What is commonly referred to as the Adoption Problem is a challenge to the idea that the principles of logic can be rationally revised. The argument is based on a reconstruction of unpublished work by Saul Kripke. As the reconstruction has it, Kripke extends the scope of Willard van Orman Quine's regress argument against conventionalism to the possibility of adopting new logical principles. In this paper we want to discuss the scope of this challenge. Are all revisions of logic subject (...) to the Adoption Problem? If not, are there significant cases of logical revision that are subject to the Adoption Problem? We will argue that both questions should be answered negatively. (shrink)

When reasons are given for compositionality, the arguments usually purport to establish compositionality in an almost a priori manner. I will rehearse these arguments why one could think that compositionality is a priori true, or almost a priori true, and will find all of them inconclusive. This, in itself, is no reason against compositionality, but a reason to try to establish or defend the principle on other than quasi-a priori grounds.

Sometimes philosophers draw philosophically significant conclusions from theories of references. This practice has been attacked [Sti96, BS98, Bis03, MMNS] for two different reasons. One line of attack against arguments from reference tries to show that they are invalid, the other attempts to show that empirical results from social psychology undermine all such arguments. In this paper I show that this criticism of arguments from reference is misplaced. There is nothing wrong in principle with arguments from reference.

I argue that Goodman’s philosophy should not be characterised in opposition to the philosophy of the logical empiricists, but is more fruitfully interpreted as a continuation of their philosophical programme. In particular, understanding Goodman’s philosophy as a continuation of the ideal language tradition makes explicable how a radical ontological relativist could be such a staunch nominalist at the same time.

We distinguish and discuss two different accounts of the subject matter of theories of reference, meta-externalism and meta-internalism. We argue that a form of the meta- internalist view, “moderate meta-internalism”, is the most plausible account of the subject matter of theories of reference. In the second part of the paper we explain how this account also helps to answer the questions of what kind of concept reference is, and what role intuitions have in the study of the reference relation.

Wie ist es wohl, eine Fledermaus zu sein? Wäre ein rein physikalisches Duplikat von mir nur ein empfindungsloser Zombie? Muss man sich seinem Schicksal ergeben, wenn man sich unfreiwillig als lebensnotwendige Blutwaschanlage eines weltberühmten Violinisten wieder findet? Kann man sich wünschen, der König von China zu sein? Bin ich vielleicht nur ein Gehirn in einem Tank mit Nährflüssigkeit, das die Welt von einer Computersimulation vorgegaukelt bekommt? Worauf beziehen sich die Menschen auf der Zwillingserde mit ihrem Wort 'Wasser', wenn es bei (...) ihnen gar kein H2O gibt? -/- Diese und weitere seltsame Fragen sind das tägliche Brot vieler professioneller Philosophen. Die abstrusen Umstände, die dabei geschildert werden, nennt man "Gedankenexperimente". -/- Was soll die Erörterung dieser Szenarien, die sich so weit von unserem alltäglichen Leben, z.T. außerhalb der Grenzen unserer Wirklichkeit abspielen? Welche Rolle spielen diese "Gedankenexperimente" in der philosophischen Methodologie? Ist diese Rolle überhaupt berechtigt? -/- Das vorliegende Buch gibt Antworten auf diese Fragen. Es stellt sich heraus, dass diese seltsamen Gedankenexperimente nicht nur berechtigte, sondern überaus wichtige Instrumente philosophischen Forschens darstellen. (shrink)

This book is conceived as an introductory text into the theory of syntactic and semantic information, and information flow.

