This paper critiques the representationalist account of qualia, focussing on the Representational Naturalism presented by Fred Dretske in Naturalizing the Mind. After laying out Dretskes theory of qualia and making clear its externalist consequences, I argue that Dretskes definition is either too liberal or runs into problems defending its requirements, in particular naturalness and mentalness. I go on to show that Dretskes account of qualia falls foul of the argument from misperception in such a way that Dretske must either admit (...) that his kind of qualia have nothing at all to do with what mental life subjectively feels like, or that veridical perception involves qualia and misperception does not. (shrink)

I defend externalism about color experiences and color thoughts, which I argue color objectivism requires. Externalists face the following question: would a subject's wearing inverting lenses eventually change the color content of, for instance, those visual experiences the subject reports with “red”? From the work of Ned Block, David Velleman, Paul Boghossian, Michael Tye, and Fiona Macpherson, I extract problems facing those who answer “Yes” and problems facing those who answer “No.” I show how these problems can be overcome, leaving (...) externalism available to the color objectivist. (shrink)

The examination of a scene of crime provides both an interesting case study and analogy for consideration of Distributed Cognition. In this paper, Distribution is defined by the number of agents involved in the criminal justice process, and in terms of the relationship between a Crime Scene Examiner and the environment being searched.

A feature of agnostic views—views that officially express ignorance about the existence of something —is that they are widely perceived to be epistemically more cautious than views that are committed to the entities in question. This is often seen as giving agnostics a debating advantage: all things being equal, fence-sitters have smaller argumentative burdens. Otávio Bueno argues in this way for what he calls “agnostic nominalism,” the view that we don’t know whether ontologically-independent Platonic objects exist. I show that agnostic (...) nominalism, so called, can be sustained only in ways that don’t give agnostic nominalists debating advantages: the position must either be deduced from antecedently-held broader sceptical assumptions or it requires manufacturing potential referents for one’s terms that artificially generate grounds for scepticism. Neither maneuver leads to an agnostic nominalism with a debating advantage over its nominalist opponents. (shrink)

An extensive exploration of the special properties of ‘exist’ is here undertaken. Two of several results are: Denying that `exist’ has associated with it a set of necessary and sufficient conditions has seemed to a number of philosophers to imply metaphysical nihilism . This is because it has seemed that without such conditions the target domain of `existence’ is arbitrarily open. I show this is wrong. Second, my analysis sheds light on the puzzling question of what we are asking when (...) we ask of something, `Does it exist?’ and mean that question in an ontically relevant way. (shrink)

On the dust jacket of The Subject's Point of View there is a detail from Vilhelm Hammershoi's Interior with Sitting Woman. It is hard to think of a painter who better captures the inner in his work. From the monochrome colour, to the back that faces us, to the door swung open to reveal yet another doorway, we are led to interiority – to the inner. This is a perfect image for a book whose author wants to persuade us to (...) return to the interior – a Cartesian interior.The Cartesian interior has come in for quite a drubbing in philosophy for some considerable time. In the mid-to-late 1970s, a style of argument emerged, designed to challenge this conception of mind and establish in its place an externalist conception of language and of mind. One version of the argument was due to Hilary Putnam and emerged in the context of considerations concerning linguistic meaning; another was due to Tyler Burge and emerged first in the context of considerations concerning the individual in relation to his/her social environment. In his earliest paper, on this topic, Burge wrote of ‘the elderly Cartesian tradition’ where ‘the spotlight is on what exists or transpires “in” the individual – his secret cognition, his innate cognitive structures, his private perceptions and introspections, his grasping of ideas, concepts or forms’ . Farkas wants to defend this ‘elderly tradition’, but she does add to it some interesting twists. First and foremost, she places to one side ideas of privacy, of incorrigibility and infallibility. She also wishes to place the issue of dualism to one side . What Farkas concentrates on is privileged access and argues that this is …. (shrink)

