Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is open to many readings, but one that has yet to be explored is the existential reading of Ahab’s pursuit from a gender perspective. By weaving together biblical, mythical, and mystical elements, the novel promises that Captain Ahab’s vengeance on the whale actually transcends the expected qualities of a maritime quest. A self-made man, Ahab endures his ever-present obsession and relentlessly clings to his deadliest struggle, which echoes Sartre’s proclamation, “Man is nothing else but what he (...) makes of himself.” Yet, intricately entwined with the spirit of nineteenth-century America, Ahab's character also assumes a canonical representation of American ideals. Thus, his hunting pursuit is overlaid onto America’s expansionist and imperialist mindset in the nineteenth century, which complements the hegemonically masculine manner camouflaged under this political ethos. Bearing this in mind, Melville subtly indicates that Ahab’s urge to assert his superiority over the whale is related to the biblical context of appointing females as something to take revenge on. In this narrative, Ahab's embodiment of the American hero undergoes a metamorphosis into an American Adam figure by asserting dominance over the whale that symbolises female subjugation. Interrogating Ahab's portrayal as an American Adam-type within the broader societal and political contexts of supremacist ideals, this article delves into Ahab's pursuit through the lens of Sartrean Existentialism. By doing so, this article interprets Ahab’s idealistic quest to hunt down the whale as a metaphor for hegemonic masculinity and subordinate femininity by exploring the subject/object, and the pursuer/pursued dynamics. (shrink)

I call the activity of assessing and developing improvements of our representational devices ‘conceptual engineering’.¹ The aim of this chapter is to present an argument for why conceptual engineering is important for all parts of philosophy (and, more generally, all inquiry). Section I of the chapter provides some background and defines key terms. Section II presents the argument. Section III responds to seven objections. The replies also serve to develop the argument and clarify what conceptual engineering is.

New technologies are the source of uncertainties about the applicability of moral and morally connotated concepts. These uncertainties sometimes call for conceptual engineering, but it is not often recognized when this is the case. We take this to be a missed opportunity, as a recognition that different researchers are working on the same kind of project can help solve methodological questions that one is likely to encounter. In this paper, we present three case studies where philosophers of technology implicitly engage (...) in conceptual engineering (without naming it as such). We subsequently reflect on the case studies to find out how these illustrate conceptual engineering as an appropriate method to deal with pressing concerns in the philosophy of technology. We have two main goals. We first want to contribute to the literature on conceptual engineering by presenting concrete examples of conceptual engineering in the philosophy of technology. This is especially relevant, because the technologies that are designed based on the conceptual work done by philosophers of technology potentially have crucial moral and social implications. Secondly, we want to make explicit what choices are made when doing this conceptual work. Making explicit that some of the implicit assumptions are, in fact, debated in the literature allows for reflection on these questions. Ultimately, our hope is that conscious reflection leads to an improvement of the conceptual work done. (shrink)

In this Introduction, we aim to introduce the reader to the basic topic of this book. As part of this, we explain why we are using two different expressions (‘conceptual engineering’ and ‘conceptual ethics’) to describe the topics in the book. We then turn to some of the central foundational issues that arise for conceptual engineering and conceptual ethics, and finally we outline various views one might have about their role in philosophy and inquiry more generally.

Since the release of ChatGPT, there has been a lot of debate about whether AI systems pose an existential risk to humanity. This paper develops a general framework for thinking about the existential risk of AI systems. We analyze a two-premise argument that AI systems pose a threat to humanity. Premise one: AI systems will become extremely powerful. Premise two: if AI systems become extremely powerful, they will destroy humanity. We use these two premises to construct a taxonomy of ‘survival (...) stories’, in which humanity survives into the far future. In each survival story, one of the two premises fails. Either scientific barriers prevent AI systems from becoming extremely powerful; or humanity bans research into AI systems, thereby preventing them from becoming extremely powerful; or extremely powerful AI systems do not destroy humanity, because their goals prevent them from doing so; or extremely powerful AI systems do not destroy humanity, because we can reliably detect and disable systems that have the goal of doing so. We argue that different survival stories face different challenges. We also argue that different survival stories motivate different responses to the threats from AI. Finally, we use our taxonomy to produce rough estimates of ‘P(doom)’, the probability that humanity will be destroyed by AI. (shrink)