Although thought experiments were first discovered as a sui generis methodological tool by philosophers of science (most prominently by Ernst Mach), the tool can also be found – even more frequently – in contemporary philosophy. Thought experiments in philosophy and science have a lot in common. However, in this chapter we will concentrate on thought experiments in philosophy only. Their use has been the centre of attention of metaphilosophical discussion in the past decade, and this chapter will provide an overview (...) of the results this discussion has achieved and point out which issues are still open. (shrink)

One of the most basic methods of philosophy is, and has always been, the consideration of counterfactual cases and imaginary scenarios. One purpose of doing so obviously is to test our theories against such counterfactual cases. Although this method is widespread, it is far from being commonly accepted. Especially during the last two decades it has been confronted with criticism ranging from complete dismissal to denying only its critical powers to a cautious defense of the use of thought experiments as (...) counterexamples. One of the strongest criticisms of the method of thought experimentation is "modal skepticism" as explicated and defended by Peter van Inwagen. Van Inwagen argues that the philosopher's notion of logical possibility is confused and that its epistemology is dubious. I argue that van Inwagen's skepticism is unwarranted. There is a sufficiently clear notion of logical possibility and a sufficiently straightforward way of getting to know what is logically possible. In the remainder of the paper I show how that connects with the methodology of thought experimentation in philosophy. (shrink)

To say that a philosophical dispute is ‘merely verbal’ seems to be an important diagnosis. If that diagnosis is correct for a particular dispute, then the right thing to do would be to declare that dispute to be over. The topic of what the disputing parties were fighting over was just a pseudo-problem (thus not really a problem), or at least – if there is a sense in which also merely verbal disputes indicate some problem, for example, insufficient clarity of (...) terminology – this problem is not substantial, or not as substantial as the disputing parties believed their problem initially to be. In this paper I will try to clarify what it means if we diagnose that two arguing parties are having a merely verbal dispute. (shrink)

In their paper “Sixteen Days” Barry Smith and Berit Brogaard try to answer the question: when does a human being begin to exist? In this paper we will address some methodological issues connected with this exercise in ontology. We shall begin by sketching the argument of “Sixteen Days”. We shall then attempt to characterize what is special about the ontological realism of “Sixteen Days” as contrasted to the linguistic constructivism which represents the more dominant current in contemporary analytic philosophy. This (...) will allow us to infer guidelines for assessing the quality of ontological theories of various types. We shall argue that ontological parsimony, groundedness, faithfulness to ordinary language, consistency with science, coherence, and fruitfulness are at least part of the adequacy criteria for such theories. These criteria will then be applied to the theory presented in “Sixteen Days”, and they will lead us to some revisions of this theory as well as to some reflections on its ethical implications. (shrink)

n diesem Kapitel soll das Problem ›Was genstand dieses Kapitels. Wir werden sehen, ist Kunst?‹, wie es sich für die analytische dass sich diese Adäquatheitsbedingungen aus Kunstphilosophie stellt, erläutert und eine Reiunserer Auffassung von analytischer Philosohe von »Adäquatheitsbedingungen« für seine phie heraus begründen lassen. Dieses zweite möglichen Lösungen formuliert werden. Adä- Kapitel bereitet also gewissermaßen den theoquatheitsbedingungen sind dabei Anforderunretischen Boden für die Folgekapitel. gen, die wir an eine potentielle Problemlösung Wie aus der Charakterisierung der analystellen und die eine Bewertung (...) der verschietischen Philosophie im ersten Kapitel bereits denen vorgebrachten Lösungsvorschläge zudeutlich geworden sein sollte, ist ein Charaklassen. Solche Adäquatheitsbedingungen erteristikum der analytischen Philosophie in jegeben sich zum Teil aus der Wissenschaftsdem Fall in der arbeitsteiligen Organisation ihgeschichte einer Disziplin: Vorgebrachte Lö- rer Forschungsanstrengungen zu sehen – ein sungsvorschläge können bestimmte Aspekte Charakteristikum, das Rudolf Carnap bereits eines Problems erhellen, stoßen bei anderen  im Vorwort zu seiner Habilitationsschrift Aspekten aber unter Umständen auf neue Pro-. (shrink)

