons for believing it, especially in light of recent views that are incompatible with it. I examine both direct and indirect routes to FEMF. (shrink)

Abstract: This essay addresses three specific moments in the history of the role played by intuition in Kant's system. Part one develops Kant's attitude toward intuition in order to understand how ‘sensible intuition’ becomes the first step in his development of transcendental idealism and how this in turn requires him to reject the possibility of an ‘intellectual intuition’ for human cognition. Part two considers the role of Jacobi when it came to interpreting both Kant's epistemic achievement and what were taken (...) to be the outstanding problems of freedom's relation to nature; problems interpreted to be resolvable only via an appeal to ‘intellectual intuition’. Part three begins with Kant's subsequent return to the question of freedom and nature in his Critique of Judgment. With Goethe's contemporaneous Metamorphoses of Plants as a contrast case, it becomes clear that whereas Goethe can embrace the role of an intuitive understanding in his account of nature and within the logic of polarity in particular, Kant could never allow an intuition of nature that in his system would spell the very impossibility of freedom itself. (shrink)

The study aimed to look into the organizational performance of Higher Education Institutions in the Philippines particularly in Zamboanga del Norte. The descriptive method of research was used. There were 95 respondents to the survey. Frequency count, percentage, and Mean were used as a statistical tool. The investigation revealed that organizational performance of the Higher Education Institutions involved was found to be very good along the areas of VMGO, faculty, curriculum and instruction, support to students, research, extension, library, physical plant (...) and facilities, laboratories and administration. The Higher Education Institutions met the standards of quality over and above the minimum requirement of government under Article XIV Accreditation, Section 60. There were areas need to focus such as congruent to the needs of the people in the community, monitoring of faculty adequacy and loading, sourcing out funds and other resources, and maintaining safety and security inside the campuses, even though all areas in organizational performance found very good, Further, the administration continuously requires planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. (shrink)

Hilde Lindemann argues that personhood is the shared practice of recognizing and responding to one another. She calls this practice holding. Holding, however, can fail. Holding failure, by stereotyping for example, can inhibit others’ epistemic confidence and ability to recall true beliefs as well as create an environment of racism or sexism. How might we avoid holding failure? Holding failure, I argue, has many epistemic dimensions, so I argue that moral encroachment has the theoretical tools available to avoid holding failures. (...) The goal of this paper, therefore, is to articulate and understand the epistemology of holding in an attempt to remedy holding failure. I show that the virtue of wokeness emerges from an epistemic environment tainted with moral encroachment. I argue that as long as an individual is woke, she will have a tendency to avoid holding failures. Wokeness and moral encroachment, consequently, are fundamental to the epistemology of holding and consistent proper holding. (shrink)

Who are the best subjects for judgment tasks intended to test grammatical hypotheses? Michael Devitt ( [2006a] , [2006b] ) argues, on the basis of a hypothesis concerning the psychology of such judgments, that linguists themselves are. We present empirical evidence suggesting that the relevant divide is not between linguists and non-linguists, but between subjects with and without minimally sufficient task-specific knowledge. In particular, we show that subjects with at least some minimal exposure to or knowledge of such tasks tend (...) to perform consistently with one another—greater knowledge of linguistics makes no further difference—while at the same time exhibiting markedly greater in-group consistency than those who have no previous exposure to or knowledge of such tasks and their goals. (shrink)

Literary beauty was once understood as intertwining sensations and ideas, and thus as providing subjective and objective reasons for literary appreciation. However, as theory and philosophy developed, the inevitable claims and counterclaims led to the view that subjective experience was not a reliable guide to literary merit. Literary theory then replaced aesthetics as did philosophy’s focus on literary truth. Along with the demise of the relevance of sensations, literary form also took a back seat. This suggested to some that either (...) literature communicated truth like any other literal form of communication or it was a mere diversion: a springboard to harmless reverie or daydreaming. Neither response satisfactorily captured what was distinctive about literature: the love readers can have for literary texts and the edification or insight claimed of works within each culture’s respective catalogue of classics. However, a concept of literary beauty has again become viable due to developments in theories of pleasure and imagination. If the defining aspect of literature is the imaginative engagement it occasions, and if this imagining is constrained by plausibility and endorsed as effective relative to our goals, ideals, and interests, then literature is not reduced to either mere fact or wish fulfillment. An account of literary beauty is available which defines literature accordingly and explains how subjective and objective reasons for appreciation intertwine to evoke pleasure and insight. (shrink)

What is the best way to account for the badness of pain and what sort of theory of welfare is best suited to accommodate this view? I argue that unpleasant sensory experiences are prudentially bad in the absence of contrary attitudes, but good when the object of positive attitudes. Pain is bad unless it is liked, enjoyed, valued etc. Interestingly, this view is incompatible with either pure objectivist or pure subjectivist understandings of welfare. However, there is a kind of welfare (...) theory that can incorporate this view of the badness of pain and which is very, very close to being a form of subjectivism. Moreover, this hybrid account of welfare is entirely compatible with the deep motivations of subjectivism. I therefore argue that those who lean towards welfare subjectivism should adopt this account of pain, and that we should revise our understanding of subjectivism to count such theories as subjective. (shrink)

You and I have been colleagues for ten years, during which we have tirelessly discussed the reasons both for and against the existence of God. There is no argument or piece of evidence bearing directly on this question that one of us is aware of that the other is not—we are, then, evidential equals relative to the topic of God’s existence. There is also no cognitive virtue or capacity, or cognitive vice or incapacity, that one of us possesses that the (...) other does not—we are, then, also cognitive equals relative to the question at issue. Given this evidential and cognitive equality, combined with the fact that we have fully disclosed to one another all of our reasons and arguments relative to this topic, we are epistemic peers with respect to the question whether God exists. Yet despite the symmetry of our epistemic positions, we deeply disagree about the answer to this question. What response does rationality require in such a case, where epistemic peers disagree over a question despite there being no apparent asymmetries between them? (shrink)

In this essay I position Kant's "psychology" portion of the lectures on metaphysics against the backdrop of Kant's work to develop a new lecture course on anthropology during the 1770s. I argue that the development of this course caused significant trouble for Kant in three distinct ways, though in each case the difficulty would turn on Kant's approach to "empirical psychology." The first problem for Kant had to do with refashioning psychology such that empirical psychology could be reassigned to anthropology (...) and rational psychology protected from the spectre of subreption. The second problem, and in many way the larger one for Kant during this time period, followed from Kant's desire to make use of empirical psychology's account of the mental faculties in his own transcendental theory of cognition. This introduced a separate problem for Kant, however, since this was a time during which physiological psychology was on the rise, a psychology that was being promoted by Ernst Platner and his followers, as "anthropology." This left Kant with the unwelcome task of simultaneously distinguishing his own philosophical anthropology from Platner's, and distancing his own transcendental theory of cognition from the likes of Herder and Tetens, given their embrace of the "embodied mind" approach being advanced by the physiological psychologists. (shrink)