This is a reply to de Sousa's 'Emotional Truth', in which he argues that emotions can be objective, as propositional truths are. I say that it is better to distinguish between truth and accuracy, and agree with de Sousa to the extent of arguing that emotions can be more or less accurate, that is, based on the facts as they are.

This essay critically examines some classic philosophical and legal theories of privacy, organized into four categories: the nonintrusion, seclusion, limitation, and control theories of privacy. Although each theory includes one or more important insights regarding the concept of privacy, I argue that each falls short of providing an adequate account of privacy. I then examine and defend a theory of privacy that incorporates elements of the classic theories into one unified theory: the Restricted Access/Limited Control (RALC) theory of privacy. Using (...) an example involving data-mining technology on the Internet, I show how RALC can help us to frame an online privacy policy that is sufficiently comprehensive in scope to address a wide range of privacy concerns that arise in connection with computers and information technology. (shrink)

”Meaningful human control” is a term invented in the political and legal debate on autonomous weapons system, but it is nowadays also used in many other contexts. It is supposed to specify conditions under which an artificial system is under the right kind of control to avoid responsibility gaps: that is, situations in which no moral agent is responsible. Santoni de Sio and Van den Hoven have recently suggested a framework that can be used by system designers to operationalize this (...) kind of control. It is the purpose of this paper to facilitate further operationalization of ”meaningful human control”. -/- This paper consists of two parts. In the first part I resolve an ambiguity that plagues current operationalizations of MHC. One of the design conditions says that the system should track the reasons of the relevant agents. This condition is ambiguous between the kind of reasons involved. On one interpretation it says that a system should track motivating reasons, while it is concerned with normative reasons on the other. Current participants in the debate interpret the framework as being concerned with (something in the vicinity of) motivating reasons. I argue against this interpretation by showing that meaningful human control requires that a system tracks normative reasons. Moreover, I maintain that an operationalization of meaningful human control that fails to track the right kind of reasons is morally problematic.When this is properly understood, it can be shown that the framework of MHC is committed to the agent-relativity of reasons. More precisely, I argue in the second part of this paper that if the tracking condition of MHC plays an important role in responsibility attribution (as the proponents of the view maintain), then the framework is incompatible with first-order normative theories that hold that normative reasons are agent-neutral (such as many versions of consequentialism). In the final section I present three ways forward for the proponent of MHC as reason-responsiveness. (shrink)

By focussing on the logical relations between scientific theories and religious beliefs in his book Where the Conflict Really Lies, Alvin Plantinga overlooks the real conflict between science and religion. This conflict exists whenever religious believers endorse positive factual claims to truth concerning the supernatural. They thereby violate an important rule of scientific method and of common sense, according to which factual claims should be endorsed as true only if they result from validated epistemic methods or sources.

Conceptual engineering is now a central topic in contemporary philosophy. Just 4-5 years ago it wasn’t. People were then engaged in the engineering of various philosophical concepts (in various sub-disciplines), but typically not self-consciously so. Qua philosophical method, conceptual engineering was under-explored, often ignored, and poorly understood. In my lifetime, I have never seen interest in a philosophical topic grow with such explosive intensity. The sociology behind this is fascinating and no doubt immensely complex (and an excellent case study for (...) those interested in the dynamics of academic disciplines). That topic, however, will have to wait for another occasion. Suffice it to say that if Fixing Language (FL) contributed even a little bit to this change of focus in philosophical methodology, it would have achieved one of its central goals. In that connection, it is encouraging that the papers in this symposium are in fundamental agreement about the significance and centrality of conceptual engineering to philosophy. That said, the goal of FL was not only to advocate for a topic, but also to defend a particular approach to it: The Austerity Framework. These replies have helped me see clearer the limitations of that view and points where my presentation was suboptimal. The responses below are in part a reconstruction of what I had in mind while writing the book and in part an effort to ameliorate. I’m grateful to the symposiasts for helping me get a better grip on these very hard issues. (shrink)

Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 2-3, Page 221-237, April 2022.