Egal was der heutige Tag auch bringen mag, der 1. April 2063 wird zumindest als der Tag in die Geschichte des Wissenschaftsjournalismus eingehen, der die bisher aufwändigste Berichterstattung erfahren hat. So viele Kamerateams, wie hier vor den Toren der Australian National University in Canberra, hat bisher kein wissenschaftliches Experiment anziehen können. Selbst der Knüller des Vorjahres, als es einer 48jährigen Hausfrau in einem Vorort von London gelang, mit einfachsten Küchenutensilien einen kleinen Kalte-Fusion-Reaktor herzustellen, der den Staubsauger und die Mikrowelle zuverlässig (...) mit sauberer Energie versorgte, hatte bei weitem nicht ein solches Echo in der Wissenschaftspresse erfahren. Es war zwar noch nichts über den Experimentausgang zu erfahren, trotzdem wurde freilich seit drei Tagen ununterbrochen live auf fast allen Kanälen aus Canberra darüber berichtet, dass nun zwar noch nichts zu erfahren sei, dass es aber ja sehr bald soweit sein müsse. Das Experiment, dessen Ausgang man hier so gespannt erwartete, war schon im Vorfeld hitzig diskutiert worden und überhaupt nur durch einen Sonderbeschluss der Vereinten Nationen zustande gekommen. Immerhin läuft die Vorbereitung bereits seit fast 30 Jahren, als sich mehrere Philosophen und Bürgerinitiativen zusammenschlossen, die UNO um eine endgültige Klärung einer der ältesten Fragen der Menschheit zu bitten: Was ist Bewusstsein? Und insbesondere: Ist Bewusstsein etwas anderes als physikalisch beschreibbare Zustände unseres Gehirns, oder sind alle Tatsachen letztlich physikalische Tatsachen? Dass diese Fragen trotz ihres Ehrfurcht einflößenden Alters zunehmend auf den Nägeln brannten, hatte nicht zuletzt die jüngste Entwicklung der Computertechnologie befördert. Nachdem die KI in den letzten Jahrzehnten einen großen Schritt vorwärts gemacht hatte, war man in Sorge, dass ohne endgültige begriffliche Klärung dieser Fragen unser zukünftiger Umgang mit unseren elektronischen Helfern auf moralisch unsicherem Boden stehen könne. Man hatte sich daher nach langer Abwägung der ethischen Aspekte dieses Experiments dazu entschieden, ein gerade neugeborenes Waisenkind in einem völlig schwarz-weiß-grauen Raum groß werden zu lassen, sorgsam darum bemüht, dass die kleine Mary (so hatte man das Mädchen in Anlehnung an die Protagonistin einer fiktiven philosophischen Geschichte genannt) keine Farben zu Gesicht bekommt.. (shrink)

In the remainder of this article, we will disarm an important motivation for epistemic contextualism and interest-relative invariantism. We will accomplish this by presenting a stringent test of whether there is a stakes effect on ordinary knowledge ascription. Having shown that, even on a stringent way of testing, stakes fail to impact ordinary knowledge ascription, we will conclude that we should take another look at classical invariantism. Here is how we will proceed. Section 1 lays out some limitations of previous (...) research on stakes. Section 2 presents our study and concludes that there is little evidence for a substantial stakes effect. Section 3 responds to objections. The conclusion clears the way for classical invariantism. (shrink)

This article examines whether people share the Gettier intuition (viz. that someone who has a true justified belief that p may nonetheless fail to know that p) in 24 sites, located in 23 countries (counting Hong-Kong as a distinct country) and across 17 languages. We also consider the possible influence of gender and personality on this intuition with a very large sample size. Finally, we examine whether the Gettier intuition varies across people as a function of their disposition to engage (...) in “reflective” thinking. (shrink)