Standard truthmaker theory has generally assumed a realist account of de re modality and essences. But there are reasons to be skeptical about such a view, and for considering antirealist alternatives. Can truthmaker theory survive in the face of such skepticism? I argue that it can, but that only certain antirealist perspectives on de re modality are acceptable for truthmaker theory. In particular, either a quasi-realist or conventionalist account of de re modality is needed to provide the best account of (...) essential and accidental features that can be put to work in truthmaker theory. An important consequence of this approach is that it offers an account of truthmaking that is consistent with a nominalist perspective on properties, and yet fully respects the ontological ambitions driving truthmaker theory. (shrink)

The so-called epistemological turn of the Descartes-Locke-Kant tradition is a hallmark of modern philosophy. The broad family of normativism constitutes one major response to the Cartesian heritage building upon some version of the idea that human knowledge, action and sociality build fundamentally upon some form of social agreement and standards. Representationalism and the Cartesian picture more generally have been challenged by normativists but this paper argues that, even where these challenges by normativism have been taken to heart, our intellectual culture (...) remains fundamentally epistemic in certain problematic senses. Two problems are highlighted: first, normativism remains functionally Cartesian, for human action and sociality appear as processes driven by the shared understandings by competent contributors, and second, normativism is unable to account for forms of human action and sociality other than those occurring in the relatively small worlds of normatively regulated conceptual spaces of mutual access and listening. These points are illustrated by an applied discussion of the blind spots of normativist accounts of the emerging environmental and the on-going economic crises. (shrink)

Justice for Earthlings reprints essays by David Miller written in the first decade of this century. The essays develop central themes of his long-term writings on social justice in interesting new ways and display the lucid and elegant prose, common-sense moral judgement and sophisticated use of analytic philosophical techniques that always characterize his work. -/- Much of the book proceeds by way of comparison of the metaethical and normative views that Miller endorses with the luck egalitarian approach to social justice (...) issues exemplified in the work of the late G.A. Cohen. Cohen tells us we should search for universal, necessarily true moral principles – true at all times and places, and true independently of any empirical facts. One such principle according to Cohen is that justice requires that benefits and burdens be overall equal for all persons, unless those who suffer the short end of unequal distribution can reasonably be held responsible for their predicament by virtue of their acts and omissions. -/- Miller rejects almost everything in this picture, except that Cohen and he unite in affirming that moral reflection turns up a plurality of principles and no master principle that rank orders them (so deciding what morality requires us to do involves intuitive balancing of several considerations), and agree also that what we owe one another is constrained by personal responsibility. (shrink)

It is our contention that an ontological commitment to propositions faces a number of problems; so many, in fact, that an attitude of realism towards propositions—understood the usual “platonistic” way, as a kind of mind- and language-independent abstract entity—is ultimately untenable. The particular worries about propositions that marshal parallel problems that Paul Benacerraf has raised for mathematical platonists. At the same time, the utility of “proposition-talk”—indeed, the apparent linguistic commitment evident in our use of 'that'-clauses (in offering explanations and making (...) predictions)—is also in need of explanation. We account for this with a fictionalist analysis of our use of 'that'-clauses. Our account avoids certain problems that arise for the usual error-theoretic versions of fictionalism because we apply the notion of semantic pretense to develop an alternative, pretense-involving, non-error-theoretic, fictionalist account of proposition-talk. (shrink)

I investigate the consequences of Nietzsche's perspectivism for notions of truth and objectivity, and show how the metaphor of visual perspective motivates an epistemology that avoids self-referential difficulties. Perspectivism's claim that every view is only one view, applied to itself, is often supposed to preclude the perspectivist's ability to offer reasons for her epistemology. Nietzsche's arguments for perspectivism depend on “internal reasons”, which have force not only in their own perspective, but also within the standards of alternative perspectives. Internal reasons (...) allow a perspectivist argument against dogmatism without presupposing aperspectival criteria for theory choice. Nietzsche also offers “internal” conceptions of truth and objectivity which reduce them to a matter of meeting our epistemic standards. This view has pluralistic implications, which conflict with common sense, but it is nevertheless consistent and plausible. Nietzsche's position is similar to Putnam's recent internalism, and this is due to their common Kantian heritage. (shrink)

The nature of cognition is being re-considered. Instead of emphasizing formal operations on abstract symbols, the new approach foregrounds the fact that cognition is, rather, a situated activity, and suggests that thinking beings ought therefore be considered first and foremost as acting beings. The essay reviews recent work in Embodied Cognition, provides a concise guide to its principles, attitudes and goals, and identifies the physical grounding project as its central research focus.

