Some prominent scientists and philosophers have stated openly that moral and political considerations should influence whether we accept or promulgate scientific theories. This widespread view has significantly influenced the development, and public perception, of intelligence research. Theories related to group differences in intelligence are often rejected a priori on explicitly moral grounds. Thus the idea, frequently expressed by commentators on science, that science is “self-correcting”—that hypotheses are simply abandoned when they are undermined by empirical evidence—may not be correct in all (...) contexts. In this paper, documentation spanning from the early 1970s to the present is collected, which reveals the influence of scientists’ moral and political commitments on the study of intelligence. It is suggested that misrepresenting findings in science to achieve desirable social goals will ultimately harm both science and society. (shrink)

According to “debunking arguments,” our moral beliefs are explained by evolutionary and cultural processes that do not track objective, mind-independent moral truth. Therefore (the debunkers say) we ought to be skeptics about moral realism. Huemer counters that “moral progress”—the cross-cultural convergence on liberalism—cannot be explained by debunking arguments. According to him, the best explanation for this phenomenon is that people have come to recognize the objective correctness of liberalism. Although Huemer may be the first philosopher to make this explicit empirical (...) argument for moral realism, the idea that societies will eventually converge on the same moral beliefs is a notable theme in realist thinking. Antirealists, on the other hand, often point to seemingly intractable cross-cultural moral disagreement as evidence against realism (the “argument from disagreement”). This paper argues that the trend toward liberalism is susceptible to a debunking explanation, being driven by two related non-truth-tracking processes. First, large numbers of people gravitate to liberal values for reasons of self-interest. Second, as societies become more prosperous and advanced, they become more effective at suppressing violence, and they create conditions where people are more likely to empathize with others, which encourages liberalism. The latter process is not truth tracking (or so this paper argues) because empathy-based moral beliefs are themselves susceptible to an evolutionary debunking argument. Cross-cultural convergence on liberalism per se does not support either realism or antirealism. (shrink)

According to Westermarck’s widely accepted explanation of the incest taboo, cultural prohibitions on sibling sex are rooted in an evolved biological disposition to feel sexual aversion toward our childhood coresidents. Bernard Williams posed the “representation problem” for Westermarck’s theory: the content of the hypothesized instinct is different from the content of the incest taboo —thus the former cannot be causally responsible for the latter. Arthur Wolf posed the related “moralization problem”: the instinct concerns personal behavior whereas the prohibition concerns everyone. (...) This paper reviews possible ways of defending Westermarck’s theory from the representation and moralization problems, and concludes that the theory is untenable. A recent study purports to support Westermarck’s account by showing that unrelated children raised in the same peer groups on kibbutzim feel sexual aversion toward each other and morally oppose third-party intra-peer-group sex, but this study has been misinterpreted. I argue that the representation and moralization problems are general problems that could potentially undermine many popular evolutionary explanations of social/moral norms. The cultural evolution of morality is not tightly constrained by our biological endowment in the way some philosophers and evolutionary psychologists believe. (shrink)

MacDonald argues that a suite of genetic and cultural adaptations among Jews constitutes a “group evolutionary strategy.” Their supposed genetic adaptations include, most notably, high intelligence, conscientiousness, and ethnocentrism. According to this thesis, several major intellectual and political movements, such as Boasian anthropology, Freudian psychoanalysis, and multiculturalism, were consciously or unconsciously designed by Jews to promote collectivism and group continuity among themselves in Israel and the diaspora and undermine the cohesion of gentile populations, thus increasing the competitive advantage of Jews (...) and weakening organized gentile resistance. By developing and promoting these movements, Jews supposedly played a necessary role in the ascendancy of liberalism and multiculturalism in the West. While not achieving widespread acceptance among evolutionary scientists, this theory has been enormously influential in the burgeoning political movement known as the “alt-right.” Examination of MacDonald’s argument suggests that he relies on systematically misrepresented sources and cherry-picked facts. It is argued here that the evidence favors what is termed the “default hypothesis”: Because of their above-average intelligence and concentration in influential urban areas, Jews in recent history have been overrepresented in all major intellectual and political movements, including conservative movements, that were not overtly anti-Semitic. (shrink)