Machery’s book is an effort to show how experimental philosophy can be valuable without the perephenelia of intuitions. I argue that the effort fails.

This paper presents an argument that certain AI safety measures, rather than mitigating existential risk, may instead exacerbate it. Under certain key assumptions - the inevitability of AI failure, the expected correlation between an AI system's power at the point of failure and the severity of the resulting harm, and the tendency of safety measures to enable AI systems to become more powerful before failing - safety efforts have negative expected utility. The paper examines three response strategies: Optimism, Mitigation, and (...) Holism. Each faces challenges stemming from intrinsic features of the AI safety landscape that we term Bottlenecking, the Perfection Barrier, and Equilibrium Fluctuation. The surprising robustness of the argument forces a re-examination of core assumptions around AI safety and points to several avenues for further research. (shrink)

The linguistic turn provided philosophers with a range of reasons for engaging in careful investigation into the nature and structure of language. However, the linguistic turn is dead. The arguments for it have been abandoned. This raises the question: why should philosophers take an interest in the minutiae of natural language semantics? I’ll argue that there isn’t much of a reason - philosophy of language has lost its way. Then I provide a suggestion for how it can find its way (...) again. (shrink)

Artificial agents create significant moral opportunities and challenges. Over the last two decades, discourse has largely focused on the concept of a ‘responsibility gap.’ We argue that this concept is incoherent, misguided, and diverts attention from the core issue of ‘control gaps.’ Control gaps arise when there is a discrepancy between the causal control an agent exercises and the moral control it should possess or emulate. Such gaps present moral risks, often leading to harm or ethical violations. We propose a (...) second-order ‘duty of moral control’ that mandates closing these gaps to reduce risks within acceptable moral limits. Our analysis encompasses both autonomous machines and collective agents, acknowledging their similarities and key differences in constitution and moral status. We suggest four methods to close control gaps: ensuring artificial agents attain moral agency, providing meaningful human control, implementing safety engineering, and employing social control. These methods aim to responsibly integrate artificial agents into society. We conclude that a realistic approach, which addresses the practical problems posed by control gaps, is essential. This approach provides solutions to manage the risks posed by artificial agents while maintaining acceptable moral standards, ensuring we responsibly harness their potential and address the ethical challenges they present. (shrink)

I assess Churchland's views on folk psychology and conceptual thinking, with particular emphasis on the connection between these topics.

In our book The Inessential Indexical we argue that the various theses of essential indexicality all fail. Indexicals are not essential, we conclude. One essentiality thesis we target in the third chapter is the claim that indexical attitudes are essential for action. Our strategy is to give examples of what we call impersonal action rationalizations , which explain actions without citing indexical attitudes. To defeat the claim that indexical attitudes are essential for action, it suffices that there could be even (...) one successful impersonal action rationalization. In what follows we bolster our case against an essential connection between action and the de se (or indexicality), first by developing a range of new action models and secondly by responding to challenges from Dilip Ninan, Stephan Torre, and José Luis Bermúdez . (shrink)

In order to predict and explain behavior, one cannot specify the mental state of an agent merely by saying what information she possesses. Instead one must specify what information is available to an agent relative to various purposes. Specifying mental states in this way allows us to accommodate cases of imperfect recall, cognitive accomplishments involved in logical deduction, the mental states of confused or fragmented subjects, and the difference between propositional knowledge and know-how .

