This paper examines one of the central objections levied against neo-Aristotelian virtue ethics: the self-absorption objection. Proponents of this objection state that the main problem with neo-Aristotelian accounts of moral motivation is that they prescribe that our ultimate reason for acting virtuously is that doing so is for the sake of and/or is constitutive of our own eudaimonia. In this paper, I provide an overview of the various attempts made by neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists to address the self-absorption objection (...) and argue that they all fall short for one reason or another. I contend that the way forward for neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists is to reject the view that the virtuous agent ought to organize her life in a way that is ultimately good for her, and instead adopt a more expansive conception of her ultimate end, one in which no special preference is given to her own good. (shrink)

This study aimed to assess the influence of peer relationships on the self-consciousness and social adaptation of school-aged children in the Enugu North Local Government Area of Enugu State. A descriptive cross-sectional survey design was used, with a population of 60,780 (29,968 males and 30,812 females). A multi-stage sampling method was employed to select 602 school-aged children from 58 schools in the Local Government Area, forming the sample for the study. For data collection, the study used questionnaires. Data were (...) analyzed with descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The findings revealed that more than half of the respondents (62.6%) showed moderate social adaptation, particularly when they were with their families (mean score of 4.53±2.31). The majority (76.6%) had low peer relationships, while 80.6% had high self-consciousness. The mean scores for peer relationships, self-consciousness, and social adaptation differed between male and female respondents. Females had higher peer relationships and social adaptation. The mean score for peer relationships was higher among students in private schools compared to those in public schools. A moderate positive relationship was found between peer relationships and social adaptation at a significance level of p<0.05. It is recommended that governmental and non-governmental organizations organize programs to facilitate peer relationships and social adaptation among school-aged children. Furthermore, teachers and parents should be educated to provide support to children in these areas. (shrink)

If language is to serve the basic purpose of communicating our attitudes, we must be constructed so as to form beliefs in those propositions that we truthfully assert on the basis of careful assent. Thus, other things being equal, I can rely on believing those things to which I give my careful assent. And so my ability to assent or dissent amounts to an ability to make up my mind about what I believe. This capacity, in tandem with a similar (...) capacity in respect of other attitudes, supports three important lessons. It means that I can know what I believe by seeing what commands my assent, that I can put aside the possibility of error in committing myself to holding such a belief, and that I can therefore perform as a person: I can organize my mind around commitments to which others are invited to hold me. (shrink)

In this article I analyse two complaints of white vilification, which are increasingly occurring in Australia. I argue that, though the complainants (and white people generally) are not harmed by such racialized speech, the complainants in fact harm Australians of colour through these utterances. These complaints can both cause and constitute at least two forms of epistemic injustice (willful hermeneutical ignorance and comparative credibility excess). Further, I argue that the complaints are grounded in a dual misrecognition: the complainants misrecognize themselves (...) in their own privileged racial specificity, and they misrecognize others in their own marginal racial specificity. Such misrecognition preserves the cultural imperialism of Australia’s dominant social imaginary—a means of oppression that perpetuates epistemic insensitivity.Bringing this dual misrecognition to light best captures the indignity that is suffered by the victims of the aforementioned epistemic injustices. I argue that it is only when we truly recognize difference in its own terms, shifting the dominant social imaginary, that “mainstream Australians”can do their part in bringing about a just society. (shrink)

(This version was submitted to Behavioral and Brain Science. A revised version was published by Biological Theory) Estimates of autism’s incidence increased 5-10 fold in ten years, an increase which cannot be genetic. Though many mutations are associated with autism, no mutation seems directly to cause autism. We need to find the direct cause. Complexity science provides a new paradigm - confirmed in biology by extensive hard data. Both the body and the personality are complex dynamic systems which spontaneously (...) class='Hi'>self-organize from simple dynamic systems. Autism may therefore be caused by the failure of a simple dynamic system. We know that infants who cannot track their mother’s face often become autistic, that eye-contact initiates intersubjectivity which is blocked in autism, and that the infant-mother pair seems designed to promote eye-contact, as does the eye’s appearance. This author earlier proposed that failure of eye-contact might directly cause autism and that early non-maternal childcare, including television/video, would therefore be statistically linked to autism. Waldman et al. (2008; 2006) recently proved that autism is strongly linked to precipitation (indoor activity) and to the introduction of cable. The most plausible explanation? Early exposure to television/video is linked to autism. Furthermore a normal developmental cascade (blocked in autism) has been deciphered: (a) Infant-mother eye-contact triggers increased maternal attention. (b) Early maternal attention permanently increases not only baseline vasopressin but also that oxytocin release which is triggered by subsequent maternal attention. (c) Vasopressin and oxytocin promote face recognition, gazing-at-the-eyes, emotion recognition, and social bonding. The eye-contact hypothesis suggests a clinical study addressing prevention: recruit prospective parents who agree to curtail television/video/computer/wi-fi in their families; measure autism’s incidence in their children. (shrink)

Three decades after Chalmers named it, the ‘hard problem’ remains. I suggest a parsimonious solution. Biological dynamic systems interact according to simple rules (while the environment provides simple constraints) and thus self-organize to become a new, more complex dynamic system at the next level. This spiral repeats several times generating a hierarchy of levels. A leap to the next level is frequently creative and surprising. From ants, themselves self-organized according to physical/chemical laws, may emerge an ant colony (...) self-organized according to eusocial laws. A dynamic system need not be material. A living language (immaterial) is a complex adaptive system. Body/brain are material but the next level of complexity, a psychological dynamic system, a thought, feeling, image or ideal, is less material. From several psychological dynamic systems emerges the next level, narrative (immaterial), and from multiple narratives emerges personality. Concrete evidence explains how an early narrative emerges from body-and-brain. Evidence also shows that personality emerges from narrative. Even an objective narrative captures subjectivity since the teller’s choice of content is subjective. I argue that the ‘stream-of-consciousness’ story (movie) you are currently telling yourself (watching) is your conscious experience, ‘what it is like’ for you to be conscious. Adriana Cavarero’s arguments support this. Each level of a hierarchy of dynamic systems must necessarily be homeostatic, at that level. McDowell et al. (2023: submitted, in revision) reported evidence that a dream (a narrative) supports personality homeostatically. Perhaps the evolutionary advantage of conscious experience, also a narrative, has always been that it too supports personality homeostatically. Personality and body/brain, a chimera of symbiotic life-forms, constitute interactionist duality. (shrink)