When the environment in which an organism lives deviates in some essential way from that to which it is adapted, this is described as “evolutionary mismatch,” or “evolutionary novelty.” The notion of mismatch plays an important role, explicitly or implicitly, in evolution-informed cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, and medicine. The evolutionary novelty of our contemporary environment is thought to have significant implications for our health and well-being. However, scientists have generally been working without a clear definition of mismatch. This paper defines (...) mismatch as deviations in the environment that render biological traits unable, or impaired in their ability, to produce their selected effects. The machinery developed by Millikan in connection with her account of proper function, and with her related teleosemantic account of representation, is used to identify four major types, and several subtypes, of evolutionary mismatch. While the taxonomy offered here does not in itself resolve any scientific debates, the hope is that it can be used to better formulate empirical hypotheses concerning the effects of mismatch. To illustrate, it is used to show that the controversial hypothesis that general intelligence evolved as an adaptation to handle evolutionary novelty can, contra some critics, be formulated in a conceptually coherent way. (shrink)

In 1965, Konrad Lorenz grounded the innate–acquired distinction in what he believed were the only two possible sources of information that can underlie adaptedness: phylogenetic and individual experience. Phylogenetic experience accumulates in the genome by the process of natural selection. Individual experience is acquired ontogenetically through interacting with the environment during the organism’s lifetime. According to Lorenz, the adaptive information underlying innate traits is stored in the genome. Lorenz erred in arguing that genetic adaptation is the only means of accumulating (...) information in phylogenetic experience. Cultural adaptation also occurs over a phylogenetic time scale, and cultural tradition is a third source from which adaptive information can be extracted. This paper argues that genetic adaptation can be distinguished from individual and cultural adaptation in a species like Homo sapiens, in which even adaptations with a genetic component require cultural inputs and scaffolding to develop and be expressed. Examination of the way in which innateness is used in science suggests that scientists use the term, as Lorenz suggested, to designate genetic adaptations. The search for innate traits plays an essential role in generating hypotheses in ethology and psychology. In addition, designating a trait as innate establishes important facts that apply at the information-processing level of description. (shrink)

A number of philosophers from Hobbes to Mill to Parfit have held some combination of the following views about the Golden Rule: (a) It is the cornerstone of morality across many if not all cultures. (b) It affirms the value of moral impartiality, and potentially the core idea of utilitarianism. (c) It is immune from evolutionary debunking, that is, there is no good naturalistic explanation for widespread acceptance of the Golden Rule, ergo the best explanation for its appearance in different (...) traditions is that people have perceived the same non-natural moral truth. De Lazari-Radek and Singer employ all three of these claims in an argument meant to vindicate Sidgwick's ‘principle of universal benevolence’. I argue that the Golden Rule is the cornerstone of morality only in Christianity, it does not advocate moral impartiality, and there is a naturalistic explanation for why versions of the Golden Rule appear in different traditions. (shrink)

According to cultural evolutionary theory in the tradition of Boyd and Richerson, cultural evolution is driven by individuals' learning biases, natural selection, and random forces. Learning biases lead people to preferentially acquire cultural variants with certain contents or in certain contexts. Natural selection favors individuals or groups with fitness-promoting variants. Durham (1991) argued that Boyd and Richerson's approach is based on a "radical individualism" that fails to recognize that cultural variants are often "imposed" on people regardless of their individual decisions. (...) Fracchia and Lewontin (2005) raised a similar challenge, suggesting that the success of a variant is often determined by the degree of power backing it. With power, a ruler can impose beliefs or practices on a whole population by diktat, rendering all of the forces represented in cultural evolutionary models irrelevant. It is argued here, based on work by Boehm (1999, 2012), that, from at least the time of the early Middle Paleolithic, human bands were controlled by powerful coalitions of the majority that deliberately guided the development of moral norms to promote the common good. Cultural evolutionary models of the evolution of morality have been based on false premises. However, Durham (1991) and Fracchia and Lewontin's (2005) challenge does not undermine cultural evolutionary modeling in nonmoral domains. (shrink)