Metasemantic inferentialismhas gained popularity in the last few decades. Traditionally, inferentialism is combined with a deflationary attitude towards semantic terms such as truth and reference, i.e., many inferentialists hold that when we use these semantic terms we do not purport to refer to substantive properties. This combination makes inferentialism attractive for philosophers who see themselves as antirealists. Although the attractions of combining inferentialism and deflationism are easy to see, deflationism is also a controversial position. For one, deflationists maintain that truth (...) is an insubstantive property, but it is not altogether clear what an insubstantive property is. Secondly, as deflationists maintain that truth does not play an explanatory role, it is incompatible with the position that truth can explain the normativity of truth talk. Given that deflationism faces these objections, it would be preferable if the success of inferentialism did not depend on the deflationist’s ability to respond to these objections. I argue that someone attracted to inferentialism for its ability to accommodate antirealist intuitions about a domain (e.g. morality) is not committed to deflationism about truth. More specifically, I will show that inferentialism combined with a straightforward account of inferentialist truth-conditions is compatible with a version of truth pluralism. I call this position Inferentialist Truth Pluralism. (shrink)

It would be good to have a Bayesian decision theory that assesses our decisions and thinking according to everyday standards of rationality — standards that do not require logical omniscience (Garber 1983, Hacking 1967). To that end we develop a “fragmented” decision theory in which a single state of mind is represented by a family of credence functions, each associated with a distinct choice condition (Lewis 1982, Stalnaker 1984). The theory imposes a local coherence assumption guaranteeing that as an agent's (...) attention shifts, successive batches of "obvious" logical information become available to her. A rule of expected utility maximization can then be applied to the decision of what to attend to next during a train of thought. On the resulting theory, rationality requires ordinary agents to be logically competent and to often engage in trains of thought that increase the unification of their states of mind. But rationality does not require ordinary agents to be logically omniscient. (shrink)

Proponents of epistocracy worry that high levels of voter ignorance can harm democracies. To combat such ignorance, they recommend allocating comparatively more political power to more politically knowledgeable citizens. In response, some recent critics of epistocracy contend that epistocratic institutions risk causing even more harm, since much evidence from political psychology indicates that more politically knowledgeable citizens are typically more biased, less open-minded, and more prone to motivated reasoning about political matters than their less knowledgeable counterparts. If so, perhaps epistocratic (...) institutions will perform worse epistemically than corresponding democratic institutions. Call this 'the problem of epistocratic irrationality'. This paper argues that the problem of epistocratic irrationality can be overcome. First, I argue that critics of epistocracy have overlooked several complications regarding the psychological data they claim shows that more knowledgeable citizens are less politically rational. Second, I argue that appropriately designed epistocratic institutions could overcome the problem of epistocratic irrationality even if such critics have interpreted the data correctly. I first explore whether refined selection mechanisms could allow epistocrats to avoid empowering less rational citizens, before assessing the prospects of implementing only those epistocratic institutions with a solid track record of reliable performance. (shrink)

There’s an interesting debate in moral and political philosophy about the nature of, and relationship between, ideal and non-ideal theory. In this paper we discuss whether an analogous distinction can be drawn in philosophy of language. Our conclusion is negative: Even if you think that distinction can be put to work within moral and political philosophy, there’s no useful way to extend it to work that has been done in the philosophy of language.