In this paper I argue that Kant’s doctrine of definitions, as it is developed in theTranscendental Doctrine of Method(TDM) and in the lectures on logic, lays down the semantic background of the problem of the objective reality of the categories and of the solution Kant provides for it in theTranscendental Analytic. The distinction between nominal and real definitions introduces a two-dimensional element in Kant’s theory of concepts, and this, I argue, provides a compelling explanation for the assumption Kant makes in (...) §13 that it is possible to possess a concept without knowing the conditions of its legitimate application. This view is supported by the parallels between Kant’s discussion of empirical, mathematical, and philosophical concepts in §13 and in theTDM. And, it allows clarifying the sense in which the arguments that prove the objective reality of the categories are, at the same time, counterfactual reflections that give us (incomplete) insight into their real definitions. (shrink)

Jesse Prinz (2006, 2007) claimed that emotions are necessary and sufficient for moral judgments. First of all, I clarify what this claim amounts to. The view that he labels emotionism will then be critically assessed. Prinz marshals empirical findings to defend a series of increasingly strong theses about how emotions are essential for moral judgments. I argue that the empirical support upon which his arguments are based is not only insufficient, but it even suggests otherwise, if properly interpreted. My criticism (...) is then extended to his sentimentalist theory, that accounts for how emotions are integrated into moral judgments. The central problem is that Prinz’s view fails to capture the rational aspect of moral evaluation. I make this failure explicit and defend that some version or other of neosentimentalism is a more promising route. (shrink)

According to epistemic internalism, the only facts that determine the justificational status of a belief are facts about the subject’s own mental states, like beliefs and experiences. Externalists instead hold that certain external facts, such as facts about the world or the reliability of a belief-producing mechanism, affect a belief’s justificational status. Some internalists argue that considerations about evil demon victims and brains in vats provide excellent reason to reject externalism: because these subjects are placed in epistemically unfavorable settings, externalism (...) seems unable to account for the strong intuition that these subjects’ beliefs are nonetheless justified. I think these considerations do not at all help the internalist cause. I argue that by appealing to the anti-individualistic nature of perception, it can be shown that skeptical scenarios provide no reason to prefer internalism to externalism. (shrink)

According to the Disjunction Problem, teleological theories of perceptual content are unable to explain why it is that a subject represents an F when an F causes the perception and not the disjunction F v G, given that the subject has mistaken G’s for F’s in the past. Without an adequate explanation these theories are stuck without an account of how non-veridical representation is possible, which would be an unsettling result. In this paper I defend Burge’s teleological theory of perception (...) against the Disjunction Problem, arguing that a perceptual state’s representing what I call an error-prohibiting disjunctive property is incompatible with the truth of perceptual anti-individualism. And because perceptual anti-individualism is at the heart of Burge’s theory, I conclude that Burgeans need not be concerned with the Disjunction Problem. (shrink)

ABSTRACT First, I consider a few motivations to idealize epistemic logics1 in such a degree that brings up the problem of logical omniscience [LOP]. I argue that the main motivation to hold omniscience is of a philosophical-scientific2 background, in the sense philosophers have a not so peculiar way of investigating underlying mechanisms, i.e., the interaction of several different components of complex systems may be better understood in isolation, even if such components are not found isolated in a realistic context. It (...) is defended that the implicit and explicit knowledge distinction is compatible that view since idealizations made by modal epistemic logic are so strong that the agents they describe hardly have anything in common with real agents. I conclude by showing how LOP can be accommodated in the logic of being informed using the Inverse Relationship Principle. 1Epistemic modal logics and the logic of being informed may collapse in many scenarios, as shown in previous articles. 2Does not necessarily imply in a naturalized epistemology a la. For a plea for non-naturalism as constructionism see. (shrink)