According to the Standard Model account of religion, religious concepts tend to conform to “minimally counterintuitive” schemas. Laypeople may, to varying degrees, verbally endorse the abstract doctrines taught by professional theologians. But, outside the Sunday school exam room, the implicit representations that tend to guide people’s everyday thinking, feeling, and behavior are about minimally counterintuitive entities. According to the Standard Model, these implicit representations are the essential thing to be explained by the cognitive science of religion. It is argued here (...) that this theoretical orientation of mainstream CSR misses a whole dimension of religiosity—the acceptance of certain religious authorities, that is, the acceptance of other people’s superior expertise. Average believers tend to accept the authority of religious experts who espouse highly counterintuitive ideas that they understand in a distorted form, if at all.... (shrink)

Thaler and Sunstein advocate 'libertarian paternalism'. A libertarian paternalist changes the conditions under which people act so that their cognitive biases lead them to choose what is best for themselves. Although libertarian paternalism manipulates people, Thaler and Sunstein say that it respects their autonomy by preserving the possibility of choice. Conly argues that libertarian paternalism does not go far enough, since there is no compelling reason why we should allow people the opportunity to choose to bring disaster upon themselves if (...) sometimes they will make the wrong decision. She defends 'coercive paternalism'. The present paper argues that errors in reasoning are not due only to cognitive biases. People also make errors because they have an insufficient level of general intelligence. Intelligence is distributed on a continuum. Those who fall on higher levels of the continuum have greater abilities, in certain contexts, to reason about both their own and others' interests. Coercive paternalism may sometimes be appropriate to prevent less intelligent people from engaging in self-destructive behavior due to errors of reasoning. (shrink)

We are addressing this letter to the editors of Philosophical Psychology after reading an article they decided to publish in the recent vol. 33, issue 1. The article is by Nathan Cofnas and is entitled “Research on group differences in intelligence: A defense of free inquiry” (2020). The purpose of our letter is not to invite Cofnas’s contribution into a broader dialogue, but to respectfully voice our concerns about the decision to publish the manuscript, which, in our (...) opinion, fails to meet a range of academic quality standards usually expected of academic publications. (shrink)

Michael Huemer argues that cross-cultural convergence toward liberal moral values is evidence of objective moral progress, and by extension, evidence for moral realism. Nathan Cofnas claims to debunk Huemer’s argument by contending that convergence toward liberal moral values can be better explained by ‘two related non-truth-tracking processes’: self-interest and its long-term tendency to result in social conditions conducive to greater empathy. This article argues that although Cofnas successfully debunks Huemer’s convergence argument for one influential form of moral (...) realism – Robust Moral Realism, which holds that moral facts are non-natural, stance-independent normative facts – Cofnas’s debunking argument broadly supports a second type of moral realism: Enlightened Self-Interest Realism, the view that moral facts are reducible to stance-dependent requirements of instrumental (‘means-end’) rationality. Finally, this article argues that insofar as different Enlightened Self-Interest Realist theories make specific predictions about the intra- and inter-personal mechanisms behind moral convergence toward liberalism, empirical observations of cross-cultural convergence can provide independent support for Enlightened Self-Interest Realism. I conclude that this is an important mark in favor of Enlightened Self-Interest Realism over Robust Moral Realism. (shrink)