This article attempts to show why an experimental hypothesis is plausible and merits testing; in brief, the hypothesis is that autism begins with a failure in early learning and that changing the environment of early learning would dramatically change its incidence. Strong statistical evidence supporting this hypothesis has been published by Waldman et al. (2008), but to date this evidence has largely been ignored, perhaps because it challenges prevalent beliefs about autism. This article also suggests that the current epidemic of (...) autism is serious enough, and intellectually mysterious enough, to merit attention from a wider community of brain scientists: New ideas are needed. A confirmation of this article’s hypothesis would have interesting implications for brain science. (shrink)

This article attempts to show why an experimental hypothesis is plausible and merits testing; in brief, the hypothesis is that autism begins with a failure in early learning and that changing the environment of early learning would dramatically change its incidence. Strong statistical evidence supporting this hypothesis has been published by Waldman et al., but to date this evidence has largely been ignored, perhaps because it challenges prevalent beliefs about autism. This article also suggests that the current epidemic of autism (...) is serious enough, and intellectually mysterious enough, to merit attention from a wider community of brain scientists: New ideas are needed. A confirmation of this article’s hypothesis would have interesting implications for brain science. (shrink)

In a preceding publication a fundamentally oriented and irreversible world was shown to be de- rivable from the important principle of least action. A consequence of such a paradigm change is avoidance of paradoxes within a “dynamic” quantum physics. This becomes essentially possible because fundamental irreversibility allows consideration of the “entropy” concept in elementary processes. For this reason, and for a compensation of entropy in the spread out energy of the wave, the duality of particle and wave has to be (...) mediated via an information self-image of matter. In this publication considerations are extended to irreversible thermodynamics, to gravitation and cos- mology with its dependence on quantum interpretations. The information self-image of matter around particles could be identified with gravitation. Because information can also impose an al- ways constant light velocity there is no need any more to attribute such a property to empty space, as done in relativity theory. In addition, the possibility is recognized to consider entropy genera- tion by expanding photon fields in the universe. Via a continuous activation of information on matter photons can generate entropy and release small energy packages without interacting with matter. This facilitates a new interpretation of galactic redshift, emphasizes an information link between quantum- and cosmological phenomena, and evidences an information-triggered origin of the universe. Self-organized processes approach maximum entropy production within their constraints. In a far from equilibrium world also information, with its energy content, can self- organize to a higher hierarchy of computation. It is here identified with consciousness. This ap- pears to explain evolution of spirit and intelligence on a materialistic basis. Also gravitation, here identified as information on matter, could, under special conditions, self-organize to act as a su- per-gravitation, offering an alternative to dark matter. Time is not an illusion, but has to be understood as flux of action, which is the ultimate reality of change. The concept of an irreversible physical world opens a route towards a rational understanding of complex contexts in nature. (shrink)

The Found and the Made: science, reason, and the reality of nature is a critical study of the role of abstraction and mathematical modeling in science, and how these affect the relationship of science and society to nature. This is a précis of the book, which questions the bias inherited from our religious and classical roots: that physical reality must be well defined, passive, and inert—a matter of divine or human specification. Determinism, time-reversibility, and isolated systems are persisting artifacts of (...) such a view, along with the notion that nature can be definitively grasped in a ‘theory of everything.’ However, if nature is autonomous in the way that organisms are (and mechanisms are not) it can be expected to self-organize in ways that elude mechanist treatment. Science could advance by taking a more self-reflective stance, acknowledging its role as a form of human cognition and examining the role of its practices and tacit assumptions in producing knowledge. Specifically, it could extend concepts of agency to non-living systems, in order to better explore self-organization in the cosmos at large. Such a shift in thinking might encourage society to extend to nature its natural legal rights. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper it is analyzed from the informational perspective the relation between mind and body, an ancient philosophic issue defined as a problem, which still did not receive up to date an adequate solution. By introducing/using the concept of information, it is shown that this concept includes two facets, one of them referring to the common communications and another one referring to a hidden/structuring matter-related information, effectively acting in the human body and in the living systems, which determines the (...) dynamic inter-change of information between specific structures of the organism by electric/electronic/chemical agents and genetic/epigenetic processes. It is shown that the maintenance of body, permanently and obligatory depending on the external matter (foods, air, water) resources, needed to provide both the structuring/restructuring basic material and energy, determines the necessary existence of an info-managing system, administrating the internal mechano-chemical/physical processes. As a natural consequence, such a system should organize and assure own survival by an effective informational operability to detect the external food resources, to select the appropriate interest information and to decide as a function of circumstances. One important component in such an informational system is memory, allowing to dispose of the reference informational data for analysis/comparison and the selection between good and bad binary possible decisions. The memory receives and stores therefore signals from external reality and from the body itself, referring to the emotional reaction, digestion status, creation, and inherited predilections, within specific info-neural communication circuits between the brain and body execution/sensitive organs, the human body appearing as an integrated info-matter self-managed dynamic system. The specific body components memorize information with different degrees of info-integration: short/long-term integration, emotive/action reaction, info-abilities, culminating with the integration in the chromosomal structures by epigenetic processes. The new acquired information is transgenerationally transmissible, and is manifested as new traits, showing the adaptation capability of the human and close relation between mind and body. Analyzing the results of such a mind-body informational model in comparison with the earlier assumed/proposed/asserted archaic, Greek and Occidental philosophies, which represent only partial aspects of this relation, it is shown that this informational model, elaborated in terms of information on the basis of scientific reasons and arguments, constitutes a general, realist, and coherent model of the mind-body relation, able to integrate and/or explain most of the others. (shrink)

