According to First-Person Realism, one's own first-person perspective on the world is metaphysically privileged in some way. After clarifying First-Person Realism by reference to parallel debates in the metaphysics of modality and time, I survey eight different arguments in favor of First-Person Realism.

Standard responses to the knowledge argument grant that Mary could know all of the physical facts even while trapped inside her black‐and‐white room. What they deny is that upon leaving her black‐and‐white room and experiencing red for the first time, Mary learns a genuinely new fact. This paper develops an alternate response in a grounding physicalist framework, on which Mary does not know all of the physical facts while trapped inside the room. The main thesis is that Mary does not (...) know certain phenomenal facts while trapped inside the room, whereby these facts classify as physical due to being wholly and fully metaphysically grounded in the underlying fundamental facts which are themselves entirely physical. (shrink)

Hawley introduced the idea of the client's perspective on knowledge, which she used to illuminate knowing-how and cases of epistemic injustice involving knowing-how. In this paper, I explore how Hawley's idea might be used to illuminate not only knowing-how, but other forms of knowledge that, like knowing-how, are often claimed to be distinct from mere knowing-that, focusing on the case studies of moral understanding and ‘what it is like’-knowledge.

The control principle implies that people should not feel guilt for outcomes beyond their control. Yet, the so-called ‘agent and observer puzzles’ in philosophy demonstrate that people waver in their commitment to the control principle when reflecting on accidental outcomes. In the context of car accidents involving conventional or autonomous vehicles, Study 1 established that judgments of responsibility are most strongly associated with expressions of guilt–over and above other negative emotions, such as sadness, remorse or anger. Studies 2 and 3 (...) then confirmed that, while people generally endorse the control principle, and deny that occupants in an AV should feel guilt when involved in an accident, they nevertheless ascribe guilt to those same occupants. Study 3 also uncovered novel implications of the observer puzzle in the legal context: Passengers in an AV were seen as more legally liable than either passengers in a conventional vehicle, or even their drivers–especially when participants were prompted to reflect on the passengers’ affective experience of guilt. Our findings document an important conflict–in the context of AV accidents–between people’s prescriptive reasoning about responsibility and guilt on one hand, and their counter-normative experience of guilt on the other, with apparent implications for liability decisions. (shrink)

A discussion concerning whether to conceive Artificial Intelligence systems as responsible moral entities, also known as “artificial moral agents”, has been going on for some time. In this regard, we argue that the notion of “moral agency” is to be attributed only to humans based on their autonomy and sentience, which AI systems lack. We analyze human responsibility in the presence of AI systems in terms of meaningful control and due diligence and argue against fully automated systems in medicine. With (...) this perspective in mind, we focus on the use of AI-based diagnostic systems and shed light on the complex networks of persons, organizations and artifacts that come to be when AI systems are designed, developed, and used in medicine. We then discuss relational criteria of judgment in support of the attribution of responsibility to humans when adverse events are caused or induced by errors in AI systems. (shrink)

I argue that any account attempting to do away with resultant or circumstantial moral luck is inconsistent with a natural response to the problem of constitutive moral luck. It is plausible to think that we sometimes contribute to the formation of our characters in such a way as to mitigate our constitutive moral luck at later times. But, as I argue here, whether or not we succeed in bringing about changes to our characters is itself a matter of resultant and (...) circumstantial moral luck. I conclude with a dilemma, both horns of which require accepting some form of moral luck. (shrink)

Many activities impose risks of harm on other people. One such class of risks are those that individuals culpably impose on others, such as the risk arising from reckless driving. Do such risks in themselves constitute a harm, over and above any harm that actually eventuates? This paper considers three recent views that each answer in the affirmative. I argue that each fails to overcome what I call the ‘interference objection’. The risk of harm itself, whether taken as a subjective (...) or an objective risk, is unable to interfere with the interests of victims in order to constitute a harm. This does not mean that a risk of harm cannot itself be wrongful, but the conclusion does weaken the moral objectionableness of impositions of risks of harm. (shrink)

There are numerous ways in which the fourth wall can be transgressed. Then what is the role of the fourth wall as an inviolable boundary between fiction and reality? Secondly, is evidence of such infringements today a sign that society is becoming more self-reflexive in a quest to redefine the borders between fiction and the “real” world?