Conceptual engineering is the enterprise of evaluating and improving our representational devices. But how should we conduct this enterprise? One increasingly popular answer to this question proposes that conceptual engineering should proceed in terms of the functions of our representational devices. In this paper, we argue that the best way of understanding this suggestion is in terms of normative functions, where normative functions of concepts are, roughly, things that they allow us to do that matter normatively (for example, things in (...) virtue of which we have normative reasons to have these concepts). Not only does this introduce a novel view about functions to the literature. This proposal also fits more naturally than the alternatives with conceptual engineering as a normative enterprise, and it allows functions to play all of the explanatory roles assigned to them in the conceptual engineering literature. Our discussion of the explanatory advantages of normative functions also advances the understanding of the ways in which concepts can be authoritative, what this means for conceptual engineering, and highlights the importance of political philosophy for thinking about conceptual engineering in practice. Furthermore, the paper explicates what kind of role considerations about function can and should actually play in conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Politics is full of people who don't care about the facts. Still, while not caring about the facts, they are often concerned to present themselves as caring about them. Politics, in other words, is full of bullshitters. But why? In this paper I develop an incentives-based analysis of bullshit in politics, arguing that it is often a rational response to the incentives facing different groups of agents. In a slogan: bullshit in politics pays, sometimes literally. After first outlining an account (...) of bullshit, I discuss the incentives driving three different groups of agents to bullshit: politicians, the media, and voters. I then examine several existing proposals to combat bullshit in politics, arguing that each will fail because they ignore the relevant underlying incentives. I conclude somewhat pessimistically that a certain amount of bullshit in politics is inevitable. (shrink)

Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn attention to the technology’s transformative potential, including what some see as its prospects for causing large-scale harm. We review two influential arguments purporting to show how AI could pose catastrophic risks. The first argument — the Problem of Power-Seeking — claims that, under certain assumptions, advanced AI systems are likely to engage in dangerous power-seeking behavior in pursuit of their goals. We review reasons for thinking that AI systems might seek power, that (...) they might obtain it, that this could lead to catastrophe, and that we might build and deploy such systems anyway. The second argument claims that the development of human-level AI will unlock rapid further progress, culminating in AI systems far more capable than any human — this is the Singularity Hypothesis. Power-seeking behavior on the part of such systems might be particularly dangerous. We discuss a variety of objections to both arguments and conclude by assessing the state of the debate. (shrink)

During the past decade, a fairly extensive literature on the digital divide has emerged. Many reports and studies have provided statistical data pertaining to sociological aspects of ‘the divide,’ while some studies have examined policy issues involving universal service and universal access. Other studies have suggested ways in which the digital divide could be better understood if it were ‘reconceptualized’ in terms of an alternative metaphor, e.g. a ‘divide’ having to do with literacy, power, content, or the environment. However, with (...) the exception of Johnson and Koehler, authors have tended not to question ‐ at least not directly ‐ whether the digital divide is, at bottom, an ethical issue. Many authors seem to assume that because disparities involving access to computing technology exist, issues underlying the digital divide are necessarily moral in nature. Many further assume that because this particular ‘divide’ has to do with something that is digital or technological in nature, it is best understood as a computer ethical issue. The present study, which examines both assumptions, considers four questions: What exactly is the digital divide? Is this ‘divide’ ultimately an ethical issue? Assuming that the answer to is ‘yes,’ is the digital divide necessarily an issue for computer ethics? If the answer to is ‘yes,’ what can/should computer professionals do bridge the digital divide? (shrink)

Articles and clinical studies by psychologists, physicians, psychiatrists, theologians and philosophers explore human response to death and the treatment of death in modern art.

What makes democracy valuable? One traditional answer holds that participating in democratic self-government amounts to a kind of autonomy: it enables citizens to be the authors of their political affairs. Many contemporary philosophers, however, are skeptical. We are autonomous, they argue, when important features of our lives are up to us, but in a democracy we merely have a say in a process of collective choice. In this paper, we defend the possibility of democratic autonomy, by advancing a conception of (...) it which is impervious to this objection. At the core of our account is the idea of joint authorship. You are a joint author of something when that thing expresses your joint intentions. Democracy may not make any one of us sole author of our political affairs, but it can make us their joint authors. It is in such joint authorship, we claim, that the intrinsic value of democratic self-government consists. (shrink)