The project format has become a standard and self-evident way to organize research work in today's accelerated university context, leading to the projectification of science. This paper argues that the project format is not a mere technical organizational tool, but that it challenges and reshapes research practices and ideals. The project format is embedded in a specific temporality which is called project time. The key characteristics of project time are scrutinized by distinguishing it from process time, which refers (...) to the internal organizational logic of research. In addition, project time is examined through Barbara Adam's theorizing on the commodification, control, compression and colonization of clock time. In the last part of the paper, temporal conflicts in project-based research are examined empirically by drawing upon interview material with Finnish academics working in the social sciences. (shrink)

The topic of alienation has fallen out of fashion in social and political philosophy. It used to be salient, especially in socialist thought and in debates about labor practices in capitalism. Although the lack of identification of people with their working lives—their alienation as workers—remains practically important, normative engagement with it has been set back by at least four objections. They concern the problems of essentialist views, a mishandling of the distinction between the good and the right, the danger of (...) paternalistic impositions, and the significance of democratic authorization. This paper recasts the critique of alienation in a way that vindicates its importance for social and political philosophy and rebuts these objections. First, it provides an analytic framework to understand alienation—distinguishing its various conceptual, explanatory, and normative dimensions. Second, it accounts for the normative aspect of the critique of alienation by articulating it in terms of prudential and moral ideas of positive freedom regarding human flourishing and solidaristic empowerment. Finally, the normative account is developed further, and sharpened to respond to the four objections, through the introduction of the Dignitarian Approach—the view that we have reason to organize social life in such a way that we respond appropriately to the valuable features of individual human beings that give rise to their dignity. (shrink)

Organisms actively compete for environmental resources. They assess their surroundings, estimate how much energy they need for particular goals, and then realize the optimum variant. They take measures to control certain environmental resources. They perceive themselves and can distinguish between “self” and “non-self.” Current empirical data on all domains of life indicate that unicellular organisms such as bacteria, archaea, giant viruses, and protozoa as well as multicellular organisms such as animals, fungi, and plants coordinate and organize their (...) essential life functions through signaling processes. Signaling allows for real life coordination and organization and is a communicative action in which speciesspecific behavioral patterns and sign repertoires are used. Cells, tissues, organs, and organisms that communicate share several key levels that are essential to all life forms and which serve as a uniform tool for investigating biocommunication. (shrink)

Relativism is a theory about how people organize their beliefs. We construct mental representations of the world—particular configurations of our internal brain stuff—to guide our actions. But our brains contain only a minuscule part of the world’s stuff. Given the limited brain stuff available, we can have detailed representations of some features of the world only if we simplify our representations of other parts. Our internal representational means are thus too meager to accurately represent reality in full. Which representations (...) we adopt will therefore depend upon our purposes: different purposes, different representations, different beliefs. Such a relativism does not deny the reality of the outside world, is not self-contradictory, and allows for progress, moral persuasion, and cross-cultural criticism. (shrink)

The paper aims at identifying, explaining and illustrating the affordances of “creative nonfiction” as a style of writing social science. The first part introduces creative nonfiction as a method of writing which brings together empirical material and fiction. In the second part, based on illustrations from my ethnographic research of European “crisis reporters,” written in the form of a novel about a fictional journalist, but also based on a review of existing social science research that employs a creative method of (...) writing, I identify several main affordances of creative nonfiction in social-scientific research. In particular, I argue that creative nonfiction allows scientists to illustrate their findings, to express them in an allegorical way, to organize data into a narrative, to let their pieces of research act in the social world, and to permeate research accounts with self-reflexive moments. I also discuss some apparent negative affordances: challenges that creative nonfiction poses to readers and to the institutionalized academic discourse. Finally, I suggest that writing about sociological problems in the style of creative nonfiction can help to produce more engaging and engaged texts, and I discuss the ethical implications of the approach. (shrink)

The mind's basic task is to organize adaptive behaviour. I argue that necessary conditions to achieve this are acquiring a 'body-self', a differentiated perception, motor intuition, and motor control. The latter three can be learnied implicitly by crosswise comparing the perceived actual situation, the desired situation, the perceived result and the anticipated result.

Disputes over land are the major source of conflict between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples around the globe. According to the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples in Canada, land claims do not simply have to do with economic settlements. They also involve, in a critical sense, respect and recognition for cultural differences regarding culturally distinct self-understandings of land. The Commissioners argue that these disputes will never be wholly resolved unless dialogue and negotiations are "guided by one of the fundamental insights (...) from our hearings: that is, to Aboriginal peoples, land is not just a commodity; it is an inextricable part of Aboriginal identity, deeply rooted in moral and spiritual values" (1996, 430). I would contend that human rights and global justice require that, as the United Nations Charter asserts, formerly colonized peoples have a legitimate claim to pursue their social, economic and cultural interests within the boundaries of a peoples' right to self- determination. I examine a spectrum of dominant liberal theories of justice regarding cultural membership and its relationship to politics with respect to Indigenous demands for self-determination. Specifically, my purpose is to explore which position is best able to accommodate the key aspect of this demand: that they have the power to organize themselves according to their traditional views of the land and that, importantly, they have the power to promote such self-understandings in their social, legal, and political institutions. I demonstrate the manner in which many such liberal theories continue to perpetuate (at times, unwittingly) a neo-colonial agenda in which Indigenous claims would be recognized by a liberal state the degree that Indigenous tribes assimilate to European cultural self-understandings. (shrink)