Does the Ship of Theseus present a genuine puzzle about persistence due to conflicting intuitions based on “continuity of form” and “continuity of matter” pulling in opposite directions? Philosophers are divided. Some claim that it presents a genuine puzzle but disagree over whether there is a solution. Others claim that there is no puzzle at all since the case has an obvious solution. To assess these proposals, we conducted a cross-cultural study involving nearly 3,000 people across twenty-two countries, speaking eighteen (...) different languages. Our results speak against the proposal that there is no puzzle at all and against the proposal that there is a puzzle but one that has no solution. Our results suggest that there are two criteria—“continuity of form” and “continuity of matter”— that constitute our concept of persistence and these two criteria receive different weightings in settling matters concerning persistence. (shrink)

Is behavioral integration (i.e., which occurs when a subjects assertion that p matches her non-verbal behavior) a necessary feature of belief in folk psychology? Our data from nearly 6,000 people across twenty-six samples, spanning twenty-two countries suggests that it is not. Given the surprising cross-cultural robustness of our findings, we suggest that the types of evidence for the ascription of a belief are, at least in some circumstances, lexicographically ordered: assertions are first taken into account, and when an agent sincerely (...) asserts that p, non-linguistic behavioral evidence is disregarded. In light of this, we take ourselves to have discovered a universal principle governing the ascription of beliefs in folk psychology. (shrink)

What do you know when you know what a sentence means? According to some theories, understanding a sentence is, in part, knowing its truth-conditions. Dorit Bar-On, Claire Horisk, and William Lycan have defended such theories on the grounds of an “epistemic determination argument”. That argument turns on the ideas that understanding a sentence, along with knowledge of the non-linguistic facts, suffices to know its truth-value, and that being able to determine a sentence’s truth-value given knowledge of the non-linguistic facts is (...) knowing its truth-conditions. I argue that the EDA withstands the objections recently raised by Daniel Cohnitz and Jaan Kangilaski, but fails for other reasons. It equivocates between a fine-grained and a coarse grained conception of “facts.”. (shrink)

There are at least two threads in our thought and talk about rationality, both practical and theoretical. In one sense, to be rational is to respond correctly to the reasons one has. Call this substantive rationality. In another sense, to be rational is to be coherent, or to have the right structural relations hold between one’s mental states, independently of whether those attitudes are justified. Call this structural rationality. According to the standard view, structural rationality is associated with a distinctive (...) set of requirements that mandate or prohibit certain combinations of attitudes, and it’s in virtue of violating these requirements that incoherent agents are irrational. I think the standard view is mistaken. The goal of this paper is to explain why, and to motivate an alternative account: rather than corresponding to a set of law-like requirements, structural rationality should be seen as corresponding to a distinctive kind of pro tanto rational pressure—i.e. something that comes in degrees, having both magnitude and direction. Something similar is standardly assumed to be true of substantive rationality. On the resulting picture, each dimension of rational evaluation is associated with a distinct kind of rational pressure—substantive rationality with (what I call) justificatory pressure and structural rationality with attitudinal pressure. The former is generated by one’s reasons while the latter is generated by one’s attitudes. Requirements turn out to be at best a footnote in the theory of rationality. (shrink)

It’s commonly held that particular moral facts are explained by ‘natural’ or ‘descriptive’ facts, though there’s disagreement over how such explanations work. We defend the view that general moral principles also play a role in explaining particular moral facts. More specifically, we argue that this view best makes sense of some intuitive data points, including the supervenience of the moral upon the natural. We consider two alternative accounts of the nature and structure of moral principles—’the nomic view’ and ‘moral platonism’—before (...) considering in what sense such principles obtain of necessity. (shrink)

Previous research in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) suggests that a main aim of explainability approaches is to satisfy specific interests, goals, expectations, needs, and demands regarding artificial systems (we call these “stakeholders' desiderata”) in a variety of contexts. However, the literature on XAI is vast, spreads out across multiple largely disconnected disciplines, and it often remains unclear how explainability approaches are supposed to achieve the goal of satisfying stakeholders' desiderata. This paper discusses the main classes of stakeholders calling for explainability (...) of artificial systems and reviews their desiderata. We provide a model that explicitly spells out the main concepts and relations necessary to consider and investigate when evaluating, adjusting, choosing, and developing explainability approaches that aim to satisfy stakeholders' desiderata. This model can serve researchers from the variety of different disciplines involved in XAI as a common ground. It emphasizes where there is interdisciplinary potential in the evaluation and the development of explainability approaches. (shrink)