Discussions of political obligation and political authority have long focused on the idea that the commands of genuine authorities constitute content-independent reasons. Despite its centrality in these debates, the notion of content-independence is unclear and controversial, with some claiming that it is incoherent, useless, or increasingly irrelevant. I clarify content-independence by focusing on how reasons can depend on features of their source or container. I then solve the long-standing puzzle of whether the fact that laws can constitute content-independent reasons is (...) consistent with the fact that some laws must fail to bind due to their egregiously unjust content. Finally I defend my understanding of content-independence against challenges and show why it retains a place of special importance for questions about the law and political obligation. Content-independence highlights that it is some feature of the law or law-making process in general that is supposed to generate moral obligations for citizens, not the merits of particular laws. (shrink)

A new philosophical analysis is provided of the notorious Sleeping Beauty Problem. It is argued that the correct solution is one-third, but not in the way previous philosophers have typically meant this. A modified version of the Problem demonstrates that neither self-locating information nor amnesia is relevant to the core Problem, which is simply to evaluate the conditional chance of heads given an undated Monday-or-Tuesday awakening. Previous commentators have failed to appreciate the significance of the information that Beauty gains upon (...) waking, and which is relevant to the conditional chance of heads: de re acquaintance with the awakening itself and the non-locating knowledge that it is an experimental awakening. David Lewis and company are committed to several unjustifiable and unacceptable probability assessments. Previous commentators have in effect confused the information that Beauty undergoes this particular experimental awakening for the information that she undergoes some experimental awakening or other. Lewis in particular thereby illegitimately tips the scales both in favor of heads and in favor of Monday. The Sleeping Beauty Problem is equivalent to a ball-in-urn word problem in elementary probability theory. (shrink)

What are we going to do about ChatGPT? Some philosophical reflections and arguments in general opposition to students using ChatGPT.

Nathan Salmon; XII*—How to Measure the Standard Metre, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 June 1988, Pages 193–218.

In the Republic, Socrates argues that morality (justice) is valuable both for itself and for what comes from it. In contemporary moral theory, this view is not widely accepted. However, contemporary empirical research in psychology reveals that what we experience is also what we come to expect. It follows from this that if we act in an immoral fashion, we will expect the same from others. The more often we act immorally, the more suspicion will be ingrained within us. Suspicion (...) quickly pervades our minds, corrodes our relationships, and increases our levels of stress, thereby dramatically decreasing our quality of life. Moral action, on the other hand, has the ability to strengthen our faith in others and create strong human relationships. Therefore,morality should be classified as having the highest type of value, just as Socrates contends.Moral behavior allows for healthy relations between persons (intrinsic value) and the wellbeing of the individual (extrinsic value). (shrink)

The topic is time travel of the sort depicted in H. G. Wells’ classic novel, The Time Machine—Wellsian time travel. The range of proper applicability of the concept of Wellsian time travel is investigated. The results of this investigation are applied to provide a new argument against the metaphysical possibility of time travel in absolute time. Alternatively, the argument is against the possibility of Wellsian time travel relative to a single temporal frame of reference. The argument leaves open the prospect (...) that an object nontrivially moves relative to one temporal reference frame from one time to another relative to another temporal reference frame. The argument does not turn on closed timelike curves or “causal loops” of any kind. It does however invoke the prospect of backward causation—a consequence of backward time travel in conjunction with common sense—but it invokes this possibility only in the weak sense of mere logical consistency. (shrink)

It is widely held that metaphysical modality is the broadest non-epistemic, alethic modality, and that /a posteriori/ modal essentialist truths, like that gold has atomic number 79, enjoy the necessity of the broadest alethic modality. One prominent argument for these conclusions--given by Cian Dorr, John Hawthorne, and Juhani Yli-Vakkuri--rests upon an extremely dubious premise: that certain pairs of properties—e.g., being gold and being made of atoms containing 79 protons—are one and the very same property. The two properties are seen to (...) be distinct on independent philosophical grounds. Metaphysical modality is in fact a restricted alethic modality. In particular, mathematical modality is broader than metaphysical modality. Arguably, the broadest alethic modality is logical modality, which is distinct from metaphysical modality. Even if it is metaphysically necessary that gold has atomic number 79, there is no logical/analytical inconsistency in the supposition that it does not. (shrink)

University of California, Santa Barbara.