Borrowing the functional modeling approach common in systems and software engineering, an implementable model of the functions of human consciousness proposed to have the capacity for general problem solving ability transferable to any domain, or true self-aware intelligence, is presented. Being a functional model that is independent of implementation, this model is proposed to also be applicable to artificial consciousness, and to platforms that organize individuals into what is defined here as a first order collective consciousness, or at (...) higher orders into what is defined here as Nth order collective consciousness. Part I of this two-part article includes: Summary; Introduction; Set of Postulates One; Set of Postulates Two; Overview of the Model; Model of Homeostasis; Model of the Functional Units; Model of the Body System; Model of the Other Basic Life Processes; Model of the Other Functional Systems; Model of Perceptions in the Perceptual Fields; Model of Body Processes as Paths in the Perceptual Field; & Model of Conscious Awareness. (shrink)

This dissertation critically examines the writings of Max Stirner, especially his masterpiece The Ego and Its Own, as a discourse of resistance against modern forms of domination and, in particular, against the modern political State. I begin by examining Stirner's inversion of the Hegelian concept of the State, from the “actualization of freedom”to an instance of domination. The State appears, to Stirner as to Hegel, as the guardian of order and cohesion in modern societies. While both recognize the genesis of (...) sovereign power as violent, Hegel sustains that, with the progress of civilization, force is eradicated from the public order and private interests and common interest are reconciled. Stirner, on the contrary, insists that force is the other face of right, as the hidden pillar of the norm, which only reveals itself in moments of crisis. Stirner’s focus on the extreme case, largely anticipated and devalued by Hegel as unilateral and equivocal, seems to be anchored on the conviction that conflict is ineradicable, that between my own will and the (political, social) representation of that will there is always a gap, which cannot be filled by any collective arrangement. From this follows that, if conflict is scarcely manifest in modern societies, it is not because it was truly solved, but because it is effectively masked, due to the dissymmetry of power and the internalization of authority. The “unique one” appears, in this environment of great suspicion, as the one who cannot be represented, who surpasses every representation, threatening the authority of every representative. Accordingly, the “unique one” reclaims his own power, without allowing the satisfaction of his will to be mediated by obedience to collective institutions, affirming himself instead as sovereign over himself. Stirner suggests that the self-affirmation of the “unique one” inevitably leads to confrontation with the external powers that organize his existence. Stirner, nonetheless, chooses to think this confrontation in terms of a “revolt”, of a reflexive and individual act by which the individual emerges from the situation in which he finds himself, rather than as a “revolution”, a political or social act directed towards the systemic transformation of the status quo. Even if we admit the validity of the Stirnerian critique of the legitimizing discourses of modernity, the problem remains if this critique can be sustained on the “unique one”, “a thoughtless word”, an openly self-contradictory and self-destructive name, subject or principle (?). The possibility of founding a discourse of resistance on the egoism of Max Stirner seems to depend upon the answer that we choose to give to two intimately connected questions: what remains after the destructive vortex of the “unique one” that may sustain the resistance against a state that Max Stirner deems oppressive? Can this resistance be realized in the revolt of a unique one without the recognition of another one with whom to build the conditions of freedom? (shrink)

The paper deals with an argument reported by Razi (d. 1210) that was used to attempt to refute the immateriality of human nature. This argument is based on an epistemic asymmetry between our self-knowledge and our knowledge of immaterial things. After some preliminary remarks, the paper analyzes the structure of the argument in four steps. From a methodological point of view, the argument is similar to a family of epistemological arguments (notably, the Cartesian argument from doubt) and is vulnerable (...) to the same objection that can be raised against that form of reasoning. The last section points out that the argument can be used indirectly to highlight the weakness in some arguments for the claim that there is something immaterial in human beings. (shrink)

In this entry, I seek to show the interdependence of questions about self-deception in philosophy of mind, psychology, and ethics. I taxonomize solutions to the paradoxes of self-deception, present possible psychological mechanisms behind it, and highlight how different approaches to the philosophy of mind and psychology will affect how we answer important ethical questions. Is self-deception conducive to happiness? How does self-deception affect responsibility? Is there something intrinsically wrong with self-deception? The entry, on the one (...) hand, is a tour of the literature; on the other, it is a case for more work that crosses traditional sub-disciplinary boundaries. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between implicit self-related information and explicit self-representation and argues that the latter is required for self-consciousness. It is further argued that self-consciousness requires an awareness of other minds and that this awareness develops over the course of an increasingly complex perspectival differentiation, during which information about self and other that is implicit in early forms of social interaction becomes redescribed into an explicit format.