In this dissertation I develop a pluralist theory of actual causation. I argue that we need to distinguish between total, path-changing, and contributing actual causation. The pluralist theory accounts for a set of example cases that have raised problems for extant unified theories and it is supported by considerations about the various functions of causal concepts. The dissertation also analyses the context-sensitivity of actual causation. I show that principled accounts of causal reasoning in legal inquiry face limitations and I argue (...) that the context-sensitivity of actual causation is best represented by a distinction between default and deviant states in causal models. (shrink)

The position of immoralism in analytic aesthetics and the philosophy of art holds that a work's moral defects can sometimes contribute to its artistic value. This position has suffered massive criticism in recent years. In support of immoralism, I present in this paper a new argument by examining immorality in the artistic genre of transgressive art. I argue that in the category of transgressive art, due to the nature of immorality that is a transgressive and liberating force against morality's authority, (...) being immoral can contribute directly to an artwork's artistic value by contributing to the realization of its artistic aim. (shrink)

Rinard (2019) brings to our attention the fact that, typically, the questions What should I believe? and What should I do? are treated differently. A typical answer to the first question is Believe according to the evidence, and a typical answer to the second question is Do what is right. But Rinard rejects this dichotomy. In its place, she argues for a view which she calls “Equal Treatment” in which one should believe according to the same considerations that govern what (...) one should do. Christensen (forthcoming) aptly situates Equal Treatment as a limit case of a recent movement towards taking pragmatic factors as partly determining what one should believe, in that Equal Treatment is a purely pragmatic view. Does Rinard’s case for a purely pragmatic view succeed? This paper argues that the answer is no. Three objections that target key parts of Rinard’s case for Equal Treatment are presented. The upshot is that the dichotomy between the answers to What should I believe? and What should I do? seems robust against strong attempts to dismantle it. (shrink)

What are the implications for agency – and in particular, the idea of acting for reasons – if we are to take seriously the notion of collective responsibility? My thesis is that some cases of individuals subject to a collective form of responsibility and blame will force us to make sense of how it is that an individual can be entitled to collective reasons for action, i.e. entitled to a reason had in the first place by a plurality of individuals (...) together rather than any one of them alone. This entitlement makes it possible for the collective reason to be a reason for which one acts, even if one’s contribution on its own makes little or no difference in the collective effort. Although a full defense of this entitlement cannot be undertaken here, I will gesture at how this might work by suggesting that intentions function to preserve reasons for action. . (shrink)

What proper role should considerations of risk, particularly to research subjects, play when it comes to conducting research on human enhancement in the military context? We introduce the currently visible military enhancement techniques (1) and the standard discussion of risk for these (2), in particular what we refer to as the ‘Assumption’, which states that the demands for risk-avoidance are higher for enhancement than for therapy. We challenge the Assumption through the introduction of three categories of enhancements (3): therapeutic, preventive, (...) and pure enhancements. This demands a revision of the Assumption (4), alongside which we propose some further general principles bearing on how to balance risks and benefits in the context of military enhancement research. We identify a particular type of therapeutic enhancements as providing a more responsible path to human trials of the relevant interventions than pure enhancement applications. Finally, we discuss some possible objections to our line of thought (5). While acknowledging their potential insights, we ultimately find them to be unpersuasive, at least provided that our proposal is understood as fully non-coercive towards the candidates for such therapeutic enhancement trials. (shrink)

Libertarian free will is, roughly, the view that agents cause actions to occur or not occur: Maddy’s decision to get a beer causes her to get up off her comfortable couch to get a beer, though she almost chose not to get up. Libertarian free will notoriously faces the luck objection, according to which agential states do not determine whether an action occurs or not, so it is beyond the control of the agent, hence lucky, whether an action occurs or (...) not: Maddy’s reasons for getting beer in equipoise with her reasons to remain in her comfortable seat do not determine that she will get up or stay seated, so it seems beyond her control, hence lucky, that she gets up. In this paper I consider a sub-set of the luck objection called the Physical Indeterminism Luck Objection, according to which indeterministic physical processes cause actions to occur or not, and agent’s lack control over these indeterministic physical processes, so agent’s lack control over, hence it is lucky, whether action occurs or not. After motivating the physical indeterminism luck objection, I consider responses from three recent event-causal libertarian models, and conclude that they fail to overcome the problem, though one promising avenue is opened up. (shrink)