This paper investigates interactive kinds, a class of kinds suggested by Ian Hacking for which classification generates a feedback loop between the classifiers and what is classified, and argues that human interactive kinds should be distinguished from non-human ones. First, I challenge the claim that there is nothing ontologically special about interactive kinds in virtue of their members being classified as such. To do so, I reject Cooper’s counterexample to Hacking’s thesis that kind descriptions are necessary for intentional action, arguing (...) that classification is required for intentional action. Having considered ways to characterise the metaphysics of interactive kinds and the semantics of kind terms, I argue that the fact that classification facilitates intentional action makes human interactive kinds ontologically distinctive because of the anomalous nature of the change which the kind-classification brings about. I then briefly examine further distinguishing features of human interactive kinds. (shrink)

The concepts of placebos and placebo effects refer to extremely diverse phenomena. I recommend dissolving the concepts of placebos and placebo effects into loosely related groups of specific mechanisms, including (potentially among others) expectation-fulfillment, classical conditioning, and attentional-somatic feedback loops. If this approach is on the right track, it has three main implications for the ethics of informed consent. First, because of the expectation-fulfillment mechanism, the process of informing cannot be considered independently from the potential effects of treatment. Obtaining informed (...) consent influences the effects of treatment. This provides support for the authorized concealment and authorized deception paradigms, and perhaps even for outright deceptive placebo use. Second, doctors may easily fail to consider the potential benefits of conditioning, leading them to misjudge the trade-off between beneficence and autonomy. Third, how attentional-somatic feedback loops play out depends not only on the content of the informing process but also on its framing. This suggests a role for libertarian paternalism in clinical practice. (shrink)

What does the way we clarify and revise concepts reveal about the nature of concepts? This paper investigates the ontological commitments of conceptual analysis and explication regarding their supposed subject matter – concepts. It demonstrates the benefits of a cognitivist account of concepts, according to which they are not items on which the subject operates cognitively, but rather ways in which the subject operates. The proposed view helps to handle alternating references to ‘concepts’ and ‘terms’ in instructions on analysis and (...) explication. Furthermore, its virtue lies not in the capacity to render concepts ‘shareable’ but in its ontological parsimony. (shrink)

There are two possible realist defense strategies against the pessimistic meta-induction and Laudan’s meta-modus tollens: the selective strategy, claiming that discarded theories are partially true, and the discontinuity strategy, denying that pessimism about past theories can be extended to current ones. A radical version of discontinuity realism is proposed by Gerald Doppelt: rather than discriminating between true and false components within theories, he holds that superseded theories cannot be shown to be even partially true, while present best theories are demonstrably (...) completely true. I argue that this position, running counter both the cumulativity of science and fallibilism, is untenable; it cannot account for the success of past theories, nor for the failures of current theories, and rather than shutting the door to the pessimistic historical objections it opens it wide. The best strategy, instead, joins the selective idea there was both some truth and some falsity in discarded theories, like in current ones, with the moderate discontinuity idea that the truth rate in present best theories is much greater than in past ones. (shrink)

We analyze the meaning of the violation of the marginal probability law for situations of correlation measurements where entanglement is identified. We show that for quantum theory applied to the cognitive realm such a violation does not lead to the type of problems commonly believed to occur in situations of quantum theory applied to the physical realm. We briefly situate our quantum approach for modeling concepts and their combinations with respect to the notions of “extension” and “intension” in theories of (...) meaning, and in existing concept theories. (shrink)

The philosophical case for extended cognition is often made with reference to ‘extended-memory cases’ ; though, unfortunately, proponents of the hypothesis of extended cognition as well as their adversaries have failed to appreciate the kinds of epistemological problems extended-memory cases pose for mainstream thinking in the epistemology of memory. It is time to give these problems a closer look. Our plan is as follows: in §1, we argue that an epistemological theory remains compatible with HEC only if its epistemic assessments (...) do not violate what we call ‘the epistemic parity principle’. In §2, we show how the constraint of respecting the epistemic parity principle stands in what appears to be a prima facie intractable tension with mainstream thinking about cases of propositional memory. We then outline and evaluate in §3 several lines of response. (shrink)