After distinguishing between a metaphysical and a contemplative strategy interpretation of the no-self doctrine, I argue that the latter allows for the illumination of significant and under-discussed Kantian affinities with Buddhist views of the self and moral psychology. Unlike its metaphysical counterpart, the contemplative strategy interpretation, understands the doctrine of no-self as a technique of perception, undertaken from the practical standpoint of action. I argue that if we think of the contemplative strategy version of the no-self (...) doctrine as a process engaged in, in order to free oneself from delusion and to see things more objectively in order to promote right action, then we find a clear parallel in Kant’s duty of self-knowledge which demands that we rid ourselves of deluded moral self-descriptions. While in Buddhism the aim is a selflessness that liberates one from suffering, for Kant the aim is an agency free of the conceit that interferes with clear moral vision, sound judgement, and dutiful action. I conclude by responding to objections advanced by Charles Goodman which aim to show that the Kantian position is deeply at odds with Buddhist thinking, arguing that neither Kantian agency nor Kantian self-legislation is undermined by the doctrine of no-self. (shrink)

When I started reading Sara Protasi’s book, The Philosophy of Envy, I was excited to learn more about an emotion I thought I rarely experienced. In the opening pages, I found myself nodding along as Protasi quotes her mother saying: “I never feel envy, but I often feel jealousy!” (6). But envy, it turns out, is sneaky, often masking itself in the guise of other emotions, hiding just below the surface. What this meticulously argued book unveils is both a nuanced (...) taxonomy of different kinds of envy and the intimate relationship that envy has to all manner of other emotions, including jealousy, shame, resentment, despair, and love. I now recognize that not only am I more familiar with envy than I supposed, but I experience envy rather often. This got me thinking about other instances of envy that I experience which I have previously overlooked or perhaps mislabeled. Prompted by Protasi’s insightful handling of envy in its varied forms, one question kept coming back to me: can you envy yourself? (shrink)

Hering’s opponent-colors theory suggests that our color sensations are produced by three mechanisms: a red–green mechanism, a yellow–blue mechanism, and a white–black mechanism. The first two mechanisms give rise to our sensations of hued colors; the third mechanism gives rise to our sensations of hueless colors. Noticeably, whereas the pair of colors produced by each of the hued mechanisms do not mix to yield a phenomenal intermediate (i.e., there are no greenish reds, reddish greens, yellowish blues, or bluish yellows), the (...) colors produced by the hueless mechanism, white and black, do have a phenomenal intermediate—gray. This different behavior of the white–black mechanism poses a problem for Hering’s theory. Several attempts to fix this problem have been suggested. This paper focuses on the suggestion made by Paul Heggelund a century after Hering proposed his theory. In Heggelund’s amendment of Hering’s theory, the hueless colors are not confined to the one-dimensional gamut between black and white, but rather require two components for their full description: a light–dark (or luminous–black) component, where light and dark are mutually exclusive sensations, and a white component, which doesn’t have an opponent counterpart. Here I show that although Heggelund’s theory indeed provides a solution to the problem that the hueless colors pose to Hering’s theory, it is not self-consistent. I go on to revise Heggelund’s theory to obtain a consistent opponent-colors theory. (shrink)

Self-locating attitudes and assertions provide a challenge to the received view of mental and linguistic intentionality. In this paper I try to show that the best way to meet this challenge is to adopt relativistic, centred possible worlds accounts for both belief and communication. First, I argue that self-locating beliefs support a centred account of belief. Second, I argue that self-locating utterances support a complementary centred account of communication. Together, these two claims motivate a unified centred conception (...) of belief and communication. (shrink)

Certain situations seem to call for acknowledging the possibility that one’s own beliefs are biased or distorted. On the other hand, certain sorts of epistemic self-doubts (such as ‘I believe it’s raining, but it’s not’) seem paradoxical. And some have put forth epistemic principles requiring rational agents to regard their own credences as so-called ‘expert functions’. This paper examines the question of whether rationality requires agents to respect their own credences in a way in which they need not respect (...) the credences of others. (shrink)

This paper examines the issue of what the self is by reviewing neuropsychological research,which converges on the idea that the self may be more complex and differentiated than previous treatments of the topic have suggested. Although some aspects of self-knowledge such as episodic recollection may be compromised in individuals, other aspects—for instance, semantic trait summaries—appear largely intact. Taken together, these findings support the idea that the self is not a single, unified entity. Rather, it is a (...) set of interrelated, functionally independent systems. Implications for understanding the self in various areas of psychological research—e.g., neuroimaging, autism, amnesia, Alzheimer’s disease, and mirror self-recognition—are discussed in brief. (shrink)

An exciting theory in neuroscience is that the brain is an organ for prediction error minimization. This theory is rapidly gaining influence and is set to dominate the science of mind and brain in the years to come. PEM has extreme explanatory ambition, and profound philosophical implications. Here, I assume the theory, briefly explain it, and then I argue that PEM implies that the brain is essentially self-evidencing. This means it is imperative to identify an evidentiary boundary between the (...) brain and its environment. This boundary defines the mind-world relation, opens the door to skepticism, and makes the mind transpire as more inferentially secluded and neurocentrically skull-bound than many would nowadays think. Therefore, PEM somewhat deflates contemporary hypotheses that cognition is extended, embodied and enactive; however, it can nevertheless accommodate the kinds of cases that fuel these hypotheses. (shrink)

Respect appears to generate a puzzling self-other asymmetry: Respect for others can demand that we avoid knowledge of others or ignore that knowledge in deciding how we treat others. This demand for epistemic distancing lies behind the imperatives not to violate others’ privacy or to treat them paternalistically. Self-respect, in contrast, mandates that we pursue knowledge of ourselves and that we choose and act light of that self-knowledge. Individual agents thus do not have a duty to epistemically (...) distance themselves from themselves; a fortiori, they have self-regarding duties to reduce such distance. This article elaborates this asymmetry and offers a plausible solution to it, rooted in the distinctive importance that self-knowledge (and acting in the world on the basis of that self-knowledge) has for self-respecting rational agents: Self-respecting agents have reasons to have others defer to their ‘surfaces’ or self-presentations in order to inhibit making themselves vulnerable to others in ways that undermine their self-respect by subordinating their wills to the wills of others. A measure of control over what others know about us and over what they do with that knowledge thus undergirds self-respect by enabling self-knowledge to play the role that it should play in the lives of self-respecting agents. Epistemic distancing thus operates in concert with the ways in which self-respecting agents value and pursue epistemic intimacy with themselves. (shrink)