According to illusionism, phenomenal consciousness is an introspective illusion. The illusion problem is to explain the cause of the illusion, or why we are powerfully disposed to judge—erroneously—that we are phenomenally conscious. I propose a theory to solve the illusion problem. I argue that on the basis of three hypotheses about the mind—which I call introspective opacity, the infallibility intuition, and the justification constraint—we can explain our disposition, on introspection, to draw erroneous unconscious inferences about our sensory states. Being subject (...) to the illusion of phenomenal consciousness consists in having this disposition. I explain our ‘problem intuitions’ about consciousness —that our sensory states bear phenomenal properties that are qualitatively like something with which we are directly acquainted that is ineffable, atomic, intrinsic, private, and non-physical. I also address the illusion meta-problem, which is to explain why illusionism seems especially counterintuitive. (shrink)

This paper presents a series of studies (total N=579) which demonstrate that folk judgments concerning the reasonableness of decisions and actions depend strongly on whether they engender positive or negative consequences. A particular decision is deemed more reasonable in retrospect when it produces beneficial consequences than when it produces harmful consequences, even if the situation in which the decision was taken and the epistemic circumstances of the agent are held fixed across conditions. This finding is worrisome for the law, where (...) the reasonable person standard plays a prominent role. The legal concept of reasonableness is outcome-insensitive: whether the defendant acted in a reasonable fashion or not depends exclusively on her context of action, no matter how things play out. Folk judgments of reasonableness are thus inconsistent with the legal concept of reasonableness. Problematically, in common law jurisdictions, the decision whether a defendant’s behavior was reasonable or not is frequently (though not necessarily) delegated to a lay jury. (shrink)

In the modern moral luck debate, Kant is standardly taken to be the enemy of moral luck. My goal in this paper is to show that this is mistaken. The paper is divided into six sections. In the first, I show that participants in the moral luck literature take moral luck to be anathema to Kantian ethics. In the second, I explain the kind of luck I am going to focus on here: consequence luck, a species of resultant luck. In (...) the third, I explain why philosophers have taken Kantian ethics to reject moral luck and, in particular, consequence luck. In the fourth, I explain why these philosophers are mistaken, and I set out Kant’s theoretical framework for consequence luck. In the fifth, I clarify and defend this framework, and in the sixth, I interrogate and attack it. (shrink)

Discussion of moral responsibility has traditionally centred around actions and the possibility of alternative actions. In this short paper I take a different approach and focus on choices rather than actions. I argue that a person is morally responsible directly for their choices and only indirectly for resulting actions. This subtle shift helps to clarify many issues such as moral luck, thwarted choice and coercion.

The inference that things do not matter because they will end is a source of despair for reflective people that features in literature, popular culture, and philosophy. Are there sound arguments in support of the inference? I first review three arguments that have been put forward in the existing philosophical literature and consider the objections that can be made against them. While the objections appear persuasive, these arguments do not exhaust the plausible justifications for the inference. Drawing on examples from (...) philosophy and literature, I introduce two previously undiscussed time-bias arguments in support of the inference that seem to be psychologically powerful. I conclude, however, that the time-bias arguments are also unsound. They involve an inconsistent shift between a temporally neutral and a temporally biased perspective on how the passage of time affects what matters. However the inconsistency is resolved, the conclusion does not follow. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Constitutive panpsychism is the doctrine that macro-level consciousness—that is, consciousness of the sort possessed by certain composite things such as humans—is built out of irreducibly mental features had by some or all of the basic physical constituents of reality. On constitutive panpsychism, changes in macro-level consciousness amount to changes in either the way that micro-conscious entities ‘bond’ or the way that micro-conscious qualities ‘blend’. I pose the ‘Selection Problem’ for constitutive panpsychism—the problem of explaining how high-level functional states of (...) the brain ‘select’ micro-conscious qualities for bonding or blending. I argue that there are no empirically plausible solutions to this problem. (shrink)