In this paper, we present and defend a natural yet novel analysis of normative reasons. According to what we call support-explanationism, for a fact to be a normative reason to φ is for it to explain why there's normative support for φ-ing. We critically consider the two main rival forms of explanationism—ought-explanationism, on which reasons explain facts about ought, and good-explanationism, on which reasons explain facts about goodness—as well as the popular Reasons-First view, which takes the notion of a normative (...) reason to be normatively fundamental. Support-explanationism, we argue, enjoys many of the virtues of these views while avoiding their drawbacks. We conclude by exploring several further important implications: among other things, we argue that the influential metaphor of ‘weighing’ reasons is inapt, and propose a better one; that, contrary to what Berker (2019) suggests, there's no reason for non-naturalists about normativity to accept the Reasons-First view; and that, contrary to what Wodak (2020b) suggests, explanationist views can successfully accommodate what he calls ‘redundant reasons’. (shrink)

This paper explores various subtleties in our ordinary thought and talk about normative reasons—subtleties which, if taken seriously, have various upshots, both substantive and methodological. I focus on two subtleties in particular. The first concerns the use of reason (in its normative sense) as both a count noun and as a mass noun, and the second concerns the context-sensitivity of normative reasons-claims. The more carefully we look at the language of reasons, I argue, the clearer its limitations and liabilities become. (...) The cumulative upshot is that although talk of reasons is intelligible and useful for the purposes of communication, we should be wary of placing much weight on it when engaging in substantive normative inquiry. By way of illustration, I consider some potential pitfalls of taking our talk of reasons too seriously, explaining how careful attention to the language of reasons undermines the main argument for moral particularism, Mark Schroeder’s recent defense of Humeanism about practical reasons, and the “reasons-first” program in metanormativity. (shrink)

This article outlines a program of ethnoontology that brings together empirical research in the ethnosciences with ontological debates in philosophy. First, we survey empirical evidence from heterogeneous cultural contexts and disciplines. Second, we propose a model of cross‐cultural relations between ontologies beyond a simple divide between universalist and relativist models. Third, we argue for an integrative model of ontology building that synthesizes insights from different fields such as biological taxonomy, cognitive science, cultural anthropology, and political ecology. We conclude by arguing (...) that a program of ethnoontology provides philosophers both with insights about traditional issues such as debates about natural kinds and with novel strategies for connecting philosophy with pressing global issues such as the conservation of local environments and the self‐determination of Indigenous communities. (shrink)

Decision-making capacity (DMC) plays an important role in clinical practice—determining, on the basis of a patient’s decisional abilities, whether they are entitled to make their own medical decisions or whether a surrogate must be secured to participate in decisions on their behalf. As a result, it’s critical that we get things right—that our conceptual framework be well-suited to the task of helping practitioners systematically sort through the relevant ethical considerations in a way that reliably and transparently delivers correct verdicts about (...) who should and should not have the authority to make their own medical decisions. Unfortunately, however, the standard approach to DMC does not get things right. It is of virtually no help in identifying and clarifying the relevant ethical considerations. And, embedded in the prevailing anti-paternalist paradigm, DMC assessments obfuscate and distort the underlying ethical justification for granting or withholding decisional authority. Here, we describe the core commitments of the standard approach to DMC and then highlight three problems with it. We then argue that these problems are significant enough that they call for more than merely tinkering and fine tuning—variations of the standard approach cannot adequately address them. Instead, we should ditch DMC. (shrink)