People’s beliefs about normality play an important role in many aspects of cognition and life (e.g., causal cognition, linguistic semantics, cooperative behavior). But how do people determine what sorts of things are normal in the first place? Past research has studied both people’s representations of statistical norms (e.g., the average) and their representations of prescriptive norms (e.g., the ideal). Four studies suggest that people’s notion of normality incorporates both of these types of norms. In particular, people’s representations of what is (...) normal were found to be influenced both by what they believed to be descriptively average and by what they believed to be prescriptively ideal. This is shown across three domains: people’s use of the word ‘‘normal” (Study 1), their use of gradable adjectives (Study 2), and their judgments of concept prototypicality (Study 3). A final study investigated the learning of normality for a novel category, showing that people actively combine statistical and prescriptive information they have learned into an undifferentiated notion of what is normal (Study 4). Taken together, these findings may help to explain how moral norms impact the acquisition of normality and, conversely, how normality impacts the acquisition of moral norms. (shrink)

Recent work in epistemology and philosophy of science has argued that understanding is an important cognitive state that philosophers should seek to analyse. This paper offers a new perspective on understanding by looking to work in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Understanding is normally taken to be inside the head. I argue that this view is mistaken. Often, understanding is a state that criss-crosses brain, body and world. To support this claim, I draw on extended cognition, a burgeoning framework (...) in cognitive science that stresses the crucial role played by tools, material representations and the wider environment in our cognitive processes. I defend an extended view of understanding against likely objections and argue that it has important consequences for questions concerning the nature of understanding and its relationship to explanation. (shrink)

We take it that conscious acquaintance has great epistemic value. I develop a new problem for reductive physicalism concerning the epistemic value of acquaintance. The problem concerns "multiple candidate cases". (This develops a theme of my paper *The Significance Argument for the Irreducibility of Consciousness", Philosophical Perspectives 2017.).

(1) Suppose that you care only about speaking the truth, and are confident that some particular deterministic theory is true. If someone asks you whether that theory is true, are you rationally required to answer "yes"? -/- (2) Suppose that you face a problem in which (as in Newcomb's problem) one of your options---call it "taking two boxes"---causally dominates your only other option. Are you rationally required to take two boxes? -/- Those of us attracted to causal decision theory are (...) under pressure to answer "yes" to both questions. However, it has been shown that many existing decision theories are inconsistent with doing so (Ahmed 2014). A simple proof shows that the same goes for an even wider class of theories: all "suppositional" decision theories. The moral is that causal decision theorists must either answer "no" to one of the above questions, or else abandon suppositional decision theories. (shrink)

This paper defends the concept of racialization against its critics. As the concept has become increasingly popular, questions about its meaning and value have been raised, and a backlash against its use has occurred. I argue that when “racialization” is properly understood, criticisms of the concept are unsuccessful. I defend a definition of racialization and identify its companion concept, “racialized group.” Racialization is often used as a synonym for “racial formation.” I argue that this is a mistake. Racial formation theory (...) is committed to racial ontology, but racialization is best understood as the process through which racialized – rather than racial – groups are formed. “Racialization” plays a unique role in the conceptual landscape, and it is a key concept for race eliminativists and anti-realists about race. (shrink)

Many contemporary democratic theorists are democratic egalitarians. They think that the distinctive value of democracy lies in equality. Yet this position faces a serious problem. All contemporary democracies are representative democracies. Such democracies are highly unequal: representatives have much more power than do ordinary citizens. So, it seems that democratic egalitarians must condemn representative democracies. In this paper, I present a solution to this problem. My solution invokes popular control. If representatives are under popular control, then their extra power is (...) not objectionable. Unfortunately, so I argue, in the United States representatives are under loose popular control. (shrink)