Pessimism is, roughly, the view that life is not worth living. In chapter 46 of the second volume of The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer provides an oft-neglected argument for this view. The argument is that a life is worth living only if it does not contain any uncompensated evils; but since all our lives happen to contain such evils, none of them are worth living. The now standard interpretation of this argument (endorsed by Kuno Fischer and Christopher (...) Janaway) proceeds from the claim that the value—or rather valuelessness—of life’s goods makes compensation impossible. But this interpretation is neither philosophically attractive nor faithful to the text. In this paper, I develop and defend an alternative interpretation (suggested by Wilhelm Windelband and Mark Migotti) according to which it is instead the actual temporal arrangement of life’s goods and evils that makes compensation impossible. (shrink)

This information-packed volume, without doubt a landmark event in the developing neuroscientific study of consciousness, deserves the attention of anyone interested in this subject. It is a sequel and companion to an earlier collection, The Boundaries of Consciousness: Neurobiology and Neuropathology, also edited by Steven Laureys (2005), which contains the proceedings of a 2004 conference sponsored by the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC). Published initially as a special issue of Progress in Brain Research (volume 150), Boundaries has (...) been reissued in paperback and appears on the ASSC website as one of its official titles. Both volumes include many prominent figures in contemporary neuroscience, and the two volumes together constitute about as clear, comprehensive, and authoritative a picture as one can find anywhere of the current state of mainstream neuroscientific thinking about consciousness and the brain. Like classical physics of the late 19th century, it is a picture of great power and beauty; nevertheless, just as discordant phenomena such as black-body radiation and the photoelectric effect presaged the rise of quantum mechanics, this book, precisely because of its clarity, reveals signs of trouble ahead. (shrink)

Despite a recent surge in publications on Tourette Syndrome, we still lack substantial insight into first-personal aspects of “what it is like” to live with this condition. This is despite the fact that developments in phenomenological psychiatry have demonstrated the scientific and clinical importance of understanding subjective experience in a range of other neuropsychiatric conditions. We argue that it is time for Tourette Syndrome research to tap into the sophisticated frameworks developed in the philosophical tradition of phenomenology for describing experience (...) in a way that integrates discrete symptoms into an overarching experiential framework concerning the self, the body, and its modes of experience. Following a historical introduction that contextualises the pertinence of phenomenology to psychopathology, we distinguish this approach from the existing, psychologically oriented studies on TS that are also qualitative. We then outline gaps and opportunities for future research, including the sorts of questions that might be utilised in phenomenological interviews and why they are of potential benefit to research programs in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. In conclusion we address some of the broader implications for phenomenology of the body and philosophy of action. (shrink)

The universe is enormous, perhaps unimaginably so. In comparison, we are very small. Does this suggest that humanity has little if any cosmic significance? And if we don’t matter, should that matter to us? Blaise Pascal, Frank Ramsey, Bertrand Russell, Susan Wolf, Harry Frankfurt, Stephen Hawking, and others have offered insightful answers to those questions. For example, Pascal and Ramsey emphasize that whereas the stars cannot think, human beings can. Through an exploration of some features of awe and its positive (...) effects on us, I offer a novel way of answering the second question: even if we don’t matter, we, unlike the stars, naturally benefit from observing our own smallness. I explore implications for accounts of the absurdity of human life. Life might be absurd. But I give reasons to think that life isn’t absurd in the ways some such as Nagel and Camus suggest. Finally, I connect non-symmetric awe with Buddhist insights to strengthen a recent and more positive account of how to find meaning in life. (shrink)

Standard views of personal identity over time often hover uneasily between the subjective, first-person dimension (e. g. psychological continuity), and the objective, third-person dimension (e. g. biological continuity) of a person’s life. Since both dimensions capture something integral to personal identity, we show that neither can successfully be discarded in favor of the other. The apparent need to reconcile subjectivity and objectivity, however, presents standard views with problems both in seeking an ontological footing of, as well as epistemic evidence for, (...) personal identity. We contend that a fresh look at neutral monism offers a novel way to tackle these problems; counting on the most fundamental building blocks of reality to be ontologically neutral with regards to subjectivity and objectivity of personal identity. If the basic units of reality are, in fact, ontologically neutral – but can give rise to mental as well as physical events – these basic units of reality might account for both subjectivity and objectivity in personal identity. If this were true, it would turn out that subjectivity and objectivity are not conflictive dimensions of personal identity but rather two sides of the same coin. (shrink)