Our emotions can be revealing. They can not only reflect our character traits and our judgments, but they can also tell us things about ourselves that we do not fully realize or may not want to admit. In this chapter, I am particularly interested in how we relate to what I will call alienated emotions: emotional experiences that are unusual, surprising, or even disturbing. What, if anything, do our alienated emotions tell us about who we are? I argue here that (...) alienated emotions lead to important questions about the ethics of self-interpretation. (shrink)

Self-evidencing describes the purported predictive processing of all self-organising systems, whether conscious or not. Self-evidencing in itself is therefore not sufficient for consciousness. Different systems may however be capable of self-evidencing in different, specific and distinct ways. Some of these ways of self-evidencing can be matched up with, and explain, several properties of consciousness. This carves out a distinction in nature between those systems that are conscious, as described by these properties, and those that are (...) not. This approach throws new light on phenomenology, and suggests that some self-evidencing may be characteristic of consciousness. (shrink)

According to conciliatory views on the significance of disagreement, it’s rational for you to become less confident in your take on an issue in case your epistemic peer’s take on it is different. These views are intuitively appealing, but they also face a powerful objection: in scenarios that involve disagreements over their own correctness, conciliatory views appear to self-defeat and, thereby, issue inconsistent recommendations. This paper provides a response to this objection. Drawing on the work from defeasible logics paradigm (...) and abstract argumentation, it develops a formal model of conciliatory reasoning and explores its behavior in the troubling scenarios. The model suggests that the recommendations that conciliatory views issue in such scenarios are perfectly reasonable—even if outwardly they may look odd. (shrink)

This chapter argues that our self-knowledge is often mediated by our affective self-knowledge. In other words, we often know about ourselves by knowing our own emotions. More precisely, what Cassam has called “substantial self-knowledge” (SSK), such as self-knowledge of one's character, one's values, or one's aptitudes, is mediated by affective forecasting, which is the process of predicting one's emotional responses to possible situations. For instance, a person comes to know that she is courageous by predicting her (...) own emotional reactions to possible risks and dangers. This hypothesis explains why attaining substantive self-knowledge tends to be difficult. Attaining substantive self-knowledge is difficult because, first, SSK is mediated by affective forecasting and, second, we tend to be wrong about predicting the intensity and duration of our own emotional reactions. As a result, we can identify what is common to central cases of SSK: such cases require knowledge about complex dispositions whose manifestations involve affective responses that one is not sufficiently familiar with. One thus needs to resort to the highly fallible method of affective forecasting. (shrink)

*As mentioned in Peter Coy's NYT essay "When Being Good Is Just a Matter of Being Lucky" (2023) -/- ----- -/- How is the problem of free will related to the problem of moral luck? In this essay, I answer that question and outline a new solution to the paradox of moral luck, the source-paradox solution. This solution both explains why the paradox arises and why moral luck does not exist. To make my case, I highlight a few key connections (...) between the paradox of moral luck and two related problems, namely the problem of free will and determinism and the paradox of self-creation. Piecing together intuitions, arguments, and insights from recent work on each of these three problems, I argue that the type of control necessary for moral responsibility can only be had by someone who is a genuine source of his own actions, but the relevant notion of sourcehood admits no coherent characterization. If our commonsense view of moral responsibility is incoherent, it is unsurprising that our commitment to the existence of morally responsible agents commits us to some paradoxical things—e.g. to both the existence and impossibility of moral luck. For more information about this article, please write to gmail account: kristin.mickelson.42. (shrink)

This paper puts forward an account of blame combining two ideas that are usually set up against each other: that blame performs an important function, and that blame is justified by the moral reasons making people blameworthy rather than by its functionality. The paper argues that blame could not have developed in a purely instrumental form, and that its functionality itself demands that its functionality be effaced in favour of non-instrumental reasons for blame—its functionality is self-effacing. This notion is (...) sharpened and it is shown how it offers an alternative to instrumentalist or consequentialist accounts of blame which preserves their animating insight while avoiding their weaknesses by recasting that insight in an explanatory role. This not only allows one to do better justice to the authority and autonomy of non-instrumental reasons for blame, but also reveals that autonomy to be a precondition of blame’s functionality. Unlike rival accounts, it also avoids the “alienation effect” that renders blame unstable under reflection by undercutting the authority of the moral reasons which enable it to perform its function in the first place. It instead yields a vindicatory explanation that strengthens our confidence in those moral reasons. (shrink)