Experimental research suggests that people draw a moral distinction between bad outcomes brought about as a means versus a side effect (or byproduct). Such findings have informed multiple psychological and philosophical debates about moral cognition, including its computational structure, its sensitivity to the famous Doctrine of Double Effect, its reliability, and its status as a universal and innate mental module akin to universal grammar. But some studies have failed to replicate the means/byproduct effect especially in the absence of other factors, (...) such as personal contact. So we aimed to determine how robust the means/byproduct effect is by conducting a meta-analysis of both published and unpublished studies (k = 101; 24,058 participants). We found that while there is an overall small difference between moral judgments of means and byproducts (standardized mean difference = 0.87, 95% CI 0.67 – 1.06; standardized mean change = 0.57, 95% CI 0.44 – 0.69; log odds ratio = 1.59, 95% CI 1.15 – 2.02), the mean effect size is primarily moderated by whether the outcome is brought about by personal contact, which typically involves the use of personal force. (shrink)

Phenomenal intentionality is irreducible. Empirical investigation shows it is internally-dependent. So our usual externalist (causal, etc.) theories do not apply here. Internalist views of phenomenal intentionality (e. g. interpretationism) also fail. The resulting primitivist view avoids Papineau's worry that terms for consciousness are highly indeterminate: since conscious properties are extremely natural (despite having unnatural supervenience bases) they are 'reference magnets'.

VAN PRAAG (Paul), Introduction : le Père Henri Bosmans, histo­rien des mathématiques (pp. 7-16). SAUVAGE (Pierre), Notice biographique du Père Henri Bosmans (pp. 17-25). HERMANS (Michel), Henri Bosmans : sa formation et ses réseaux de rela­tions (pp. 27-72). DELANGHE (Richard), Quelques aspects de la vie et de l’œuvre de Paul Mansion (1844-1919) (pp. 73-82). BRIGAGLIA (Aldo), Saccheri vu par Corrado Segre en Italie et par Mansion et Bosmans en Belgique / traduit de l’italien par Bruna GAINO et Patricia RADELET-DE (...) GRAVE (pp. 83-104). MAWHIN (Jean), La tentative belge d’édition des œuvres complètes d’Euler vue par Henri Bos­mans (pp. 105-133). GOLVERS (Noël), Henri Bosmans, s.j., et la mission jésuite en Chine / traduit du néerlandais par Anne-Sophie MEURICE (pp. 135-152). ROMANO (Antonella), Henri Bosmans, jésuite et historien des mathéma­tiques dans la Belgique du premier XXe siècle (pp. 153-168). SAUVAGE (Pierre), Le Père Henri Bosmans et l’historiographie au tournant du XXe siècle (pp. 169-187). RADELET-DE GRAVE (Patricia), Le fonds Henri Bos­mans / avec un ajout de Michel HERMANS (pp. 189-215). MANSION (Paul), Correspondance de Paul Mansion adres­sée à Henri Bosmans / introduction, trans­cription et annotation par Michel HERMANS (pp. 217-251). HEEFFER (Albrecht) – HERMANS (Michel) – STOFFEL (Jean-François), Bibliographie d’Henri Bosmans (pp. 253-298). (shrink)

In this paper I defend anti-realism about race and a new theory of racialization. I argue that there are no races, only racialized groups. Many social constructionists about race have adopted racial formation theory to explain how ‘races’ are formed. However, anti-realists about race cannot adopt racial formation theory, because it assumes the reality of race. I introduce interactive constructionism about racialized groups as a theory of racialization for anti-realists about race. Interactive constructionism moves the discussion away from the dichotomous (...) (social vs. biological) metaphysics that has marred this debate, and posits that racialized groups are the joint products of a broad range of non-racial factors, which interact. (shrink)

It is commonly held that political ignorance is rational, a response to the high costs and low benefits of acquiring political information. But many recent critics of the claim that political ignorance is rational instead urge that it is a simple consequence of agents not concerning themselves with the acquisition of political information whatsoever. According to such critics, political ignorance is inadvertent radical ignorance rather than a rational response to the incentives faced by agents in democracies. And since political ignorance (...) is not a response to incentives, these critics urge, it cannot be ameliorated by incentivizing the acquisition of political information. This paper has two goals. First, I show that these seemingly competing accounts of political ignorance are in fact complementary, together explaining much political ignorance. Indeed, there is a sense in which political ignorance can be both rational and radical at the same time. Second, I more closely examine the relationship between incentives, kinds of political ignorance, and the acquisition of political information. On the one hand, from the fact that political ignorance is rational it does not follow that it can be overcome by incentivizing the acquisition of information. On the other hand, from the fact that political ignorance is radical it does not follow that it cannot be overcome by incentivizing the acquisition of information. Lastly, the complexity of the information in question is more relevant to determining whether ignorance can be overcome than whether such ignorance is rational or radical. (shrink)