Tattoos are widely regarded as morally neutral, and the decision to have them as carrying no ethical implications. The aim of this paper is to question this assumption. I argue that decisions to have tattoos involve risks that are not merely prudential—they are normative. The argument starts with a thesis that the power we presently have over our lives is constrained by the need to respect our future selves. If we make a discretionary choice that disregards our future interests and (...) preferences, then, under certain circumstances, we can be morally to blame. I argue that certain decisions to get tattoos fit this description. Therefore, getting some tattoos makes us blameworthy. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer an expansionist view of the Frickerian central case of testimonial injustice, citing examples from the South Asian context. To defend this expansionist position, I provide an argument in three parts. First, I argue that credibility deficit and credibility excess are entangled with each other in such a way that often, one produces the other. Secondly, I contend that we should not say that systematic testimonial injustice is a consequence of credibility deficit only because of the (...) entanglement between them. I also contend that for being the central case of testimonial injustice, identity prejudice should not be necessarily negative; it can be positive as well. Propounding a twofold condition of the status of a knower, the last part claims that testimonial injustice occurs when one of the two conditions remains unmet. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDeath as an inevitable reality is a subject of study in various philosophical schools. This concept can be reviewed within three realms: semantics, ontology, and epistemology. The objective of this article is to examine death within the ontological realm in the thoughts of Mullā Sadrā and Schopenhauer, and it attempts to answer the question whether philosophical discussions on the concept of death in Sadrā’s transcendental wisdom, despite differences in principles, methods, and objectives, are comparable to Schopenhauer’s intellectual framework. Using a (...) descriptive-analytical approach, the present study first investigates the issue of death in the thought of both philosophers and then focuses on their comparative analysis. The findings of this study show that both philosophers believe in the dichotomy in the world, immortality of human nature after death, existence of suffering in the world, asceticism, austerity, love, and affection to all human beings. However, each of them analyzes and explains the issue of death within his own intellectual framework. (shrink)

In this special issue, we put together papers that explore the theme “objectivity, space, and mind” from various angles. In the introduction we minimally discuss what are involved in this theme.

What, if anything, directly detracts from well-being? Objective list theorists affirm basic goods such as knowledge, friendship, and achievement, but it is less clear what they should say about opposing bads. In this paper, I argue that false beliefs, unhealthy relationships, and failed projects are not basic bads and do not directly detract from well-being. They can have bad effects or elements, or block the realization of basic goods, but do not themselves carry negative weight with respect to well-being. This (...) is shown by comparing cases where these bads are present and absent, examining their relation to negative overall well-being, and considering the role of these bads in the pursuit of positive goods. (shrink)

Algorithms can now identify patterns and correlations in the (big) datasets, and predict outcomes based on those identified patterns and correlations with the use of machine learning techniques and big data, decisions can then be made by algorithms themselves in accordance with the predicted outcomes. Yet, algorithms can inherit questionable values from the datasets and acquire biases in the course of (machine) learning, and automated algorithmic decision-making makes it more difficult for people to see algorithms as biased. While researchers have (...) taken the problem of algorithmic bias seriously, but the current discussion on algorithmic fairness tends to conceptualize ‘fairness’ in algorithmic fairness primarily as a technical issue and attempts to implement pre-existing ideas of ‘fairness’ into algorithms. In this paper, I show that such a view of algorithmic fairness as technical issue is unsatisfactory for the type of problem algorithmic fairness presents. Since decisions on fairness measure and the related techniques for algorithms essentially involve choices between competing values, ‘fairness’ in algorithmic fairness should be conceptualized first and foremost as a political issue, and it should be (re)solved by democratic communication. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to explicitly reconceptualize algorithmic fairness as a political question and suggest the current discussion of algorithmic fairness can be strengthened by adopting the accountability for reasonableness framework. (shrink)