An expanded version of the author’s candid, autobiographical “My Philosophical Education”.

The Counterfactual Comparative Account of Harm says that an event is overall harmful for someone if and only if it makes her worse off than she otherwise would have been. I defend this account from two common objections.

I defend the widely-held view that morally worthy action need not be motivated by a desire to promote rightness as such. Some have recently come to reject this view, arguing that desires for rightness as such are necessary for avoiding a certain kind of luck thought incompatible with morally worthy action. I show that those who defend desires for rightness as such on the basis of this argument misunderstand the relationship between moral worth and the kind of luck that their (...) argument employs. Consequently, the argument provides no reason to doubt the popular view that a desire for rightness as such is no part of virtue. I conclude by suggesting that a family of worries about merely accidentally right action presuppose one side of the recent debate about objectivism and perspectivism about moral rightness. (shrink)

An argument for pro-choice advocates engaging the ethical arguments about abortion, and more. Public philosophy on abortion and the value of philosophy. With Jonathan Dudley, MD.

Frege held that the bare demonstrative ‘that’ is incomplete, and that it is the word together with a gesture that serves as the designating expression, and likewise that it is the word ‘yesterday’ together with the time of utterance that designates the relevant day. David Kaplan’s original theory of indexicals holds that Frege’s supplementation thesis is correct about demonstratives but incorrect about ‘yesterday’. Kaplan’s account of demonstratives deviates from Frege’s in treating supplemented demonstratives as directly referential, hence rigid. It is (...) argued here that the gesture or other demonstration that accompanies an utterance of ‘that’ is not part of the designating expression but instead part of the utterance context. (shrink)

Epistemic trespassers judge matters outside their field of expertise. Trespassing is ubiquitous in this age of interdisciplinary research and recognizing this will require us to be more intellectually modest.

We offer an original argument for the existence of universal fictions—that is, fictions within which every possible proposition is true. Specifically, we detail a trio of such fictions, along with an easy-to-follow recipe for generating more. After exploring several consequences and dismissing some objections, we conclude that fiction, unlike reality, is unlimited when it comes to truth.

On Kripke’s intended definition, a term designates an object x rigidly if the term designates x with respect to every possible world in which x exists and does not designate anything else with respect to worlds in which x does not exist. Kripke evidently holds in Naming and Necessity, hereafter N&N (pp. 117–144, passim, and especially at 134, 139–140), that certain general terms – including natural-kind terms like ‘‘water’’ and ‘‘tiger’’, phenomenon terms like ‘‘heat’’ and ‘‘hot’’, and color terms like (...) ‘‘blue’’ – are rigid designators solely as a matter of philosophical semantics (independently of empirical, extra-linguistic facts). As a consequence, Kripke argues, identity statements involving these general terms are like identity statements involving proper names (e.g., ‘‘Clark Kent=Superman’’) in that, solely as a matter of philosophical semantics, they express necessary truths if they are true at all. But whereas it is reasonably clear what it is for a (first-order) singular term to designate, Kripke does not explicitly say what it is for a general term to designate. General terms are standardly treated in modern logic as predicates, usually monadic predicates. There are very forceful reasons – due independently to Church and Godel, and ultimately to Frege – for taking predicates to designate their semantic extensions. But insofar as the extension of the general term ‘‘tiger’’ is the class of actual tigers (or its characteristic function), it is clear that the term does not rigidly designate its extension, since the class of tigers in one possible world may differ from the class of tigers in another. What, then, is it for ‘‘tiger’’ to be rigid? (shrink)

The dogma that the propositional logic of metaphysical modality is S5 is rebutted. The author exposes fallacies in standard arguments supporting S5, arguing that propositional metaphysical modal logic is weaker even than both S4 and B, and is instead the minimal and weak metaphysical-modal logic T.