Recent debate on the nature of probabilities in evolutionary biology has focused largely on the propensity interpretation of fitness (PIF), which defines fitness in terms of a conception of probability known as “propensity”. However, proponents of this conception of fitness have misconceived the role of probability in the constitution of fitness. First, discussions of probability and fitness have almost always focused on organism effect probability, the probability that an organism and its environment cause effects. I argue that much of the (...) probability relevant to fitness must be organism circumstance probability, the probability that an organism encounters particular, detailed circumstances within an environment, circumstances which are not the organism’s effects. Second, I argue in favor of the view that organism effect propensities either don’t exist or are not part of the basis of fitness, because they usually have values close to 0 or 1. More generally, I try to show that it is possible to develop a clearer conception of the role of probability in biological processes than earlier discussions have allowed. (shrink)

This paper develops a puzzle about non-merely-verbal disputes. At first sight, it would seem that a dispute over the truth of an utterance is not merely verbal only if there is a proposition that the parties to the dispute take the utterance under dispute to express, which one of the parties accepts and the other rejects. Yet, as I argue, it is extremely rare for ordinary disputes over an utterance’s truth to satisfy this condition, in which case non-merely verbal disputes (...) are extremely rare. After examining various responses to the puzzle, I outline a solution using the framework of truthmaker semantics. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a position that I call erotetic amelioration, according to which we must evaluate and, eventually, improve our answers to questions of the form “What is x?”. My focus will be on cases where x stands for a strongly social kind, such as marriage. Such a position is offered as an alternative to the idea-sometimes called conceptual engineering-according to which we should evaluate and, eventually, seek to improve our concepts. After introducing the idea of erotetic amelioration, (...) I will show how it can be put into work to deal with what I call the topic preservation challenge, and what advantages it has in relation to a similar position available in the literature, namely, Cappelen’s (2018) Austerity Framework. (shrink)

A brief (10,000 word) introduction to James's philosophy with particular focus on the relation between James's naturalism and his account of various normative notions like rationality, goodness and truth.

Does the capacity to think require the capacity to sense? A lively debate on this topic runs throughout the history of philosophy and now animates discussions of artificial intelligence. Many have argued that AI systems such as large language models cannot think and understand if they lack sensory grounding. I argue that thought does not require sensory grounding: there can be pure thinkers who can think without any sensory capacities. As a result, the absence of sensory grounding does not entail (...) that large language models cannot think or understand. I also consider to what extent quasi-sensory grounding can at least boost the performance of a language model. (shrink)

According to the causal-historical theory of reference, natural kind terms refer in virtue of complicated causal relations the speakers have to their environment. A common objection to the theory is that purely causal relations are insufficient to fix reference in a determinate fashion. The so-called hybrid view holds that what is also needed for successful fixing are true descriptions associated in the mind of the speaker with the referent. The main claim of this paper is that the objection fails: reference (...) fixing of natural kind terms can be purely causal. The main argument draws inspiration from recent theoretical advances made in metaphysics of kinds by Marion Godman, Antonella Mallozzi, and David Papineau. The main claim is that their notion of super-explanatory properties may explain how reference of many kind terms can be fixed purely causally. (shrink)

Essentialism as applied to individuals is the claim that for at least some individuals there are properties that those individuals possess essentially. What it is to possess a property essentially is a matter of debate. To possess a property essentially is often taken to be akin to possessing a property necessarily, but stronger, although this is not a feature of Aristotle’s essentialism, according to which essential properties are those thing could not lose without ceasing to exist. Kit Fine (1994) takes (...) essential properties to be those that an object has in virtue of its identity, while other essentialists refer (as Fine also does) to the nature of an object as the source of its essential properties. It is sometimes important to distinguish the essential properties of a thing and the ‘full’ essence of a thing. The latter is the set of the essential properties of a thing, when that set necessarily suffices to determine the thing’s identity. One might hold that something has essential properties without agreeing that it has an identity-determining essence. Essentialism was largely in abeyance during the first two thirds of the twentieth century thanks to the domination of analytic philosophy by anti-metaphysical logical empiricism and the linguistic turn. The rehabilitation of essentialism owes much to the development of a formal apparatus for the understanding of modality more generally, thanks to C. I. Lewis, Ruth Barcan Marcus, and Saul Kripke. Kripke’s discussion of essentialism both about individuals and also about about natural kinds brought essentialism to wider philosophical prominence. Natural kind essentialism, which finds its modern genesis also in the work of Hilary Putnam, claims that natural kinds have essential properties: to say that possession of property P is is part of the essence of the kind K implies that, necessarily, every member or sample of the kind K possesses P. Essentialism about individuals has been linked to thinking about natural kinds by the contentious claim that one of the essential properties of any entity is that it belongs to the natural kind (or kinds) it actually belongs to. In this chapter I shall first outline certain claims and arguments concerning essentialism concerning individuals (Section 2).. (shrink)