Consequentialist doctrines have often been criticized for their excessive demandingness, in that they require the thorough instrumentalization of each person’s life as a vehicle for the production of good consequences. In turn, the proponents of such doctrines have often objected to what they perceive as the irrationality of the demandingness of deontological duties. In this paper, I shall address objections of the latter kind in an effort to show that they are unfounded. My investigation of this matter will unfold by (...) reference to a scenario that strikingly and concretely exemplifies the demandingness of deontological duties. That scenario, which involves a situation of torture (specifically, placatory torture – in other words, torture undertaken for the purpose of appeasing people who have demanded that it be administered), will serve as a springboard for my endeavor to vindicate the rationality of deontological absolutes and will help to illuminate the endeavor’s practical implications. (shrink)

What’s important about ‘coming out’? Why do we wear business suits or Star Trek pins? Part of the answer, we think, has to do with what we call agential identity. Social metaphysics has given us tools for understanding what it is to be socially positioned as a member of a particular group and what it means to self-identify with a group. But there is little exploration of the general relationship between self-identity and social position. We take up this exploration, developing (...) an account of agential identity—the self-identities we make available to others. Agential identities are the bridge between what we take ourselves to be and what others take us to be. Understanding agential identity not only fills an important gap in the literature, but also helps us explain politically important phenomena concerning discrimination, malicious identities, passing, and code-switching. These phenomena, we argue, cannot be understood solely in terms of self-identity or social position. (shrink)

Is consciousness intrinsically valuable? Some theorists favor the positive view, according to which consciousness itself accrues intrinsic value, independent of the particular kind of experience instantiated. In contrast, I favor the neutral view, according to which consciousness is neither intrinsically valuable nor disvaluable. The primary purpose of this paper is to clarify what is at stake when we ask whether consciousness is intrinsically valuable, to carve out the theoretical space, and to evaluate the question rigorously. Along the way, I also (...) show why the neutral view is attractive and why certain arguments for the positive view do not work. (shrink)

The one who dies is deprived of goods that this person would have enjoyed if he or she had continued living, according to the popular “deprivation account of harm.” The person who dies “prematurely” is generally thought to suffer the most harm from death. However, the concept of a premature death is unclear, as will be shown. I will evaluate various definitions of a premature death and will argue that the existing definitions are too ambiguous and unreliable to serve as (...) the basis for estimating the degree of harm from death. (shrink)

If we lack deep free agency, like that supposed by metaphysical libertarianism, should we view life as meaningless, pointless, or not worth living? Here I present a new argument in support of meaning-compatibilism, or the view that life can indeed be meaningful without our having deep free agency. I show that this argument secures meaning-compatibilism more effectively than an argument provided by Derk Pereboom. In the process, we learn that Susan Wolf’s hybrid theory of meaning in life is not equipped (...) to handle the question of meaning-compatibilism, which a broader approach to meaning in life should help us to grasp. On the alternative approach I present, judgments about meaning in life involve a sensitivity to whether giving up on life, or “agency defeat”, is justified. I argue that, so long as we are able to exist in reality, giving up on life is difficult to justify, and even without deep free agency, we do indeed exist in reality. (shrink)

Moral philosophers and psychologists often assume that people judge morally lucky and morally unlucky agents differently, an assumption that stands at the heart of the Puzzle of Moral Luck. We examine whether the asymmetry is found for reflective intuitions regarding wrongness, blame, permissibility, and punishment judg- ments, whether people’s concrete, case-based judgments align with their explicit, abstract principles regarding moral luck, and what psychological mechanisms might drive the effect. Our experiments produce three findings: First, in within-subjects experiments favorable to reflective (...) deliberation, the vast majority of people judge a lucky and an unlucky agent as equally blameworthy, and their actions as equally wrong and permissible. The philosophical Puzzle of Moral Luck, and the challenge to the very possibility of systematic ethics it is frequently taken to engender, thus simply do not arise. Second, punishment judgments are significantly more outcome- dependent than wrongness, blame, and permissibility judgments. While this constitutes evidence in favor of current Dual Process Theories of moral judgment, the latter need to be qualified: punishment and blame judgments do not seem to be driven by the same process, as is commonly argued in the literature. Third, in between-subjects experiments, outcome has an effect on all four types of moral judgments. This effect is mediated by negligence ascriptions and can ultimately be explained as due to differing probability ascriptions across cases. (shrink)