Wars are large-scale conflicts between organized groups of belligerents, which involve suffering, devastation, and brutality unlike almost anything else in human experience. Whatever one’s other beliefs about morality, all should agree that the horrors of war are all but unconscionable, and that warfare can be justified only if we have some compel- ling account of what is worth fighting for, which can justify contributing, as individu- als and as groups, to this calamitous endeavour. Although this question should obviously be central (...) to both philosophical and politi- cal discussion about war, it is at the forefront of neither. In recent years, philosophical discussion of warfare has bloomed, but the debate has focused on whom we may kill, on the assumption that our aims are justified.1 Political debate, meanwhile, is more concerned with matters of prudence, international law, and public justification, than with reassessing what is worth fighting for. For wars of intervention to halt or prevent massive humanitarian crises, this gap is not so troubling. When warfare is the only means to prevent the mass killing or enslavement of the innocent, the purposes of military force are clear enough (though undoubtedly many other problems remain). The problem is more pressing, how- ever, for the justification of national defence.3 Although common-sense morality and international law view national defence as the paradigm case of justified warfare, grounding this consensus is surprisingly difficult.4 We typically believe that any state is justified in using lethal force to protect its territory against any form of uninvited military incursion by any other state. And yet we lack a good argument to explain why this should be so. In this chapter, I explain why one familiar and otherwise plausible approach to the justification of killing in war cannot adequately ground common-sense views of permissible national defence.5 Reductionists believe that justified warfare reduces to an aggregation of acts that are justified under ordinary principles of interpersonal morality.6 The standard form of reductionism focuses on the principles governing killing in ordinary life, specifically those that justify intentional killing in self- and other-defence, and unintended but foreseen (for short, collateral) killing as a lesser evil. Justified warfare, on this view, is no more than the coextension of multiple acts justified under these two principles. Reductionism is the default philosophical approach to thinking through the ethics of killing in war. It makes perfect sense to ask what principles govern permissible kill- ing in general, before applying them to the particular context of war. If it cannot deliver a plausible set of conclusions about when national defence is permitted, then we must either revise our beliefs about which conclusions count as plausible, or else face the significant challenge of developing a different theoretical model for justifying war- fare—an exceptionalist model, which views war as an exception to the regular moral landscape, to which principles apply which apply to nothing else but war.7 We must show, in other words, that there is something worth fighting for in wars of national defence, which is not engaged when we use force in any other context. The chapter proceeds as follows. Section 2.2 sets out the argument against reduc- tionism.8 Section 2.3 considers and rebuts one common response to the argument, which has often been thought sufficient grounds to disregard its conclusion. Section 2.4 then asks whether a modified reductionism would survive unscathed by the argu- ment. Finally, section 2.5 sets out some desiderata on a plausible exceptionalist alterna- tive. Section 2.6 concludes. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the method of transparency --determining whether I believe that p by considering whether p -- does not explain our privileged access to our own beliefs. Looking outward to determine whether one believes that p leads to the formation of a judgment about whether p, which one can then self-attribute. But use of this process does not constitute genuine privileged access to whether one judges that p. And looking outward will not provide for access (...) to dispositional beliefs, which are arguably more central examples of belief than occurrent judgments. First, one’s dispositional beliefs as to whether p may diverge from the occurrent judgments generated by the method of transparency. Second, even in cases where these are reliably linked — e.g., in which one’s judgment that p derives from one’s dispositional belief that p — using the judgment to self-attribute the dispositional belief requires an ‘inward’ gaze. (shrink)

Many philosophers believe that agents are self-ruled only when ruled by their (authentic) selves. Though this view is rarely argued for explicitly, one tempting line of thought suggests that self-rule is just obviously equivalent to rule by the self . However, the plausibility of this thought evaporates upon close examination of the logic of ‘self-rule’ and similar reflexives. Moreover, attempts to rescue the account by recasting it in negative terms are unpromising. In light of these problems, (...) this paper instead proposes that agents are self-ruled only when not ruled by others. One reason for favouring this negative social view is its ability to yield plausible conclusions concerning various manipulation cases that are notoriously problematic for nonsocial accounts of self-rule. A second reason is that the account conforms with ordinary usage. It is concluded that self-rule may be best thought of as an essentially social concept. (shrink)

Philosophers ask just whose expression, if anyone’s, we hear in lyric poetry. Walton provides a novel possibility: it’s the reader who “uses” the poem (just as a speech giver uses a speech) who makes the language expressive. But worries arise once we consider poems in particular social or political settings, those which require a strong self-other distinction, or those with expressions that should not be disassociated from the subjects whose experience they draw from. One way to meet this challenge (...) is to consider the poem expressive of a plural subject, which frees us from looking for a particular individual whose voice we hear in the work, whether she be fictional or actual. Some lyrics give voice to a group whose experience is attended to in the work. This may be done through a posited fictional speaker, but the ontology of the speaker is shown to be less important. Attending to a group whose concerns are voiced allows us to explain how poems can manage to address our-worldly concerns even when lacking actual persons whose expressions we encounter in the poems. (shrink)

The suppression thesis is the theological claim that theistic non-belief results from culpable mistreatment of one’s knowledge of God or one’s evidence for God. The thesis is a traditional one but unpopular today. This article examines whether it can gain new credibility from the philosophy of self-deception and from the cognitive science of religion. The thesis is analysed in terms of the intentionalist and the non-intentionalist model of self-deception. The first proposed model views non-belief as intentional suppression of (...) one’s implicit knowledge of God. It is less feasible psychologically but has a good theological fit with Paul’s and Calvin’s versions of the thesis. This model also helps the argument for the culpability of non-belief. The second model views suppression as a process of subconscious motivated reasoning driven by a desire to avoid an uncomfortable truth. It fits Pascal’s view that one’s desire for or against God determines whether one sees general revelation as providing sufficient evidence for God. There is some empirical and anecdotal evidence for both models, but obvious cases of non-resistant non-belief present a major problem for the suppression thesis. Also, it is hard to see what might motivate anyone to deceive oneself about God’s existence. (shrink)

Users of psychedelic drugs often report that their sense of being a self or ‘I’ distinct from the rest of the world has diminished or altogether dissolved. Neuroscientific study of such ‘ego dissolution’ experiences offers a window onto the nature of self-awareness. We argue that ego dissolution is best explained by an account that explains self-awareness as resulting from the integrated functioning of hierarchical predictive models which posit the existence of a stable and unchanging entity to which (...) representations are bound. Combining recent work on the ‘integrative self' and the phenomenon of self-binding with predictive processing principles yields an explanation of ego dissolution according to which self-representation is a useful Cartesian fiction: an ultimately false representation of a simple and enduring substance to which attributes are bound which serves to integrate and unify cognitive processing across levels and domains. The self-model is not a mere narrative posit, as some have suggested; it has a more robust and ubiquitous cognitive function than that. But this does not mean, as others have claimed, that the self-model has the right attributes to qualify as a self. It performs some of the right kinds of functions, but it is not the right kind of entity. Ego dissolution experiences reveal that the self-model plays an important binding function in cognitive processing, but the self does not exist. (shrink)