A puzzle concerning fractional and mixed numbers of things (e.g., two and a half oranges) is examined.

In (Owesen 2022), Owesen purportedly argues that pains are activations of nociceptors. In these comments I show that much of what Owesen says is consistent with pains being nociceptors themselves.

Although Professor Schiffer and I have many times disagreed, I share his deep and abiding commitment to argument as a primary philosophical tool. Regretting any communication failure that has occurred, I endeavor here to make clearer my earlier reply in “Illogical Belief” to Schiffer’s alleged problem for my version of Millianism.1 I shall be skeletal, however; the interested reader is encouraged to turn to “Illogical Belief” for detail and elaboration. I have argued that to bear a propositional attitude de re (...) is to bear that attitude toward the corresponding singular proposition, no more and no less. If this is right, then according to Millianism every instance of the following modal schema is true. (shrink)

In this candid autobiographical essay, Nathan Salmon recounts and assesses the impact of various philosophers and events on his philosophical development.

Many philosophers think that punishment is intentionally harmful and that this makes it especially hard to morally justify. Explanations for the latter intuition often say questionable things about the moral significance of the intent to harm. I argue that there’s a better way to explain this intuition.

I argue that there is moral luck, i.e., that factors beyond our control can affect how laudable or culpable we are.

A paradox about sets of properties is presented. The paradox, which invokes an impredicatively defined property, is formalized in a free third-order logic with lambda-abstraction, through a classically proof-theoretically valid deduction of a contradiction from a single premise to the effect that every property has a unit set. Something like a model is offered to establish that the premise is, although classically inconsistent, nevertheless consistent, so that the paradox discredits the logic employed. A resolution through the ramified theory of types (...) is considered. Finally, a general scheme that generates a family of analogous paradoxes and a generally applicable resolution are proposed. (shrink)

Hume’s argument against believing the testimony of miracles is the most influential treatment of the topic, but there is not yet a consensus on how to interpret his argument. Two arguments are attributed to him. First, Hume seems to start with the infrequency of miracles and uses this to infer that the testimony of a miracle is exceedingly unlikely, and this then creates strong but defeasible evidence against the testimony of any miracle. Second, perhaps Hume takes the constancy of our (...) experience of the laws of nature as decisive or indefeasible evidence against the testimony of any miracle. I explain the basis for each of these interpretations of Hume’s argument, and then develop a novel criticism of his view: namely, any inductive inference depends on the relevant similarity between the observed and the unobserved, but we may have reason for thinking that purported miracles are not relevantly similar, and thus our past experience cannot be used as reliable evidence about the testimony of (some) miracles. (shrink)

Toward a theory of n-tuples of individuals and concepts as surrogates for Russellian singular propositions and singular concepts. Alonzo Church proposed a powerful and elegant theory of sequences of functions and their arguments as singular-concept surrogates. Church’s account accords with his Alternative (0), the strictest of his three competing criteria for strict synonymy. The currently popular objection to strict criteria like (0) on the basis of the Russell-Myhill paradox is misguided. Russell-Myhill is not a problem specifically for Alternative (0). Rather (...) it is a disproof of unrestricted concept comprehension. Unrestricted comprehension is also inconsistent with facts about sets of properties. It is demonstrated furthermore that the principal rival conception of propositions, as classes of possible worlds, is subject to a fatal philosophical collapse: It follows on that conception, given that each of us is fallible, that everyone believes everything. Although it is far superior to its principal rival conception, Church’s proposed theory is vulnerable under (0) to a version of Russell’s notorious Gray’s /Elegy/ objection. Some amendments to Church’s proposal are proffered that address Russell’s objection, including an amendment first proposed in the present author’s /Frege’s Puzzle/ (1986). Church’s response (personal correspondence) is considered. (shrink)

A sequel to the author’s book /Frege’s Puzzle/ (1986).