Scientific disagreements are an important catalyst for scientific progress. But what happens when scientists disagree amidst times of crisis, when we need quick yet reliable policy guidance? In this paper we provide a normative account for how scientists facing disagreement in the context of ‘fast science’ should respond, and how policy makers should evaluate such disagreement. Starting from an argumentative, pragma-dialectic account of scientific controversies, we argue for the importance of ‘higher-order evidence’ (HOE) and we specify desiderata for scientifically relevant (...) HOE. We use our account to analyze the controversy about the aerosol transmission of COVID-19. (shrink)

In this article we develop and defend what we call the “Trust View” of promissory obligation, according to which making a promise involves inviting another individual to trust one to do something. In inviting her trust, and having the invitation accepted (or at least not rejected), one incurs an obligation to her not to betray the trust that one has invited. The distinctive wrong involved in breaking a promise is a matter of violating this obligation. We begin by explicating the (...) core notion of “inviting someone to trust one to do something”, suggesting that it involves signaling to the other individual one's recognition of the importance the relevant action has for her, and one’s willingness to license her to have faith or optimism in one's character with regard to the performance of that action. We then turn to a defense of the Trust View, arguing that it has considerable appeal in its own right, that it is distinct from and superior to three similar accounts (T.M. Scanlon's Assurance View, Judith Jarvis Thomson's Reliance View and David Owens' Authority View), and that several objections to it can be answered. (shrink)

Much recent work in epistemology has concerned the relationship between the epistemic and the practical, with a particular focus on the question of how, if at all, practical considerations affect what we ought to believe. Two main positive accounts have been proposed: reasons pragmatism and pragmatic encroachment. According to reasons pragmatism, practical (including moral) considerations can affect what we ought to believe by constituting distinctively practical (i.e., non-epistemic) reasons for or against belief. According to pragmatic encroachment, practical considerations bear on (...) what we ought to believe by affecting epistemic justification (e.g. how much justification is required to justifiably believe). Both debates center around intuitive judgments about cases together with various principles involving reasons (or justification) and belief, with many contributors in the pragmatism and—to a lesser extent—encroachment debates helping themselves to talk of belief without saying much about what exactly they have in mind. There has also been a tendency to overlook potentially relevant distinctions among different kinds of reasons that have been drawn elsewhere. The goal of this paper is to argue that greater clarity and care concerning both reasons and belief is called for. Increased sensitivity to various subtleties will not only minimize the chances of unwittingly engaging in merely verbal disputes but also allow us to better navigate the pragmatism and encroachment debates. (shrink)

This paper takes a closer look at ordinary thought and talk about motivating reasons, in an effort to better understand how it works. This is an important first step in understanding whether—and if so, how—such thought and talk should inform or constrain our substantive theorizing. One of the upshots is that ordinary judgments about motivating reasons are at best a partial and defeasible guide to what really matters, and that so-called factualists, propositionalists, and statists are all partly right, as well (...) as partly wrong, when it comes to the question of what motivating reasons “are”. (shrink)

This paper defends the Intention Account of Inquiry. On this account, inquiry is best understood by appeal to a ‘question-directed intention’ (QDI), an intention to answer a question broadly construed. This account’s core commitments help meet recent challenges plaguing extant approaches to characterizing inquiry. First, QDIs are the type of mental state central to inquiry, not attitudes like curiosity or wonder. Second, holding a QDI towards a question and acting in service of it constitutes the start of inquiry. Third, controversial (...) norms which mandate a rational inquirer's ignorance towards the answer to her question can be reformulated and defended by appeal to rational constraints on intention. Fourth, instrumental pressures inquirers face are the standard pressures of plan-rationality. In defending these theses, I show that the Intention Account provides compelling explanations to standing challenges, in ways competitors cannot. It does so by advancing understanding of how our epistemic and practical agency are intertwined. (shrink)

This paper surveys some ways in which epistemic reasons ascriptions (or ERAs) appear to be context-sensitive, and outlines a framework for thinking about the nature of this context-sensitivity that is intimately related to ERAs' explanatory function.