Closure for justification is the claim that thinkers are justified in believing the logical consequences of their justified beliefs, at least when those consequences are competently deduced. Many have found this principle to be very plausible. Even more attractive is the special case of Closure known as Single-Premise Closure. In this paper, I present a challenge to Single-Premise Closure. The challenge is based on the phenomenon of rational self-doubt – it can be rational to be less than fully confident (...) in one's beliefs and patterns of reasoning. In rough outline, the argument is as follows: Consider a thinker who deduces a conclusion from a justified initial premise via an incredibly long sequence of small competent deductions. Surely, such a thinker should suspect that he has made a mistake somewhere. And surely, given this, he should not believe the conclusion of the deduction even though he has a justified belief in the initial premise. (shrink)

This paper seeks to carve out a distinctive category of conspiracy theorist, and to explore the process of becoming a conspiracy theorist of this sort. Those on whom I focus claim their beliefs trace back to simply trusting their senses and experiences in a commonsensical way, citing what they take to be authoritative firsthand evidence or observations. Certain flat Earthers, anti-vaxxers, and UFO conspiracy theorists, for example, describe their beliefs and evidence this way. I first distinguish these conspiracy theorists by (...) contrasting them with another group that has recently received a lot of attention from the media, philosophers, and academics more broadly. I then dig more deeply into the nature of these conspiracy theorists’ epistemic self-understanding, in order to give an account of the process by which one becomes such a conspiracy theorist. I conclude with some takeaways and implications: first, I explore the implications of my account for whether these conspiracy theorists’ beliefs are rational; then, I argue that my account has practical takeaways about counteracting beliefs in misinformation, since strategies appropriate to this kind of conspiracy theorist may not be the same ones that are appropriate for other kinds. (shrink)

A longstanding issue in attempts to understand the Everett (Many-Worlds) approach to quantum mechanics is the origin of the Born rule: why is the probability given by the square of the amplitude? Following Vaidman, we note that observers are in a position of self-locating uncertainty during the period between the branches of the wave function splitting via decoherence and the observer registering the outcome of the measurement. In this period it is tempting to regard each branch as equiprobable, but (...) we argue that the temptation should be resisted. Applying lessons from this analysis, we demonstrate (using methods similar to those of Zurek's envariance-based derivation) that the Born rule is the uniquely rational way of apportioning credence in Everettian quantum mechanics. In doing so, we rely on a single key principle: changes purely to the environment do not affect the probabilities one ought to assign to measurement outcomes in a local subsystem. We arrive at a method for assigning probabilities in cases that involve both classical and quantum self-locating uncertainty. This method provides unique answers to quantum Sleeping Beauty problems, as well as a well-defined procedure for calculating probabilities in quantum cosmological multiverses with multiple similar observers. (shrink)

When are morally good actions beautiful, when indeed they are? In this paper, it is argued that morally good actions are beautiful when they appear to express the deep or true self, and in turn tend to give rise to an emotion which is characterised by feelings of being moved, unity, inspiration, and meaningfulness, inter alia. In advancing the case for this claim, it is revealed that there are additional sources of well-formedness in play in the context of moral (...) beauty in addition to those that have tended to be focused on to date: one which is connected to imagining a deep location for the goodness concerned, and another which is connected to imagining that the goodness stems from capacities which are essential to the person. (shrink)

According to the Self-Location Thesis, one’s own location can be among the things that visual experience represents, even when one’s body is entirely out of view. By contrast, the Minimal View denies this, and says that visual experience represents things only as "to the right", etc., and never as "to the right of me". But the Minimal View is phenomenologically inadequate: it cannot explain the difference between a visual experience of self-motion and one of an oppositely moving world. (...) To show this, I argue (i) that these experiences are different in an important respect, (ii) that this difference is genuinely experiential, (iii) that it is visual, (iv) that it is not purely phenomenal, and (v) that it cannot be identified with anything other than the apparent motion of the self. So the Self-Location Thesis is upheld: reports of one’s own motion can correspond to aspects of visual experiences every bit as basic to their contents as the apparent motion or rest of the things one has in view. (shrink)

Self-employment merits protection and promotion, we often hear, because it confers independence from a boss. But what, if anything, is wrong with having a boss? On one of the two views that this chapter inspects, being under the power of a boss is objectionable as such, no matter how suitably checked this power may be, for it undermines workers’ agency. On a second view, which republican theorists favor, what is objectionable is subjection not to the power of a boss (...) as such but to their arbitrary power. The first view is unconvincing, I argue, as it entails (implausibly) that being under the power of others in realms like the family or the state is likewise objectionable as such. And although the second view yields compelling reasons for self-employment, it only does so when employers’ power is not suitably checked. When it is, such reasons are more easily outweighed by competing considerations, like those stemming from the further forms of dependence—on suppliers and purchasers—that self-employment may prompt. (shrink)

Throughout her work, Audre Lorde maintains that her self-preservation in the face of oppression depends on acting from the recognition and valorization of her feelings as a deep source of knowledge. This claim, taken as a portrayal of agency, poses challenges to standard positions in ethics, epistemology, and moral psychology. This article examines the oppositional agency articulated by Lorde’s thought, locating feeling, poetry, and the power she calls “the erotic” within her avowed project of self-preservation. It then explores (...) the implications of taking seriously Lorde’s account, particularly for theorists examining ethics and epistemology under nonideal social conditions. For situations of sexual intimacy, for example, Lorde’s account unsettles prevailing assumptions about the role of consent in responsibility between sexual partners. I argue that obligations to solicit consent and respect refusal are not sufficient to acknowledge the value of agency in intimate encounters when agency is oppositional in the way Lorde describes. (shrink)