This research paper aims to study analogy as a comparative thinking and to investigate whether it is justified in claiming that an analogical thought has cognitive content. Two theories in cognitive science claim that analogy has cognitive content. The first one is called the weak view of analogy in cognition, e.g. the works of Gust et al. (2008), Lakoff & Johnson (1980), Hesse (1950), Black (1955); and the second one is called the strong view of analogy in cognition, e.g. the (...) works of Hofstadter (2001), Hofstadter& Sanders (2013). According to the weak view, analogical thought is only a necessary condition of cognition. But for the strong view, analogy is both necessary and sufficient of cognition. Regardless of the differences, both theories are not justified in claiming analogical content. While the weak view cannot provide an account of the perceptual aspect of content, the strong view suffers from the lack of normative constraint for analogical content. -/- Keywords: analogy, comparative thinking, concept, cognitive content, philosophy of cognitive science . (shrink)

Over the past fifty years the philosophy of language and mind has been dominated by a nondescriptivist approach to content and reference. This book attempts to recast and systematize that approach by offering an indexical model in terms of mental files. According to Recanati, we refer through mental files, the function of which is to store information derived through certain types of contextual relation the subject bears to objects in his or her environment. The reference of a file is determined (...) relationally, not satisfactionally, so a file is not to be equated to the body of (mis-)information it contains. Mental files are the mental equivalent of singular terms, and the reference of linguistic expressions is inherited from that of the files we associate with them. On this approach, mental files, the vehicles of singular thought, do all the work of so-called 'modes of presentation' in Fregean and neo-Russellian theories. (shrink)

In response to Kripke's modal argument contemporary descriptivists suggest that referring terms, e.g., ‘water’, are synonymous with actually-rigidified definite descriptions, e.g., ‘the actual watery stuff’. Following Scott Soames, this strategy has the counterintuitive consequence that possible speakers on Perfect Earth cannot be ascribed water-beliefs without beliefs about the actual world. Co-indexing the actuality and possibility operators has the equally untoward result that possible speakers on Twin Earth are ascribed water-beliefs. So, Soames's dilemma is that the descriptivist can account for either (...) Twin Earth or Perfect Earth but not both. In response, this paper argues that since ‘actual’ is an indexical, the content of water-beliefs is egocentric, and so if the descriptivist avails herself of relativized propositions as the content of such beliefs, she is able to account for both Twin Earth and Perfect Earth. The lesson is that we have to tread carefully when making inferences about the contents of beliefs from the semantics of belief-reporting sentences that contain actually-rigidified expressions. (shrink)

The imperviousness of delusions to counter-evidence makes it tempting to classify them as imaginings. Bayne and Pacherie argue that adopting a dispositional account of belief can secure the doxastic status of delusions. But dispositionalism can only secure genuinely doxastic status for mental states by giving folk-psychological norms a significant role in the individuation of attitudes. When such norms individuate belief, deluded subjects will not count as believing their delusions. In general, dispositionalism won't confer genuinely doxastic status more often than do (...) competing accounts of belief. (shrink)