The hard problem of consciousness has held center stage in the philosophy of mind for the past two decades. It claims that the phenomenal character of conscious experiences—what it’s like to be in them—cannot be explained by appeal to the operation of physiological subsystems. The hard problem arises, however, only given the assumption that hylomorphism is false. Hylomorphism claims that structure is a basic ontological and explanatory principle. A human is not a random collection of physical materials, but an individual (...) composed of physical materials with a structure that accounts for what it is and what it can do—the powers it has. What is true of humans is true of their activities as well. The latter are not random physiological changes, but structured ones: we engage in them by coordinating the ways our parts manifest their powers. Structured activities include perceptual experiences. Consequently, everything about a perceptual experience, including its phenomenal character, can be explained by describing the perceiver’s perceptual subsystems, the powers of those subsystems, and the coordination that unifies their activities into the activity of the perceiver as a whole. Conscious experiences thus fit unproblematically into the natural world—just as unproblematically as the phenomenon of life. Even exponents of the hard problem of consciousness agree that there is no hard problem of life. Consequently, if hylomorphism is true, there can be no hard problem of consciousness. To insist that there is such a problem, then, is implicitly to reject hylomorphism. The concept of consciousness that motivates the hard problem is as much a theoretical construct, therefore, as the concept of life that motivates an obstinate vitalist. (shrink)

In both ethics and epistemology an important question is whether justification is a fully internal or a partly external matter. In view of analogies between relevant considerations in each area, I recommend distinguishing, as basic and independent subjects of normative status, (i) people and (ii) what they do. Evaluations of subjects, on one hand, and of their beliefs and actions, on the other, are less intimately related than is presupposed. This helps resolve internalism/externalism controversies in both domains. An important related (...) advantage of the distinction is its effect on our understanding of normative luck, both moral and epistemic. (shrink)

The concept of morality underpins the moral responsibility that not only depends on the outward practices (or ‘output’, in the case of humanoid robots) of the agents but on the internal attitudes (‘input’) that rational and responsible intentioned beings generate. The primary question that has initiated extensive debate, i.e. ‘Can humanoid robots be moral?’, stems from the normative outlook where morality includes human conscience and socio-linguistic background. This paper advances the thesis that the conceptions of morality and creativity interplay with (...) linguistic human beings instead of non-linguistic humanoid robots, as humanoid robots are indeed docile automata that cannot be responsible for their actions. To eradicate human ethics in order to make way for humanoid robot ethics highlights the moral actions and adequacy that hinges the myth of creative agency and self-dependency, which a humanoid robot can scarcely express. (shrink)

Death is an undeniable fact of life. Whether it is a bad or feared thing is an important discussion that can be brought back to the ancient Greek philosophers. This article is primarily concerned with the discussion on what grounds Epicurus's thesis "death, is nothing to us; since when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist," and to what extent satisfactory results are reached. Later, it tries to investigate how Lucretius, (...) who is regarded as the successor of Epicurus, derives the result of meaningless of fear of death from the symmetrical relationship between prenatal and post-mortem non-existences. Finally, it refers to the modern asymmetric approaches which argue that, contrary to Lucretius's claim, the relationship between these two periods of non-existence is not symmetrical, because there are serious differences between the later birth and the later death of people, given their deprivations. This article argues that death has a mystery that raises the anxiety that comes from the nature of death; however, it defends the idea that it makes a significant contribution to the meaning of life. (shrink)

I argue that free will is a nominal construct developed and deployed post hoc in an effort to provide cohesive narratives in support of a priori moral-judgmental dispositions. In a reversal of traditional course, I defend the view that there are no circumstances under which attributions of moral responsibility for an act can, should, or do depend on prior ascriptions of free will. Conversely, I claim that free will belief depends entirely on the apperceived possibility of moral responsibility. Orthodoxy dictates (...) an agency-first thesis, according to which free will is necessarily antecedent to moral responsibility. However, I present a number of arguments against this view, and in favor of an agency-last stance, according to which the concept of free will is dependent upon that of moral responsibility. I provide further support for my case in the form of new empirical evidence regarding the stable mode of inference used to attribute free will across moral contexts. These experimental results can be interpreted to imply the deflation of one of the longest-standing veridical paradoxes in experimental philosophy. Furthermore, the sole conceptual scheme found to be capable of modeling the experimental results is also capable of illuminating several classic works in the analytic philosophy of moral agency. (shrink)