I discuss Frege's argument - later called the slingshot - that if a construction is extensional and preserves logical equivalence then it is truth-functional. I consider some simple apparent counterexamples and conclude that they are not sentence-embedding in the required way.

Slurs possess interesting linguistic properties and so have recently attracted the attention of linguists and philosophers of language. For instance the racial slur "nigger" is explosively derogatory, enough so that just hearing it mentioned can leave one feeling as if they have been made complicit in a morally atrocious act.. Indeed, the very taboo nature of these words makes discussion of them typically prohibited or frowned upon. Although it is true that the utterance of slurs is illegitimate and derogatory in (...) most contexts, sufficient evidence suggests that slurs are not always or exclusively used to derogate. In fact, slurs are frequently picked up and appropriated by the very in-group members that the slur was originally intended to target. This might be done, for instance, as a means for like speakers to strengthen in-group solidarity. So an investigation into the meaning and use of slurs can give us crucial insight into how words can be used with such derogatory impact, and how they can be turned around and appropriated as vehicles of rapport in certain contexts among in-group speakers. In this essay I will argue that slurs are best characterized as being of a mixed descriptive/expressive type. Next, I will review the most influential accounts of slurs offered thus far, explain their shortcomings, then provide a new analysis of slurs and explain in what ways it is superior to others. Finally, I suggest that a family-resemblance conception of category membership can help us achieve a clearer understanding of the various ways in which slurs, for better or worse, are actually put to use in natural language discourse. (shrink)

Mental fictionalism is the view that, even if mental states do not exist, it is useful to talk as if they do. Mental states are useful fictions. Recent philosophy of mind has seen a growing interest in mental fictionalism. To date, much of the discussion has concerned the general features of the approach. In this paper, I develop a specific form of mental fictionalism by drawing on Kendall Walton’s work on make-believe. According to the approach I propose, talk of mental (...) states is a useful pretence for describing people and their behaviour. I try to clarify and motivate this approach by comparing it to well-known alternatives, including behaviourism, instrumentalism and eliminativism. I also consider some of the challenges that it faces. (shrink)

In this paper I defend the metaphysics of race as a valuable philosophical project against deflationism about race. The deflationists argue that metaphysical debate about the reality of race amounts to a non-substantive verbal dispute that diverts attention from ethical and practical issues to do with ‘race.’ In response, I show that the deflationists mischaracterize the field and fail to capture what most metaphysicians of race actually do in their work, which is almost always pluralist and very often normative and (...) explicitly political. Even if debates about the reality of race turn out to be verbal disputes, they are substantive, and worth having. (shrink)

Models as Make-Believe offers a new approach to scientific modelling by looking to an unlikely source of inspiration: the dolls and toy trucks of children's games of make-believe.

Support for the biological concept of race declined slowly but steadily during the second half of the twentieth century. However, debate about the validity of the race concept has recently been reignited. Genetic-clustering studies have shown that despite the small proportion of genetic variation separating continental populations, it is possible to assign some individuals to their continents of origin, based on genetic data alone. Race naturalists have interpreted these studies as empirically confirming the existence of human subspecies, and by extension (...) biological races. However, the new racial naturalism is not convincing. The continental clusters appealed to by race naturalists are arbitrary and superficial groupings, which should not be elevated to subspecies status. Moreover, the criteria applied to humans are not consistent with those used to define subspecies in nonhuman animals, and no rationale has been given for this differential treatment. (shrink)