This paper is a response to two sets of published criticisms of the 'Reasons as Evidence’ thesis concerning normative reasons, proposed and defended in earlier papers. According to this thesis, a fact is a normative reason for an agent to Φ just in case this fact is evidence that this agent ought to Φ. John Broome and John Brunero have presented a number of challenging criticisms of this thesis which focus, for the most part, on problems that it appears to (...) confront when it comes to the topic of the weighing of reasons. Our paper responds to all of the criticisms that these critics have provided, shedding fresh light on this interesting topic in the process. (shrink)

The appearance of consciousness in the universe remains one of the major mysteries unsolved by science or philosophy. Absent an agreed-upon definition of consciousness or even a convenient system to test theories of consciousness, a confusing heterogeneity of theories proliferate. In pursuit of clarifying this complicated discourse, we here interpret various frameworks for the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness through the lens of social insect evolutionary biology. To do so, we first discuss the notion of a forward test versus (...) a reverse test, analogous to the normal and revolutionary phases of the scientific process. Contemporary theories of consciousness are forward tests for consciousness, in that they strive to become a means to classify the level of consciousness of arbitrary states and systems. Yet no such theory of consciousness has earned sufficient confidence such that it might be actually used as a forward test in ambiguous settings. What is needed now is thus a legitimate reverse test for theories of consciousness, to provide internal and external calibration of different frameworks. A reverse test for consciousness would ideally look like a method for referencing theories of consciousness to a tractable model system. We introduce the Ant Colony Test as a rigorous reverse test for consciousness. We show that social insect colonies, though disaggregated collectives, fulfill many of the prerequisites for conscious awareness met by humans and honey bee workers. A long lineage of philosophically-neutral neurobehavioral, evolutionary, and ecological studies on social insect colonies can thus be redeployed for the study of consciousness in general. We suggest that the ACT can provide insight into the nature of consciousness, and highlight the ant colony as a model system for ethically performing clarifying experiments about consciousness. (shrink)

Critical Notice of Alex Worsnip's 'Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the Demands of Structural Rationality' (OUP 2021).

In Marxist circles it is common to refer to Karl Marx’s The Civil War in France for a theoretical analysis of the historical significance of the Paris Commune, and to Prosper-Olivier Lissagaray’s History of the Commune of 1871 for a description of the facts surrounding the insurrection of the Paris workers and its repression by the National Assembly led by Adolphe Thiers. What is less well-known is that Marx himself oversaw the German translation of Lissagaray’s book and made numerous additions (...) to it. In this article we describe Marx’s addenda to Lissagaray’s work, showing how they contribute to concretising his analysis of the Paris Commune and how they relate to the split in the International Working Men’s Association between Marxists and anarchists that took place after the Commune’s defeat. We also show how Marx’s additions to the German version of Lissagaray’s book were linked to his involvement with the recently created Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany and to his criticism of the programme it had adopted at the congress celebrated in the city of Gotha. (shrink)

We should not be creating conscious, humanoid agents but an entirely new sort of entity, rather like oracles, with no conscience, no fear of death, no distracting loves and hates.

Vendler’s :161–173, 1979) puzzle about imagination is that the sentences ‘Imagine swimming in that water’ and ‘Imagine yourself swimming in that water’ seem at once semantically different and semantically the same. They seem semantically different, since the first requires you to imagine ’from the inside’, while the second allows you to imagine ’from the outside.’ They seem semantically the same, since despite superficial dissimilarity, there is good reason to think that they are syntactically and lexically identical. This paper sets out (...) the puzzle and offers a novel solution. Our proposal is that, just as there is knowledge-wh, there is also imagining-wh and that the inside/outside distinction Vendler points to is properly understood as a distinction within imagining-wh. In particular, to imagine swimming from the inside is to imagine what it feels like to swim, while to imagine swimming from the outside is to imagine what it looks like to swim. We show that this proposal is well grounded in both the semantics and syntax of ‘imagine.’ We also argue it makes better sense than its rivals of the data Vendler found so puzzling. (shrink)