Some plausibly necessary a posteriori theoretical claims include ‘water is H 2 O’, ‘gold is the element with atomic number 79’, and ‘cats are animals’. In this paper I challenge the necessity of the third claim. I argue that there are possible worlds in which cats exist, but are not animals. Under any of the species concepts currently accepted in biology, organisms do not belong essentially to their species. This is equally true of their ancestors. In phylogenetic systematics, monophyletic clades (...) such as the animal kingdom are composed of an ancestral stem species and all of its descendants. If the stem species had not existed, neither would the clade. Thus it could have been the case that all the organisms which actually belong to the animal kingdom might have existed yet not have been animals. (shrink)

Sally Haslanger is concerned with the debate between social constructionists and error theorists about a given category, such as race or gender. For example, social constructionists about race claim that the term “race” refers to a social kind, whereas error theorists claim that the term “race” is an empty term, that is, nothing belongs to this category. It seems that this debate depends in part on the meaning of the corresponding expression, and this, according to some theorists, depends in turn (...) on our intuitions as competent speakers. But then, what should we say if competent users of the expressions “race” and “gender” understand the terms so that being a natural or biological property is a necessary condition in order to fall under the term? If that were the case, then it would seem that a social constructionist view would be out of the question. Haslanger has argued that a social constructionist view could still be defended in that situation. In order to argue for this, she draws on the classical arguments for semantic externalism, which show that the intuitions of competent speakers concerning the nature of a given category, and the objective type that actually unifies the instances of that category, may come apart. In this paper I will argue that the arguments for semantic externalism concerning natural kinds do not really offer support for Haslanger’s claim that ordinary intuitions concerning social kinds are not relevant. (shrink)

With its strategic consideration of phenomenal consciousness illusorily seeming to us, illusionism claims to deny phenomenality and thereby obviate the hard problem of consciousness. The problem with illusionism, however, is that, although its thesis appears persuasively simple, it strikes as absurd insofar as the phenomenal illusions themselves also seem as much as phenomenality, keeping no fundamental differences between the two. In short, it reinforces the same phenomenon/issue, i.e., phenomenality, that it claims to deny/avoid. This single absurdity is reflective of its (...) self-refuting nature, and it alone is enough for a rejection of illusionism. However, does illusionism have any reasonable justification to defend itself in the face of the experientially undeniable reality of phenomenal consciousness? This paper attempts to find out if there is any such illusionist justification. (shrink)

We very often grant that a person can gain knowledge on the basis of epistemic artifacts such as telescopes, microscopes and so on. However, this intuition threatens to undermine virtue reliabilism according to which one knows that p if and only if one’s believing the truth that p is the product of a reliable cognitive belief-forming process; in an obvious sense epistemic artifacts are not parts of one’s overall cognitive system. This is so, unless the extended cognition hypothesis (HEC) is (...) true. According to HEC when parts of the environment become properly coupled to the agent’s brain then they too can be considered constitutive parts of the overall cognitive mechanism—i.e. cognition potentially extends to the world surrounding the agent. Interestingly, HEC and the broader framework of virtue reliabilism share some intriguing similarities, which render these two views mutually supportive. Making these similarities explicit provides a principled account of the way in which our knowledge-conducive cognitive characters may extend beyond our natural cognitive capacities by incorporating epistemic artifacts. (shrink)

This paper investigates the conception of causation required in order to make sense of natural selection as a causal explanation of changes in traits or allele frequencies. It claims that under a counterfactual account of causation, natural selection is constituted by the causal relevance of traits and alleles to the variation in traits and alleles frequencies. The “statisticalist” view of selection (Walsh, Matthen, Ariew, Lewens) has shown that natural selection is not a cause superadded to the causal interactions between individual (...) organisms. It also claimed that the only causation at work is those aggregated individual interactions, natural selection being only predictive and explanatory, but it is implicitly committed to a process-view of causation. I formulate a counterfactual construal of the causal statements underlying selectionist explanations, and show that they hold because of the reference they make to ecological reliable factors. Considering case studies, I argue that this counterfactual view of causal relevance proper to natural selection captures more salient features of evolutionary explanations than the statisticalist view, and especially makes sense of the difference between selection and drift. I eventually establish equivalence between causal relevance of traits and natural selection itself as a cause. (shrink)