In his Death and the Afterlife, Samuel Scheffler provides a compelling argument that people would see less reason and be significantly less motivated to pursue most of their life's projects if they were to discover that there is no collective afterlife (i.e. future generations of humans continuing to exist after they die). Scheffler focuses on how people would react to learning there is no collective afterlife. In this paper, I focus on issues concerning how people ought to react to learning (...) there is no collective afterlife. Answers to this question lead to surprising conclusions that challenge some of the normative claims Scheffler seems disposed to endorse. This paper has two central aims. First, I attempt to show that negative attitudes toward the lack of a collective afterlife are warranted for two reasons that have been heretofore overlooked. Interestingly, such reasons leave open the possibility that it can be appropriate to lament the lack of a collective afterlife even if it is not bad, all things considered, for anyone. Second, I argue that the lack of a collective afterlife need not be bad, all things considered, for most people. This is because there could be a sufficient number of meaningful projects available to people that would compensate for the loss of pro tanto value caused by the lack of a collective afterlife. These considerations lead to the somewhat paradoxical conclusion that the lack of a collective afterlife need not negatively affect the total value of anyone's life, yet it may still be appropriate to lament the fact that there is no collective afterlife. (shrink)

It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period – (...) its etymology is ancient Greek, and its theoretical underpinnings are medieval. Charles Sanders Peirce made major advances in semiotics, so he can act as a pipeline for these forgotten ideas. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are now seen as conflicting commitments, Champagne endeavors to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. The key, he suggests, is to understand how humans can insert distinctions between features that are always bound. Recent attempts to take qualities seriously have resulted in versions of panpsychism, but Champagne outlines a more plausible way to achieve this. So, while semiotics has until now been the least known branch of philosophy ending in –ics, his book shows how a better understanding of that branch can move one of the liveliest debates in philosophy forward. (shrink)

One of the leading concerns animating current philosophy of mind is that, no matter how good a scientific account is, it will leave out what its like to be conscious. The challenge has thus been to study or at least explain away that qualitative dimension. Pursuant with that aim, I investigate how philosophy of signs in the Peircean tradition can positively reshape ongoing debates. Specifically, I think the account of iconic or similarity-based reference we find in semiotic theory offers a (...) more promising variant of the phenomenal concept strategy. Philosophers who endorse this strategy think that the difficulties we have fitting conscious qualia into a scientific picture may owe to the peculiar nature of indexical concepts. They point to the fact that, when we try to convey the feel of our experiences, we employ context-dependent gestures and/or utterances that are indexed to perspectives unique to each person. However, according to the theory I defend, there are three ways signs can refer, namely by convention, causal contact, and similarity. Since similarity is not reducible to proximity, I argue that a theory of reference that turns on shared quality can bypass some of the implausible consequences that plague indexical accounts. In the first chapter, I describe the apparatus needed to make sense of this claim. In the second chapter, I present my account of iconic reference. In the third chapter, I justify my reliance on a distinction that is less than real yet more than nominal. In the fourth chapter, I sketch a trinitarian metaphysics well-suited to house the foregoing account of qualia. (shrink)

It is often said that ‘what it is like’-knowledge cannot be acquired by consulting testimony or reading books [Lewis 1998; Paul 2014; 2015a]. However, people also routinely consult books like What It Is Like to Go to War [Marlantes 2014], and countless ‘what it is like’ articles and youtube videos, in the apparent hope of gaining knowledge about what it is like to have experiences they have not had themselves. This article examines this puzzle and tries to solve it by (...) appealing to recent work on knowing-wh ascriptions. In closing I indicate the wider significance of these ideas by showing how they can help us to evaluate prominent arguments by Paul [2014; 2015a] concerning transformative experiences. (shrink)

Many philosophers, psychologists, and medical practitioners believe that killing is no worse than letting die on the basis of James Rachels's Bare-Difference Argument. I show that his argument is unsound. In particular, a premise of the argument is that his examples are as similar as is consistent with one being a case of killing and the other being a case of letting die. However, the subject who lets die has both the ability to kill and the ability to let die (...) while the subject who kills lacks the ability to let die. Modifying the latter example so that the killer has both abilities yields a pair of cases with morally different acts. The hypothesis that killing is worse than letting die is the best explanation of this difference. (shrink)